Page "Sophie's Choice (novel)" Paragraph 11

Similarly, by placing a non-Jewish character at the center of an Auschwitz story, Styron suggests the universality of the suffering under the Third Reich.

Though several characters, including Stingo, discuss in detail the fact that the Jewish people suffered far more than other groups, Stingo also describes Hitler's attempts to eliminate the Slavs or turn them into slave labor and makes the case that the Holocaust cannot be understood as an exclusively Jewish tragedy.

In contrast, Nathan, whose paranoid condition makes him particularly sensitive about his ethnicity, is the novel's prime spokesman for this exclusivity.

His inability to cope with the fact that Sophie, a Polish-Catholic, shared the sufferings of European Jews, while he was prevented, by his mental illness, from even enlisting in the military, causes him to accuse Sophie of complicity in the Holocaust and leads to their mutual destruction.