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Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Stijn Vervaet, my research supervisor, for his guidance, encouragements and constructive critiques of this work. I would also like to thank him for recommending the two beautiful novels that are discussed in this paper. Furthermore, I am grateful to Prof. Dr. Philippe Codde, for arousing my interest in the subject of thirdgeneration Holocaust literature during his course ‗Contemporary American Literature‘. Finally, special thanks are extended to my parents for their support and encouragement throughout my study
Faculteit Letteren en Wijsbegeerte Ayla De Greve Holocaust Representation in Third-Generation Literary Non-fiction: Postmemory in Daniel Mendelsohn‘s The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million and Edmund De Waal‘s The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance Paper submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master in de Taal- en Letterkunde Nederlands – Engels 2013 Supervisor: Dr Stijn Vervaet Department Literature Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to Dr Stijn Vervaet, my research supervisor, for his guidance, encouragements and constructive critiques of this work I would also like to thank him for recommending the two beautiful novels that are discussed in this paper Furthermore, I am grateful to Prof Dr Philippe Codde, for arousing my interest in the subject of third-generation Holocaust literature during his course ‗Contemporary American Literature‘ Finally, special thanks are extended to my parents for their support and encouragement throughout my study Abstract This paper deals with Marianne Hirsch‘s concept of postmemory in the context of the Holocaust Postmemory describes the relationship that the generation after bears to the traumatic experiences that preceded their births, but which were transmitted to them deeply and affectively This essay focuses on this relationship in the third generation, where postmemory can be seen as an obsession with the inaccessible past of the ancestors Focusing on non-fictional literature, this paper elucidates how postmemory has influenced the representation of the Holocaust in The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn and The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance by Edmund De Waal The novels by these third-generation writers both examine the family history of the authors in the context of the Holocaust By means of a close reading, this paper examines several aspects related to postmemory in both novels Table of contents Introduction Postmemory 2.1 What is postmemory? 2.2 The generation after 2.3 The first generation 2.4 The second generation 2.5 The third generation 12 Postmemory in Daniel Mendelsohn‘s The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million and Edmund De Waal‘s The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance ……………………………… 15 3.1 About the novels ……………………………………………………………… 15 3.1.1 Daniel Mendelsohn – The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million ……… 15 3.1.2 Edmund De Waal – The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance 17 3.2 Quest …………………………………………………………………………… 19 3.2.1 Daniel Mendelsohn – The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million ……… 19 3.2.2 Edmund De Waal – The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance 24 3.3 Communicative and cultural memory ………………………………………… 25 3.4 The influence of postmemory on identity ……………………………………… 28 3.4.1 Daniel Mendelsohn – The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million ……… 28 3.4.2 Edmund De Waal – The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance 32 3.5 Representation of postmemorial aspects ……… ……………………………… 34 3.5.1 Mediation ……………………………………………………………… 34 3.5.2 Received history ……………………………………………………… 37 3.5.3 Storytelling …………………………………………………………… 42 3.6 Perpetrators and victims ………………………………………………………… 45 3.6.1 Survivor‘s guilt ……………………………………………………… 45 3.6.2 Identity of the perpetrator …………………………………………… 47 3.6.3 The grey zone ………………………………………………………… 50 3.7 The role of photographs in Daniel Mendelsohn‘s The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million ……………………………………………………………………………… 52 3.7.1 The effects of photographs on Daniel Mendelsohn …………………… 52 3.7.2 The effects of photographs on the survivors …… …………………… 55 3.7.3 The effects of photographs on the readers …………………………… 57 3.8 References to myth in Daniel Mendelsohn‘s The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million ………………………… 58 3.9 Testimonial objects in De Waal‘s The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance ………………………………………………………………………… 62 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………… 66 Introduction [T]he Holocaust wasn‘t something that simply happened, but is an event that‘s still happening – Mendelsohn, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million The Holocaust took place over sixty years ago, yet in a way it is still happening Marianne Hirsch states that ―[t]hese events happened in the past, but their effects continue into the present‖ (2012: 5) The more this tragedy recedes from us in time, the more our preoccupation with it increases, it seems (Hoffman 2004: ix) Not only is the Holocaust still an important topic in literature and scholarly work, but also in daily life, the effects of the Shoah can still be palpable This is the case especially for those who have a ―sense of living connection‖ to the event (xv) Hence, not only the survivors, but also their descendants, who have a living connection to the Holocaust through their parents and grandparents, can be affected by the Holocaust Indeed, many scholars like Sicher, Hoffman, Schwab and Hirsch have established that ―[a]long with stories, behaviors, and symptoms, parents transmit to their children aspects of their relationship to places and objects from the past‖ (Hirsch 2012: 213) Thus, as Schwab points out, ―[t]he legacies of violence not only haunt the actual victims but also are passed on through the generations‖ (2010: 1) In this paper, we will focus particularly on members of the third generation, whose grandparents lived during the Holocaust and whose lives and work seem to be affected by this Since the generation of survivors is starting to pass away, the third generation is highly concerned with preserving their stories As De Waal points out, ―I am the wrong generation to let it go‖ (2010: 348) Descendants of survivors tend to want to preserve their relatives‘ stories not only to ensure that the Holocaust will not be forgotten, but also to discover and safeguard their own family story, to which they are closely connected Hirsch describes this close connection to the trauma of their grandparents as ‗postmemory‘ Through stories, behaviours or images, the experiences of the Holocaust were transmitted to them so affectively, ―as to seem to constitute memories in their own right‖ (Hirsch 2012: 5) Writers of the generations after are thus not only concerned with representing their ancestors‘ stories to preserve them, but also with their personal involvement, the way in which the stories were transmitted to them and the way they represent the stories towards the next generations While Hirsch applied the concept of postmemory on the second generation, Codde and others argue that it is also suitable for the third generation Codde states that ―[p]ostmemory is an obsession with the opaque and inaccessible past of one‘s parents or grandparents‖ (2009: 64) For third-generation writers Daniel Mendelsohn and Edmund De Waal, this ‗obsession‘ has resulted in a non-fictional novel about their family history In this paper we will discuss how the issue of postmemory has influenced respectively The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million and The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance In the first chapter on postmemory, we will define and discuss Marianne Hirsch‘s influential concept of postmemory thoroughly Afterwards, we will briefly discuss how ‗the generation after‘ became important in scholarly work and we will consider some typical characteristics of the first, second and third generation of Holocaust survivors In the next chapter, we indulge in a close reading of Mendelsohn‘s The Lost and De Waal‘s The Hare with Amber Eyes We will analyse how postmemory plays an important role in these non-fictional novels Firstly, we describe the content of the novels and illuminate why they are considered works of postmemory and thus the subject of this paper Next, we will argue that both novels are quests, which has an influence on their structure and we will briefly discuss which difficulties the authors came across during the quests Further on, we examine the difference between cultural and communicative memory and how this is relevant for the novels After that, the influence of postmemory on the identities of the authors is explored Subsequently, we deal with the representation of three significant aspects of third-generation writing, which are the issues of mediation and received history, and the way of storytelling Afterwards, the connection between perpetrator and victim is investigated, by focussing on survivor‘s guilt, the identity of the perpetrator and the grey zone in both books This is followed by a discussion of the role of photographs in Mendelsohn‘s novel Their impact on the author himself, on the survivors he interviews and the possible effects on the reader will be central Next, we will discuss how and why Mendelsohn often refers to myths throughout his story Finally, we will discuss what testimonial objects are and how they are relevant in De Waal‘s story 2 Postmemory 2.1 What is postmemory? Survivors who lived through massive traumatic events can transmit their memories to the following generations, even if these descendants were not there to witness the events The descendants can connect so intensely to the previous generation that they deem that connection as a form of memory (Hirsch 2012: 3) Marianne Hirsch named this phenomenon ‗postmemory‘ and defines it as follows: ―Postmemory‖ describes the relationship that the ―generation after‖ bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before—to experiences they ―remember‖ only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up But these experiences were transmitted to them so deeply and affectively as to seem to constitute memories in their own right (5) Thus, for descendants of survivors, the powerful distressing experiences of the parental generation can be identified as memories of their own, even though these events preceded their births By growing up with the stories of atrocity lived by their parents, children can adopt this trauma as their own Dominick LaCapra‘s notion of ‗empathic unsettlement‘ can clarify this further According to LaCapra, a desirable response to traumatic stories is to be empathically unsettled Hereby, the hearer identifies with the victim enough to reach an affective response but at the same time realises that these events happened to the speaker and not to oneself Thus, one‘s response to this victim‘s traumatic experience is empathic and unsettling in its own right but it does not lead to a vicarious experience (LaCapra 2001: 102104) LaCapra remarks that empathic unsettlement may take different forms, ―it may at times result in secondary or muted trauma as well as objectionable self-dramatization in someone responding to the experience of victims‖ (102) An example of what LaCapra calls a ‗vicarious‘ experience, whereby the distinction between the victim and the self is completely blurred due to a total pathological identification is the well-known Wilkomirski case (LaCapra 2004: 125) Benjamin Wilkomirski identified with the Holocaust victims so deeply, that it led to a vicarious experience whereby he believed to be a Holocaust survivor himself These vicarious experiences are rather exceptional, the majority of the descendants of survivors realise that they did not literally experience the Holocaust themselves They tend to experience what LaCapra calls a virtual experience Logically, the virtual experience of trauma, captured by the term ‗empathic unsettlement‘, is greater when the traumatic events happened to someone in the family, especially the parents When the protagonist is someone close and familiar like a parent, the empathy the hearer feels is expected to be much deeper Transmission of memory and even trauma thus occurs more likely within a family rather than between strangers Empathic unsettlement can only happen when a testimony is given As Gabriele Schwab points out, that is not the only way that transmission of trauma can occur Precisely the absence of testimony, the silence that surrounds the traumatic experiences can express and transmit trauma (Schwab 2010: 4) Traumatic silences and gaps in language are […] ambivalent attempts to conceal But indirectly, they express trauma otherwise shrouded in secrecy or relegated to the unconscious […] It is the children or descendants, Abraham insists, who will be haunted by what is buried in this tomb, even if they not know of its existence or contents and even if the history that produced the ghost is shrouded in silence (4) As with empathic unsettlement, the transmission is more likely to happen within a family The secrecy is more palpable to members of the family than to outsiders and ―[o]ften the tomb is a familial one, organized around family secrets shared by parents and grandparents but fearfully guarded from the children It is through the unconscious transmission of disavowed familial dynamics that one generation affects another generation‘s unconscious‖ (4) 2.2 The generation after The ‗generation after‘ acquired scholarly attention with the founding texts of Helen Epstein and Nadine Fresco (Van Alphen 2006: 476) In respectively Children of the Holocaust: Conversations with Sons and Daughters of Survivors and ‗Remembering the Unknown‘, ―the parents/children relationship is not qualified in terms of continuity‖ (476) On the contrary, ―these two ―founding‖ texts by Epstein and Fresco assess the dynamics between survivors of the Holocaust and their children as one which utterly fails to establish continuity between generations‖ (478) Epstein compares the so-called transmitted trauma of the descendants with a phantom pain of a hand they never had; they feel the pain of something that was not there in the first place Amnesia takes the place of memory, according to Epstein, ―the only memory there is is that one remembers nothing‖ (478) Epstein‘s metaphor of the phantom pain reminds us of the notion of ‗transferred loss‘ introduced by Eva Hoffman (2004: 73) Members of the second generation can experience an absence in their life, the absence of people they never knew because they died before they had the chance to know them This feeling of absence can be transferred into a feeling of loss The image of phantom pain that Epstein introduced is linked to this; they experience the pain of losing someone they have never even known While this notion is very adequate, the idea that the only memory of the generation after is ―that one remembers nothing‖ seems inaccurate Hirsch explains that postmemory is a form of memory: Postmemory is a powerful and very particular form of memory precisely because its connection to its object or source is mediated not through recollection but through an imaginative investment and creation […] Postmemory—often obsessive and relentless—need not be absent or evacuated: it is as full and as empty, certainly as constructed, as memory itself (2002: 22) This is why Nadine Fresco‘s terms ―absent memory‖ and ―hole of memory‖ seem unsuitable to Hirsch The term ‗postmemory‘ seems more apt in this account ‗Postmemory‘ contains an inherent paradox however: how can an experience of a traumatic event be stored in the memory of someone who was born ‗post‘ or after the event itself? The prefix ‗post‘ could indicate that we are beyond memory and thus purely in history Hirsch explains it as follows: Postmemory is distinguished from memory by generational distance and from history by deep personal connection […] Postmemory characterizes the experience of those who grow up dominated by narratives that preceded their birth, whose own belated stories are evacuated by the stories of the previous generation shaped by traumatic events that can be neither understood nor recreated (22) Abiding by Hirsch, we will continue using the term ‗postmemory‘ The concept describes the relationship that the ‗generation after‘ bears to the trauma of the first generation (Hirsch 2012: 5) Therefore, we will discuss some characteristics of the first generation of survivors 2.3 The first generation Generally speaking, the first generation encompasses the actual survivors of the Holocaust, those who literally lived through the event However, it is difficult to define these survivors in one category since there are many different ways to have lived through the Holocaust It is remarkable that in the standard four-volume Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, published by The Holocaust Remembrance Authority Yad Vashem, no definition of ‗a survivor‘ is given (BarOn 1998: 100) Dan Bar-On proposes the following definition: From a legal-historical point of view, a Holocaust survivor can be defined as anyone who lived under Nazi occupation during World War II and who was threatened by the policy of the ―Final Solution‖ but managed to stay alive (100) Dan Bar-On acknowledges that there are many problems with this definition The definition is easily applicable on survivors of the concentration camps and ghettos, Bar-On states; indeed their lives were clearly threatened by the policy of the ‗Final Solution‘ The definition stays valid when talking about the Jews and other targets who managed to stay hidden from the Nazis and lived through the Holocaust underground However, they undoubtedly experienced the Holocaust in a completely different way than the camp survivors did The value of the definition dwindles somewhat when we discuss those who escaped from territory subjugated by the Nazis in time to safer places By leaving their homes and dear ones behind they suffered enormously but in a completely different way than those who survived a concentration camp or had to hide for their lives for years By studying interviews with these emigrants, Bar-On noticed that many of them felt like their trauma was illegitimate because they had not suffered like the ―real‖ survivors (100) Furthermore, Bar-On also wonders whether we should distinguish adults from children in this definition Important to consider as well is that many people felt that their being labelled as a Holocaust survivor stigmatised them (100) ―Who decides who is a Holocaust survivor? Is it a socially imposed or a selfdetermined process? Is it a historical fact or a psychological reconstruction?‖ (100) Thus, it is difficult to find an all-embracing definition of the first generation Although the ‗first generation‘ encompasses all these different kinds of survivors, we may treat them as one group based on the similarities they share as well Firstly, Dan Bar-On and his students discovered that emigrants who left Europe between 1935 and 1937 who lost family members in the Holocaust, show similar long-term psychological effects from those The children, I don‘t recognise them anymore I pointed out Lorka to her with my finger […] She said, I don‘t think this is Lorka She said she sees Lorka in her mind, and this is not Lorka (304-305) Mendelsohn does not explicitly prove her wrong, but we are still inclined to believe that the girl in the photograph is in fact Lorka Anna has not seen Lorka‘s face in over sixty years Chances are that in those years she has formed an image in her head that has diverted from reality This reaction makes us think about the role of photographs in our lives and the way we take images for granted Mendelsohn also discusses this issue How casually we rely on photographs, really; how lazy we have become because of them What does your mother look like? someone will want to know; and you‘ll say, Wait, I‘ll show you, and run to the drawer or an album and say, Here she is But what if you had no photographs of your mother, or anyone in your family—indeed, even of yourself before a certain age? How would you explain what she, they, you, looked like? (182) Mendelsohn notices that we think of photographs as self-evident and understands how difficult his request to describe his lost relatives is to the survivors 3.7.3 The effects of photographs on the readers Two kinds of photographs are included in the novel Firstly, some of the photographs of Shmiel, Ester and the four girls that Mendelsohn shows the interviewees are included in the novel.10 Secondly, Daniel Mendelsohn‘s brother, Matthew Mendelsohn, is a photographer who joined his brother on many trips He took beautiful pictures of every survivor they interviewed ―I heard the distinctive and by now familiar noise of the shutter on Matt‘s camera opening and closing: not so much a click as a k-shonck‖ (Mendelsohn 2008: 258) The novel also exhibits several photographs that Matt Mendelsohn took of these surviving and testifying Bolechowers.11 These two categories of photographs could have different effects on the readers 10 Examples of the photographs of Shmiel, Ester and their four daughters can be found on pages 75, 194, 213 and 305 11 Examples of the photographs of the testifying survivors can be found on pages 127, 129, 143, 181, 259, 360, 376, 382, 389, 430, 445 and 452 57 Firstly, the photographs of Mendelsohn‘s lost relatives can personalise the story for the readers By seeing the faces of the victims, the readers tend to empathise more with them According to Hirsch, ―the photos can bridge the gap between viewers who are personally connected to the event and those who are not They can expand the postmemorial circle‖ (2002: 251) Just like the photographs materialise the memory for Mendelsohn, who only knows their appearances through photographs as well, the pictures materialise the story for the readers Secondly, the pictures of the survivors that are included in the novel can have two paradoxical effects On the one hand, they can again personalise the story for the readers The photographs connect a story to an individual, to a person we can see and with whom we can empathise One the other hand, the multitude of photographs can have the exact opposite effect Since so many stories are told and so many photographs are included, it can be difficult for the reader to remember which story belonged to which individual The multitude of information can make the stories and the faces indistinct from each other As Hirsch states, they ―serve less to individualize then to generalize: in the photographs‘ multiplicity, the names become anonymous and generic‖ (2002: 254) Thus, the photographs, which individualise each distinct story, can eventually end up having a generalising effect on the reader But this does not undermine the strength of the stories, on the contrary The multitude of names, photographs and stories the readers saw and read, can remind us that there are countless stories like these to be told The novel then achieves what its title has predicted It is not just a story about the six relatives, it is not even just a story about the survivors of Bolechow, but it is also a story about the six million stories left untold 3.8 References to myth in Daniel Mendelsohn‘s The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million As we have already briefly discussed, myths and fairy tales often appear in fictional novels by third-generation authors to fill in unknowable aspects of the past (Codde 2009: 64) Codde explains that ―[m]yth and fairy tales provide the third generation with a means to imaginatively approach and represent an otherwise unknowable and/or irrepresentable past‖ (73) Fictional authors like Foer and Budnitz incorporate these myths into the main story, they ―take the imaginative leap implied by the concept of postmemory […] to fill in the blanks left by their absent history‖ (64) Since Mendelsohn is a non-fictional author, he cannot this 58 However, Mendelsohn also often refers to myths, especially the ones from the Torah, but he uses them in a different way than writers of prose fiction Mendelsohn occasionally refers to Homer‘s Odyssee and Vergil‘s Aeneid, but the most important myths he draws upon are definitely the ones from the Torah Throughout the novel, several passages are included in italics in which he discusses five ‗parashas‘ of the Hebrew Bible Mendelsohn draws upon the work of the biblical commentators Rashi and Friedman, and adds his own ideas as well The five parashas that he discusses, also structure his novel The Lost is divided into five parts, all named after a particular parashah that is thematically somewhat related to the content of the part: Bereishit, Cain and Abel, Noach, Lech Lecha and Vayeira Besides slightly imparting the readers in the stories of the Torah, these references contribute to the novel in the following three ways Firstly, the references to myths create parallel stories which mirror elements of the central plot The highest level of the novel, that of the quest itself, is for example symbolised by the different interpretations that Rashi and Friedman often formulate on the same excerpt Mostly, there is no way of knowing which analysis is correct This mirrors the central story in that the interviewees often have different versions of the same event, just like Mendelsohn‘s elder relatives had different opinions on events as well For example: These elderly Jews tended to interrupt one another a lot […], cutting off one another‘s stories to make corrections, remind one another what had really happened at this or that vahnderfoll or (more likely) tahrrible time […] (Mendelsohn 2008: 6) Just like we cannot know whether Rashi or Friedman is correct, we cannot always know which version of the event happened in reality Another symbolical comment on the difficulties of the quest is provided by one of the references to the Odyssee Mendelsohn‘s comment on how Odysseus‘ travels could be adventurous and surprising implicitly refers to his own travels For anyone who‘s travelled extensively knows that, although you may think you know what you‘re looking for and where you‘re going when you first set out, what you learn along the way is often quite surprising (267) 59 Just like Odysseus was surprised by what he came across during his travels, Mendelsohn is often surprised by what he encounters As he set out, he did not expect to hear all these astonishing stories and discover what he did, not only about his lost relatives, but also about himself and his family A final example to show that the references mirror the quest is that an ancient scribe forgot to write a certain line in the Torah and ―because he was, after all, only human (and we know what lapses human memory is prey to), […] that one line […] was irretrievably lost‖ (122) Here Mendelsohn mirrors the fact that in the story of his family, certain elements get irretrievable lost because of lapses in the human memory The references to myths also reflect upon the storyline on Mendelsohn‘s family For example, the discussion of the myth of Cain and Abel refers to three different troublesome relationships between siblings in The Lost: Abraham and Shmiel Jäger, Daniel and Matt Mendelsohn and metaphorically, Ukranians and Jews In the myth, Cain kills his brother Abel for no particular reason but envy and resentment Of course Abraham Jäger does not kill his brother and neither does Daniel Mendelsohn kills his, but they both seem to have hurt and failed them Abraham Jäger has failed his brother by not helping him enough to escape Bolechow, as we have discussed Daniel Mendelsohn often admits that he had a troubled relationship with his younger brother Matt He hurt his brother physically by breaking his arm when they were younger and he notes that he knows ―how brothers, for reasons that no archival document can ever illuminate, can fail each other‖ (61) ―Cain‘s failure as a brother‖ mirrors these difficult relationships between the brothers in the story Metaphorically, Ukranians and Jews were also siblings who lived closely together Mendelsohn explicitly links this relationship which turned into hatred and murder to the myth of Cain and Abel I think of how resentful Cain is – of how envious certain farmers must be of those others who, although born on the same soil, the same country, seem to be luckier […] I think of how the natural tension between siblings, between those who grow up in close quarters and know one another too well, can be exacerbated by these economic resentments and envies […] And I think of other kinds of siblings, too, those who grew up in close quarters and know another too well, some forced to work the land, the others, seemingly luckier, more blessed, able to wander here and there with their (seemingly) ever-increasing wealth I think, naturally, of Ukrainians and Jews (109) Sibling rivalry is an important theme in The Lost and the myth of Cain and Abel mirrors this theme Other examples of mirror stories to the central plot include a reference to Abram and his family who had to flee out of Egypt, their ―homeland from which they are forced to flee 60 during a time of crisis‖, which mirrors the story of the Jägers who emigrated from Bolechow (313) A final example is the ark of Noah, which is compared to the hiding-places of Jews during the Holocaust ―In these modern-day arks, too, the humans were utterly helpless, […] passive inhabitants of darkened spaces from which, eventually, they too would emerge, like Noah, like Moses, blinking into the light‖ (243) Secondly, these references to myths in non-fiction create the opportunity to comment indirectly on moral implications related to the Holocaust and present these issues as understandable For example, Mendelsohn questions the justice in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah No valid reason is given as to why these cities have to be destroyed: [T]he condemned don‘t seem to have been informed of the charges against them— charges that, at least in the text that we have, are neither named nor, indeed, ever proved, which is worrisome when the accused is an entire population (468) This passage shows a clear parallel with the situation of the Jews in the Holocaust and the injustice of the mass-murder Obviously, this prosecution was absolutely immoral, and the novel does not question this But the issue of Sodom and Gomorrah raises other questions, about the issue of responsibility and the guilt of the perpetrator Even if there were fewer than then good Sodomites—even if, let‘s say, there were only one righteous person in the whole vast metropolis—wouldn‘t it be unjust to kill him along with the guilty? Or even this: As long as there is one good inhabitant of the country of the wicked, can we say that the entire nation is guilty? (469) Through the myth of Sodom and Gomorrah, Mendelsohn here reflects upon the question of the guilt of the perpetrating nation Should we condemn all Germans for initiating the Holocaust? Should we blame all the Ukrainians for suppressing the Jews? Mendelsohn does not explicitly ask these questions associated with the Holocaust, but they are implicated in the myth He does not answer the questions either, but the fact that he raises them in the first place, seems to be a warning that we should try not to blame all inhabitants of the perpetrating countries 61 Finally, the references to myths in Mendelsohn‘s non-fiction prose are also used to universalise the story in two ways Firstly, by referring to well-known stories with universal themes like justice, the relationships between siblings or knowledge, which are also important themes in Mendelsohn‘s story, the novel becomes more understandable and people can more easily identify with the themes It can also makes the readers realise that the Holocaust, while an exceptional and horrendous historical fact, can to some extent be associated with very universal themes It can make the readers be aware of what humans are capable of doing to each other Secondly, it universalises the story of the Jäger family Friedman observes that the Torah focuses on Abram and his family since ―often it is the small things, rather than the big picture, that the mind can comfortably grasp: that, for instance, it is naturally more appealing to readers to absorb the meaning of a vast historical event through the story of a single family‖ (ibid., 18) This mirrors exactly what Mendelsohn is doing in his novel He focuses on a single family, but through the myths he connects their story to the entire Holocaust, thus making it universal Through the six lost relatives, he actually refers to six million lost ones 3.9 Testimonial objects in Edmund De Waal‘s The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer define ‗testimonial objects‘ as ―images, objects and memorabilia from the past [that are] ―points of memory‖ – points of intersection between past and present, memory and postmemory, personal remembrance and cultural recall‖ (2006: 358) We consider De Waal‘s collection of netsuke to be testimonial objects They are indeed points of intersection between past and present, since they are presently in De Waal‘s possession and he knows to whom they belonged and, more or less, what happened to them in the past They are also points of intersection between memory and postmemory, as the definition says To De Waal‘s great-uncle Iggie, the netsuke are objects of memory, as they are able to remind him of his family and his life in Vienna before the Anschluss To De Waal, they are objects of postmemory He has no literal memories of his relatives‘ past, but their experiences and in extension their relationships to the netsuke ―were transmitted to them so deeply and affectively as to seem to constitute memories in their own right‖ (Hirsch 2012: 5) For him, the netsuke instigate ―an obsession with the opaque and inaccessible past‖ of his ancestors (Codde 2009: 64) Finally, they are also points of intersection between personal remembrance and cultural recall On the hand they are objects of personal remembrance, they remind the members of the Ephrussi family of their family history On the other hand, they 62 are also objects of cultural recall They prove for example the cultural taste of ‗japonisme‘ in fin-de-siècle Paris, when Charles Ephrussi bought these Japanese netsuke These testimonial objects play an important role in De Waal‘s The Hare with Amber Eyes Hirsch mentions that ―testimonial objects‖ […] [can] structure plots of return: they can embody memory and thus trigger affect shared across generations‖ (2012: 206) This is precisely the role that the netsuke play in The Hare with Amber Eyes, the historical path of the netsuke structures De Waal‘s quest and consequently the novel Furthermore, ―material remnants can serve as testimonial objects enabling us to focus crucial questions both about the past itself and about how the past comes down to us in the present‖ (Hirsch & Spitzer 2006: 355) The netsuke serve both purposes in the novel They enable De Waal to ask questions about the past, as they lead him to his ancestors throughout the novel He follows the netsuke‘s travels and thoroughly studies the situation in their home cities and the lives of their owners For example: In March 1899, Charles‘ generous wedding gift [i.e the netsuke] for Viktor and Emmy is carefully crated up and taken from the avenue d‘Iéna, leaving the golden carpet, the Empire fauteuils and the Moreaus It travels across Europe and is delivered to the Palais Ephrussi in Vienna, on the corner of the Ringstrasse and the Schottengasse It is time to stop walking with Charles and reading about Parisian interiors, and start reading Die Neue Freie Presse and concentrating on Viennese street life at the turn of the century (De Waal 2010: 111) The transmission of the netsuke also raises some questions about how the past comes down to us, in the novel De Waal addresses the issue of transmission early in the novel There is no easy story in legacy What is remembered and what is forgotten? There can be a chain of forgetting, the rubbing away of previous ownership as much as the slow accretion of stories What is being passed on to me with all these small Japanese objects? (17) The testimonial objects, the netsuke, teach us some things about the past Firstly, they ―authenticate the past; they trigger memories and connect them […] to a particular place and time They also help to recall shared experiences and fleeting friendships‖ (Hirsch & Spitzer 63 2006: 367) The fact that the netsuke managed to maintain in the Ephrussi family and end up with Edmund De Waal, authenticates the actions of Anna, the maid who saved the netsuke from the Gestapo So I would slip three of four of the little figures from the Baroness‘s dressing-room, the little toys you played with when you were children—you remember—and I put them into the pocket of my apron whenever I was passing, and I took them to my room I hid them in the mattress of my bed (De Waal 2010: 278) If it weren‘t for Anna, the netsuke would have disappeared like most other possessions of the Ephrussis The netsuke authenticate this event simply by being with De Waal in the present Secondly, the fact that Anna saved the netsuke shows that she was unwilling to be completely governed by the Gestapo Saving these small objects was an act of resistance against the powerful regime According to Hirsch and Spitzer, there is a ―deep connection between miniaturization, confinement, and power The miniature offers the powerless the fantasy of hiding, of escape, and of a victory over the powerful jailors.‖ (2006: 375-376) Taking and hiding the netsuke must have felt like a victory to Anna In financial value, these small objects did not make much of a difference compared to what the Ephrussis lost, but in the present, it has symbolical value It shows us that Anna, the subordinated maid, was not willing to surrender completely and that she believed that times would change again Thus, the collection of netsuke is a ―testament to a faith in the future – to a time yet to come when [these events] will be recalled It is thus an expression of reassurance – of a will to survive‖ (367) The testimonial object can show us some things about Edmund De Waal‘s position as well As Assmann says, ―though objects and places not themselves carry qualities of past lives, they hold whatever we ourselves project onto them or invest them with‖ (quoted in Hirsch 2012: 211) De Waal receives the netsuke and is triggered by them to embark on a quest to discover his family‘s history This may mean that he always wanted to know his roots, and projected this need on the objects, using them as a guide to explore his history By giving the netsuke an important role in his life, De Waal ―reconnect[s] some of the disparate parts of [his] life [and] find[s] continuity with a severed past‖ (215) He enables some part of his family‘s legacy to remain in the family, not to be admired or safeguarded but to create a perpetuation to the family story The ending of the novel illustrates this 64 This last vitrine I think will be a good place for the netsuke It is next to the piano, and unlocked so that the children can open the door if they wish to (…) A rat, curled up asleep, has been pushed to the front I open the glass door and pick it up I slip it into my pocket, put the dog on the lead and leave for work I have pots to make The netsuke begin again (De Waal 2010: 351) In the end, De Waal‘s focus is no longer on the past but on the future, thus creating a sense of continuity 65 Conclusion Forgetfulness leads to exile while remembrance is the secret of redemption - The Ba‘al Shem Tov The impact of a family legacy, shaped by a traumatic event like the Holocaust, can continue unto the third generation Many scholars like Bar-On, Sicher, Hirsch or Hoffman have established that ―[t]he grandchildren of survivors are still deeply affected by their elders‘ experiences, memories, accounts‖ (Hoffman 2004: 185) The relationship that ―the generation after‖ bears to their ancestors‘ trauma, is described by Hirsch‘s concept of postmemory (2012: 5) The experiences of the generations before were transmitted to them so deeply and affectively as to seem to constitute memories of their own (5) Codde argues that postmemory manifests itself in the third generation as ―an obsession with the opaque and inaccessible past of one‘s parents or grandparents‖ (2009: 64) At the same time, the third generation can feel responsible for exploring their family‘s traumatic past, since the generation of actual witnesses is starting to pass away The combination of the obsession with the past and the sense of responsibility to transmit the memory of the Holocaust to following generations, has urged many third-generation survivors to investigate their past For third-generation writers Daniel Mendelsohn and Edmund De Waal, this has led respectively to their novels The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million and The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance In this paper, we have discussed how postmemory has influenced these non-fictional literary novels After having given an overview of what postmemory is and having discussed some typical characteristics of the first, second and third generation, we indulged in a close reading of the two novels We have established that they are both works of postmemory on the basis of their relationship towards their ancestors‘ trauma of the Holocaust This postmemorial relationship caused them to embark on a quest to discover their family story We have noticed that Mendelsohn includes his readers in every step of this quest, while De Waal focuses more on the results of his quest In Mendelsohn‘s quest, we have identified the silence of his grandfather, the temporal distance, the spatial distance and the lack of witnesses as the biggest difficulties to overcome Then, we have discussed the communicative and cultural memory in both novels and we have established that they are in the transit zone between both forms of memory The novels consequently also contribute to making the remembrance of the Holocaust in the future more personal Afterwards, we have clarified how postmemory seems 66 to have had an influence on the authors‘ identities Mendelsohn was perceived as a memorial candle, we have established that this increases the possibility of his identity being influenced by postmemory We have discussed how his relationship towards his lost relatives and towards Judaism and the traditions of the Old Country, seems to have affected his identity De Waal too seems to be influenced by postmemory, especially by the responsibility he feels towards his ancestors‘ story Next, the representation of certain significant postmemorial aspects was looked at The issue of mediation has an important role in these quests, the fact that the third-generation writers always had to rely on interpretations of others, is represented in several ways Especially Mendelsohn focuses on this issue and often refers to it both explicitly and implicitly Also the idea of received history, the notion that the authors‘ reception of the story influences its representation, is relevant in the novels We have discussed in which way we notice that reception influences Mendelsohn‘s novel and we have noticed that Mendelsohn makes his readers aware that his novel is an example of received history De Waal‘s reception of the story has also influenced his novel, in that he sometimes indulges in postmemorial invention Unlike Mendelsohn, he does not alert his readers on this fact much A final aspect of representation we have discussed is the way of storytelling As the third-generation writers are the guardians of their family stories, we have discussed how both Mendelsohn and De Waal are concerned with how to tell these stories Subsequently, we have focused on the postmemorial representations of the perpetrators and the victims in the novels Firstly, we have identified the survivor‘s guilt in some of Mendelsohn‘s interviewees We have noticed how Mendelsohn implicitly seems to think of his grandfather‘s survivor‘s guilt as valid, as he does not understand why he did not try to help his brother more De Waal seems to feel guilty himself for his netsuke being saved while so many people were killed Then, we have discussed the identity of the perpetrator and the viewpoints of the authors towards them We ended with a discussion of the grey zone and Mendelsohn‘s attitude towards it Afterwards, we have examined the role of photographs in The Lost We have noticed that the pictures of Mendelsohn‘s relatives seem to have different effects on Mendelsohn himself, his interviewees and the readers Furthermore, we have discovered that the photographs of the survivors can have a double effect on the readers: they both individualise and generalise the stories Subsequently, we have discovered that Mendelsohn‘s references to the myths of the Torah create a parallel plot of the central storyline, that they enable Mendelsohn to comment on moral implications and that they universalise his story Finally, we have identified the netsuke as testimonial objects in De Waal‘s novel, which both teach us about the past and about De Waal himself in the present 67 Daniel Mendelsohn‘s The Lost and Edmund De Waal‘s The Hare with Amber Eyes are both written as a result of their authors‘ relationship to their families‘ traumatic past On the one hand, it has cultural value, since it prevents these stories from being forgotten On the other hand, it also has personal value for the authors These third-generation writers can hardly be called traumatised anymore, but as we have seen, their personal and intellectual project can be described as an obsession with the obscure and unreachable past of their grandparents (Codde 2009: 64) By unraveling and writing down this past, or at least everything there can still be known about it now, their obsession seems in some extent dissolved The final words of both novels illustrate this De Waal starts his story in the past and ends it in the present His final words in The Hare with Amber Eyes are words of continuity, of looking towards the future instead of the past: A rat, curled up asleep, has been pushed to the front I open the glass and pick it up I slip it into my pocket, put the dog on the lead and leave for work I have pots to make The netsuke begin again (De Waal 2010: 351) Mendelsohn‘s final words in The Lost signify two symbolical meanings For years, Mendelsohn was constantly looking back at the past, obsessing over what happened exactly When in the end, he finds out everything there is to know, he plans to literally look back at Bolechow while driving away However, he is distracted and is too late to look back One the one hand this is a metaphor for him being too late to see Bolechow, to know the story of his relatives On the other hand, this also signifies that he is done looking back at Bolechow now and that, like he says, he is ‗leaving it forever‘: I told myself that I‘d look through the back window and stare at the little town as it receded, because I wanted to be able to remember not only what the place looked like when you were arriving there, but what it looked like when you were leaving it forever […] [W]e all started talking at once, telling the remarkable story of what we had found and where we had walked, and by the time I remembered to turn around and take that one last look, we had traveled too far, and Bolechow had slipped out of sight (Mendelsohn 2008: 503) Thus, by writing their family stories, Mendelsohn and De Waal prevent them from going into exile and at the same time, they redeem their own obsession with the subject, just like the Ba‘al Shem Tov has taught 68 References Assmann, J (2003) ‗Cultural Memory: Script, Recollection, and Political Identity in Early Civilizations‘ Historiography East & West.1:2, 154-177 Bar-On, D (1998) ‗Transgenerational Aftereffects of the Holocaust in Israel: Three Generations‘ Breaking Crystal Writing and Memory after Auschwitz Ed Efraim Sicher Urbana: University of Illinois Press Berger, A.L (1998) ‗Bearing Witness: Theological Implications of Second-Generation Literature in America‘ Breaking Crystal Writing and Memory after Auschwitz Ed Efraim Sicher Urbana: University of Illinois Press Caruth, C (1995) ‗Introduction‘ Trauma: Explorations of Memory Ed Cathy Caruth Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press Codde, P (2009) ‗Transmitted Holocaust Trauma: A Matter of Myth and Fairy Tales?‘ European Judaism 42:1, 62-75 Dant, T & Gilloch, G (2002) ‗Pictures of the Past: Benjamin and Barthes on photography and history‘ European Journal of Cultural Studies.5:1, 5-25 De Waal, E (2010) The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance London: Vintage Books De Waal, E (2010) ‗God of small things‘ The Guardian Accessed: 27 May 2013 http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/may/29/edmund-waal-hare-amber-netsuke Erll, A (2010) ‗Literature, Film, and the Mediality of Cultural Memory‘ A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies Eds Astrid Erll, Ansgar Nünning Berlin: De Gruyter Feinstein, S.C (1998) ‗Mediums of Memory: Artistic 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27:2, 473-488 Van der Kolk, B.A & Van der Hart, O (1995) ‗The Intrusive Past: The Flexibility of Memory and the Engraving of Trauma‘ Trauma: Explorations in Memory Ed Cathy Caruth Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press Wardi, C (1992) Memorial Candles: Children of the Holocaust London: Routledge White, H (1992) ‗Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth‘ Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution” Ed Saul Friedlander Cambridge: Harvard University Press Young, J (1997) ‗Towards a Received History of the Holocaust‘ History and Theory 36:4, 21-43 [...]... Everything is Illuminated or Nicole Krauss‘ The History of Love 14 3 Postmemory in Daniel Mendelsohn‘s The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million and Edmund De Waal‘s The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance 3.1 About the novels 3.1.1 Daniel Mendelsohn - The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million Daniel Mendelsohn is an award-winning writer, critic and translator who was born on Long Island and educated... De Waal – The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance Edmund de Waal is one of the world‘s leading artists working in ceramics today, who lives and works in London.7 His large-scale installations of porcelain vessels are what he is best known for in ceramics De Waal has exhibited his work in many different venues, including the Waddesdon Manor, the Victoria & Albert Museum, Tate Britain and MIMA... Evidently, Edmund De Waal is also known as an author His novel The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance was published in 2010 by Chatto & Windus and has become an international bestseller ever since It has won many literary prizes, including the Costa Biography Award, the Galaxy New Writer of the Year Book Award and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize The novel has been translated in. .. Tokyo in the 1970s They were proudly displayed in their original home-country until Iggie passed away and the netsuke finally ended up in London with Edmund De Waal Edmund De Waal‘s The Hare with Amber Eyes contains clear aspects of postmemory His grandmother moved to the United Kingdom before the Second World War and his greatgrandparents left Vienna during the Holocaust De Waal can be considered... survive, perpetrators or bystander, probably do not know the details of the event because of its enormous, chaotic and terrifying nature As with Ruchele, the details of Bronia‘s death remain unknown 3.2.2 Edmund De Waal – The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance Edmund De Waal embarked on a quest to learn more about the history of his collection of netsuke He researched to whom in his family they used... in a personal way For example, the title The Lost: A Search for Six of Six 27 Million illustrates that the story is indeed about six relatives, but that these can also be seen as a pars pro toto for all the people who lost their life in the Holocaust When relating the personal story of six Jews, it is implied that all six million Holocaust victims have a personal story like this Accordingly, De Waal... can relate to it 3.4 The influence of postmemory on identity 3.4.1 Daniel Mendelsohn – The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million We have already established that Daniel Mendelsohn was perceived by his relatives as a memorial candle for Shmiel Dina Wardi claims that ―[t]he emotional need of the ‗memorial candles‘ to compensate their parents for what they lost comes at the cost of the development of an... him the same food again and again until Art would finally eat it or starve (Spiegelman 2003: 45) Because of the deprivation they suffered, the parents can have unreasonably strong reactions to wasting anything Furthermore, survivors are inclined to see everything from a Holocaust perspective The problems of the child are always belittled because they are nothing compared to the Holocaust The beginning... event (LaCapra 2004: 125) In this case, the trauma is in a way transferred from parent to child In addition, parents who survived the Shoah can treat their child as a memorial candle This concept of Dina Wardi describes ―children of survivors who are designated to continue the name of a dead relative—an ancient Judaic tradition and who function as the family‘s scapegoat, on whom the parents unload their... Tel Aviv again and Kfar Saba again and Beer Sheva again, to Haifa and Jerusalem and Stockholm and, finally, those two days in Copenhagen‖ (72) On a practical note, this travelling costs a lot of time and money Additionally, it is tiring on an emotional level as well Often when Daniel Mendelsohn sets out on a journey to meet a surviving Bolechower, he seems both excited and nervous, both hopeful and