Speaker: Academia.eu

Abstract: »The grandchildren of Holocaust survivors–the third generation–often retell their grandparents’ experiences during the Holocaust. Much of the time, however, grandchildren are missing information about this history; a common refrain from grandchildren is that they only know “bits and pieces” about this past. Scholars have argued that grandchildren fill in these gaps in their knowledge of the Holocaust through fantasy and imagination, especially in their fictional cultural output. One well-known example of this phenomenon is Jonathan Safran Foer’s EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED. While understanding how grandchildren use fiction to fill in such lacunae is important, it is also necessary to analyze the origins, development, and content of this missing information. After all, when grandchildren are interviewed, they are typically unable to employ the same creative techniques to supplement the “bits and pieces” they have about their grandparents’ history.
This tension is the point of departure for my presentation, which examines the gaps and overlaps of survivors’ and grandchildren’s accounts of the Holocaust. I argue that at times, grandchildren knew a remarkable amount of details about their grandparents’ Holocaust experiences–perhaps even more than was documented in survivors’ archived video testimonies. At other times, however, grandchildren lacked information about their grandparents, particularly when it came to topics deemed taboo like sexual experiences, “collaboration” with the Nazis, and mental health. Therefore, I argue, grandchildren can sometimes give voice to survivors’ silences, but in other instances, grandchildren (inadvertently) perpetuate survivors’ silences and these elements of their narratives are simply lost.
My presentation will advance these arguments through analysis of interviews I conducted with American and German grandchildren of survivors and information about their survivor grandparents from their video testimonies or writings. I will consider why survivors’ and their grandchildren’s narratives were at times consonant and at other times diverged. In doing so, I will examine the influence of remembrance structures on these gaps and overlaps. Ultimately, this presentation offers another method through which to analyze survivors’ silences and calls into question the framing of grandchildren–by themselves and others–as the bearers of absolute “lessons” and “legacies” of the Holocaust.« (Source: Online Program)

Wikipedia: History of Europe: History of Germany / Nazi Germany | Genocide: The Holocaust / Sexual violence during the Holocaust | Sex and the law: Sexual violence / Sex crimes in Germany