Constructing the Imaginative Bridge: Third-Generation Holocaust Narratives

Abstract

Reynolds’s research examines the ways in which third-generation Holocaust writers, the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, approach the subject of their own traumatic history and the intergenerational transmission of trauma and memory. Despite the two generational divide that separates the third generation from the preceding two generations of Holocaust writers, the trans-generational transmission of trauma continues to preoccupy contemporary narratives. This research examines the ways the grandchildren of survivors, represented in this paper by Margot Singer and Jonathan Safran Foer, confront and include lost worlds in their narratives as well as their attempts to resurrect these fractured pasts through innovative uses of imaginative leaps. The third generation continues to suffer from the intergenerational transmission of trauma and memory yet discovers innovative ways to share that trauma, evidence of evolving modes of bearing witness. KEYWORDS: Holocaust Narratives; Third-Generation; Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma; Literature; Trauma; Memory Studies; Jewish Identity; Grandchildren of Survivors