The_Holokaust_-_origins,_implementation,_aftermath

INTRODUCTION
them were associated. In this context we may think, for instance, of Elsa Morante,
whose epic History: A Novel, a “view from below” of the destruction of war as
seen and experienced (but never understood) by a simple and poor woman and
her toddler son, in many ways far surpasses her more famous husband Alberto
Moravia’s writings; 40 and of Nadezhda Mandelstam, whose memoir is a devastating
woman’s view of Stalinist terror, and at least the equal of her own husband’s (Osip
Mandelstam) greatest poems. 41 A third work of exceptional merit is Heda Margolius
Kovály’s memoir, an excerpt from which is included here. Kovály too married a
prominent Czech politician (and Holocaust survivor) after she returned from the
camps, and lived to see him murdered in Stalin’s last purge. Most of her memoir is
devoted to life under Stalinism. And yet the first pages can be counted among the
most remarkable (and least known) accounts of a woman’s experience in the
Holocaust and her ultimate escape from the horror. Written in tight, concise prose,
ruthless in its sincerity and yet filled with compassion, it should enable the reader
to gain at least a glimpse of the reality of life in what the Nazis called the “anus
mundi.” 42
Part III, “Aftermath,” addresses some central issues related to post-Holocaust
confrontations or coming to terms with the event. In recent years scholars have
become increasingly aware of the importance of memory as a phenomenon
worthy of historical research and analysis. The Holocaust, one of whose most
devastating consequences was a vast erasure of memory, accompanied by
widespread trauma and repression, has now come to be seen as an event whose
personal ramifications can be understood only by means of a sensitive and subtle
analysis of survivors’ oral testimonies. The human aspects of the affair, and the
long-range effects it has had on future generations, are now being examined by
way of interviews with survivors and the application of literary and psychological
tools to their analysis in an attempt to uncover their hidden meanings. 43 One of
the most perceptive and insightful analyses of such oral testimonies can be
found in a recent pathbreaking study by Lawrence Langer. 44 Chapter 11 brings
an article by Langer which summarizes some of his arguments and discusses
several disturbing aspects of survivors’ oral accounts. What we find here is not
only that it is impossible for us to imagine the experiences being related by the
survivors, but also that even the latter cannot fully reconcile their present selves
with their memories of life in the Holocaust. Whereas the interviewers wish to
apply current moral and ethical criteria to the memories their questions evoke,
the survivors reject the applicability of normal standards of behavior and
judgments to a situation of utter and complete abnormality. Hence the very
attempt by those who were there to explain their experience to those who were
not demonstrates only the yawing abyss between them. Moreover, we realize
that the speakers themselves can never integrate the memory of the past into
their present reality, but are doomed to a condition of perpetual inner conflict
between two irreconcilable identities. This chapter thus provides an example of
the crucial importance of this line of inquiry and constitutes a troubling critique
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