Trajectories of memory : intergenerational representations of the Holocaust in history and the arts

This volume, which grew out of a conference of the same name held at Bowling Green State University in March 2006, represents new scholarly perspectives on the way in which the Holocaust is remembered in history, literary studies and theatre. It is a response to changing representations of the Holocaust across generations, disciplines, and in various cultural and national contexts. The contributions address the following questions: How do historians, artists, scholars, and teachers negotiate the language of the Holocaust as survivors die, leaving future generations to respond to the dictum: Never again? How do children and grandchildren of survivors, perpetrators, bystanders transmit the difficult legacy of the Holocaust in American, Israeli, French, German, Swiss and Austrian contexts while navigating feelings of transgenerational guilt or victimhood? How can we do justice to survivor testimony when the survivors can no longer speak directly or mediate the testimony to us? How does transferred and multiply mediated knowledge translate into meaningful artifacts for the next generations? The collection features an interview about interdisciplinarity within Holocaust studies conducted at the conference with keynote speakers Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer. The articles in the first section explore the complex relationship between memory, oral history and historiography in cross-cultural contexts. The second section includes articles on texts by Cynthia Ozick, Thane Rosenbaum, Daniel Handler, W.G Sebald, Monika Maron, Stephan Wackwitz, Jonathan Foer, Art Spiegelman, Georges-Arthur Goldstein, Binjamin Wilkomirski, Elfriede Jelinek, Thomas Bernhard, Tim Blake Nelson, and Diane Samuel. Table of Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 Introduction • Christina Guenther and Beth Griech-Polelle 10 Part I: Acknowledging Personal Presence in the Embodied Nature of Scholarship 24 A Conversation with Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer • Julia Baker 26 Part II: Representations of the Holocaust in History 36 Between the “Known” and the “Could be Known”: The Case of the Escape from Auschwitz • Ruth Linn 38 Child Holocaust Survivors at Kibbutz Mishmar HaEmek—The Recorded Tale Unremembered • Micha Balf 64 The Impact of “Jewish Soap” and “Lampshades” on Holocaust Remembrance • Joachim Neander 74 The Use of Nazi Symbols in Israel: The Politics of Holocaust Discourse and Memory • Dirk Michel 102 Holocaust Survivors’ Attitudes toward Jewish Suicide: A Preliminary Examination • Mark Mengerink 126 Place and Memory in Holocaust Survivor Oral Histories • Jamie Wraight 150 Voices, Visions, and Silence: Reflections on Listening to Holocaust Survivors • Sidney Bolkosky 168 Part III: Representations of the Holocaust in the Arts 180 The Golem Redux: Intertextuality in Contemporary Jewish American Literature • Elisabeth Baer 182 Emigrant Narratives and their Devices in Spiegelman, Foer, and Sebald • Hans Kellner 198 Towards an Extension of Memory: W. G. Sebald Reads Jean Améry • Markus Zisselsberger 214 Spectral Topographies: Locating Auschwitz in W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz and Stephan Wackwitz’s An Invisible Country • Silke Horstkotte 248 Images and Imagination: Monika Maron’s Pavel’s Letters • Caroline Schaumann 272 Fragments and Beyond: Childhood Trauma in Binjamin Wilkomirski’s and Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt’s Holocaust Testimonies and Life-Writing • Julia Baker 302 Postmemory in Austrian Post-Holocaust Literature: Thomas Bernhard’s Heldenplatz and Elfriede Jelinek’s Totenauberg • Christine Kiebuzinska 336 The Creation and Representation of Postmodern Geschichtsraum in Die Kinder der Toten • Maria-Regina Kecht 356 Performance of Memory: Diane Samuel’s Kindertransport, Tim Blake Nelson’s The Grey Zone, and Holocaust Representation • Charlene Gould and Jeffrey Myers 376 List of Contributors 398 Index 404