YOF z o n HITLER ON LYGON STREET: LILY BRETT AND SECOND GENERATION JEWISH SUFFERING. Shannon Dowling Thesis Submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Discipline of Gender Studies University of Adelaide April 2004 TABLE OF CONTENTS TITLE PAGE....... ABSTRACT...... .. DECLARATION........ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.... ...... vrr INTRODUCTION: MEMORY, HISTORY, IDENTITY AND LITERATURE..... 1 History and Memory...... 2 And Literature . 12 Lily Brett. t6 Chapter Outline. 18 CHAPTER ONE: AN AUSTRALIAN JEWISH LITERARY TRADITION?. ..... 23 From Assimilation to Identification: Jews in Australian History. ... 24 Jewish Identity - A Mosaic of Meaning . '.. ...'. 34 Identity and a Literary Tradition?'..... ' ......... 40 CHAPTER TWO: FROM SILENCE TO SATURATION. THE HOLOCAUST AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY: THE EARLY YEARS. ... 51 Post War Recovery and Rebuilding".' ...... " " 54 ASinkingBoatandaWanderingJew. '.'"'"''64 Next Year in Jerusalem: Eichmann, Zionism, and the State of Israel in Australia ...... '... 69 A Girl's Story. 78 CHAPTER THREE: FROM SILENCE TO SATURATION. THE HOLOCAUST AND COLLECTIVE MEMORY: THE LATTER YEARS. .. ..... 85 Identity Politics. .... 86 "Migrant Writing" 90 The Rise and Rise of Holocaust Consciousness. 101 Revising Memory: Holocaust Deniers, War Crimes Trials, and a Phoney "Ethnic" in a Peasant Blouse. 113 ..AUSCHWITZ,,, CHAPTER FOUR: IMAGINING r25 The Historical Auschwitz... r27 "Auschwitz" the Signifier.. 130 The Auschwitz Poems....... 132 The Auschwitz Museum...., t70 CHAPTER FIVE: TIL' DEATH DO US PART. THE LIVING HORROR OF THE HOLOCAUST.... .. 178 Lily Brett and Legacy....... 181 Living Horror 185 My Mother, My Self... 203 The Living Dead. 215 The Ordinary and the Extra-Ordrnary.. '. 222 A Story of Two Voices. 232 CHAPTER SIX: TRAVELLING..HOME'' TO A STRANGE PLACE. 240 Poland and the Holocaust.. 243 Warsaw and the Wall of Silence... .. 249 Lodz and Loss...... ......... 25r Krakow and Commercialism..... ... .....257 Silver and Cloth. .........263 Conversing with Dead Nazis...... .........272 CONCLUSION: BETWEEN NEW YORK AND GERMANY'..... .........279 WORKS CITED...... .........284 1V HITLER ON LYGON STREET: LILY BRETT AND SECOND GENERATION JEWISH SUFFERING. I have walked through Melbourne as though it were Warsaw on guard for the Gestapo in fear of informers (Brett, Poland 133) ABSTRACT In the last decades of the twentieth century the Holocaust became a significant source of identification for Jewish people throughout the diaspora, including in Australia. The collective memory of the Holocaust has become so significant that contemporary critics have coined the term "Holocaust industry" to explain the production of, and ready market for, multiple forms of Holocaust representation. Within this context, an author such as Lily Brett, a child of Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors, finds a ready market for her representation of the Holocaust and its effects in contemporary societies. This thesis discusses this author's work, both in terms of the themes explored in her writing, as well as the political and historical contexts that have assured a growing international readership. It is argued that Brett's representation of the affects of the Holocaust on children of survivors, herself included, provides a space for remembering that is particularly intimate and affective. Brett's writing is also part of an expanding Holocaust market for narratives from the "next" generation. The thesis explores the interrelationship between history, memory, identity and literature to explain both the themes of Brett's writing, and how this writing is shaped by, and shapes, contemporary discourses on Jewish identity and the Holocaust. vll ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis has gone through significant changes since its inception. Throughout the years I have been most fortunate to have the input of excellent scholars guiding me through these changes. For her considered comment and positive support as a joint supervisor in the initial years of my candidature, I thank Dr Sue Hosking from English at the University of Adelaide. For her many years of support, and for teaching me important critical skills, beginning in my honours year and throughout the first half of my PhD candidature, I thank Professor Kay Schaffer from the Discipline of Gender Studies at the University of Adelaide. Finally, my most sincere thanks to my supervisor who ended this journey with me, and who gave me the vital support and confidence in myself to finish, I acknowledge Associate Professor Margaret Allen from the Discipline of Gender Studies at the University of Adelaide. Associate Professor Allen's critical influence has been vital in helping to shape disparate ideas into a thesis, and her enthusiasm for my topic kept me going when my energy was at its lowest. I have also been supported throughout this thesis by a Department that has nurtured my growth as a scholar. I particularly acknowledge the support from Dr Margie Ripper, Professor Chilla Bulbeck, Kathie Muir and the efficient and unwavering administrative support from Thalia Palmer. My time in the (former) Department of Social Inquiry has been made so positive and intellectually fruitful through a number of friendships formed with peers. I would like to thank my friend Dr Greg Ogle for his overall generous support, and in particular, for attending my seminars and for reading work in a very different field from his own. I also thank Dr Jyanni Steffensen for her early input into my work, her friendship, and for introducing me to the work of Emmanuel Levinas. To my friend Dr Jennifer Jones, who supported me in multiple ways, who so generously shared her ideas and passion for Lily Brett's writing, and whose comments on my work influenced my thinking greatly, my most sincere thanks. Thanks to Michelle Jones, who shared this thesis journey with me, and provided vital moral and intellectual support. Thanks to Pam Papadelos, for the many stimulating conversations, and for her intellectual insights as well as her friendship. I also owe a great debt of gratitude to my dear friend Dr Wendy Bastalich, whose keen questioning and intellectual rigour has made me a better scholar. vllt For their patience and their support in extending my candidature, and supporting me as a PhD student, I thank the Graduate Centre at the University of Adelaide. For their support, both moral and financial, and for always giving me a home where I could revitalise, I thank my wonderful parents Beth and Gil Dowling. I also thank my supportive and loving siblings, David, Therese, Paul, Andrew and Louise. For her enthusiasm for my research, and her support and nurture, I thank my Aunt Beverley. For her great conversations about Lily Brett's writing, and for her critical insights into the reading process, I thank my friend Abbey Patterson. To Kate Borrett, who not only encouraged my ideas, read, edited and helped format this thesis, and offered her own considered analysis, but who also loved and nurtured me throughout the last four years, and made this journey with Lily Brett a shared one, my heartfelt thanks. Finally, to Lily Brett, for her generosity in talking to me, and for her generosity, more broadly, as an author. Lily Brett's writing has been my work and my passion, and I hope this thesis contributes, in a modest way, to the recognition of this author's contribution to our understanding of the continuing trauma of the Holocaust. Introduction I INTRODUCTION: MEMORY, HISTORY, IDENTITY AND LITERATURE. Over the last thirty years the Holocaust has come to represent one of the most significant events of the twentieth century, if not, more broadly, a defining moment - of rupture - in Western history, culture and philosophy. More particularly, the Shoah (the Jewish name for the Holocaust) has come to represent a pivotal moment in Jewish history. As Sander Gilman explains: If there is a postmodern reading of the center/periphery model which dominates the writing of "Diaspora" Jewish history in the 1990s it is the translation of the center from that of "Jerusalem" to that of the "Holocaust." Such a reading of the "Shoah," "Holocaust," "Churban" as the new center of Jewish history and historiography makes all of the rest of Jewish history into a new periphery (3)' Thus, as Gilman contends, it becomes increasingly necessary to re-think Jewish history metaphorically or teleologically in terms of this new understanding of the centre: "Readings of Jewish history from the Middle Ages to the 1920s become preparatory for the Holocaust. Studies of anti-Semitism as a European phenomenon come to make sense only in terms of its relationship to the new center, the Holocaust" (Gilman3-4). Just as the Shoah has become central to, and centred in, Jewish history, so too, and consequently, has it become central to Jewish identity. Jewish identity, which has always been invested in a history of persecution, suffering and survival, has been re-centred on this story of suffering and survival through a contemporary focus on the Shoah. Not only, however, has the Shoah affected the identity of those who survived, and those from the surviving generation, but the Shoah has also greatly influenced how the children of that surviving generation, and those who have come after the Holocaust, understand and live their "Je'wishness."t However, this contemporary focus on the Holocaust as a new centre for Jewish identity is a relatively recent phenomena. Historical events, such as the Holocaust, come into prominence at particular times, in particular ways, for a number of reasons. At other times, ' I use inverted commas here to acknowledge that the signifier Jewishness contains multiple signifieds that are diverse, changing and contested. Introduction 2 events are forgotten, or at least not legitimised and given the space for public memorialisation. In the twenty years or so after the end of World War II, the plight of the Jews was not pttblicly recognised as an event unique from the general suffering of the war. Then from the mid 1960s onward, there was a growing recognition of the particular fate of the European Jews and the need to remember the Holocaust not only as a Jewish catastrophe (Shoah), but as a catastrophe for the'Western "civilised" world.