Writing And Rewriting The Holocaust

Study of how historical memory and understanding are created in Holocaust diaries, memoirs, fiction, poetry, drama video testimony and memorials. Explores the consequences of narrative understanding for the victims, the survivors, and subsequent generations. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

As one of the best-known survivors of the concentration camps, Primo Levi's testimony to his experiences in Auschwitz is internationally recognised as one of the most significant works of the last century. This volume examines each of Levi's works in detail, assessing and analysing the influence of Levi's time in Auschwitz on his writing. It identifies a variety of thematic, temporal, stylistic and linguistic echoes of Levi's concentration camp testimony, and traces these echoes throughout his subsequent, apparently unrelated, work. The book provides original and fascinating insights into the works of this remarkable writer, giving readers a new understanding and perspective on the immense significance and the pervasive influence of the holocaust on Levi's creative output.

Several prominent writers reflect on the degree to which the atrocities of the Holocaust have affected contemporary writing on the subject. a very extensive and well documented historiographical and literary analysis.

Women's Holocaust Writing, the first book of literary criticism devoted to American Holocaust writing by and about women, extends Holocaust and literary studies by examining women's artistic representations of female Holocaust experiences. Beyond racial persecution, women suffered gender-related oppression and coped with the concentration camp universe in ways consistent with their prewar gender socialization. Through close, insightful reading of fiction S. Lillian Kremer explores Holocaust representations in works distinguished by the power of their literary expression and attention to women's diverse experiences.

In the early years of the 21st century it appeared that the memory of the Holocaust was secure in Western Europe; that, in order to gain entry into the European Union, the countries of Eastern Europe would have to acknowledge their compatriots' complicity in genocide. Fifteen year later, the landscape looks starkly different. Shedding fresh light on these developments, The Perversion of Holocaust Memory explores the politicization and distortion of Holocaust remembrance since 1989. This innovative book opens with an analysis of events across Europe which buttressed confidence in the stability of Holocaust memory and brought home the full extent of nations' participation in the Final Solution. And yet, as Judith M. Hughes reveals in later chapters, mainstream accountability began to crumble as the 21st century progressed: German and Jewish suffering was equated; anti-Semitic rhetoric re-entered contemporary discourse; populist leaders side-stepped inconvenient facts; and, more recently with the revival of ethno-nationalism, Holocaust remembrance has been caught in the backlash of the European refugee crisis. The four countries analyzed here – France, Germany, Hungary, and Poland – could all claim to be victims of Nazi Germany, the Allies or the Communist Soviet Union but they were also all perpetrators. Ultimately, it is this complex legacy which Hughes adroitly untangles in her sophisticated study of Holocaust memory in modern Europe.

The first multidisciplinary study of its kind, Breaking Crystal examines how members of the generation after the Holocaust in Israel and the United States confront through their own imaginations a traumatic event they have not directly experienced. Among the questions this groundbreaking work raises are: Whose memory is it? What will the collective memory of the Holocaust be in the twenty-first century, after the last survivors have given testimony? How in the aftermath of the Holocaust do we read and write literature and history? How is the memory inscribed in film and art? Is the appropriation of the Holocaust to political agendas a desecration of the six million Jews? What will the children of survivors pass on to the next generation?

A comprehensive survey of the most important writing to come out of the Holocaust. Writing in Witness is a broad survey of the most important writing about the Holocaust produced by eyewitnesses at the time and soon after. Whether they intended to spark resistance and undermine Nazi authority, to comfort family and community, to beseech God, or to leave a memorial record for posterity, the writers reflect on the power and limitations of the written word in the face of events often thought to be beyond representation. The diaries, journals, letters, poems, and other works were created across a geography reaching from the Baltics to the Balkans, from the Atlantic coast to the heart of the Soviet Union, and in a wide array of original languages. Along with the readings, Eric J. Sundquist’s introductions provide a comprehensive account of the Holocaust as a historical event. Including works by prominent authors such as Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel as well as those little known or anonymous, Writing in Witness provides, in vital and memorable examples, a wide-ranging account of the Holocaust by those who felt the imperative to give written testimony. “Written in every European language, in every conceivable manner, and from every point on the Holocaust compass—prisons, ghettos, transports, concentration and labor camps, killing fields, bunkers, makeshift shelters, camps for displaced persons—these diary entries, letters, testimonies, eyewitness accounts, poems, stories, sermons, and inscriptions demand that they be heard. Written by Jewish men, women, and children; by Christian bystanders; and yes, even by two German perpetrators, they depict the living nightmare as it unfolds. Six nightmare years and their aftermath are rendered in a language that defies the limits of language; an inescapable present that eclipses the past and cries out to an unattainable future. In the beginning was the Holocaust, and this is its story as told by its original responders.” — David G. Roskies, author of Holocaust Literature: A History and Guide “Writing in Witness is a devastatingly and deeply honest work of testimony by those whose worlds were shattered by the catastrophic rupture of the Holocaust. It is also, and primarily, a testament to the strength and courage of those who experienced the atrocities of Nazism and who felt compelled to write about those events in clear, unsparing language. Eric Sundquist, editor of this important collection, provides a sensitive selection of primary texts by men and women who witnessed the machinery and implementation of genocide. In his thoughtful and knowledgeable introduction, Sundquist establishes the framework for the ethical engagement of reader and eyewitness in the calculation of enormous loss. The various genres of witnessing included in this collection—diaries, poems, memoirs, letters, records—evoke in their clarity ancient forms of lamentation and Midrash, giving voice to memory. With judiciously interpretive preliminary material introducing each section, Sundquist lets the witnesses speak for themselves. No course on Holocaust literature or history should be without this anthology.” — Victoria Aarons, editor of Third-Generation Holocaust Narratives: Memory in Memoir and Fiction “This wide-ranging and affecting collection of firsthand accounts of the Holocaust, each expertly chosen and deftly introduced and contextualized, will be ideal for teaching purposes and indispensable to anyone intent on recovering a sense of what the horror felt like. Eric Sundquist has assembled an extraordinarily illuminating and powerful book.” — Peter Hayes, Theodore Zev Weiss Holocaust Educational Foundation Professor Emeritus, Northwestern University “Writing in Witness is a rich assortment of written accounts of diverse aspects of the experience of the Holocaust that are skillfully chosen and masterfully introduced and contextualized. What emerges from an overarching reading of these collective texts is a sense of how the actors who experienced or witnessed the events of the Holocaust registered them in language and through the sometimes immediate, sometimes reflective process of writing.” — Erin McGlothlin, author of Second-Generation Holocaust Literature: Legacies of Survival and Perpetration

How are Holocaust events remembered and narrated, and why? What knowledge can Holocaust testimony convey? Christine June Wunderli explores these questions as she examines four works by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. Guided by Bourdieu's theory of literary field as well as Young's theory of literary representation, she traces Hasidic influences in Wiesel's writing. Her conclusions are telling: Wiesel's narratives are born as memory is pulled towards both Auschwitz and the shtetl, caught up in the tension between the two. Still, the emerging trajectory is one of hope, led by a new categorical imperative. Christine June Wunderli has worked as an independent writer in St. John's, Canada, since 2020. Her focus is on theology, philosophy, and Jewish Studies.