Narrative Fissures, Historical Context: When Traumatic Memory Is Compromised

Abstract

This article demonstrates how manifestations of trauma in testimony narratives emerge as sources for historiographical research on the Holocaust. The testimony of Shmuel B. from Bessarabia in Romania deals with the persecution and expulsion of the teenage Jewish boy and his family from his hometown Hotin, to the ghettos of Murafa and Djurin in Romanian and German-occupied Transnistria in 1941–1942. Moments of silence and muteness in the witness’ narrative, narrative fissures, and inconsistencies will be integrated in a carefully reconstructed historical landscape of events and developments. In their interpretations, a (his)story will unfold that reflects the inner world of the boy Shmuel in the outer world of the Holocaust in Transnistria. This analysis aims at highlighting the dimensions of human experience and recollection in the historiography of genocidal events. It also promotes listening to the voices of the muted, to ask for their epistemic value in regard to our historical understandings, and to integrate them into our picture of the past.