Interrogating the Ethics and Intentions of Family Life Writing Relating to the Holocaust

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Holocaust and its representation are the subject of acute historical, academic and artistic study. The dominant channels of representation tend to perpetuate popularised narratives and fictionalise in ways that are often irresponsible and unethical, designed to captivate audiences at the expense of accuracy and respect for the trauma of victims. It is crucial that non-witnesses who seek to write about the Holocaust period interrogate the ethics of, and intentions for, their practice. In this paper I analyse my own experience as a third-generation writer—the grandchild of a survivor—and two case study texts: An Exclusive Love (2010) by Johanna Adorján, and A Certain Light (2018) by Cynthia Banham, to illustrate how writers at a three-generation remove from the Holocaust engage with their grandparents’ Holocaust story ethically. In these works of memoir, empathy and memory are problematised in relation to the Holocaust’s lingering presence in family narrative. Imaginative projection—derived from deep research, memory, and empathic response—functions in these memoirs as a bridging device between past and present. Such key characteristics as transparent and reflexive narrative voice, documented research process, and informed, imaginative projection are, I argue, exemplary of an ethical approach to family Holocaust history.