Abstract
Holocaust witness is the witness of imposed death. But the dying is twofold. There is both the murder of the individual and also the death of the memory of the individual and all that to which the individual belonged. The murdered individual cannot be restored. The death of the memory of the individual (and all that to which the individual belonged) can be — if only in part. To witness as a survivor is to witness one’s own potential fate, but also to restore to narrative a part of the destruction of that and those who did not survive to bear their own testimony. To witness is also to project the memory of that past onto the contemporary discourse and to contribute to the collective conscience in respect of those events, in the present and for the sake of posterity.
‘I thought that our suffering was atonement for all tinte and that generations to come would be free front prejudice forever. Alas! I was wrong.’2
— Anita Lasker-Wallfisch
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, Inherit the Truth (London: Giles de la Mare, 1996), p.13.
Quoted by: Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, By Words Alone; The Holocaust in Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), p.21.
Lawrence L. Langer, Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), p.39.
Henry Greenspan, On Listening to Holocaust Survivors: Recounting and Life History (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1998), p.27.
Elie Wiesel, One Generation After (New York: Schocken Books, 1982), pp.15–16.
Jurek Becker, in conversation with Stephen Lewis, in Lewis, Art Out of Agony: The Holocaust Theme in Literature, Sculpture and Film (Montreal: CBC Enterprises, 1984), p.94.
Young, Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), p.39.
Elie Wiesel, A Jew Today (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), p.247.
Lawrence L. Langer, Versions of Survival: The Holocaust and the Human Spirit (New York: New York University Press, 1982), p.1.
Jean François Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), pp.56–57.
Joanna Weiner Rudof, ‘Shaping Public and Private Memory: Holocaust Testimonies, Interviews and Documentaries’, Studies on the Audio-Visual Testimony of Victims of the Nazi Crimes and Genocides 1/1 (June 1998), p. 124.
Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: The Jewish Tragedy (London: Fontana Press, 1987).
Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Disaster (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), p.42.
Jean Améry, At the Mind’s Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities, trans. Sidney Rosenfeld and Stella Rosenfeld (Blooming: Indiana University Press, 1980), p.40.
Lyotard, Heidegger and ‘the Jews’ (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), p.9.
Dominic LaCapra, Representing the Holocaust; History, Theory, Trauma (New York: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp.40–41.
Antze and Lambek. (eds.), Tense Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Memory (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), p.xix.
Elie Wiesel, And the Sea is Never Full (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1999), p.346.
Geoffrey Hartman, ‘Closing Remarks’, in Peter Hayes (ed.), Lessons and Legacies; the Meaning of the Holocaust in a Changing World (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1991), p.336.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2001 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Smith, S. (2001). The Trajectory of Memory. In: Roth, J.K., Maxwell, E., Levy, M., Whitworth, W. (eds) Remembering for the Future. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-66019-3_163
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-66019-3_163
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-80486-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-66019-3
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)