Holocaust Narratives Trauma, Memory and Identity Across Generations

Holocaust Narratives: Trauma, Memory and Identity Across Generations analyzes individual multi-generational frameworks of Holocaust trauma to answer one essential question: How do these narratives change to not only transmit the trauma of the Holocaust – and in the process add meaning to what is inherently an event that annihilates meaning – but also construct the trauma as a connector to a past that needs to be continued in the present? Meaningless or not, unspeakable or not, unknowable or not, the trauma, in all its impossibilities and intractabilities, spawns literary and scholarly engagement on a large scale. Narrative is the key connector that structures trauma for both individual and collective.

Introduction: Holocaust traumata and their generational legacies and emanations Generations: structural frameworks The dialogical nature of (collective) trauma Trauma theory: concepts, implications, outlooks Moving trauma theory into the generation of postmemory Living in the aftermath: forms of trauma Insterstices between individual and cultural trauma Trauma as connective force Structure of the book Narrating the inexpressible: Wiesel’s Night as testimonial trendsetter God on the gallows: doublings of faith Trauma in the mirror: identities in the face of trauma Paradigmatic accuser: connecting audiences Witness in search of meaning and silence Surviving and remembering: representing trauma in the present The truth of fiction in Louis Begley’s Wartime Lies Narrated identities: fictionalization of self and its actual facts Negotiating fact and fiction in meaningful representation for the audience The creation of meaning and its passing ownership (R/De-)construction of narrative and real identity Asserting control by narrative means Rescuing one’s memory from past traumata: Cheryl Pearl Sucher’s The Rescue of Memory Past and Present: making a stance of one’s own Photographs and other stories: past negatives and healing trauma Generational Connections: approaching first- and second-generation trauma First-hand trauma in second-generation writing Emancipation through embedding: establishing a meaningful presence of the past Meaningful incorporation of past trauma into present narratives Encaustic memories: Second-generation assertions in Rosenbaum’s Second Hand Smoke Traumatic impositions: connecting first- and second-generation trauma Encountering the ghosts: generational connections to the past Close contact: breaking down past and present distinctions Imposing trauma: between filial rage and generational forgiveness Individual and cultural authorship over trauma stories Damaged goods: navigating parental trauma and one’s own Exclusion from and inclusion into parental narratives Remembering, letting go, and incorporating the past into the present Progressive and tragic narrative outlook in overcoming trauma Connecting worlds: Narrative networks in Horn’s The World to Come Generational temporal connections Choosing narrative, choosing life Linguistic connections to translated pasts Storied bridges: connecting present, past, and future worlds Meaningful narratives: paper bridges between (past) trauma and (present) meanings Connecting worlds: people as stories Creating a future from the past Stories as narrative intersections between generations When memory fails: Fiction as history in Everything Is Illuminated Narrative trajectories: limitations of fictional meaning creation Generational positions: midrashic engagements and circular historicity (Re-)Constructing the past: interrelations between the place and its stories Language and silence: connective phantasmagorias of meaning Workable terminologies: integrating past-tensed facts Fictional records: tracking meanings between past and present Narrative realities: permeating events and stories Imaginative representation: memory’s narrative dependencies Generational catharsis in dyadic, generational encounters Conclusion: The future of trauma

Thorsten Wilhelm studied History and English Literature and Linguistics at the University of Heidelberg and the University of Durham. He received his Staatsexamen (M.A.) in 2014. In 2019, Thorsten was awarded his Ph.D. summa cum laude by the English Department at Heidelberg University for his dissertation on "Traumatic Memories—Memories of Trauma: Post-1945 Jewish American Fiction and the Cultural Work of Trauma Narratives." Thorsten’s work comprises trauma theory and cultural productions at the interstices of trauma, memory, and narrative. Apart from his work on contemporary literature and its diverse traumata, Thorsten is fascinated by the 19th century. He lives his euphoria for Charles Dickens by working on a digitization project of rare and unique archival materials at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. He has been a Curatorial Fellow at the Beinecke in 2018. Thorsten has been a Baden-Württemberg Lector at Yale University since 2016. He teaches German language, culture, and writing, and is interested in pedagogy with a focus on cultural learning and the production of cultural perceptions. He is a peer-reviewer for Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German and book-reviewer for CALICO.