I I74 Reviews Second-Generation Holocaust Literature: Legacies of Survival and Perpetration. By ERIN MCGLOTHLIN. (Studies inGerman Literature, Linguistics and Culture) Rochester, NY: Camden House. 2oo6. iX+254 pp. $75; C45. ISBN 978-I 57I I3-325-6. As the generation that lived throughNazi Germany and theHolocaust passes away, the children and grandchildren of the formersurvivors and perpetrators increasingly move into the focus of scholarly research. In most disciplines, the psychoanalytic paradigm of trauma continues to play a defining role in characterizing the experi ence of the firstgeneration of survivors and their children, and more recently also the perpetrators and their descendants. Erin McGlothlin's examination of second generation Holocaust literature situates itselfwithin thiswider discourse, although with the particular focus on nine literary texts on the second generation in theUS, France, and Germany. Following Efraim Sicher's use of the term 'second-generation Holocaust literature' todenote the literaryconstruction of the Jewish second genera tion's experience regardless ofwriters' personal backgrounds and family histories, McGlothlin expands thisconcept to examine the literary treatmentof thechildren of perpetrators as well. Texts as diverse asArt Spiegelman's Maus and Robert Schin del's Gebzirtig on the one hand, and Peter Schneider's Vati and Bernhard Schlink's Der Vorleser on the other, provide ample material for this investigation, which sets out with a theoretical discussion of the usefulness of the concept of trauma when extended to the second generation as well as theperpetrators and theirdescendants. Drawing mainly on Dan Bar-On's psychoanalytically inspiredwork with the chil dren ofHolocaust survivors and perpetrators and Gabriele Rosenthal's comparative analysis of personal narratives byHolocaust survivors, perpetrators, and the two fol lowing generations, McGlothlin employs Dan Diner's notion of the 'negative sym biosis' of thepost-war Jewish and non-Jewish generation to support the comparative scope of her project. This does not mean that McGlothlin conflates the two groups or even argues to reconcile them (and particularly Rosenthal's findingswould resist such a takeon the subject); rather,her study remains nuanced and careful throughout in examining the specificities of each text and itsprotagonists. Outlining the typical themes of the examined texts, McGlothlin reiterates how theHolocaust has become themost salient marker of second-generation Jewish identity,which is enacted, for example, through Jewish rituals of mourning. Such troping or marking also ap pears innarratives depicting the children of perpetrators, only heremost commonly as the unbearable burden of guilt. Surprisingly, however, neither side fully repro duces the common dichotomy of victims and perpetrators; thus, the drawing-desk of Spiegelman's protagonist Art echoes the image of thewatchtowers ofAuschwitz, thus implicating theartistwith exploitation of thevictims' suffering,and thechildren of perpetrators often perceive themselves as victims of theirparents' past. The observation of these ambiguities calls for furtherelaboration on their social and cultural relevance, which isnot always transparent in the study.Furthermore, its illustration of thepersonal, of narrated lifehistories and individual psychology, isnot always clearly distinguished from literaryconstruction as another formofmediating the personal, social, and historical: a medium thatmight indeed facilitate a depar ture from the often homogenizing application of the concept of trauma to human experience during theHolocaust, and instead open up narratives of personal agency, resistance, and political accountability that the trauma discourse may neglect. The dominance of trauma discourse itself may need to be historicized, particularly in its extension beyond the category of victims since the I990s, as the second generation and second-hand accounts ofHolocaust representation increasingly take centre stage. In the study, the historical circumstances of these discourses do not fully receive the attention they deserve. Major national and global events none the less fuelled MLR, I03.4, 2oo8 I I75 the emergence of the theories and second-generation literarywritings explored in the study, fromBitburg and the fortieth anniversary of the ending of the Second World War in I985 through to the 1995 and 2005 anniversaries that each marked a caesura in cultural memory. How the 200I attacks on the World Trade Center may have contributed to these developments generally still awaits attention, despite the appearance of salientworks such as Spiegelman's recent In theShadow ofNo Towers. Instead, thematerials considered in McGlothlin's study seem to testifyto a statically conceived notion particularly of the Jewish second-generation...