Jewish Identity in the Holocaust Literature of Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel
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Enduring Identities: Jewish Identity in the Holocaust Literature of Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel Victoria Lee Nesfield Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of PhD The University of Leeds York St John University, Faculty of Arts. February 2011 Intellectual Property and Publication The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Victoria Lee Nesfield to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2011 The University of Leeds and Victoria Lee Nesfield Acknowledgements First and foremost I would like to take this opportunity to thank my research supervisors Dr Robert Edgar-Hunt, Professor Pauline Kollontai and Professor Sebastian Kim. I am indebted to my supervisors for their support, knowledge, interest and patience over the last three years and very grateful for always finding the time and energy for me. I would like to thank Professor Sue Vice from the University of Sheffield and Dr Claire Honess from the University of Leeds for dedicating their time to examining this thesis. Thanks also go to Professor Julian Stern for his time and support during the upgrade and throughout my study. I would like to thank York St John University and the University of Leeds for their support, encouragement and resources in assisting me through the PhD. Thanks must go to Dr John Rule and Jill Graham in the York St John Research Office for their unerring support throughout. I would also like to thank all my friends and colleagues in the York St John Graduate Centre for the moral support and the fantastic team spirit of the centre. I have to thank my family and friends for their support, encouragement and patience over the last three years. Special thanks to my mum Sue Nesfield for her endless patience in proof-reading and also to David Lewis for his time spent proof-reading and for his valuable suggestions. There are several people and organisations I would like acknowledge for their financial support throughout the PhD; I would not have been able to complete this study without the grants of some very generous charities to whom I am so grateful. Thank you to the Scarborough United Scholarships Foundation (John Kendall Trust); the Scarborough Municipal Charity; the Ruby and Will George Trust and the Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust. Abstract 'Enduring Identities' is a comparison of the Holocaust literature of Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel, debating the cultural divide between Jewish communities in the East and West of Europe. Beginning with a historical and theological context, the thesis explores the establishment of the Jewish people, their movement into the Diaspora, the changes of Modernity and the ensuing dichotomy between East and West which created divided Jewish identities. There follows an identification and analysis of a literary lineage between the East and West of Europe, identifying a divide in cultural trajectories and situating Levi and Wiesel as Jewish authors within Western and Eastern literary paradigms. Identifying four conceptual frameworks through which to compare the written works of Levi and Wiesel, the study takes as its central focus the Holocaust and discusses the representation of Jewish identity through the literary lineage of modern Jewish authorship and the East / West divide. The theme of 'otherness' is a central point of contention, identified through the work of Zygmunt Bauman on Modernity and Edward Said's work on theories of Orientalism, discussing the construction of 'the Jew' and Jewish identity as 'other' in Europe. Finally 'Enduring Identities' uses the Holocaust literature of Levi and Wiesel to discuss the identification of 'the Jew' from 'within and without', how Jewish communities perceived each other as different, across the East and West of Europe, from 'within' and how Jewish communities were perceived by the Gentile majority, from 'without'. The study identifies how the divided Jewish communities of Europe had their identities deconstructed by the Nazi anti-Semitic persecution to the point of convergence in the concentration and extermination camps. The primary question the study aims to identify is whether the Holocaust united divided Jewish identity, or whether the cultural separations between the Eastern and Western Jewish identities endured. The study concludes that although the Jewish identities of Levi and Wiesel necessarily changed through the Holocaust, as a metaphor for an East / West dichotomy, the literature of Levi and Wiesel represents the continuing divide between European Jewry. Abbreviations Due to the large number of in-text references to the works of levi and Wiesel, and also to biblical texts, the references to these works will include an abbreviated title rather than the Author-Date system used throughout. Below is a list of titles cited and their abbreviations. Primo Levi The Drowned and the Saved: Drowned Primo Levi If Not Now, When?: If Not Now Primo Levi If This is a Man: Man Primo Levi The Periodic Table: Periodic Primo Levi The Search for Roots: Search Primo Levi The Truce (within the same volume as If This is a Man): Truce Elie Wiesel All Rivers Run to the Sea: All Rivers Elie Wiesel And the Sea is Never Full: And the Sea Elie Wiesel and Richard Heffner Conversations with Elie Wiese/: Conversations Elie Wiesel Dawn: Dawn Elie Wiesel Day: Day Elie Wiesel and Michel de Saint Cheron Evil and Exile: Evil Elie Wiesel The Gates of the Forest: Gates Elie Wiesel Messengers of God: Messengers Elie Wiesel Night: Night Elie Wiesel The Town Beyond the Wall: Town Elie Wiesel The Trial of God: Trial The same principal will apply to quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, where the reference will cite the book title rather than author-date. Full bibliographic details of the Tanakh and Bible are supplied in the bibliography. Contents Acknowledgements Abstract Abbreviations Introduction 1 1. Chapter One: Identifying the Jewish Character in the Scriptures 17 1.1. The Israelites: A Chosen People? 20 1.2. Redemptive Faith? 24 1.3. Job and the Tests of Faith 28 1.4. Victim Identity: From Genesis to Auschwitz 35 1.5. Judas the Betrayer? Anti-Semitism in the Gospels 40 1.6. Iconography and the Image of 'Judas the Jew' 45 1.7. The Christian Story: Hegemony and Anti-Judaism 49 1.8. Conclusion 51 2. Chapter Two: The Jew as 'Other': Modernity and the Development of Jewish Identity in European Literature 53 2.1. After the Renaissance: An Enlightened Europe? 54 2.2. Modernity and the Construction of Identity 61 2.3. The Oriental in the Midst: Race and 'Otherness' in the Nineteenth Century 67 2.4. East and West: A Geographical Divide of European Jewry 72 2.5. With Hind Legs Mired in Jewishness: the Jew as 'Other from 'Within and Without' 77 2.6. Jewish Identity in the East: Aleichem and Singer 80 2.7. Conclusion 85 3. Chapter Three: The Jew of the East and of the West: Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi 87 3.1. Levi and Wiesel: A Cultural Comparison 88 3.2. The Jews of Italy 92 3.3. The Jew of the West: Primo Levi 93 3.4. The Jews of Hungary and Romania 99 3.5. The Jew of the East: Elie Wiesel 102 3.6. Post-War Modernity and 'Otherness' 107 3.7. Jewish 'Others': The Crisis of Identity from Within 110 3.8. Conclusion 114 4. Chapter Four: The Jewish Question: Anti-Semitism and 'Otherness' in the Propaganda and Ideology of the Third Reich 116 4.1. Out of a Defeated Germany: The Weimar Years 118 4.2. Mein Kampf: An Anti-Semitic Obsession 122 4.3. Legitimising Anti-Semitism: Persecution and Violence 125 4.4. Where They Begin By Burning Books ... 130 4.5. The Return to the Ghettos 132 4.6. The Ghettos as a Prelude to the Moral Construct of the Camps 134 4.7. The Road to the Final Solution 138 4.8. Conclusion 143 5. Chapter Five: The Deconstruction of Jewish Identity in Auschwitz 145 5.1. Swallowed up by the Night: The Arrival at Auschwitz 147 5.2. Jewish 'Others': The Camp Infrastructure 150 5.3. Jewish Conformity in the Camp Structure 156 5.4. Grey Zones: Privilege in the Camps 165 5.5. Conclusion 168 6. Chapter Six: Narrative, Testimony and Holocaust Memory 170 6.1. Haftling A-7713: Elie Wiesel 172 6.2. Haftling 174517: Primo Levi 175 6.3. Memory in the Holocaust Narrative 178 6.4. Bearing Witness: The Representation and Language of Testimony 182 6.5. The Literary Heritage of the East and West in the Holocaust Narrative 188 6.6. The Construction of a Victim Identity 191 6.7. Conclusion 195 7. Chapter Seven: A Silent and Empty Sky? God and the Crisis of Faith in Auschwitz 197 7.1. "lfThis is a Man": The Deconstruction of Religious Culture in Auschwitz 199 7.2. "Buried Beneath History's Debris": The Role of God in Holocaust Theology 204 7.3. God on Trial: Elie Wiesel and the Evolution of Protest Theology 209 7.4. "A Strange Trial": Wiesel's Indictment of God 211 7.5. Primo Levi and the Confrontation with Faith 216 7.6. To Concur with Job: The Martyrdom of Levi and Wiesel 222 7.7. "The Drowned and the Saved": The Final Days of Auschwitz 224 7.8. Conclusion 226 8. Chapter Eight: Reconstructing Jewish Identity in the Post-Holocaust World 228 8.1.