Third-Generation Holocaust Narratives: Memory in Memoir and Fiction ed. by Victoria Aarons

Abstract

Reviewed by: Third-Generation Holocaust Narratives: Memory in Memoir and Fiction ed. by Victoria Aarons Elizabeth Scheiber (bio) Third-Generation Holocaust Narratives: Memory in Memoir and Fiction Edited by Victoria Aarons Victoria Aarons Lexington Books, 2016. xxii + 211 pp. $100.00 hardcover. $44.99 paperback. Third-Generation Holocaust Narratives is a collection of essays by different authors intended primarily for Holocaust scholars interested in critically engaging questions related to, as the title implies, narratives by authors who can be identified as third-generation Holocaust survivors. Typically, third generation refers to the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, but, as some scholars in the volume point out, such a label is slippery and sets boundaries of identity that are not conducive to critical thinking. The label of “third generation” refers to a distance to the event that leaves a gap in time and/ or geography, and even identifying who constitutes a survivor can be tricky. This volume is not an attempt to settle questions of classification and representation once and for all. Instead, it presents an array of questions for readers to ponder, such as what third-generation writing accomplishes, by what means the authors attempt to understand what is unknowable, and how they foreground their search for the past and lack of ability to bring closure. Editor Victoria Aarons provides a good overview in her introduction entitled “Approaching the Third Generation.” She posits that the third generation inhabits a precarious position between proximity and distance, close enough to survivors but still at a remove from events, so their legacy requires a process of construction and contrived memory since it does not have direct access to the event. While the focus is on what third-generation narratives (both fiction and non-fiction) accomplish, the chapters span many nations, from Europe to North America and South America, and time periods, from the Second World War to the start of the 21st century. The first and final chapter emphasize what fiction accomplishes in this regard. In a journalistic chapter, “A Special Kind of Kinship: On Being a ‘3G’ Writer,” Erika Dreifus makes the point that fiction can bring a sense of interiority about an experience that nonfiction cannot. The volume then concludes with a piece of creative writing inspired by the works of Marcel Proust, “Simon and Mania” by Henri Raczymow, translated by Alan Astro. With its accumulation of memory and detail, it illustrates the way trauma can be experienced at a generational remove. Chapters two and three provide comparisons of second- and third-generation writers. In “Memory’s Afterimage: Post-Holocaust Writing and the Third Generation,” Victoria Aarons proposes that the space the second generation occupies is closer in time and emotion to the event, thus receiving [End Page 230] the uneasy inheritance of the Shoah while the third generation seeks these stories out, attempting a kind of contemporary midrash and merging memory and imagination to form a coherent narrative about the past. In “A Visible Bridge: Contemporary Jewish Fiction and Literary Memorials to the Shoah,” Avinoam Patt examines works by Sara Houghteling, Julie Orringer, Molly Antopol, Boris Fishman, and Daniel Torday, proposing that while the second generation seems to have co-opted the Holocaust in what can at times feel like appropriation, the third generation attempts to create memorials to the event, compelled to tell the “story that remains untold” (43). Chapter four, “Storytelling, Photography, and Mourning in Daniel Mendelsohn’s The Lost” by Paule Lévy, is a scholarly examination of the limits of comprehension in our attempts to recapture the past. Archives are incomplete and photographs cannot capture the essence of a person, and visits to locations such as Auschwitz feel more like attractions or museums. In the end, the seeker realizes that there is no way to arrive at a sense of closure or completeness, and the book becomes a work of mourning, a kaddish to the dead. In chapter five, “Life after Death: A Third-Generation Journey in Jérémie Dres’s We Won’t See Auschwitz,” Alan L. Berger contends that Dres’s graphic novel crosses genres: memoir, sociological inquiry, history lesson, and political primer as it explores post-Holocaust Jewish identity in France and Poland. Chapter...