our place be in hell." As he ponders how he shall comport himself before the firing squad, zur Linde realizes that he feels no fear or pity, even for himself. Conception Zur Linde's reflections articulate a typical trait of fascism, the notion of sacrificial violence and rejection of the sentiment of empathy for his victim, his dehumanization and blaming. This passage refers to Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1885), in which the disposition of sharing in the suffering of the victim is seen as a vulnerability. In an interview with Richard Burgin, Borges recalled how his interactions with Argentina's Nazi sympathisers led him to write the short story. And then I realized that those people that were on the side of Germany, that they never thought of German victories or the German glory. What they really liked was the idea of the Blitzkrieg, of London being on fire, of the country being destroyed. As to the German fighters, they took no stock in them. Then I thought, well now Germany has lost, now America has saved us from this nightmare, but since nobody can doubt on which side I stood, I'll see what can be done from a literary point of view in favor of the Nazis. And then I created the ideal Nazi. Of course, no Nazi was ever like that, they were all full of self pity; when they were on trial no one thought of saying, "Yes, I'm guilty, I ought to be shot; why not, this is as it should be and I would shoot you if I could." Nobody said that. They were all apologising and crying... References External links Short story text Holocaust literature Short stories about Nazi Germany Short stories by Jorge Luis Borges World War II short stories 1946 short stories Works originally published in Sur (magazine)