Re-examining the Holocaust through Literature (review)

Abstract

Re-examining Holocaust through edited by Aukje Kluge and Benn E. Williams. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2009. 396 pp. $89.95. As a middle school teacher preparing my Holocaust unit each spring I was always aware of the journey that this labor of love entailed. It was not just about lining up materials and activities, but also contemplating all newly available histories, stories, and personal remembrances. As decade of 90s progressed, more and more Holocaust resources became available. And while much of this material was created for use in classroom, much more was work of scholars who did and still continue to examine this watershed event. In one sense, Re-examining Holocaust through Literature reflects some of ways that Holocaust scholarship has evolved over past sixty years. But in another sense, this collection of scholarly essays edited by Aukje Kluge and Benn E. Williams asks us to reconsider a fundamental question: What counts as Holocaust literature? essays in this volume challenge us as educators to explore our notions of what we think we already know, as well as what these new perspectives can provide as we continue to rethink, remake, and reinvigorate our teaching of Holocaust. Part I, titled Mixing Genres, Histories, and Representation, approaches questions of genre and representation though analyses of literature and film. In Car cela devient une histoire: Representation of Holocaust in Imaginative and Collective Memoirs of Charlotte Elizabeth Scheiber examines work of Charlotte Delbo, a survivor who shares her memories through multiple genres, including prose, lyric poetry, and what Scheiber calls poetic memoir. In Peter Weiss's Die Ermittlung: Dramatic and Legal Representation and Auschwitz Trial, Scott Windham discusses audience response to Weiss's portrayal of Holocaust perpetrators in his 1965 play. Weiss's dramatic enactment of 1963-65 Frankfurt trials of former Auschwitz officers and guards drew on actual transcripts from trials at a time when majority of Germans preferred to cease investigation of past connections to Holocaust. Windham demonstrates how Die Ermittlung intertwines history and literature to provide competing representations of perpetrators, creating a collage rather than a final, normative judgment. Finally, in third of Part I, The Limits of Holocaust Representation in Arab World, Esther Webman explores how political landscape limits and complicates cultural representations. Surveying Arab literature and television in three different time periods, Webman analyzes their major themes and acknowledges those minor voices who have attempted to intervene in dominant Arab discourses. Part II of Re-examining Holocaust through Literature investigates how fiction and history work together to reteU stories of both those who Uved through experience and those who wrote about it after fact. Benn E. WiUiams takes a broad look at French fiction and then deals more specificaUy with novel, La cliente. His essay Varying Shades of Gray: Pierre Assouline at Frontier of Fact and Fiction, provides a compelling example of challenges of addressing actual history of die Holocaust by way of a fictionalized story. In Suffering, Heroism, and Healing Arrival of Savior: Holocaust in Evangelical Literature, Yaakov Ariel argues that purpose of much of this body of literature is to demonstrate that horrors of Holocaust were perpetrated by non-Christians, as true Christians would not have taken part in such inhumane acts. …