Guilt & the Myth of the Innocent Bystander: Louis Malle’s Au revoir les enfants

Abstract

This review studies the representation of director Louis Malle's experiences as a child in the Holocaust in the film Au Revoir les enfants. The film blurs the lines between the controversial categories of Holocaust participants as victims, bystanders, and perpetrators. This ambiguity and overlapping of roles in the film presents the question of treatment of Holocaust memory.