Literary Commentary: A Transactional Approach to Holocaust Literature

1994 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Shawn
Keyword(s):  
Reading Strategies ◽  
Holocaust Literature ◽  
Response Theory ◽  
Literary Response ◽  
Active Reading ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Age Appropriate ◽  
Transactional Approach

Through active reading strategies including annotation, shared inquiry, and interpretive discussion, librarians can play a major role in the development of age-appropriate Holocaust literature programs suitable for library and classroom settings. Literary response theory becomes practice as librarians and students, in this updated adaptation of the chavruta, use writing journals to articulate and exchange questions, comments, and feelings about the books they have read and recommended, bridging the gap between the generations of readers who share, through literature, the Holocaust experience.

Out of the Whirlwind Reconsidered

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Michael Berkowitz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Personal History ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Holocaust Literature ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mutual Accountability ◽  
Union College

This article argues that Albert Friedlander’s edited book, Out of the Whirlwind (1968), should be recognised as pathbreaking. Among the first to articulate the idea of ‘Holocaust literature’, it established a body of texts and contextualised these as a way to integrate literature – as well as historical writing, music, art and poetry – as critical to an understanding of the Holocaust. This article also situates Out of the Whirlwind through the personal history of Friedlander and his wife Evelyn, who was a co-creator of the book, his colleagues from Hebrew Union College, and the illustrator, Jacob Landau. It explores the work’s connection to the expansive, humanistic development of progressive Judaism in the United States, Britain and continental Europe. It also underscores Friedlander’s study of Leo Baeck as a means to understand the importance of mutual accountability, not only between Jews, but in Jews’ engagement with the wider world.

Levinas as a Reader of Jewish Texts

2018 ◽  
pp. 442-458
Author(s):  
Ethan Kleinberg
Keyword(s):  
Reading Strategies ◽  
Related Issue ◽  
Written Texts ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
And Training ◽  
Do So

This article attempts to understand Levinas as a reader of Jewish texts, with particular attention paid to his Talmudic commentaries. To do so, the entangled relation between oral and written texts is explored; one must be able to properly “read” but also “write,” and there is the related issue of the methodology and training to be able to do so properly. Levinas offers commentary on each issue. Several interpretations of Talmudic texts and an important discussion of reading Scripture are analyzed in order to elucidate Levinas’s reading strategies, what this tells us about his relation to the larger tradition of Talmudic commentary, and Levinas’s particular historical moment, especially the role of the Holocaust for his approach to reading the Talmud and traditional texts.

Multimedia Active Reading

2017 ◽  
pp. 153-163
Author(s):  
Jennifer Ann Palilonis
Keyword(s):  
Reading Strategies ◽  
Digital Reading ◽  
Digital Space ◽  
Study Guides ◽  
Reading Support ◽  
Active Reading ◽  
Environment Map

In the age of online textbooks and digital reading devices, the nature of active reading has changed. During active reading, learners build and analyze the materials they read by applying specific strategies, such as annotating, summarizing, and developing study guides or other artifacts in an effort to comprehend, memorize, and synthesize information. However, research suggests that as textbooks migrate to the digital space, contemporary active reading may be more accurately conceptualized as, at least in part, dependent upon the medium or the platform on which it occurs. This chapter proposes a novel perspective for understanding active reading called Multimedia Active Reading, which is empirically grounded in prior research that uncovered ways in which learner behaviors in the tablet textbook environment map to common physical active reading strategies (i.e., annotation, reorganization, browsing, and cross-referencing) and introduced and evaluated novel active reading support designed for the tablet textbook environment.

‘Anti-Fascist Literature’ as Holocaust Literature?

2019 ◽  
pp. 409-426
Author(s):  
Richard S. Esbenshade
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Holocaust Literature ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
Second World

THE long-accepted, fairly universal idea of a ‘great silence’ on the Holocaust in general, and in Hungary in particular, extending from the end of the Second World War until the Eichmann trial, has recently been challenged.1 The return or emergence from hiding of survivors quickly led to an explosion of Holocaust literature. Before the communist takeover, in the midst of difficult material and turbulent political conditions, Jenő Lévai and others published collections of documents;...

scholarly journals Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” and Holocaust Literature

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Ethnic Difference ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Holocaust Literature ◽  
Horror Genre ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Theodor Adorno ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Us

Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” has been notorious since its first publication in 1948, but rarely, if ever, has it been read in light of its immediate historical context. This essay draws on literature, philosophy, and anthropology from the period to argue that Jackson’s story, which scholars have traditionally read through the lens of gender studies, invokes the themes of Holocaust literature. To support this argument, the essay explores imaginative Holocaust literature from the period by David Rousset, whose Holocaust memoir The Other Kingdom appeared in English translation in 1946, anthropological discourse from the period on scapegoating and European anti-Semitism, and critical discourse on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism from the period by Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno. The analysis finds that, in representing the phenomena of scapegoating and death selection in a small town in the US, Jackson’s story belongs to an abstract discourse on Holocaust-related themes and topics that was actively produced at midcentury, as evidenced partly by Rousset’s influential memoir. A master of the horror genre, Jackson could have drawn on her own experience of anti-Semitism, along with her known interest in the study of folklore, to contribute this chilling representation of the personal experience of death selection to a discourse on Holocaust-related themes. As this article shows, the abstract discourse Jackson’s story joined is marked by skepticism about or disinterest in ethnic difference and anthropological concepts. Due to the fact that this article features comparative analysis of Holocaust literature, a sub-topic is the debate among scholars concerning the ethics of literary representation of the Shoah and of analysis of Holocaust memoir. Jackson’s story and its context invoke perennially important questions about identity and representation in discourse about the Shoah and anti-Semitism.

scholarly journals Transgenerational Memory: From Pre-Holocaust to Post-Yugoslavia

2020 ◽  
pp. 33-54
Author(s):  
Кринка [Krinka] Видаковић-Петров [Vidaković-Petrov]
Keyword(s):  
First Generation ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Hybrid Structure ◽  
Holocaust Literature ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Mother Daughter Relationship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Hybrid Character ◽  
And Gender

Transgenerational Memory: From Pre-Holocaust to Post-YugoslaviaThe study focuses on Fanika as an example of documentary writing by firstand second-generation survivors, i.e. women in the mother-daughter relationship (Hanna Altarac/Fanika Lučić and Branka Jovičić), both from Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. The timeline of the life story of Hanna/Fanika, born in 1922 in a Sephardic family from Sarajevo, coincides on the macro level with the history of Yugoslavia (the establishment of the state and the interwar period, World War Two and the Holocaust, the postwar socialist period, the break-up of the country and post-Yugoslavia), which is important for the contextualization of the narrative. We have analyzed the motivation of first-generation survivor Fanika Lučić to present her memories of the Holocaust, highlighting the importance of communicative memory as an instrument of their transmission to a second-generation survivor as well as the process involved in their transfer from private to public narrative. Further analysis refers to the generic frames of the narrative, its hybrid character, and its liminal position at a point where biography and autobiography meet and interact. Mediation is a key procedure in Fanika, so attention has been dedicated to determining the degrees of mediation, their variation throughout the narrative and their impact on the substructures (narrative segments). Finally, we have identified, interpreted, and contextualized several gender markers appearing at various levels of the text. In conclusion, the book was designed not only to transmit the Holocaust testimony of Fanika Lučić, but also to provide a biographical account of her life in socialist Yugoslavia, her experience of the war in Bosnia, and the final phase of her life as a Canadian immigrant. Transgenerational memory and gender play a key role in the hybrid structure of this book, which is a welcome contribution to Yugoslav Holocaust literature. Pamięć międzypokoleniowa: od czasów przed Holokaustem do okresu postjugosłowiańskiegoArtykuł analizuje książkę Fanika jako przykład prozy dokumentalnej, autorstwa dwóch kobiet należących kolejno do pierwszego i drugiego pokolenia ocalałych z Holokaustu. Są to pochodzące z Sarajewa matka i córka – Hanna Altarac/Fanika Lučic i Branka Jovičic. Ramy czasowe historii życia Hanny/Faniki (ur. 1922 w sefardyjskiej rodzinie) zbiegają się z historią Jugosławii (powstanie państwa i okres międzywojenny, II wojna światowa i Holokaust, powojenny socjalistyczny okres, rozpad kraju i okres postjugosłowiański), co stanowi istotny punkt wyjścia dla kontekstualizacji narracji. W artykule poddano analizie zarówno motywację ocalałej z pierwszego pokolenia Faniki Lučić do przedstawienia swoich wspomnień z Holokaustu, podkreślając znaczenie pamięci komunikacyjnej jako narzędzia służącego do przekazywania wspomnień ocalałemu z drugiego pokolenia, jak i proces transferu wspomnień z narracji prywatnej do publicznej. Dalsza analiza odnosi się do ogólnych ram narracji, jej hybrydowego charakteru i jej pozycji liminalnej w punkcie, w którym biografia i autobiografia spotykają się i współdziałają. Ponieważ mediacja jest procedurą kluczową w Fanice, zwrócono uwagę na określenie stopnia mediacji, jej zmienności poprzez narrację, a także jej wpływu na narracyjne podstruktury (segmenty narracyjne). Wreszcie zidentyfikowano, zinterpretowano i osadzono w kontekście kilka wyznaczników płci pojawiających się na różnych poziomach tekstu. Podsumowując, książka miała na celu nie tylko przekazanie świadectwa o Holokauście Faniki Lučić, ale także przedstawienie biograficznego opisu jej życia w socjalistycznej Jugosławii, jej doświadczeń wojny w Bośni i ostatniej fazy jej życia jako imigrantki w Kanadzie. Pamięć międzypokoleniowa i płeć odgrywają kluczową rolę w hybrydowej strukturze tej książki, która wnosi istotny wkład do jugosłowiańskiej literatury Holokaustu.

scholarly journals Zapomniane, przemilczane, przeoczone. Inne zagłady i ich literackie reprezentacje w ujęciu Arkadiusza Morawca

2020 ◽  
pp. 409-425
Author(s):  
Tatiana Czerska
Keyword(s):  
Mental Retardation ◽  
Comparative Research ◽  
Armenian Genocide ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
Holocaust Literature ◽  
Polish Literature ◽  
Genocide Studies ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
State Of Research

The article presents findings contained in the work by Arkadiusz Morawiec entitled Literatura polska wobec ludobójstwa. Rekonesans [Polish literature faced with genocide. Reconnaissance]. The scholar from Łódź calls into question the hitherto established hierarchy of genocides. Extensive comparative research into literary representations of particular wartime massacres is what constitutes the thematic pivot of the said treatise, which joins in the discussion scope outlined by genocide studies. Subsequent chapters of the presented book are devoted to literary reverberations of the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by Turks, the Nazi-Germany extermination of persons with physical and mental retardation as well as Sinti and Roma, the Srebrenica massacres carried out by Serbs. The remaining chapters deal with the Holocaust literature and, according to the author’s intentions, an attempt to enrich the state of research, and sometimes – to amend some of their findings.

Bring Up the Bodies: The Classical Concept of Poetic Vividness and Its Reevaluation in Holocaust Literature

PMLA ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 133 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-123
Author(s):  
Alan Itkin
Keyword(s):  
Classical Concept ◽  
Holocaust Literature ◽  
Peter Weiss ◽  
Three Generations ◽  
The Holocaust

The scenario of someone gazing at corpses plays an important role in the work of three authors representing three generations of Holocaust literature: Peter Weiss, W. G. Sebald, and Jonathan Littell. Plato and Aristotle used this scenario to address a key question raised by the concept of poetic vividness, which they defined as putting a described scene before the reader's eyes: If literature shows us gruesome sights that we should not desire to see or enjoy seeing, does this make literature a form of voyeurism? Weiss, Sebald, and Littell evoke corpse gazing in the context of the Holocaust to answer this question and to articulate unique poetic philosophies that respond to the challenge to literature's validity constituted by the Holocaust. The diferent ways in which they use corpse gazing reveal how Holocaust literature has changed and continues to change as the era of survivor testimony wanes.

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