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WOMEN IN THE HOLOCAUST: THE MEMOIRS OF RUTH KLUGER, CORDELIA EDVARDSON, AND JUDITH MAGYAR ISAACSON

Evelyn Hyder

A Thesis

Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

August 2009

Committee:

Christina Guenther, Advisor

Geoffrey Howes

© 2009

Evelyn Hyder

All Rights Reserved

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ABSTRACT

Christina Guenther, Advisor

In what ways does an individual choose to express her memories in writing – particularly when the memories reveal such a cataclysmic and traumatic event as the

Holocaust? Furthermore, what do memoirs tell us about the author?

During the 1980s and the 1990s, three women authors in particular undertook the task to capture in written words their childhood memories of the Holocaust: Gebranntes

Kind sucht das Feuer by Cordelia Edvardson (1984), Seed of Sarah by Judith Magyar

Isaacson (1990), and weiter leben by Ruth Kluger (1992). At first glance, these memoirs may appear to be very similar: three female authors who endured Auschwitz at young ages, writing down their memories at a much later date. However, despite the number of shared characteristics between the authors’ stories, the reveal some central issues, which are nevertheless strikingly different.

In this thesis I intend to emphasize not only the commonalities between these three authors’ memoirs, but also the distinct and significant differences. I will examine these recounted memories closely to distinguish the contrasting underlying messages, intents, sentiments, and stylistic devices that make the three authors’ and their expressions of memory different and unique.

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This work is dedicated to my sister Rosey and my brother Luke, the only ones who share

my memories of witnessing, both as children and as adults.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to acknowledge those who lent their support, guidance, and effort toward

the successful completion of this project. First and foremost, I am extremely grateful to

my advisor, Dr. Christina Guenther, for her constant direction and encouragement from the very beginning of this project to its completion. Your unfaltering readiness to meet with me, review my writing, and discuss with me at length is truly inspiring, and served to make this project a reality. I would like additionally to acknowledge Dr. Geoffrey Howes, whose helpful suggestions and criticism also influenced this work. I would also like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Andrew Thompson, for his support and help throughout the writing process. Thank you for always being there for me, for your eagerness to contribute

in any way to the process, giving literary advice and unfailing moral suppo rt. And special

thanks and love to my uncle Robert D’Angelo, who made it a priority to be present for the

commemoration of my success. You have supported my decisions, my dreams, and my

achievements my whole life. Thank you.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

CHAPTER I. READING WOMEN’S HOLOCAUST MEMOIRS ...... 1

Why Write Them? How to Read Them? ...... 1

The Relevance of Gender in the Holocaust ...... 6

CHAPTER II. WOMEN AND THE THIRD REICH ...... 19

Aryan and Jewish Women in Nazi Ideology ...... 19

Jewish Women in Society: the “Double Jeopardy” ...... 22

CHAPTER III. THE MEMOIRS OF RUTH KLUGER, CORDELIA EDVARDSON, AND

JUDITH MAGYAR ISAACSON ...... 26

Ruth Kluger: A Message of Memory ...... 26

Cordelia Edvardson: Belonging in an Alienated World ...... 43

Judith Magyar Isaacson: Speaking for Silent Voices ...... 57

CONCLUSION ...... 67

WORKS CITED ...... 69

Hyder 1

CHAPTER I. READING WOMEN’S HOLOCAUST MEMOIRS

Holocaust Memoirs: Why Write Them? How to Read Them?

The memoirs of Judith Magyar Isaacson, Ruth Kluger, and Cordelia Edvardson represent something very unique: firstly, these three women are all survivors of the Holocaust, and additionally, they documented their experiences in writing. As a defined starting point can completely alter one’s perception of the narratives, it is necessary to ensure a firm, clear basis of understanding of possible motives–both those of the reader and of the author–before setting out to examine these memoirs. In this section, I will examine the roles of both parties involved in the content of the texts: the author and the readers. Regarding the authors, I will introduce theories by Holocaust scholars for motivational reasons prompting these Holocaust survivors to document their experiences. Following this, I will examine the role of the readers in relation to the content, investigating some productive approaches towards reading the memoirs and determining what information readers should properly expect to take away from these stories.

The authors of the memoirs carry out the dual role of narrator and protagonist in the writing. While they outline and describe each brutal and horrific experience, they recount simultaneously a first-hand trauma. Since the end of the war, Holocaust survivors have been capturing in written words the trauma that they had to endure. This brings us to the question: why would survivors write down these terrible memories, keeping them alive and sharing them with others? The desire or need to write memoirs may be related to the trauma that the individual experienced, and thus the manner with which the survivor handles the trauma manifests itself in such a tool of expression. Hyder 2

In a 1998 interview, Professor Dominick LaCapra discusses trauma and the coping strategies associated with it in both a personal psychological context as well in connection with historiography and the experience of the historian confronted with traumatic events in the past.

Borrowing from Freudian analysis, LaCapra outlines two different processes of dealing with trauma, which he refers to as “acting out” and “working through” processes (1-3). In the “acting out” process, the victims “have a tendency to relive the past”; that is, they “tend to relive occurrences, or at least find that those occurrences intrude on their present existence, for example, in flashbacks; or in nightmares ; or in words that are compulsively repeated …” (2).

This process is therefore related to the tendency to call something back on impulse (2), and so this manner of dealing with trauma keeps the past alive by making it ever present in the present.

For example, someone who suffered the traumatic deportation to Auschwitz in the cattle-cars experiences in her post-war life a recurring sense of claustrophobia–thus the survivor relives the feelings associated with this traumatizing experience every time she enters an elevator or another such small, confined area. In contrast to this, the “working through” process is the act of making a separation between past traumatic experiences and the present (2-3). This particular process of coping with trauma requires the ability to accept the present independently, to a degree, of the past experiences. In this case, while the events of the past become no less horrific, the person views the present day events as apart from those past times, and functions in her everyday life without connecting the current days to her past trauma.

Having this basis of understanding for trauma, one looks for the connection between that and the memoirs. Later in this interview, LaCapra refers to “the post-Holocaust” narratives and historiography specifically, mentioning: “Many forms of writing seem to be post-traumatic Hyder 3

forms, which are coming to terms with the trauma that called them into existence in different

ways.” The memoirs, therefore, can be tools to help the victim come to terms with their

traumatic past. Regarding the “acting out” and “working out” processes of coping with trauma,

LaCapra first makes a distinction between “redemptive” and “non-redemptive” narratives. The

“redemptive” , LaCapra explains, “denies the trauma that brought it into existence”

(32). Non-redemptive narratives, often “more experimental,” are “… narratives that are trying to come to terms with the trauma in a post-traumatic context, in ways that involve both acting out and working through” (32). The two processes of “acting out” and “working through” seem to be combined in the act of capturing the trauma in memoirs, towards their ultimate goal of dealing with the trauma. That is to say, as the survivor writes about the experiences, she “acts out” and brings the memory into the present, while at the same time “working through” and using the writing to help both acknowledge and disengage herself from the past. In this way, therefore, the memoirs can serve as a tool for managing and accepting past traumatic events for the authors.

Expanding on these theories, R. Ruth Linden explains further the motives behind writing

memoirs in her study Making Stories, Making Selves. She notes that such acts of writing lend the

experiences an element of significance and value to the author, replacing the otherwise plain

horror that the stories involve. Quoting Hannah Arendt quoting Isak Dinesen, Linden reminds us

that: “All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.”

Elaborating on Dinesen, Arendt added, “The story reveals the meaning of what otherwise would

remain an unbearable sequence of sheer happenings” (17). By both “acting out” and “working through” their trauma in the act of putting their experiences into an organized layout of words Hyder 4

and chapters, the survivors therefore find or construct a sense of meaning for such a series of

traumatic events.

Memoirs represent some of our best impressions of the actual events during the

Holocaust–but at the same time, nonetheless, they are produced by the victims, whose

perspectives and opinions at the time are inevitably subject to influence by the circumstances.

That is to say, while one may be inclined to view these documents as belonging to our historical

records of the Holocaust events, these accounts while authentic are nevertheless fallible. Thus,

we must grapple with difficult questions: what is the best method for reading multiple memoirs?

Additionally, what is the most appropriate approach for comparing and contrasting multiple

accounts?

James Young discusses this matter in his collection of essays entitled Writing and

Rewriting the Holocaust, and brings forth several different accounts of the same stories as point

of study. He presents the story of “the dancer,” a young woman who feigned a strip-tease in

order to draw the SS close enough to snatch their pistols and shoot them (Young 48). Young

comments on the inconsistencies between the different accounts of this same story, noting:

“Depending on the teller of the story, this heroine is either Jewish, French, Italian, Polish, Czech,

or American … Depending on who told the tale and who received it, the incident represented

courage, desperation, resistance, justice, or hope ...” (49). These inconsistencies between

accounts render it necessary to reflect on how one approaches reading the memoirs. Reading the

Holocaust accounts as a tool for seeking the historical “truth” of the Holocaust seems therefore impractical, as these accounts differ each time the experience is retold, due to different circumstances surrounding each witness’s perception of the situation. Such an argument against Hyder 5

this approach, however, seems to threaten the credibility of the victims’ accounts. Young addresses this ethical conundrum and presents a conclusion:

The aim in comparing several variant versions of the same events is not to find

the truest, or the one that corresponds most closely to the reality, or to undermine

the credibility of these witnesses. It is rather to trace the manner in which this act

has been grasped by several different survivors, how they have assimilated it to

other preexisting legends and to their own understanding of the camp, how it has

reinforced particular truths already held, how it was molded to conform to their

beliefs, and how it was sustained imaginatively as a kind of inspiration to other

victims. (49)

The aim in examining these accounts is therefore not to single out the most accurate or most convincing re-telling of Holocaust history. Rather, contrasting and comparing the articulations of experiences is appropriate in order to uncover valuable information on the characters’ persons, the characters’ perceptions and priorities, and the application of the characters’ backgrounds to the current traumatic situations. This approach will inform my reading of the three Holocaust narratives weiter leben (1992) by Ruth Kluger, Gebranntes Kind

sucht das Feuer (1986) by Cordelia Edvardson, and Seed of Sarah (1991) by Judith Magyar

Isaacson. In this way, such a study of Holocaust memoirs will yield important knowledge and perspectives for such a multi-layered, cataclysmic event in our world’s history. Hyder 6

The Relevance of Gender in the Holocaust

Why gender and the Holocaust?

The question of the importance of gender as a focus of investigation in Holocaust studies

has long been disputed in intellectual circles, stimulating curious analysis and sometimes

provoking heated resistance to its relevance. Other aspects of the Holocaust have been selected for special attention and examination, including the experiences of gypsies, homosexuals and heterosexuals, Jews and non-Jews, etc. However, not only is the question of the relevance of gender in the Holocaust controversial in the first place, but those supporting the issue find further intense debate over the most appropriate way to handle it. How relevant is gender in the

Holocaust? What role has gender played, if any, and how can an analysis of gender contribute best towards our understanding of the Holocaust?

There are a number of reasons for the resistance to gender as a focus of study. One reason, although probably the least convincing one, is that gender as an area of study is just simply either uninteresting or unimportant (Roth 10). Some scholars have even agreed that it is

important to keep gender out of Holocaust studies. This concern is based on the belief that any

differentiation of Holocaust victims risks taking away the important fact that Jews were selected

for persecution and murder for being Jews. Others suspect that this approach was employed by

feminist opportunists taking advantage of the Holocaust for the application of their feminist

beliefs and interests, and see this as a grave misuse of the phenomenal tragedy of the Holocaust.

Another concern is that such a specific investigation might cause people to lose sight of the view Hyder 7

of the Holocaust as a “singular cataclysmic event”–thereby leading to a trivialization of the

Holocaust (Weitzman12).

Although the first conference on women and the Holocaust was not to take place until

1983,1 the question of gender gained increasing interest and spawned more and more discussion in the 1970s. Both dissenting and supporting voices were heard on the subject in Holocaust conferences, sometimes with more passion than other times. At a Holocaust conference in 1979,

Holocaust survivor Helen Fagin responded to the question “What about women?” with the clear- cut, heated negation: “I don’t want the Holocaust to be made secondary to feminism” (144). As discussion about arranging the first conference specifically on women and the Holocaust arose,

Cynthia Ozick (author of the The Shawl, 1980) responded to the proposal with pronounced displeasure. In a 1980 letter to Joan Ringelheim, she states:

I think you are asking the wrong question. Not simply the wrong question in the

sense of not having found the right one; I think you are asking a morally wrong

question, a question that leads us still further down the road of eradicating Jews

from history. You are–I hope inadvertently–joining up with the likes of [the

Revisionists] who [say] that if it happened to Jews it never happened. You insist

that it didn’t happen to “just Jews.” It happened to the women, and it is only a

detail that the women were Jewish. It is not a detail. It is everything, the whole

story. Your project is, in my view, an ambitious falsehood … The Holocaust

happened to victims who were not seen as men, women, or children, but as Jews.

(“Thoughts about Women and the Holocaust” 114)

1 This conference took place in March 1983 at Stern College, funded by the New York Council for the Humanities and sponsored by the Institute for Research in History (Ringelheim, Women and the Holocaust: A Reconsideration of Research 400). Hyder 8

Both these scholars raise concerns about retaining the “purity of the Jewish experience”

(Ringelheim, “Thoughts about Women and the Holocaust” 144) in representations of the

Holocaust. For them, central to the Holocaust is the Judenfrage–the “Jewish Question”–and

differentiation and specification of areas in the Holocaust tarnishes the overall picture and

counteracts what really happened.

This dissention has been challenged by authors since then, calling for the topic of gender

as an area of specific importance. In her article “Thoughts about Women and the Holocaust,”

Joan Ringelheim specifically criticizes Ozick’s concerns, pointing out that the disinclination to

show elements of sexism in the Holocaust derives from the tendency to see sexism–the

oppression of women–as “commonplace,” and that such commonplaceness will bring down the

horrific image that the Holocaust should convey (145). In another article, she explains: “Gender

may not define the Holocaust, but it is not trivial either” (“The Split between Gender and the

Holocaust” 348).

Author Myrna Goldenberg introduces the premise of “differentness” as reason for the validity of gendered analysis, capturing her argument succinctly in the metaphoric explanation

that women’s experiences in the Holocaust were “different horrors” in the “same hell”

(“Different Horrors, Same Hell” 150). Goldenberg criticizes that the picture of the Holocaust

constituted predominantly of stories written by male survivors, and she maintains that women’s

experiences “differ.” Therefore, the picture of the Holocaust is incomplete without their

incorporation. “[Women’s narratives] include material about experiences that are unique to

women” Goldenberg writes, “because of their biology, i.e. as childbearers, and their

socialization, i.e. as nurturers and homemakers” (“Different Horrors, Same Hell” 151). Not only Hyder 9

is gender relevant and important to Holocaust studies, but Goldenberg sees the study as an

obligation on the part of Holocaust scholars to investigate. Regarding the risk of trivializing the

Holocaust through this specific focus of study, Goldenberg responds:

We study each concentration camp as a separate entity because each differed from

the next; we track the experiences of Jews according to their country of origin and

avoid generalizations that disregard their separate trials and fates; we examine the

behavior and attitudes of religious and secular Jews, of urban and rural Jews, of

heterosexuals and homosexuals, and of Jew and non-Jews. In the same way, we

are obligated to examine, separately, the lives of women and of men to determine

the differences and the similarities in the way they were treated as well as in the

way they responded. (“Different Horrors, Same Hell” 152)

Contending the concern about the focus on gender, Goldenberg qualifies the study of gender as

an equally valid area of research as the other already investigated, non-disputed areas of the

Holocaust story (such as homosexuals, etc.). The qualifying character here is the “differentness” that each particular area features.

Goldenberg mentioned both “biology” and “socialization” (“Different Horrors, Same

Hell” 151) as contributing factors to women’s “different” experiences. Referencing women’s

testimonies, women’s differing biological factors to men’s also contributed to women’s differing

“vulnerabilities as sexual beings” (“Different Horrors, Same Hell” 151), including pregnancy

and menstruation. In a later article “Memoirs of Auschwitz Survivors: The Burden of Gender,”

Goldenberg also includes the fear of rape and sexual humiliation as additional sexual

vulnerabilities often found in female narratives (336). Regarding women’s different Hyder 10

“socialization” techniques, Goldenberg suggests evidence that in their writings women mention

particularly their “bonding” experiences, their re-creation of families and familial structures, and

the importance of retaining connections with each other (“Different Horrors, Same Hell” 151). In

her essay “The Case of German and German-Jewish Women,” Sybil Milton also speaks of

women’s “significantly different survival skills” than men’s, mentioning in particular using

housework as a kind of therapy, engaging in religious beliefs and circles, making networks, etc.

(311).

The central theme of “differentness” was however problematic, because it required a

“standard” from which to be different, and thereby involved and necessitated other spheres for its legitimacy (e.g., men’s experiences). Since these spheres call for a contrast in order to achieve a

“differentness” between them, this approach consequently led scholars in the dangerous direction

of comparing and weighing women’s experiences against men’s, and vice versa. Goldenberg

attributes abilities to “care for one another” and to “bond” as survival techniques particular to

women, declaring that “it is difficult to find consistent evidence of men’s caring about one

another to the extent that women did” (“Memoirs of Auschwitz Survivors” 337). She quotes Elie

Cohen in claiming that the “lone wolf” behavior could almost guarantee death [in the camps],”

and suggests that men “had to learn behaviors that women already knew” to facilitate survival

(337). Sybil Milton also followed this dangerous route of comparison. She stated that women

“shared and pooled their limited resources better than men” (311) and that women were in

general “more resilient to malnutrition and starvation” than men, quoting Jewish physicians that

men “were selfish and undisciplined egoists, unable to control their hungry stomachs, and

revealed a painful lack of courage” (311). Hyder 11

This approach to the role of gender in the Holocaust is harmful in a number of ways, and

raised a clamor of disapproving voices in response. Joan Ringelheim explained that a focus on

women’s “bonding” and “creating friendships” valorizes the effects of oppression. In the

eloquent and succinct assertion by Ringelheim: “Oppression does not make people better;

oppression makes people oppressed” (“A Reconsideration of Research” 387). Such valorization

takes our minds away from the absolute horror that constitutes oppression, and gives us instead

happy thoughts of “learning” and “strengthening” that arose out of difficulties. In a way, such an

approach ends up extolling and therefore encouraging, to an extent, oppression, which should be

abhorred and seen without virtue. “It is only human, even for a feminist,” Ringelheim notes in

this same article, “to look for something that will make the horror less horrible or even

negligible” (388). While this “valorization” would help dull the sheer horror that was the

Holocaust, it also would draw the attention away from the more important scene–the awfulness

of oppression. Indeed, not only is the effect of “bonding” because of oppression valorized, but its

occurrence in hard times is so expected to take place that a case of its absence is often met with

surprise or confusion. The holocaust survivor and author Ruth Kluger expresses this sentiment in

the following passage from her Holocaust narrative Still Alive:

[Listeners] assume a stance of virtuous indignation, and tell me that given the

hardships we had to endure during the Hitler period, the victims should have

come closer together and formed strong bonds … But this is sentimental rubbish

and depends on a false concept of suffering as a source of moral education. (52)

What Ringelheim referred to as “oppression,” Kluger here refers to as “suffering”–and both authors agree there is an inclination in humankind to look for a “strengthening,” or a “self- Hyder 12

improvement” arising out of an evil situation (“moral education in suffering,” in Kluger’s terminology) as an easier way to coming to grips with such a level of tragedy.

Also problematic with Goldenberg’s approach of comparing and evaluating experiences by gender is that one’s concentration is placed completely on gender to explain behavioral patterns, overlooking other possible causes. In her article “Engendering Trauma Memory,” Sara

Horowitz outlines a number of other possible factors contributing to a chosen coping method for oppression:

Treating women as a more or less unified group with similar behavioral

characteristics ignores important differences in cultural background, social class,

age, economic standing, level of education, religious observance and political

orientation–differences that, like gender, contribute to the way victims responded

to their circumstances. (370)

The other mistake in this approach, therefore, is the generalization of coping strategies attributed frequently by female survivors to gender as a whole. We see, therefore, how this approach can be particularly dangerous for gender studies, since the core of this problem is its misuse of gender in examination, and thus this approach could undermine the appropriateness and importance of examining gender altogether.

Indeed, the effects of this misuse of gender as an area of investigation can be seen in

Holocaust discussion by other scholars, who protest the harmfulness of “ranking” men’s and women’s experiences even more emphatically. Lawrence Langer, for example, finds that

“nothing could be crueler or more callous” (362) than this approach, noting: Hyder 13

All efforts to find a rule of hierarchy in that darkness, whether based on gender or

will, spirit or hope, reflect only our own need to plant a life-sustaining seed in the

barren soil that conceals the remnants of two-thirds of European Jewry. The

sooner we abandon this design, the quicker we will learn to face such chaos with

unshielded eyes. (362)

As well as stressing the irrelevance and harmfulness of this “comparative endurance” (362),

Langer also calls into question specifically what is meant by “better” (Milton 311) surviving techniques. For example, contesting the argument that women were “disadvantaged” due to factors like pregnancy and children, Langer brings up the example of a male Holocaust survivor, who breaks down crying while recounting the story of his last moment with his wife and child before they were shipped to Auschwitz and gassed. Langer cuts straight to the point: “Shall we celebrate the fact that because he was a man, and able to work, his life was saved? I think that he, a man crying, would not agree” (362). Langer illustrates in this passage the complexities and overwhelming tragedy that comprises the intricate and convoluted Holocaust web, rendering impossible a black-and-white view of a situation as “better” or “worse.”

Langer’s dismissal of gender is not contained to just this subject of comparative surviving, but is even extended to the entire relevance of gender in the Holocaust altogether. He views the role of gender as insignificant in the large picture of such a cataclysmic and complicated event as the Holocaust. His argument here can best be understood if broken down

into two categories: the role of gender during the suffering, and the role of gender after the

event, in remembering the suffering. Regarding the former, Langer provides several passages by

female Holocaust survivors to prove the absence and irrelevance of gender in the female Hyder 14

Holocaust experiences. But in his arguments, he seems to restrict the definition of “gender” to

the traditional roles of the sex, without including the effect of those traditional habits placed in

new situations. For example, one particular passage tells of one woman who gave birth in

Auschwitz, concluding: “Indeed, in some instances, women were forced to reject what they

regarded as one of their natural roles, as a result of their ordeals in the camps” (356). While this was meant to prove the uselessness of gender in the context of the Holocaust, Elizabeth Baer and

Myrna Goldenberg call this particular passage into question. They note: “That is exactly the

point of gendered analysis: not solely a focus on traditional notions of womanhood, but a

perceptive articulation of how those roles have been constructed under various circumstances”

(xxviii). That is to say, the passage that Langer proposed is nevertheless still relevant to the

emphasis of gender in women’s experiences, in that it involves the effects of a traditional

meaning of gender (i.e. having children) on the current new situation (i.e. child is murdered upon

birth).

As mentioned earlier, Langer also challenges the importance of gender in the remembering and reviewing of the suffering after the event. According to Langer, the immense

world of pain and grief in the memories of the Holocaust leaves little room for gender

distinction. “The ultimate sense of loss unites former victims in a violated world beyond gender”

(362) he maintains. But Langer misses an important distinction here as well–if not the most

important and useful distinction for concentration on the role of gender in Holocaust studies. In

so far as the validity of their pain is concerned, victims are indeed “united” in their loss,

regardless of gender (as Langer maintains). Nevertheless, gender does not remain useless and Hyder 15

irrelevant. Rather, gender provides an important critical lens with which to view and better understand the experiences of the survivors.

This “gendered lens” concept is discussed by Pascale Bos, who explains the three-fold

selection process for narrating a personal story. “Survivors seek to represent themselves through

their narratives in a certain way” (“Women in the Holocaust: Analyzing Gender Difference” 28),

she explains. With the exception of the survivors themselves, the only picture of the Holocaust

experience provided to us is what is recounted to us by the surviving victims. It is impossible for

the victim 1) to relate to us every experience, as well as 2) to remember every experience, so she

or he must decisively choose which ones to recount and selectively lodge certain ones in their

memory banks to keep. The third part of this selection process is the survivor’s choice of

narrative emplotment: their rhetorical strategy, structure, tone, etc. for their narrative. Bos

follows this up by explaining the resulting significance of the personal experience of the survivor

to our general understanding of the situation:

The elements the survivor selects will be chosen from so many options that these

choices must hold particular if often unknown significance. What survivors select

therefore reflects their version of reality, filtered in part through the changing lens

of trauma (that what cannot be told), time (bringing both aging and the possibility

for reflexive distance), the psychological process of self-preservation, and the

narrative conventions of that process. (31)

Gender is relevant, therefore, as the traditional notions of gender can have an effect on the

survivor’s choice of remembering and re-telling. That is to say, depending on each person’s

historical past–including religious and secular expectations of gender roles–certain memories Hyder 16

would receive more or less emphasis in remembering and in re-telling. For example, regarding the topic of “bonding” in camps, which has been claimed to be significantly more common for women (Goldenberg, “Memoirs of Auschwitz Survivors” 337), Bos declines to agree that many men did not form important relationships in camps as well. Instead, she notes:

Most men born in the first decades of this century tend to under-emphasize these

bonds and place greater importance on recollections that contain instances of

individual strength, heroism, or autonomy. Women, on the other hand, had been

generally socialized to value relationships and interdependence, and therefore

they tend to remember friendships and connections more fondly and choose to

emphasize them in a narrative, even to the point of personal effacement.

(“Women in the Holocaust: Analyzing Gender Difference” 36)

As opposed to earlier approaches in feminist research, Bos avoids generating general conclusions about men and women based on narratives, and instead suggests including the role of gender in reflection and memory as important factors to explain possible behavioral patterns in the experiences.

This presents the most accurate and reasonable approach to the role of gender in the

Holocaust, since this approach is applied to the very source of the narratives (the personal selection of remembering and recounting), gives women’s experiences legitimacy independent of men’s experiences, and, thereby, escapes unwarranted generalizing and “ranking” of men’s and women’s experiences. Bos summarizes her point in the conclusion of her article:

Gender thus becomes important in texts by survivors … not because the Nazis

were inherently sexist (even though this might be true), or because women or men Hyder 17

displayed certain distinct (gendered) behaviors which survivors felt compelled to

write about, but because gender is one of the important lenses through which

survivors perceive and understand themselves as members of their community.

(“Women in the Holocaust: Analyzing Gender Difference” 38)

The new emphasis, therefore, shifts away from stereotypes and “differentness,” to instead explore and appreciate the representations of the Holocaust by the individual testimonies of the survivor. This provides a new understanding of gender as an “identity” (Disch 11) rather than as a yardstick to differentiate experiences between men and women.

After investigating and deciding upon the most appropriate way to address gender and the

Holocaust, this resulting approach nevertheless posed concerns and caused some confusion.

During a conference in 2001 titled “Departures: New Feminist Perspectives on the Holocaust,”

Pascale Bos introduced her questions and theories about viewing the Holocaust through a

“gendered lens,” after which a participant approached in anger. Regretting her participation in the conference, this woman decided to give up this field as her “safe space” to talk about her

Holocaust experience, retorting with the question: “Now you mean to tell me we are lying?”

(Disch 13). This response makes it clear that the suggestion to view the narratives as subjective representations of the Holocaust can be misunderstood to mean that the stories need not be taken seriously. The statement that each story is influenced by the narrator’s past history and cultural context may seem to imply that the stories are not being considered completely legitimate or perfectly truthful. Seeing this reaction, it is necessary to acknowledge that while this new approach proposed by Pascale Bos is legitimate and appropriate, the delicate matters surrounding Hyder 18

the topic require particular care and sensitivity in the explanation and presentation of this approach.

Hyder 19

CHAPTER II. WOMEN AND THE THIRD REICH

Aryan and Jewish Women in Nazi Ideology

The Nazi ideology included a specific image for Aryan women and their role in society.

Adolf Hitler asserts that women as a sex were “equal but different” to their male counterpart; a

claim similar to that in the Weimar constitution that “women and men have basically the same

rights and duties” (Bridenthal 35). This ideology can be viewed as a form of political propaganda

utilized by Hitler, perhaps in an effort to appeal both to a traditional mindset and to the steadily-

growing women’s movement. Although the claim of “equal rights” between genders implies an

open-minded and non-traditional approach, the ideology following this claim reflects the

traditional notions of gender roles. In a translation by Dr. Clifford Kirkpatrick, Hitler explains

the Nazi stance on male and female roles:

The man upholds the nation as the woman upholds the family. The equal rights of

woman consist in the fact that in the realm of life determined for her by nature she

experiences the high esteem that is her due … Woman and man represent two

quite different types of being. Reason is dominant in man … Feeling in contrast is

much more stable than reason and woman is the feeling and therefore the stable

element … The movement therefore can take no other position toward woman

than that of cherishing her as a life partner and life companion with equal rights.

(112)

Although Hitler presents the Nazi view of female roles seemingly agreeably, nevertheless the

limitations placed on women are evident and non-revolutionary: women are defined throughout Hyder 20

in terms of their male counterparts, categorized as “feeling,” and restricted to serving out their

lives as the “life partner” and “companion” to men.

Furthermore, the Nazi party maintained that the role of Aryan women in society was first

and foremost motherhood. Hitler exalted the “simple German women,” holding the of

many children to be more valued and respect-worthy than even a successful female lawyer

(Kirkpatrick, 113). The importance of the woman’s call to motherhood was emphasized by Dr.

Joseph Goebbels, the “Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda,” who asserted in

a speech: “The outstanding and highest calling of woman is always that of wife and mother, and

it would be an unthinkable misfortune if we allowed ourselves to be turned from this point of

view” (Kirkpatrick, 117).

While the “Gretchen image” of women ruled the ideology, the advance of industrialism and the demands of the economy provided conflicting needs. Although the motherhood vocation of women was so strongly underlined, the Nazi party nevertheless recognized the economic necessity of women and refrained from banning women from the workforce altogether. Elizabeth

Baer and Myrna Goldenberg explain the strange conflict of the theory and practice regarding

Aryan women’s roles in the context of the times: “The ideal of the home-centered woman had a practical and a threatening impact on the building of a wartime labor force” (xxi). In an attempt to bring both together, women were encouraged to reserve the work-force for only unmarried girls, and even then the nature of the work should correspond to the “feminine type” as much as possible (117). At the same time, however, the Nazis could not conceal their need for women in the staffing of the concentration camps, and so the times found women employed by the Nazis as guards, supervisors, and in other such seemingly “unfeminine” roles. Hyder 21

In the case of German-Jewish women, however, discussion about “vocation” and “roles”

according to the Nazis was irrelevant, as in theory Jewish women were viewed by the Nazis in

terms of their Jewishness, and not in terms of their sex. As far as the Nazis were concerned,

every Jew–regardless of age or sex–should be eliminated. This intent of total destruction of the

Jewish people led to the cold-blooded murder of nearly six million of them–unfathomable in its

inhumanity. This sense of “equality” regarding the victimization of the Jews is not to imply, however, that Jewish women were therefore completely spared mistreatment specific to their sex in the Nazi Regime, nor that it is valueless to look at the case of the persecution of Jewish

women independently from men.

After 1933, Jewish women found themselves subject to unrelenting attacks of insults and

propaganda from society, including their legal exclusion from social and professional circles.

These attacks were not only aimed passively but also aggressively, as Jewish women also

endured physical violence and sometimes even sexual assaults in society.2 Having outlined the

ideology of the Nazis in regard to the “calling” of women, one perceives the stark contradictions

in the expectations of the Jewish women. For example, while the Nazi ideology extolled the

vocation of marriage for women above all else, in the particular case of Jewish women married

to Christian men there risked the constant pressure on the husbands to obtain divorces (Milton

300). While the Nazis promoted the “motherhood” vocation of their German women, they

simultaneously deemed Jewish women as “inferior” in their Jewishness, and therefore eligible

for various forms of sterilization (Bock 275). In fact, what the Nazis regarded as the very model

of womanhood for Aryan women––they also feared in Jewish people as the central

2 For more information about the physical and sexual violence that Jewish women endured in pre-war times, consider Raul Hilberg’s text The Destruction of the European Jews, (28-29), and Christine King’s article “Strategies for Survival: An Examination of the History of Five Christian Sects in Germany, 1933-1945” (216-19). Hyder 22

threat to German “racial pur ity” and “cultural superiority,” as the Jewish mother gave birth to

Jewish children (Roth 11). The Nazi official Heinrich Himmler pointed this out himself in a

speech to SS leaders in October 1943:

We had to answer the question: What about the women and children?

Here, too, I had made up my mind … I did not feel that I had the right to

exterminate the men and then allow their children to grow into avengers,

threatening our sons and grandchildren. A fateful decision had to be made:

This people had to vanish from the earth. (Roth 11)

Jewish Women in Society: the “Double Jeopardy”

While the Jews were persecuted on the basis of their race and not on that of their sex,

gender nevertheless made a difference. Gender, according to Lenore J. Weitzman and Dalia Ofer

in their introduction to the anthology Women in the Holocaust, reflects the “social and cultural

construction of the roles and positions of men and women in society. (In contrast, sex refers to

the biological differences between men and women.)” (2). For example, the pre-war gender roles

of men and women might have affected the ways that they were prepared to handle the

Holocaust. Following the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, German-Jewish women in Germany found

themselves relegated to gender-specific contexts, such as providing emotional nurturing and

moral suppo rt in difficult times. With an emphasis on family and motherhood, Jewish society

placed on Jewish women the responsibility of keeping up the morale and emotional strength for

the family and specifically for the husband–in other words, they were expected to “make things work” (Weitzman 3) and keep spirits up until better times had arrived. This expectation of Hyder 23

responsibility for women is reflected in the following message from the League of Jewish

Women, who gave these instructions during the time when Jewish families had to move together into tightly-packed living quarters:

“It is the duty ... of the Jewish woman to regulate the schedule and the

organization of the household so that everyone is satisfied. She has to give

her husband, the head of the household, the necessary time to be alone to

relax ... She has to adjust without being subordinate.” (Kaplan, “Jewish

Women in : Daily Life, Daily Struggles, 1993-1939” 198)

This sense of familial responsibility for Jewish women in pre-war times is an example of gendered conditions which may have conditioned women with a specific set of skills for coping for the Holocaust-to-come.

Gender also played a significant role in the Jews’ anticipatory reactions to where the rising oppression of Jews might ultimately lead. The general assumption was that men faced the real danger here, as no one really expected the Nazis to be inhuman enough to harm women and children. Holocaust survivor Ruth Kluger refers to this in her narrative Still Alive:

The old idea, or rather the old prejudice, that women are protected by men

was so deeply ingrained in that society that they overlooked what was the

most obvious, that is, that the weakest and the disadvantaged are the most

exposed. Why would the Nazis, with their racist ideology, refrain from

harming women? Did the concept of chivalry so outshine that of racism in

the minds of our people? (72) Hyder 24

This mentality effected a number of results. One of these was a heightened concern for men’s

safety. This was not always extended to their female counterpart as well, however, which

sometimes meant disastrous consequences for the women involved. For example, before the

Black Thursday in Paris of July 16, 1942, a warning had been sent to the Jewish men to keep off the streets to avoid arrest, but the assumption that women and children were safe to go out resulted with disproportionate numbers in the ensuing arrests: 5,802 women, 4,051 children, and only 3,031 men (Weitzman 5). Another result of this expected chivalry among the Jews was the push for men–over women–to emigrate, particularly after 1933. From 1933 to 1939, a ratio of

136 Jewish women to every 100 Jewish men was left in Germany (Baer xix). In addition to

factors of age (women tend to outlive men) and remaining effects of WWI (the war had left a

higher ratio of women to men in Germany), the substantial rise in emigration is the primary

cause for these figures. As a result, the census of April 1939 recorded 123,104 Jewish women

and only 90,826 Jewish men in Germany (Milton 301). Jewish women’s organizations were also

advising women not to “hinder” their husbands from emigrating without them, if it was

necessary (Kaplan, Jewish Women in Nazi Germany 203). So while sex may have been

irrelevant in the Nazi’s view of Jews, gender nevertheless played a role in the Jewish women’s

pre-war experiences.

Marion Kaplan refers to German-Jewish women’s “double jeopardy” (Kaplan, Sisterhood

under Siege 175) as being subject both to oppression due to their ethnic/religious heritage and to

oppression due to their sex. They suffered sexual discrimination along with the German-women

in society, as well as suffering racial discrimination along with the rest of the Jewish community.

As women’s movements furthered the career of women in Germany, anti-Semitism denied Hyder 25

Jewish women from participating. Furthermore, their second-class status in their own Jewish communities added to their existing difficulties in Germany. For example, when women’s suffrage was granted in 1918, Jewish women were nevertheless still refused the right to vote in elections for Jewish communal office. Outside the home they endured treatment as “inferior” humans due to the Nazi ideology, and within the home they lived their existence as the “inferior” sex due to the religious beliefs of their own Jewish communities (Kaplan, Sisterhood under Siege

175). In the years preceding the rise of Hitler and the war, this “double jeopardy” characterized the lives of Jewish women in a unique way.

This pre-war social and political situation of Jewish women in the Third Reich is important to remember and consider in the following chapter while examining the three

Holocaust memoirs by Kluger, Edvardson, and Isaacson. This knowledge of pre-war gendered conditions for women prompts the following questions: in what way could this “double jeopardy” have informed these three memoirs? What important aspects of the authors’ stories reveal influences of the “motherhood” image in Nazi society? Given this context, in what ways can we see traces of this background affecting some of the important themes of the authors’ narratives? Hyder 26

CHAPTER III. THE MEMOIRS OF RUTH KLUGER, CORDELIA EDVARDSON, AND

JUDITH MAGYAR ISAACSON

Ruth Kluger: living on after a Holocaust girlhood

Ruth Kluger captured her Holocaust experiences in both German and English within the

same decade, publishing weiter leben: eine Jugend in German in 1992 and Still Alive: A

Holocaust Girlhood Remembered in English in 2001. The original German account received

prestigious literary prizes and glowing praise from Germany’s most esteemed literary critics,

being recognized as “one of the most important works on the subject to appear in a decade”

(Schulte-Sasse 2). While this narrative subsequently appeared in multiple languages–Dutch,

French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Czech–an English version was not published until

produced by Kluger herself in 2001: Still alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered. Kluger

decided this on behalf of her mother, whose disinclination to invest attention in anything German

would have protected her from reading the author’s disturbing descriptions of their mother- daughter relationship. Despite this, Alma Hirschel put aside her disapproval of the German language momentarily and obtained a copy of the text. She was disappointed, indeed hurt, by her daughter’s portrayal of her in the account. This event dissuaded Kluger from producing an

English version until after her mother’s death in 2000, at 97 years of age (Schaumann 3). This

English version is “neither a translation nor a new ,” as Kluger explains, “it’s another version, a parallel book, if you will” (Still Alive 210).

Holocaust scholars such as Pascale Bos, Dagmar C. G. Lorenz, Caroline Schaumann, and

Linda Schulte-Sasse have investigated and analyzed the two texts of Ruth Kluger, providing Hyder 27

insight into the interesting and unique aspects of Kluger’s writing and experiences. Using

Kluger’s memoirs and the existing scholarly discussion on her texts, I would like to investigate

and observe the prominent characteristics of Kluger’s narratives, beginning with the significance

of her introductory pages to her , which will introduce to us Kluger’s distinct

privileging of her memories over all other sources of information. This discussion will show how

the importance and privileged status of Kluger’s memories are accentuated by their play with

both knowledge and with the restrictions of place and time, followed by a particular examination

of the sphere of “place” in its function as a bridge to connect Kluger to her memories. To

elaborate upon this connection between past and present, I will then introduce the fascinating and unique narrative voices that Kluger employs: the dual narration of the memoirs, the message of

weiter leben to a German audience, and the meaning of Still Alive to her American audience.

Lastly, I will explore the relationship of Kluger to her identities: first as a Jew, and second as a woman, examining additionally the question of gender roles that accompanies being a woman.

“Their secret was death, not sex.” This short line beginning both narratives introduces a

story about the author’s cousin Hans, who endured torture in the Buchenwald concentration

camp. The opening line referred to little 8-year-old Kluger’s piqued interest in overhearing from beneath her bedcovers the adults’ conversations about “forbidden” topics–torture, pain, death.

Wryly, author Kluger replaces our usual notion of inappropriate subject matter for children’s ears–“sex”–with the new, circumstantially more pressing one: “death.” Nevertheless, 8-year-old

Kluger managed to deviously place herself within earshot of the adults’ conversations, eagerly taking in all this “forbidden” talk. This beginning is significant because Kluger lays out and discusses what will set the tone for the rest of the text: uncovering forbidden and unwanted Hyder 28

truths, regardless of what society would consider “appropriate.” Her inquisitiveness for the

sensitive details of Hans’ experiences did not leave her entirely guilt-free, however. She contemplates in her narrative: “And still I can’t get rid of the prickly sense that I am breaking taboos, searching for indecencies, like Noah’s children uncovering their father’s nakedness, that

I am not supposed to know about death and dying” (17).

Her “craving” (18) for the truths of the situations led her to investigate areas that others

refuse to explore, and to portray her own frank descriptions, exerting no effort to decorate or

magnify the trauma towards the goal of moving the reader. This “frankness” in style led to

criticism from many reviewers (Schulte-Sasse 470), who failed to understand something that

Kluger clearly intended to convey: how one cannot claim to understand the Holocaust without

“paying attention” to the happenings (Kluger 17). In response to these critics, Schulte-Sasse

explains Kluger’s preference of truthfulness over emotional quality:

[Kluger] knows something her reviewers don’t: that to think about the Holocaust,

especially at this juncture, is to think about thinking about the Holocaust. She is

loath [sic] to let feeling “moved” substitute for being informed, preferring to

rupture our narrative identification at every turn, and with it the pleasure and

reassurance that even–or especially–a horror story affords us, as we fear, suffer,

or rejoice with figures in whom we have invested emotionally. (470)

While Kluger’s unconventional approach to writing fails to “pull at the heartstrings” of the readers in the traditional way, her focus is to portray only the truths of her Holocaust experience, however uncomfortably candid they might be. As her opening analogy of “death, not sex” Hyder 29

conveyed, she focuses on her burning desire for the truths of the situations, however “indecent”

they might be.

The exact nature of this “truthfulness” is, however, twofold. In her descriptions of

characters and events, Kluger highlights an important distinction between knowledge and

memory, and throughout Kluger’s narrative there exists a tension between these two notions.

This distinction can be seen, for example, in the presentation of Kluger’s great aunt Irene (Still

Alive 19). Kluger takes information both from her knowledge and from her memories to portray

this character of her childhood. Kluger “knows” that her great-aunt perished in the gas chambers, and that she was, therefore, a “real” victim of the Holocaust.3 Kluger’s memory, on the other hand, reveals a person who the author detested with “a child’s needle-sharp aversion, and who I can’t forgive, even after a death that is as hard to imagine as it is impossible to forget” (19). The

seeming lack of sensitivity is, in fact, Kluger’s refusal to place after-the-fact knowledge as a

priority over her memories. The significance of Kluger’s memories in the re-telling of her experience is an important feature of her narratives and a medium for communicating her experiences that Kluger privileges over any other. Regarding the story of her great-aunt Irene, in particular, author Schulte-Sasse remarks on this interplay between knowledge and memory:

The gap between these voices, this disparity between memory and knowledge, is

more than just Kluger being “irreverent” or “philosophical” (Annan). It forces us

to straddle with her the no-man’s land between recollection and knowledge …

Since Kluger refuses to rewrite the aunt with the charity of 20/20 hindsight, we

are again left to shift back and forth between two irreconcilable narrative genres,

3 Ruth Kluger referred to “the real victims” of the Holocaust in her article “Forgiving and Remembering.” She expanded upon this term as to mean: “the dead, as distinct from survivors like me” (311). Hyder 30

the children’s story and the historical tragedy, and between two aunts, the irritator

and the victim, who can’t be thought or felt at the same time. (473)

Although her present knowledge could potentially trump her personal memory in the description

of her aunt, Kluger goes against convention and privileges her childhood impression, providing

two clashing and perplexing images of the character in the reader’s mind. The “children’s story”

is her memories, and the “historical tragedy” is her knowledge. Just as Kluger cannot personally

substitute her memory with this knowledge (“who I can’t forgive” 19), she refuses to give

knowledge preference in her narratives as well. This is also reflected in the mother-daughter

conflict in Kluger’s memoirs, an emphasized and important theme in the narratives. While

knowledge might tell Kluger (and us) that her mother was a Holocaust victim who suffered and

survived unspeakable tribulations, the “children’s story” (Schulte-Sasse 473) can only be relayed by Kluger, and this children’s story again takes precedence in the way these stories are told.

The importance of memories in Ruth Kluger’s narratives is not only accentuated by their

interplay with knowledge. Another salient feature of Kluger’s memories is the role of places as

well. In fact, in both weiter leben and Still Alive, the chapters of the narratives are divided by the

geographical location where the memories took place, thereby emphasizing Kluger’s interest in the role of places. As with the tension between knowledge and recollection, Kluger’s memories also take precedence over the current geographical locations of the happenings. In this way, her focus parallels that of authors such as Ruth Beckermann, who in her documentary film Die

papierne Brücke traveled to the hometown of her father in the former Yugoslavia in search of a sense of belonging and an identification with the past. Beckermann’s journey revealed to her that one cannot find an identity or Gehörigkeit in the geographical place of one’s origin, but can only Hyder 31

rely instead on one’s own imaginations and memories for a connection to the past. Similarly,

Kluger also regards her memories of the happenings more important than the geographical locations where they occurred. For this reason, she never returned to visit places of her past, such as (now the museum) Auschwitz. In a review of Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah, Kluger explains the irrelevance of visiting places of her memories, after their reason for being remembered has since ceased being:

I don’t go back to where I’ve been. I have escaped … Like all survivors I know

that Auschwitz, when the Nazis killed Jews there, felt like a crater of the moon, a

place only peripherally connected with the human world. It is this “otherness” of

the death camps that we have such difficulty conveying. But once the killing

stopped these former camps became a piece of our inhabited earth again. (250)

Kluger’s memories of Auschwitz convey the truth of what happened there. Now a museum and a

spot for tourism, the former concentration camp no longer carries the meaning it once did for her.

“Auschwitz” is a place of the past, only still alive in Kluger’s memory, and therefore Kluger

does not feel a need to visit the site today. In a 1993 article, Lorenz articulates succinctly

Kluger’s view of geographical places in the context of history:

Because of her ability to remember, [Kluger] feels no need to search for the lost

culture and revisit the death camps. Experience has taught her that only memory

transcends time and space, and she disputes the notion that landscapes and

buildings can retain history. (211)

Unlike knowledge and geographical places, fixed to a certain degree in their own sphere,

memories are still living and apply to both the present world and the past world. Given, thus, the Hyder 32

power of memories, one can understand Kluger’s resentment at hearing friends or acquaintances

question these recollections:

Heute gibt es Leute, die mich fragen: “Aber Sie waren doch viel zu jung, um sich

an diese schreckliche Zeit erinnern zu können.” Oder vielmehr, sie fragen nicht

einmal, sie behaupten es mit Bestimmtheit. Ich denke daran, die wollen mir mein

Leben nehmen, denn das Leben ist doch nur die verbrachte Zeit, das einzige, was

wir haben, das machen sie mir streitig, wenn sie mir das Recht des Erinnerns in

Frage stellen. (73)

Clearly, then, one’s memories constitute one’s past and accordingly one’s entire life, and calling

them into question can be perceived as a kind of violence.

While concrete geographical places (in the present) defer to memories of those places in terms of defining Kluger’s past, they nevertheless still play an important role in her narratives.

As mentioned previously, Kluger divides her memories in weiter leben into chapters of location:

“Wien,” “Die Lager,” “Deutschland,” “New York,” and “Göttingen.” The English versions in

Still Alive are consistent with the exception of the “Göttingen” epilogue, which becomes in Still

Alive an unnamed epilogue (consisting of memories of both Göttingen in Germany and Irvine in

the USA). This deliberate structure of her chapters reveals how memories of these particular

places provide bridges that connect the present to the past.4 Places also served an additional

important function in the writing of her two narratives. Regarding weiter leben, the location of

4 Kluger, Ruth: „Ich wollte meine Erinnerungen ‚Stationen‘ nennen und ganz unbefangen an Ortsnamen knüpfen. Erst jetzt, an dieser Stelle, frage ich mich, wieso Orte, wenn ich doch eine bin, die nirgendwo lange war und wohnt. Wiederholt bin ich gestrandet, und so sind mir die Ortsnamen wie die Pfeiler gesprengter Brücken. Wir können nicht einmal sicher sein, daß es die Brükcen hier, wo es nach Pfeilern aussieht, gegeben hat, und vielleicht müssen wir sie erst erfinden, und es könnte ja sein, daß sie, obwohl erfunden, trotzdem tragfähig sind. Wir fangen mit dem an, was bleibt: Ortsnamen“ (weiter leben 79) Hyder 33

Göttingen for Kluger’s accident and ensuing bedridden state played a key role in her decision to

write down her first autobiography during this time. Schaumann explains the unique space that

Göttingen offered Kluger during this period:

Whereas Klüger established her post-war life as a German professor in the United

States, Göttingen was a break from this life, putting her in closer contact with the

nightmares of her past. Yet, Göttingen in the late 1980’s turned out to be a place

very different from her hometown Vienna and from the camps … Although

clearly linked to the past, Göttingen represented a new, neutral space in which

testimony became possible. (329)

Göttingen’s dual characteristic of being both separate from past and present worlds and yet paradoxically close to her past world presented the first space both neutral and confrontational

enough to support this new undertaking. Lorenz also comments on the important role of

Göttingen in the writing of weiter leben: “Without the distance from her country and language

of origin and her collision with the past in Göttingen, Klüger could not have achieved the

detachment that allowed her to write weiter leben” (215). When writing her second

autobiography Still Alive, Kluger was in the place of familiarity, her home in Irvine. Irvine also

facilitates the writing of her story, but for different reasons. It is a place of belonging, or “home”

(Still Alive 280), where Kluger has spent more time than any other one place (Schaumann 329), and therefore presents a place of safety–in a much different way than Göttingen does.

Schaumann explains the difference between Göttingen and Irvine: “While Göttingen was a site

of displacement that offered distance from the present and access to the past, Irvine is a less

emotionally charged and disruptive site, and Klüger chooses a more gentle tone to describe her Hyder 34

home in Irvine” (329). So while the distance and confrontation of Göttingen were necessary to yield her first autobiography, the safety and sense of belongingness in Irvine facilitated the production of her second.

Another important feature in Kluger’s memoirs is the play between past and present–that is, the role of time in Kluger’s memoirs. She plays the dual role of being both the narrator and the protagonist, both the adult and the child, both the player and the commentator. That is to say,

Kluger often switches back and forth from the feelings of the child in the past and the retrospective comments of the narrator in the present. As opposed to following in the footsteps of the protagonist, the child Kluger, and re-living with her each individual moment of her experience, there is a clear distinction in weiter leben and Still Alive that the primary figure is the narrator, who interjects in the course of the stories to yield some comment or question.

Pascale Bos explains how this shift between author and protagonist adds a more complex element to the memoir, allowing the author to interrupt the course of the autobiography and move forward and backward in time:

… [Kluger] delivers a continuous commentary from her present position on this

past that breaks up the flow of the autobiography: she moves back and forth in

time, she foreshadows and backshadows. This commentary complicates received

notions of memoir itself as it self-consciously deconstructs them through a

questioning of memory and as it opens a view on the conflicting accounts and

interpretations of the past … It also calls attention to the fact that it is being

refracted through the eyes of the adult who remembers these events that the Hyder 35

author experienced during her childhood. (Bos, “German-Jewish in the

Wake of the Holocaust” 74)

As we see, this “dual perspective” (Lorenz 213) also further accentuates the importance of memory in the narratives, since the constant shift from the experiencing child to the reflecting narrator keeps the reader from getting lost in the story by reminding the reader that these are indeed real memories being relayed. This “dual perspective” also reflects the powerful force of

memory in its play with time–as memory is the only medium which is not restricted to its period

of occurrence but can move through time. As Lorenz notes: “Flashbacks and previews enable the

narrative voice to connect different events, to travel in time and between cultures” (216). The

power of memory, therefore, transcends space as well as time. This is further exemplified by a

side-by-side analysis of weiter leben and Still Alive. Impressions and stories between these two

accounts change, as in Still Alive some more recent memories are added, some old memories

change because of new perspectives after the fact, and some are added or embellished after the

sharing of memories with family members or friends.5 Schaumann comments upon this

development between narratives, noting: “Along with the present, Klüger’s past is continuously

evolving, proving that memories cannot be fixed in space and time but live on” (328). The

importance of memories in Kluger’s narrative derive from their unique property of being

untethered to the forces of time, to the extent that they are still living when other media are gone,

in their ability to develop and change.

There are other notable differences between the memoirs weiter leben and Still Alive

which are important to understanding the entire story of survival of Ruth Kluger. Firstly, the

5 One can find specific examples of these differences between narratives outlined in Caroline Schaumann’s 2004 article: “From “weiter leben” (1992) to “Still Alive” (2001): Ruth Kluger’s Cultural Translation of Her “German Book” for an American Audience.” 327-8. Hyder 36

audience to whom Kluger wrote played an important part in her writing, while at the same time, the time period at which Kluger wrote played an important part in her audience. As mentioned

previously, her situation in Göttingen enabled her to put her story into printed words, yielding a

message and a tone in her first autobiography strikingly different from that in her second.

Published in German in Germany, weiter leben serves to provoke a dialogue between the Jews and the Germans. In this case as well, we see the interplay of past and present, with a focus on the present: while the narrative centers on the events of the past, it functions to bring about a

conversation in the present. In this way, Bos explains, Kluger attempts to confront the Germans

with their past:

In weiter leben, Klüger seeks a German audience to engage in a dialogue about

the Nazi past, about what the Germans have done to the Jews, in order to bring

about the possibility for a conversation between Germans and Jews, in the

present. For until this dialogue about the past takes place, Germans and Jews do

not meet on sufficient common ground to function together in a German present

or future, she suggests. (“German-Jewish Literature in the Wake of the

Holocaust” 81)

But a dialogue should not be confused with a monologue, with a message from Jews to

Germans–weiter leben is a dialogue, as it addresses both Germans and Jews. Kluger does not

restrict her writings to the brutalities of the Holocaust, but continues to write extensively about

her life and her difficulties after her escape in Germany and New York–that is, how she

“survived survival” (Miller 392). The last section of weiter leben includes her difficulties

managing the language barrier in the US, the bitter co-dependency between her and her mother, Hyder 37

her catastrophic visits to a therapist, etc. Moreover, she also recounts her dealings with the

Germans, specifically while attending school in Germany before their emigration to New York.

Lorenz notes that weiter leben “challenges the notion that the Nazi legacy concerns only the

German mainstream. Klüger’s work illustrates that Jews too need to come to terms with their

past, with the Holocaust, with Germany, and with the Germans” (208). Not only does weiter

leben challenge Germans to assume responsibility for their past, it also speaks to Jews as well.

Kluger guides her Jewish audience to follow in her footsteps in reflecting on, mourning, and

accepting the tragedies and difficulties that have to do with one’s traumatic Holocaust past.

Still Alive, on the other hand, displays a strikingly different tone in its narration. While

her original memoir addressed a German-Jewish population, in her second text Kluger looks to an American-Jewish audience. No longer a focus in her mission, she leaves out the parts which addressed Germany’s confrontation with its Nazi past. While the intended dialogue between

Germans and Jews in weiter leben was clear and straightforward, Schaumann notes, the objective

in Still Alive is not as definite:

[Klüger] chooses a different way of addressing her American readers that does not

include a dialogue with them as it did in weiter leben. With her German audience,

Klüger defined her endeavor very clearly as an attempt to unsettle Germans’

understanding of the Holocaust; what she seeks from and for her American

readers, however, remains undisclosed. (335)

Much in contrast to her provocative statement in weiter leben, the exact message for Americans

in Still Alive is not clear. Hyder 38

Still Alive, however, sends more messages of reconciliation and acceptance than weiter

leben. While the characters in weiter leben have fictional names, Kluger releases to us in Still

Alive the true names of the figures, including that of her adopted sister and of her friends in

Theresienstadt, Germany, and New York. According to Schaumann, “… Klüger’s use of actual

names contributes to the more personal, honest, and forgiving tone of Still Alive” (326). Enraged

or intense sentiments expressed in weiter leben feature a softer quality in their paralleling stories

in Still Alive, particularly those in regard to her strained relationship with her mother. Towards this point, Schaumann brings up two examples in particular (326-327): where in weiter leben

Kluger maintains: “Ich glaube, das hab ich ihr nie verziehen ...” (62), its corresponding English

passage in Still Alive becomes: “But I never forgot that …” (57). Similarly, later in weiter leben

Kluger discusses her mother’s suggestion of suicide in the camps: “Ich frage mich, ob ich ihr

diesen schlimmsten Abend meines Lebens je verziehen habe” (114) –a question literally translated into English in Still Alive, but which in this case is followed by an answer: “Of course

I have” (97) . While in the first case “never forgiving” turns into “never forgetting,” and in the

second example we see some form of acceptance or reconciliation with her mother–all contribute

to the gentler, more forgiving tone in Still Alive.

Lastly, Kluger’s identities play important roles in the structure and content of her

narratives. Firstly, she identifies with her Jewishness very closely, albeit not in the traditional

religious sense. One of the first instances where she mentions identifying strongly with her

Jewish heritage explains the sentiments in terms of a reaction to its oppression: “I became

Jewish in defense” (Still Alive 42), after which she accordingly changes her name of reference

from her middle name to her biblical first name, Ruth (42). Originally sparked by oppression, her Hyder 39

Jewish identity was strengthened further by oppression, in finding companionship with other

oppressed Jews in the camps, and learning Yiddish in Theresienstadt. In the traditional sense of

the Jewish heritage, however, Kluger remarks that her Jewishness is “nothing to be proud of”

(Still Alive 44), admitting that she’s never enjoyed a single religious ceremony (44).

Nevertheless, Kluger neither laments nor criticizes the development of her Jewish identity, as

Lorenz explains: “… Klüger experienced her gender and ethnicity as positive forces. She

portrays them as the source of her political views, her love of justice, her compassion with the

oppressed, her rejection of violence, and her circumspection” (217). Similar to Ruth Beckermann in her film Die papierne Brücke,6 Kluger’s identity with her Jewish heritage is based on a self-

defined, personal meaning, rather than on the traditional, inherited expectation.

The second important part of Kluger’s identity is her womanhood. Kluger was bitter

about the gender roles of her Jewish heritage, resenting particularly being denied to say kaddish

for her deceased father (Still Alive 30) and, later on, the double standard of morality for the

Jewish adolescent boys in Germany (166). She objects strongly to the customary view of women

as second-class citizens in the Jewish beliefs: “If it were different … I’d have a friendlier attitude

towards this religion which reduces its daughters to helpmates of men and circumscribes their

spiritual life within the confines of domestic functions” (30). While open to criticism regarding

her Jewishness, Kluger in no way implies rejection or discouragement of her Jewish identity, in

contrast to other Jewish Holocaust authors (Bos, “German-Jewish Literature in the Wake of the

Holocaust” 86). Rather, as Lorenz explains, her “goal is to change within her culture, reform

6 For a discussion on Ruth Beckermann and her quest for identity, see the article “The Politics of Location in Ruth Beckermann’s “Vienna Films” ” by Guenther, Christina. Modern Austrian Literature. 37.3/4 (2005). Hyder 40

rather than abolition” (217). As already discussed, Kluger develops a personal bond with her

Jewish identity, and not necessarily a religious one.

Outside the confines of gender roles in Jewish tradition, Kluger criticizes the treatment of women, those in pre-war society and even to an extent the Nazi women. She blames men in particular for abandoning their female family members in Germany to save their own lives by emigrating, under the assumption that “nobody would hurt an old woman. Or a child …” (42).

She regards the Holocaust experience as a “male” evil (115) and defends, to an extent, those active female participants:

Female guards are often called “SS women”. It’s a misnomer, since there were no

women in the SS. The SS was strictly a men’s club. Everybody knows this … It

seems we always pull the same names out of the hat when it comes to women,

while the names of men who committed the atrocities are legion. (115)

In Kluger’s memories, war and World War II in particular were claimed by men, who governed these realms exclusively.

In the years following the war, Kluger manages and copes with her trauma in very gender-conscious experiences. Bos summarizes some of the ways that Kluger faces gender-based conflicts:

In the passages that deal with Klüger’s postwar life, weiter leben shows its

explicit feminist agenda most clearly. Klüger describes her experience as one of

constant exclusion: she finds that as a woman she is consistently written out of

history [sic] and denied the opportunity to tell her story, as the war is supposedly Hyder 41

a story that belongs to men. (“German-Jewish Literature in the Wake of the

Holocaust” 86)

Always conscious of unequal restrictions placed on women, Kluger frustratingly comes across

gender-based repression even after her “liberation.”

In Kluger’s narratives, the primary living characters are predominantly female, while the

important “ghosts” (34) of the story are male: her father and brother. Miller notes the strong

presence of active female figures in the story, and comments on them in the context of gender:

Faced with extermination, what difference does gender make? … In addition to

the mother-daughter relationship, Still Alive represents female networks within

the camps but also, once Klüger emigrates to the United States, friendships among

women in college and summer school. (393)

While Kluger’s social circles are indeed characterized by bonds with fellow women, this

observation should not downplay her ability to form friendships with men. In the section of the

memoirs that deals with her experience in Germany, Christoph of weiter leben and Martin of

Still Alive merit more pages dedicated to friendship with Kluger than any of her three female

friends in New York.

In weiter leben, Kluger may seem to make the claim that women experienced better chances of survival than men, in the mutual support that women showed each other in camps:

“Ich glaube fest, obwohl die Männer es unbegreiflicherweise bestritten, daß Frauen lebensfähiger

als Männer sind” (237, 128).7 However, this line and other feminist sentiments expressed by

Kluger should not mislead the readers toward thinking that Kluger supports the “valorized

7 Interestingly, this sentiment was not expressed by Kluger in the later English version, Still Alive. For some undisclosed reason, Kluger must have decided against incorporating the line. Hyder 42

women” approach of Goldenberg and Milton. Kluger never attributed these characteristic behaviors of women to their biological sex. In this way, she differs from authors such as

Goldenberg and Milton, who claimed that women innately possess qualities of nurturing which enabled them to survive better. Lorenz in particular draws out this distinction, maintaining:

Klüger emphasizes that mutual support greatly increased chances for survival,

particularly in the generally neglected women’s camps, but she does not consider

solidarity among women or “feminist” behavior to be biologically pre-

determined. However, she concurs with feminist sociologists who believe that

women prisoners have a greater capacity for endurance and collaboration (and

thus survival) than men because of gender-specific socialization. (219)

While the outcome may be a certain pattern of behavior among women, Kluger never gives biologically-determined female qualities the credit. Instead, she agrees with other scholars that such common performances within a sex-defined group stem predominantly from socially imposed gender roles–that is, cultural gender-specific training.

Ruth Kluger reveals to us a comprehensive understanding of her Holocaust experience, from her days in Vienna preceding the war, through the concentration and labor camps, and onward to her “surviving survival” in New York and after. She holds fast to her strong identities of being a Jew, a woman, and a Holocaust survivor. In her critical observations and reflective comments, she casts new perspectives on the role of memories, time, space, and gender in the

Holocaust past. A historical narrative, a social commentary, a therapeutic tool, a pointed challenge to society, and a literary work of art, Ruth Kluger’s multi-faceted memoirs are a brilliant representative of contemporary Holocaust literature. Just as the author is “still alive” in Hyder 43

today’s society, as the title of her narrative declares, it is certain that memories of her stories and

influences will transcend space and time as well, truly living on through the generations of the

future.

Cordelia Edvardson: Belonging in an Alienated World

Cordelia Edvardson’s narrative shares a number of aspects with Ruth Kluger’s memoirs, some being key features of her experiences. Both Edvardson and Kluger experienced the

Holocaust as children: Edvardson was 14 years old, and Kluger was 12. They were both first

forcibly transported to the ghetto Theresienstadt, and then later deported to the concentration

camp Auschwitz. A central characteristic in both these women’s Holocaust experiences is a

conflicted relationship with the mother, a tension whose emotional implications affected the protagonists long after the war and even after their mothers passed away. Yet, in other ways, these experiences are very different. For example, Edvardson was deported alone on the

Kindertransport, while Kluger and her mother stayed together throughout the terrible ordeal.

Another unique feature in Edvardson’s experience is that Edvardson’s mother Elisabeth

Langgässer (1899-1950) was a writer, whose add an additional level of complexity to

Edvardson’s narrative. In her Proserpina (1933), Langgässer reevaluates the narrow

mother image prevalent in the Weimar Republic and Nazi era. Edvardson’s narrative, on the

other hand, is a direct response to her mother’s text; we hear a child’s voice whose “societal

values have been shattered together with her mother image” (Kraft 119). This dialog between

writers within a Holocaust memoir is an unusual feature, and contributes to the unique nature of Hyder 44

Edvardson’s narrative. In this section, I would like first to analyze the nature of the “narrator” voice that Edvardson uses in her memoirs to convey her story. Following this investigation, I would like to explore both the mother’s and the daughter’s texts, and examine them particularly in relation to each other. Together with this and other scholarly discussions of Edvardson’s

memoir, I intend to gain an insight into the complexities of the mother-daughter relationship

between Langgässer and Edvardson. In addition to this discussion, I would also like to include a

examination of the role of “time and space” in Edvardson’s narrative, as the construction of these

spheres shares similarities to their function in Kluger’s text, but also reveals noteworthy

differences.

One of the first striking characteristics of Edvardson’s text is her “narrator” voice. In a

way, the narrator almost becomes its own character: as an adult, she stands back and criticizes

the terrible events and abuse surrounding the life of the child (the protagonist). Indeed,

Edvardson’s use of the third-person voice only strengthens the presence of this independent narrator even more, giving the reader the feeling that the child and the narrator are two different people entirely. I am identifying this important aspect at the outset because it is through the

narrator that Edvardson confronts her mother and condemns the “motherliness” of her character.

Through the use of her narrator, Edvardson achieves distance and therefore objectivity, enabling her to regard her mother critically and assess her mother’s many heartless actions appropriately and with clarity.

The reader’s first impression of the mother figure in Edvardson’s text occurs in the opening chapter. This sequence introduces two important themes to the author’s story: the child’s

“calling” and, as previously mentioned, the mother figure. Edvardson describes her mother in Hyder 45

this first, introductory passage as “Die Mutter, die alleinstehende, die geplagte und von ihren

Gesichtern [sic] vergewaltigte … .”8 Edvardson elaborates on this apparently delusional aspect

of her mother, explaining how “die Mutter nährten die eigenen Mythen,” mentioning in

particular “Proserpina” and “das Jesukind” (10). These two figures are particularly significant to

the understanding of the author’s mother. As mentioned earlier, Elisabeth Langgässer was a self-

employed writer and a member of the avant-garde (Kraft 119). Her mother was Jewish, but she

grew up Catholic. Although Langgässer remained a steadfast Catholic, she nevertheless

approached some traditionally Catholic notions of the role of women with criticism. As Helga

Kraft notes, “Her Catholicism was always a very personal one” (119). Langgässer’s criticism of the role of women did not end with the Catholic Church, but she also rejected the dominant fascist beliefs of the 1930s in regard to women, challenging in particular both the Church’s and

the Nazis’ view of motherhood. She herself was a mother who followed a non-traditional course,

having had an illegitimate child (Edvardson) with an already-married Jewish man.

Langgässer confronts the common image of motherhood in her writing and published a

novel in the same year as Edvardson’s birth titled Proserpina (1933). This was a modern adaption

of the ancient Greek myth of Persephone, the daughter of Zeus and Demeter (also called Mother

Earth). In the myth, Persephone is raped and kidnapped by her uncle Hades, and taken to the

underworld to dwell with him forever. The raging response of the mother Demeter is to devastate

the earth, and although she cannot win back her daughter completely, her daughter is eventually

allowed to return for a part of the year. The remainder of the year the helpless, innocent girl is

8 This line was translated in the English version of Edvardson’s narrative, Burned Child Seeks the Fire, by Joel Agee as the following: “The mother, lonely, tormented and violated by her visions …” (4). Hyder 46

doomed to remain in Hades. This myth indicates the necessity of the sacrifice of the daughter for

the preservation of life on earth (Kraft 122).

Langgässer adapts this myth to reflect a new, radically different understanding of the

relationship between mother and daughter. She incorporates her own personal experience

symbolically and explores the aspects of “motherhood” in relation to motherhood’s connection to

Mother Nature, the power of its abilities to produce and destroy, and the desires of the daughter

to achieve those abilities. Kraft explains: “[Langgässer] rewrites this element of the myth in an

individualistic and modernist way to express the daughter’s powerlessness, as she attempts to

deal with her own inner drives of early adolescence, and as she yearns to participate in the

motherly powers of nature to satisfy those undefined desires” (123). The modern Proserpina goes

in search of a missing mother, realizing that her birth mother is unfit as a role model. Similar to

the ancient myth, Langgässer’s text reveals an alienation of mother and daughter in a patriarchal

society. But, Kraft explains, “Contrary to ancient myth, Langgässer creates a Proserpina who is

not protected by her mother.” Later, she notes: “Only through the sacrifice of the innocent

daughter can life continue on earth” (122).

We see strong influences of Langgässer’s modernized myth in her young daughter’s

narrative. Edvardson tells us that although she never read her mother’s text, it hadn’t been

necessary, since the message had already been internalized by the daughter much earlier (10).

This is evident in her descriptions of the child’s “vocation.” An example of this would be when

Edvardson’s mother arranged for her daughter to acquire Spanish citizenship, in an effort to protect her from the anti-Semitic laws of the Nazis. However, the attempt was exposed, and a

Nazi official threatened Edvardson that unless she signed a document agreeing to conform to all Hyder 47

Jewish laws, he would prosecute her mother. Edvardson the child signed the document without

hesitation, and notes in the memoir: “Niemand sagte etwas, nichts brauchte gesagt zu werden, es

gab keine Wahl, hatte nie eine gegeben, sie war Cordelia, die ihr Treuegelöbnis hielt, sie war

auch Proserpina, sie war die Auserwählte …” (70-71). In the child’s eyes, she was the necessary

sacrificial daughter in order for Mother Earth to continue to exist. Or, to use the religious images

clearly kindled in Edvardson by her mother’s fervent Catholicism, Edvardson was the

“Jesukind,” the sacrificial lamb.

While Langgässer wrote her novel to make a statement to society and for personal reasons, Edvardson seems to approach her memoirs with the intent of confronting her mother.

Dagmar Lorenz explains: “Gebranntes Kind sucht das Feuer is a … passionate and painful

attempt to come to terms with her family, particularly with her mother, a symbol of the

uprootedness of German-Jewish society and the cause of her daughter’s lack of emotional and

cultural stability” (236). There are a number of reasons that her mother would appear to be a

“symbol” of the oppression that Edvardson endured in her childhood. Edvardson’s mother

rejected her Jewishness, which she shared with her daughter, and instead concentrated on her

German identity by adhering publicly to her Catholic faith, marrying an Aryan man, and clinging

to her own Aryan heritage.9 She sought to belong to German society and attempted to bury the

Jewish heritage of both herself and her daughter in order to do so. Indeed, as a child, Edvardson

9 Langgässer made attempts to fit into Aryan society by pleading with the NS government. For example, in a 1973 letter to the Reichkulturwalter Hinkel, she clearly makes no attempt to give her Jewishness any place in her identity: “Meinen künstlerischen Beruf kann ich auf die rein arische Linie meiner mütterlichen Vorfahren… zurückführen. Außerdem habe ich einen arischen Halbbruder... ich bin mit einem Mann von rein arischer Herkunft verheiratet...” (Kraft 131) Hyder 48

was initially unaware of her three-quarters Jewish identity10 and consequently could not understand the increasingly hostile anti-Semitic attitudes directed toward her: “Eine dreckige

Judengöre–was ist das eigentlich? ... Aber sie ist doch ein frommes, katholisches kleines

Mädchen, das schon vor ein paar Jahren zur ersten Kommunion gegangen ist“ (27). After this image of her identity was shattered, and Edvardson endured the brutal life of the concentration and labor camps along with the Jewish population, her mother nevertheless continued to represent the ideal German-Catholic citizen. Thus, in order to later reject the German and

Catholic tradition of her upbringing and embrace her new Jewish identity, Edvardson faced the need to reject the figure of her German-Catholic mother, the embodiment of the values of her youth. Lorenz comments upon this:

For both Goll and Edvardson, both of whom sought distance from their German

origins, it was essential to construct an enemy image of their German mothers,

who had so much wanted to belong … But for Edvardson especially, who

eventually moved to Israel, it was important to confront the legacy of her Catholic

mother. (238)

Writing her memoirs was for Edvardson a means to define her identity, which depended upon a proper understanding of the role of her mother in her life. Kraft agrees with this theory, explaining that Edvardson “wrote her book out of a need to reconstruct the image of a mother and in so doing achieve a more secure identity” (126). These assertions are further supported by the writings of Edvardson herself, who reported inheriting her mother’s gift to “lend shape and definition to chaos” (7). In Edvardson’s own words, writing Gebranntes Kind sucht das Feuer

10 Edvardson explains in her memoir that although Langgässer’s mother was Aryan and Catholic, Langgässer’s father was a Jew who converted to Catholicism (6). Langgässer was, therefore, considered a “half-Jew.” Since she had Edvardson with a Jewish man, Edvardson was considered three-quarters Jewish. Hyder 49

was a tool to help her shape and form her mother’s image–a chaotic complication of impressions and emotions–in order to perceive the image more clearly and, in turn, define a self-identity more appropriately.

One way that Edvardson “constructs” the image of her mother in particular is to formally recognize the areas in her childhood where “the mother” had failed and, additionally, to charge her mother with these failures. One important step in this direction is the author’s recognition of her mother’s inability to grasp the reality of the situations. In several parts of the text, Edvardson confronts the reader with the mother’s propensity to handle difficult situations by simply replacing the unlikeable reality with worlds of myths and fantasy. In one passage, the mother’s full name appears for the first time in writing, revealing the author’s particular vehemence in this matter:

Welche nie ausgesprochenen Absichten hegte sie? War es die halbbewußte,

magische Vorstellung, die Tochter dadurch schützen zu können, daß sie sie

geradewegs in die Höhle des Wolfes führte? ... War es so? Oder war es wieder nur

das mangelnde Verständnis der Mutter und ihre fehlende Einsicht in eine

Wirklichkeit, die sich nicht manipulieren und beschwören ließ–nicht einmal durch

Elisabeth Langgässer? (11).

Edvardson, who had to endure the reality of her violently difficult childhood so keenly, felt an additional feeling of abandonment by her mother’s failure to live through these realities along with her. According to Kraft: “Edvardson belongs to a generation that can no longer condone an aesthetic cloaking of real, terrifying experiences” (129). Other passages in Edvardson’s narratives illustrate the blissful oblivion that Edvardson’s mother chose to have. The memoir Hyder 50

includes a passage from her mother’s letter to a friend, in which Langgässer provides a light- hearted description of Edvardson’s new place in the overcrowded and disease-ridden ghetto

Theresienstadt:

Wir fanden sie völlig gefaßt, ja sogar heiter und zuversichtlich, denn erstens war

es ja wirklich nur Theresienstadt und nicht Polen, und zweitens fuhr sie im Zug

als begleitendes Pflegepersonal mit, sie hatte sich um zwei Kinder und einen

Säugling zu kümmern und trug bereits Schwesterntracht und ein Häubchen, was

sie, glaube ich, mit großem Stolz erfüllte. (77)

This fragment of the letter captures tragically the delusional view of Langgässer and her inability or refusal to witness the terrible reality of her young daughter’s plight. Edvardson brings this passage of her mother’s letter to light, coming to terms with this betrayal by finally acknowledging it and condemning it.

Another benefit of “constructing” an image of her mother by writing down her memoirs is the clarity of view that writing provides. Now that Edvardson has sorted through her grievances and anger and has designated the blame appropriately, the intricate complexities of her relationship with her mother are finally made clear to her. For example, she acknowledges the co-dependence that exists between the mother and child. The very first passage of

Edvardson’s text paints a picture of the child with her mother’s head resting on the child’s knitted jacket, first introducing us to this co-dependence. Although the mother in the scene speaks metaphorically of the “protection” (7) that the mother bird’s nest offers the little freezing bird, the mother nevertheless in reality is seeking “refuge” and “comfort” (7) from the child, reflected in the act of resting her head on the child’s breast. We infer from this passage that while Hyder 51

the child needs the mother, the mother needs the child to need her–that’s what defines her mother

as a mother. Kraft proposes:

Edvardson asks: what are mothers, when they know that their daughters don’t

need them anymore? We might add, what fills the gap, when the symbiotic

constellation of Demeter, Ceres, and Proserpina is no longer serving patriarchy

through a prescribed sacrifice? (130).

Kraft captures in these questions Edvardson’s criticism of the mother and daughter roles, and the role as a mother that Langgässer played specifically. This mother-daughter co-dependency is also displayed through a series of contradictions in their relationship: for example, Edvardson’s assuming the role of the protector and yet seeking protection from the mother, or her offering herself as the sacrifice for the mother’s welfare yet looking sacrifices from the mother for the child’s welfare. These examples reflect the careful reconstruction of her mother’s image that

Edvardson undertook in the writing of these memoirs, which provided the author with the clarity and precision to assess, realize, and criticize the intricate and complex nature of her relationship with her mother.

In both Langgässer’s and Edvardson’s texts, we see, thus, a distinct and complex relationship between mother and daughter. Helga Kraft, however, observes an additional familial tension for the mother and daughter in the role of a father figure, which Kraft casts in terms of a

“fatherland” and which represents the patriarchal society of Germany surrounding the mother and daughter (117-19). Langgässer has a complex and conflicting relationship with the fatherland. While on the one hand she regards herself as alienated from this patriarchal society due to its imposed restrictions on the daughters’ powerful “ability to desire, produce, and Hyder 52

destroy” (125), Langgässer nevertheless retains a strong need to be a part of this society. Her

daughter, on the other hand, also experiences alienation from the patriarchal society–the

“fatherland”–but, in contrast, because of her Jewish heritage and because of her mother’s need to

belong. Instead of helping Edvardson find a place of belonging in the “fatherland,” her mother

drives them even farther apart by privileging the society over her daughter. Kraft observes the

tension between Edvardson and the patriarchal fatherland, noting: “[Edvardson] faces squarely

the actual tyranny of fascism that destroyed her bond with her mother.” However, in addition to

the blame that Edvardson lays on the fatherland for the deterioration of the mother-daughter

relationship, as Kraft has pointed out, I find it very important not to forget that Edvardson

distinctly places blame on her mother for the broken relationship as well. While Langgässer

confronts the fatherland gently through use of myths and stories, Edvardson places blame on the

part of both parental figures in her narrative, condemning the patriarchal fatherland for its

fascism (Kraft 130) and condemning her mother, even directly by name (Gebranntes Kind such

das Feuer 11).

As in Ruth Kluger’s narratives, time and space also play interesting roles in Edvardson’s

memoirs. Edvardson’s narration abruptly shifts between separate places (i.e. Berlin to

Auschwitz) and between times (home with her mother to the future in the concentration camp).

According to Carmel Finnan: “By juxtaposing spatial and temporal realities, Edvardson employs associative motifs as the structuring principle of her narrative” (450). So instead of strictly adhering to a timeline, Edvardson forces the reader out of a chronological comfort-zone, throwing her back and forth into different spheres, thereby emphasizing each event as an individual moment, rather than as one link in a structured chain of events. Such an organization Hyder 53

promotes an understanding that horror is not restricted to a chronological passage of time, but rather trauma transcends the boundaries of time and space in one’s memories.

Edvardson’s narrative transcends time through the use of a unique stylistic device. She alternates between two voices: the narrator and the child. This dual voice is shared to a degree by

Kluger in her narratives as well, but Edvardson takes it to a different level. While Kluger alternates between her “adult” person and her “child” person, it is nevertheless clear that these two voices belong to the same individual, the author. In this way, Kluger transcends the time of aging, by allowing both characters a voice. In Edvardson’s text, however, the relationship between the “narrator” and the “child” is not as straightforward, as they seem to be two separate individuals. Her use of the third-person narrative further confuses these voices at times.

Therefore, even this stylistic device shared with Kluger is still unique in Edvardson’s memoirs.

The presence of this dialogue between the narrator’s voice and the child’s voice is a striking characteristic of Edvardson’s text and very interesting to observe. The voice of the narrator and that of the child in Edvardson’s memoirs are heard sometimes within the same passage, sometimes helping each other convey a memory, sometimes making a statement or judgment. Sometimes we find a dialogue where the narrator (from the future) seems to be trying to remember the event, while the child (from the present) is helping supply information by expressing her feelings and impressions in the moment. For example, in the incident where the child accidentally broke a music box, we see a juxtaposition of the emotions of the child at the time and the reflection on the event by the narrator in the aftermath:

Die Großmutter kommt gelaufen und schimpft. Böses Kind! Die Spieldose sollte

ein Geschenk für ein anderes Kind sein, und jetzt hat sie sie kaputtgemacht! Hatte Hyder 54

das Mädchen dies gewußt? Hatte sie sie deshalb kaputtgemacht? Aber sie hatte es

ja nicht gewollt, nicht absichtlich getan. Oder? Dies wird zu ihrer ersten bewußten

Erinnerung. (11)

The narrator inquires as to the details of the event–“Hatte das Mädchen dies gewußt?” Whether or not the child knew, is left unanswered; the child enlightens the reader only of her feelings and impressions at the time: “Aber sie hatte es ja nicht gewollt, nicht absichtlich getan” (11). The passage confirms the child’s impression of the situation, which constitutes the readers’ understanding of the child’s “first conscious memory” (11). This seems to imply that the exact facts of the incident are not as important as the child’s memory of the impressions or feelings at the time. In other parts of the text, the narrator assumes a critical, all-knowing tone, which clashes with the emotional, sometimes naïve impressions of the child voice. For example, on the one hand, confronted with the decision to sign the form agreeing to conform to Jewish laws or to risk her mother having political trouble, the child signs immediately. According to the child- voice, the ensuing sense of “closeness” to her mother redeems the difficulty of her “mission,” being the “sacrificial lamb” for her mother: “sie war Cordelia, die ihr Treuegelöbnis hielt, sie war auch Proserpina, sie war die Auserwählte, und nie hatte sie dem Herzen ihrer Mutter nähergestanden” (70). But the narrator looks back on this incident through a critical lens, posing the confrontational and poignant question: “Mutter, warum hast du mich verlassen!” (77). As discussed in the beginning of this paper, Edvardson utilizes the distant, objective voice of the author to finally confront and charge Langgässer with her failures. Clearly, the dialogue between the narrator and the child is a striking characteristic of Edvardson’s memoir, and, most importantly, it provides an insight into the sentiments and objectives of the author. Hyder 55

In addition to the transcendence of space and time effected by the “dual perspective”

(Lorenz 213) of the narrator and child, Edvardson uses a literary medium to transport her to

another time and space. Using the mythological world and literary background introduced to her

by her mother, Edvardson manages the painful everyday life in the camp by immersing herself in

her imagination, absorbing herself in her poetry and in fantasy worlds, and, thereby, escapes the inhuman earthly existence. For example, while marching with the other inmates in Auschwitz, the child recalls the famous poem “Der Mond ist aufgegangen” by Matthias Claudius. She relates: “Darin war das Mädchen unsichtbar und unerreichbar, darin konnte sie sich [sic]

ausruhen ... Sie ging und ging, vergaß den nagenden Hunger und die Schmerzen der

Erschöpfung, sie ging geradewegs hinein in das Ewigkeitslicht des Gedichts und ließ sich davon

erfüllen” (20-21). In her mental recitation of the poem, she incorporates the rhythmic “LEFT,

two, three, four” of the inmates’ marching feet. This has the effect to bring together both the

fantastic sphere and the earthly realm, making something tangible enough to take her away but

distant enough to mask her current pain. Her later position with Mengele, however, didn’t allow this method of coping. According to Petra Fiero: “When she became Mengele’s secretary, whose task it was to register the number of victims who were selected for gassing, poetry, fairy tales and songs no longer enabled her to transcend a reality where she felt she bore her share in the guilt” (9). Here we see the difference between the author’s and her mother’s uses of denial: while the mother completely escaped reality by conjuring up fantasy worlds, Edvardson resorted to this method as a coping strategy only as much as her awareness of the harsh reality of the situation would allow her. Hyder 56

Lastly, while the original language of the memoirs played an important role in Kluger’s

memoirs, Edvardson’s choice of language also has special meaning, but a much different

meaning than that of Kluger. Sweden provided for Edvardson enough distance away from her trauma, to enable her to undertake writing. The Swedish language not only served as an additionally neutral sphere for Edvardson to express her memories, but also represents the aforementioned necessary break from her German-Catholic mother. Finnan observes:

“Edvardson, by contrast, frees herself from the literary legacy of her German mother by writing in Swedish, claiming that she has lost the necessary link with the German language.” Writing in

Swedish, therefore, can be understood as another tool to facilitate her break from the German-

Catholic world (which includes her mother) and her movement into a new world. This “new world” of her Jewish identity becomes even more literal when she converts to Judaism and later on moves to Israel (Finnan, 452).

Cordelia Edvardson’s memoirs are characterized by her strained relationship with her mother and her resulting struggles to define an identity because of this. Her memoirs reflect the plaintive cry of a motherless daughter, seeking resolution with her mother and with herself. After

“lending shape and definition” to the chaos of her relationship with her mother by reconstructing her mother’s image in her memoirs, Edvardson finds her place of belonging–not in the

Catholicism or the German culture of her childhood–but in the area which led her to be “burnt” in the first place: her Jewish identity. She proceeded to seek this “fire”: first in the acceptation of her Jewish heritage, then in her full conversation to Judaism in Stockholm, and then finally her relocation to Israel in 1974.

Hyder 57

Judith Magyar Isaacson: Speaking for Silent Voices

Judith Magyar Isaacson’s Holocaust memoir Seed of Sarah (1990) may not have as much

in common with Kluger’s and Edvardson’s memories as the latter do with each other, but there

are nevertheless several interesting themes shared by all three of these authors. Like Kluger and

Edvardson, Isaacson was first deported to Auschwitz and later brought to a labor camp,

Lichtenau. She also commenced writing her autobiography much later in life: starting writing in

the late 1970s, though not to finish and publish until 1990. A particularly noteworthy coping

strategy shared by all three authors is to cite literature, poetry in particular, to bear the brutality

of camp life. Kluger used poetry to help channel her feelings, especially those repressed (Still

Alive 127), while for Edvardson, poetry helped her transcend the reality of the situation

(Gebranntes Kind sucht das Feuer 21). Isaacson, too, used poetry and stories as a familiar refuge in the midst of the horror of the camps (90-91). Nonetheless, these three authors’ narratives also feature significant differences. Unlike the other two authors, Isaacson was somewhat older when she was forcibly deported, at 19 years of age and thus no longer a child. Also unlike the first two

authors, Isaacson’s story is not characterized by a conflicted mother-daughter relationship, but rather by a healthy and therefore supportive family presence; her mother and her young aunt survived with her. And while Kluger’s hometown was Vienna and Edvardson’s Berlin,

Isaacson’s home was Kaposvár, a little town in southwest Hungary. In this paper, I would like to discuss several other characteristics of this Holocaust narrative which set it apart from the previous two authors’ experiences. One of these is Isaacson’s motivation and intent for writing her story, supported by stylistic features and reflected by her choice of language. Her relationship Hyder 58

with her Jewish heritage undergoes a development significantly different from Kluger’s and

Edvardson’s. Finally, I would like to examine two particular areas in Isaacson’s memoir that

received special attention in my discussion of Kluger’s accounts: first, the transcendence of time

and space, and lastly, and the tension between “memory” and “knowledge” in the retelling of the

stories. In closing, I will tie together the findings of my examination of Seed of Sarah with an interpretation of the title.

Isaacson tells us in her memoir that she was first motivated to write her story following a discussion with students after a conference at Bowdoin College in 1973, for which she was a speaker. Preceding the conference was a documentary film about the Holocaust, which released

Isaacson’s repressed memories for the first time and allowed her to answer the students’ questions openly (x-xi). How does this incident relate to her over-arching intent for writing about

her Holocaust experience?

As we remember from earlier discussion, Kluger’s intent as articulated in her dedication

at the beginning of the memoir weiter leben was to send a message to Germans, to challenge

them to acknowledge their Nazi past, and, accordingly, she wrote her first narrative in German.

Edvardson, writing in the “neutral” language of Swedish, wrote her experiences as a way to

come to terms with her traumatic past, a Holocaust experience that very particularly concerned

her mother. In contrast to Kluger and Edvardson, Isaacson wrote her memoirs solely in English,

her language of emigration. As this choice of language reflects, the content of her narrative does not seem to speak to a German or Hungarian audience about confronting their past. Neither does it appear to be a means of coming to terms with her own past, since 64-year-old Isaacson herself said that she no longer “suffers from any traumas” (166). Reflecting this statement, her writing in Hyder 59

Seed of Sarah does not express any specific, great anger against anyone. Rather, in my

interpretation, Isaacson sees herself as one who can (and is called upon to) give a voice to both

those who perished in the Holocaust as well as those who survived it, by telling the world their

shared experiences–her “debt” to the murdered dead, as she sees it.

James Young’s examination of the role of the witness according to Torah and Talmud

provides relevant and intriguing material for this analysis. According to Young, the obligation to

relate one’s witness of a great evil is commanded by the rabbis, which he supports with a quote from the bible: “And he is witness whether he has seen or known of it; if he does not utter it, then he shall bear his iniquity” (Lev. 5:1). This is expanded to include three important decrees: first,

anyone who witnesses or knows of an injustice is therefore a witness; second, an unjust event

must be reported as soon as it is witnessed; lastly, by re-telling the event, you expand the number

of witnesses (18). Young concludes: “[I]t seems possible that these biblical and legal obligations

to bear witness play some traditional role in the Holocaust victims’ conceptions of themselves

and their roles as witnesses” (18-19). This feeling of obligation to retell an injustice is reflected

in Isaacson’s narrative, who both feels a need to speak for the dead, as well as to inform the

living. These sentiments are demonstrated in a conversation which Isaacson recalls having with

her adult daughter Ilona during the first visit back to Hungary. Her daughter inquires:

“Will you [write your story]?”

“I’ve already finished one chapter, Ilona. After this trip, I know I’ll go on. I seem

to owe it to the dead.”

“You owe it to the living,” Ilona suggested. (144) Hyder 60

This line closes the chapter of her first return visit to her hometown since her deportation, thirty-

three years earlier. It seems that the hope of offering the world an understanding of the Holocaust

motivates Isaacson–particularly for the sake of those silenced, the ultimate victims, but also on

behalf of the living world, who deserves to know. Isaacson must have first realized this calling

after the discussion with the interested, curious college students at Bowdoin College, as this was

the incident which first prompted her to write her story. To avoid misunderstanding, it should be

mentioned that Isaacson never implies that she can speak for the individual experiences of each

Holocaust victim, but rather her narrative suggests that an understanding of her own story can

allow readers to set foot, even if only temporarily, into the world of suffering that the Nazis

produced.

This over-arching intent in writing–telling the world of the Holocaust experience–is also reflected by her writing style. Since Isaacson’s memoirs work towards an understanding of the sufferings of Holocaust victims, Isaacson strives to connect her readers as closely as possible to her protagonist’s impressions in the stories to facilitate the most intimate understanding of these particular experiences possible. Isaacson achieves this “intimate understanding” in several ways.

For example, she portrays scenes and impressions with vivid descriptions to cause the moment to seem as realistic as possible. Even simple settings, such as a view from her school window before the war started, are tenderly and elegantly portrayed: “Down in the courtyard, a willful

March wind bent the shivering poplars. I watched through Dr. Biczó’s window as one of the young trees bowed humbly to the ground and stood upright again” (11). In stark contrast, the violent and shocking description of the Nazis’ inhuman disposal of the transport’s insane and deceased passengers conveys the horrific setting effectively: Hyder 61

The earth was heaving under my feet as I elbowed my way through the mob. Did

they toss the insane with the dead? I must find out … At the curbing, between two

glaring lights, I found a hill of people, the living and the dead piled like a

haystack. The flaming sky framed it all. A funeral pyre! I searched, nauseated.

Was Sári among the dead? Buttocks on faces, heads over jerking feet, necks

falling off the edge … I recognized a face: Dr. Margit Nemes, my former

professor of French and German. She was buried several bodies deep, shrieking

insanely, eyes dilated, mouth foaming. My skin went clammy, my eyes dimmed.

(63)

As these two passages exemplify, Isaacson conveys the horrendous scene in powerful detailed description to place the readers directly in her footsteps and give them the perspective of an on- looker like herself, bringing about the most intimate understanding of her deadly impressions.

Regarding this stylistic feature, it is worth mentioning that the author goes into descriptive detail particularly in her impressions of “first-time” moments, such as her first time wearing the “David

Star,” her first day in Auschwitz (including her arrival), etc.

Besides achieving realism through the use of detailed description, Isaacson employs other stylistic means to connect the readers to the experiences. Unlike Kluger and Edvardson, who relayed their accounts in narrative style, Isaacson’s memoirs feature recurrent dialogues between the characters, the simple back-and-forth practice of everyday conversation, making these scenes

“come alive” for the readers. She also uses real names to bring the characters to life–even coming up with new names for those forgotten, noting this decision separately in the footnotes

(96, 104). Lastly, Isaacson incorporated real photos of both living and deceased Holocaust Hyder 62

victims, including those of her family, to finally add a last visual element to her vividly depicted experiences. All these stylistic features contribute to providing the readers with the most intimate

understanding of this Holocaust victim’s experiences, working towards her overall intent of

enlightening the world regarding the intolerable, brutal experiences in the Holocaust.

Language, of course, plays a key role in this objective of passing onto the world

Isaacson’s and her comrades’ experiences in the Holocaust. As mentioned before, Isaacson wrote her memoirs in American English. Since the readers’ intimate understanding of the narrator’s experiences is vital, the most important function of language is to serve as a vehicle to facilitate

this close understanding. While the published narrative was written in English, giving Isaacson

and her comrades’ testimony for an American audience, she relates in her memoir that she changed her language of choice depending on the situation. While at Holocaust functions in

Germany, she preferred to deliver her speeches in her “rusty” German, despite being given distinct permission to speak in her more comfortable English: “I closed my eyes to reflect. How to speak for one thousand comrades, most of them dead? Could I say it in German, so everyone

would understand?” (164). As Isaacson intends her message to be for all audiences, so the

language must be adaptable to the audience. She reminds us that central to her mission was that

her story be understood by as broad an audience, in this case, American or German. The underlying assumption here, similar to Kluger’s perhaps in writing weiter leben, is that it is

possible to communicate this deadly experience; as difficult as it might be to transcribe the

trauma into language, there is hope that the testimony will prevent future genocides.

Isaacson’s relationship with her Jewish identity is quite different from that of Kluger’s

and Edvardson’s. While the latter two authors first really defined their Jewish identities through Hyder 63

its repression by the Nazis, Isaacson’s identification with her Jewish heritage seemed at its

strongest before Nazi persecution. Isaacson, like Edvardson, regarded her Jewishness as being

the source of the tribulations; but while “burned” Edvardson ultimately seeks the source of the

fire to find her identity, Isaacson responds by defensively warding it away: “Why inflict

persecution on my descendants?” In Lichtenau, where she was sent from Auschwitz to do forced

labor for the Nazis, Isaacson tells us, she wonders whether to “stay Jewish” at all, and

contemplates marrying a gentile (101). Despite this, she seems to continue to find a sense of

belonging in her Jewish heritage, nonetheless: for example, after her liberation, she marries a

Jewish-American soldier; and as another example, she tells us she finally felt that she “buried”

her murdered family and friends only upon hearing the Jewish funeral prayer chanted by a rabbi

during a Holocaust memorial service years later (150). In summary, Kluger’s and Edvardson’s

Jewish identities were greatly influenced by the oppression of the Holocaust, and the authors

brought these newly defined identities with them into their present-day lives. Isaacson, a practicing Jew since birth, already had a firm connection to her Jewish heritage before the Nazis.

Unlike Kluger and Edvardson, Isaacson does not share openly with us what effects the Holocaust

might have had on her relationship to her Jewish heritage, but rather lets our reading of her

Jewishness stay primarily connected to her Holocaust experiences. While she does not reject her

Jewish origins, neither does she express a newfound personal meaning for her Jewishness, but

seems content to let our understanding of her Jewish identity remain associated with symbols of

the Holocaust: her murdered friends and family of her past, her testimonies at Holocaust

conferences in the present, and her memories, unlimited by temporal strictures. Hyder 64

Lastly, I would like to look at two aspects of Isaacson’s narrative particularly in relation to Kluger’s memoirs. Firstly, one remembers the previously discussed “dual perspective”

(Lorenz 213) of Kluger’s narratives: that is, her movement back and forth in time, speaking both as an adult looking back and as a child in the moment within the same passage of narration, thereby transcending the strictures of time and place. Isaacson, in contrast, follows a more-or- less strict chronological structure in her narrative–but one can still make a case that she, too, transcends time, albeit in a much different way and towards a much different effect. Unlike

Kluger, Isaacson focuses on a general audience, since her message of the hidden evils in the

Holocaust is relevant to all nations, and she uses, therefore, a skillful directness in her writing that envelopes the readers and places them in a different world. Her use of dialogues, descriptions, and detail detach the readers from their respective “safe” or removed places and plant them in the middle of this violent world. In this way, one could argue that Isaacson, too, transcends both time and place in her narrative, but to a much different effect.

The second aspect that I would like to contrast with Kluger’s memoirs is the tension between “knowledge” and “memory” that takes place in Isaacson’s narratives. As discussed earlier, Kluger privileges her memories (and thereby impressions) of events and characters over anything else, resisting specifically to allow later knowledge to “correct” her memories.

Although this characteristic of Kluger’s memoir is perhaps not quite as prevalent in Isaacson’s, I nevertheless observed similar tendencies. Isaacson generally recounts her memories purely from her impression at the time, not even allowing knowledge in the aftermath to alter its portrayal in any way. An example would be her description of her professor, Dr. Biczó. Portrayed as an austere professor with vast knowledge and a keen interest in his students’ educational welfare, he Hyder 65

overlooked the growing anti-Semitism of the time, giving Isaacson a lead part in the Hungarian

national celebration and visiting her in the ghetto. Isaacson relates his visit to the ghetto with

particular tenderness and describes his sorrowful manner at seeing his beloved former student in

such conditions (53). However, it is not until after the story of her girlhood in the Holocaust is

completely told that we learn more about Dr. Biczó. In a chapter near the end of the narrative,

Isaacson reveals that the cause of this same beloved professor’s death in 1945 was alcohol, being

“haunted by a bad conscience” (142). According to the reports, shortly after Isaacson’s transport, the professor was placed in charge of a Jewish forced labor unit, where he proved to be a cruel

Kommandant, harsh and prone to drunkenness. Isaacson even hesitates to consider forgiving him, should the reports be true (143). This is an example of an instance where Isaacson refuses to allow her later knowledge of Dr. Biczó’s eventual cruelty to Jews taint or alter her awed

impression of him as a child–thus sharing to a degree a characteristic of Kluger’s narrative as

well.

Isaacson’s memoirs are the voices of the dead passing to the world of the living, particularly those of her friends and family, which the narrative’s title also appears to reflect. The source of the title comes from an instance in the labor camps, when Isaacson was caught daydreaming by a “female SS guard” nicknamed “Hyena” (97).11 The guard furiously accuses the young girl of “thinking of men” and becomes angry with her:

Hyena grabbed my arm and slapped me on the cheeks: “Don’t lie to me!” She

roared. “I can read your face. But dreaming is all that’s left for you, bitch. After

the war, you’ll be transported to a desert island. No males–not even natives. Much

11 As Ruth Kluger has pointed out (Still Alive 115), there actually were no female SS guards, as the SS was reserved strictly for men. This was a common myth at the time. That Isaacson still chose to use this term, may be another indication of her privileging the protagonist’s impressions at the time over Isaacson’s later knowledge. Hyder 66

use’ll be your fancy looks, with snakes for company. Do you suppose the

Americans will win the war? That would be your death sentence. We’ll shoot you

Jewish bitches before the Americans come–it’s the Führer’s decree. Your fate is

sealed either way: No men. No sex. No seed of Sarah.” (108)

Despite the guard’s threats, these memoirs represent Isaacson’s victory over the Nazis. What the guard probably meant quite literally as the offspring of Isaacson, receives a broader and more personal meaning to the author in its place as the narrative’s title. Perhaps the existence of this account in itself, together with its memories and its audience, is the “Seed of Sarah,” which seemed impossible and yet triumphed. Although her stories and her experiences seemed doomed to perish in the Holocaust with her and her people, forever silenced, she has nevertheless managed to survive–and here, a triumphant tribute to her survival, is a voice of a Holocaust victim, attesting to the sufferings of her people. Perhaps, just like the biblical figure Sarah, who was able to pass on her legacy miraculously despite her infertility, Isaacson overcomes staggering odds and miraculously is able to pass on the legacy of her and her fallen comrades to the subsequent generations. Defying death, impossibility, and the bounds of time, the seed of

Sarah will bear witness to the Holocaust long after the witnesses of the Holocaust will pass away, bringing silenced voices to life for generations to come. Hyder 67

CHAPTER IV. CONCLUSION

The autobiographies by the three women authors, Ruth Kluger, Cordelia Edvardson, and

Judith Magyar Isaacson, share some central themes which influence and characterize their experiences. We saw how these women experienced the Holocaust as women. We followed their struggles to transfer their repressed, buried memories into the open and listened to their voices tell the stories. We trod in their footsteps as they guided us through Auschwitz, through the labor camps, through their home lives before the war, and even to their life afterward.

Nevertheless, even within the same shared themes, we have identified striking and compelling differences, rendering every experience incredibly unique and uniquely incredible.

Kluger’s text is written in German, addresses primarily a German audience, fluctuates between

the narrative voices of her adult self and her child self, and speaks particularly about her self- defined Jewish identity and female identity. Edvardson, on the other hand, wrote her memoir in the “neutral” language of Swedish, motivated by a personal need to confront her past and specifically the image of her mother, and tells her story using shifting third-person voices: the narrator and the child. While Kluger’s Jewish identity is very personal, Edvardson connects to

her Jewish heritage by finding belonging in the Jewish community. The third author in this

study, Isaacson, wrote her memoir in English, but prefers to adapt the language to the audience.

She recounts her experiences from the perspective of the protagonist, the 19-year-old girl, and

portrays the impressions of the girl vividly and realistically to give the reader an intimate

understanding of the Holocaust victim’s experiences. Her Jewish identity does not undergo a

significant change or development, like Kluger’s and Edvardson’s, but instead Isaacson leaves Hyder 68

the readers associating her Jewishness almost exclusively with her Holocaust past. These features of the three authors’ memoirs play very important roles in the authors’ experiences and texts, and yet differ from each other significantly. Therefore, although these autobiographies would all fall in the category of “Women’s Holocaust Studies,” gender alone does not bind these texts together. That is, while gender serves as an interesting category through which to compare and contrast the survivors’ Holocaust experiences and background, each individual account is independent and stands on its own in its uniqueness, message, and power.

Just as the memories of these three women transcend space and time and fit appropriately in every place and period, so will all three of these narratives share a timelessness together, passing through the unrestricted spatial and temporal spheres and on into the future.

Hyder 69

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