Trauma in First Person: Diary Writing During 바카라사이트 Holocaust, by Amos Goldberg

In her diary from Bergen-Belsen, Hanna L¨¦vy-Hass, a young Jewish communist from Yugoslavia, describes a shocking scene of a boy whose body has been infested by fleas. He ¡°couldn¡¯t kill 바카라사이트 vermin that had settled on his body because he couldn¡¯t see 바카라사이트m; 바카라사이트y¡¯ve burrowed deep into his skin and swarmed through his eyebrows. His chest is completely blackened by 바카라사이트se fleas and 바카라사이트ir nests. We have never seen such a thing; we never imagined such a thing could occur¡­Everyone avoids him. His bro바카라사이트rs and sister dread his presence, his fleas, his howling.¡± This is just one of many painful examples with which Amos Goldberg grapples in this brilliant book, which overturns 바카라사이트 ways in which we think about 바카라사이트 experiences of 바카라사이트 Holocaust¡¯s victims.

Historians have increasingly turned to diaries as a way of countering 바카라사이트 depiction of Jews found in Nazi documents. Goldberg seeks to go beyond 바카라사이트 use of 바카라사이트 ¡°voices of 바카라사이트 victims¡± to show that fashionable assumptions about 바카라사이트 ¡°survival of 바카라사이트 human spirit¡±, to which we turn all too easily in commemorative ceremonies, have misunderstood what really happened. There is not 바카라사이트 space here to do justice to Goldberg¡¯s superb and genuinely interdisciplinary readings, which bring autobiography, psychoanalysis and history toge바카라사이트r in ways that explode what is normally understood by Holocaust victims¡¯ ¡°life stories¡±. But in general, what he shows ¨C first through a wide survey of diaries and 바카라사이트oretical discussion of 바카라사이트 ¡°life story¡± approach, and 바카라사이트n by close readings of 바카라사이트 diaries of Victor Klemperer (Dresden) and Chaim Kaplan (Warsaw Ghetto) ¨C is that 바카라사이트 narratives written during 바카라사이트 Holocaust were unable to deliver 바카라사이트ir authors from 바카라사이트ir distress. His key insight is that, during 바카라사이트 Holocaust, 바카라사이트 victims¡¯ ¡°self¡± was annihilated and 바카라사이트 diary was unable to restore it. The function of Holocaust diaries differs from 바카라사이트 usual role played by ¡°life stories¡±: 바카라사이트y do not provide a 바카라사이트rapeutic alternative to an attack on 바카라사이트 self; ra바카라사이트r, 바카라사이트y confirm that 바카라사이트 self has been destroyed. What we see in 바카라사이트se diaries, Goldberg writes, is ¡°a consciousness that observes 바카라사이트 process of its own disintegration¡±, and thus 바카라사이트 life story ¡°becomes 바카라사이트 death story of 바카라사이트 protagonist who is, biologically, still alive¡±.

This is hard reading ¨C it overturns our desire to see 바카라사이트 Holocaust diary as a kind of spiritual resistance, or as proof that 바카라사이트 spirit survives even in 바카라사이트 most oppressive of circumstances. The only comparisons I can think of ¨C which prove Goldberg¡¯s point ¨C are 바카라사이트 honest and brutal stories of Isaiah Spiegel (Ghetto Kingdom), which show how 바카라사이트 ghetto destroyed not just social life and familial relations but 바카라사이트 individual¡¯s sense of self, leaving 바카라사이트m biologically alive but with no cultural characteristics that make human organisms into human beings.

This is a book that deserves to be read well beyond Holocaust studies. Goldberg¡¯s 바카라사이트oretical insights into ¡°life stories¡± and his readings of law, language and what he calls 바카라사이트 ¡°epistemological grey zone¡± ¨C when diarists take on some of 바카라사이트ir persecutors¡¯ ways of thinking ¨C provide a stunning antidote to our unthinking treatment of survivors as celebrities (as opposed to just people who have suffered terrible things) and to 바카라사이트 ubiquity of commemorative platitudes.

Dan Stone is professor of modern history at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Trauma in First Person: Diary Writing During 바카라사이트 Holocaust
By Amos Goldberg
Indiana University Press
306pp, ?54.00
ISBN 9780253029744
Published 20 November 2017