Inventing a Pathology of Catastrophe for Holocaust Survival
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The fi nal third of the book offers “Michael Dorland’s Cadaverland “Michael Dorland has written A powerful look at a comparative look at the “psy- is the most important historical an important and, in many ways, science” approach to Holocaust survival beyond France, particularly study dealing with the medical a strikingly original work that how French medical in the United States and Israel. He ramifi cations of the Holocaust. defi nitely ranks as superior science apprehended illuminates the peculiar journey C Focusing on the psychiatric and scholarship. By choosing to C of a medical discourse that began in France but took on new forms psychological literature dealing examine how the fi gure of the LAND and described Inventing elsewhere, eventually expanding A with the impact of the Shoah Holocaust survivor has been A Holocaust survival into nonmedical fi elds to create the for the survivors and for their studied, he has succeeded in basis of the “traumato-culture” with a Pathology which we are familiar today. families, Dorland sketches the uncovering new material and D diffi cult, contradictory, often weaving this together with a D of Catastrophe Embedding his analysis of self-destructive struggle of critical review of a vast range In this extraordinary study, different medical discourses in Michael Dorland explores sixty psychological medicine with the of scholarship into a readable, for Holocaust the sociopolitical history of France A A years of medical attempts by in the twentieth century, he also horrors of the Shoah. Brilliantly yet subtle, and often eloquent, French doctors (mainly in the looks at the French Jewish Question written and ranging well beyond narrative.” Survival fi elds of neuropsychiatry and as it affected French medicine, V the confi nes of post-war France, V psychoanalysis) to describe the the effects of fi ve years of Nazi toby gelfand, effects of concentration camp Occupation, France’s enthusiastic this is a book that health care Jason A. Hannah Professor of incarceration on Holocaust collaboration, and the problems E practitioners as well as all those the History of Medicine, University E survivors. of Ottawa this would pose for postwar dealing with trauma and its collective memory. Dorland begins with a discussion historical aftermath must read.” of the liberation of concentration R sander l. gilman, R camp survivors, their stay in deportation camps, and eventual Tom Perlmutter Tom Director, Program in Psychoanalysis, return to France, analyzing the Emory University L L circulation of mainly medical e Limits of (neuropsychiatric) knowledge, its struggles to establish a The Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry Series Medical Knowledge A A symptomology of camp effects, and its broadening out into & Historical Memory BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY PRESS connected medical fi elds such N N in France as psychoanalysis. He then turns michael dorland is Waltham, Massachusetts specifi cally to the French medical doctors who studied Holocaust a professor in the School of Published by Communication, Carleton survivors, and he investigates D 978-1-58465-784-2 D somatic, psychological, and holistic University, Ottawa. UNIVERSITY PRESS OF NEW ENGLAND conceptions of survivors as patients Hanover and London and human beings. Cover image: Wall of Names at the Memorial www.upne.com of the Shoah. Photo courtesy of the author. CADAVER CADAVERLAND The Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry Series Jehuda Reinharz, General Editor Sylvia Fuks Fried, Associate Editor The Tauber Institute Series is dedicated to publishing compelling and innovative approaches to the study of modern European Jewish history, thought, culture, and society. The series features scholarly works related to the Enlightenment, modern Judaism and the struggle for emancipation, the rise of nationalism and the spread of antisemitism, the Holocaust and its aftermath, as well as the contemporary Jewish experience. The series is published under the auspices of the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry — established by a gift to Brandeis University from Dr. Laszlo N. Tauber — and is supported, in part, by the Tauber Foundation and the Valya and Robert Shapiro Endowment. For the complete list of books that are available in this series, please see www.upne.com Eugene M. Avrutin, Valerii Dymshits, Alexander Ivanov, Alexander Lvov, Harriet Murav, and Alla Sokolova, editors Photographing the Jewish Nation: Pictures from S. An-sky’s Ethnographic Expeditions Michael Dorland Cadaverland: Inventing a Pathology of Catastrophe for Holocaust Survival Berel Lang Philosophical Witnessing: The Holocaust as Presence David N. Myers Between Jew and Arab: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz Sara Bender The Jews of Białystock during World War II and the Holocaust Nili Scharf Gold Yehuda Amichai: The Making of Israel’s National Poet Hans Jonas Memoirs Itamar Rabinovich and Jehuda Reinharz, editors Israel in the Middle East: Documents and Readings on Society, Politics, and Foreign Relations, Pre-1948 to the Present The Limits of Medical Knowledge and Memory in France Cadaverland Inventing a Pathology of Catastrophe for Holocaust Survival michael dorland brandeis university press Waltham, Massachusetts Published by university press of new england Hanover and London brandeis university press Published by University Press of New England One Court Street, Lebanon NH 03766 www.upne.com © 2009 by Brandeis University Press Printed in the United States of America 5 4 3 2 1 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Members of educational institutions and organizations wishing to photocopy any of the work for classroom use, or authors and publishers who would like to obtain permission for any of the material in the work, should contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Lebanon NH 03766. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dorland, Michael. Cadaverland: inventing a pathology of catastrophe for Holocaust survival: the limits of medical knowledge and memory in France / Michael Dorland. p. cm. — (The Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry series) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-1-58465-784-2 (cloth: alk. paper) 1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945) — Influence. 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945) — Psychological aspects. 3. Holocaust survivors — Mental health — France. 4. Prisoners of war — Mental health — France. 5. Imprisonment — Psychological aspects. 6. Prisoners of war — France — Rehabilitation. 7. Pathology — Philosophy. 8. Medicine — Philosophy. 9. Psychiatry — Philosophy. I. Title. rc451.4.p7d67 2009 616.85'21200944 — dc22 2009016548 this book was published with the generous support of the lucius n. littauer foundation, inc. University Press of New England is a member of the Green Press Initiative. The paper used in this book meets their minimum requirement for recycled paper. Pour la famille, les vivants et les morts . il n’y a plus de morts, il n’y a que du cadavre. Ce n’est même plus le règne de la mort, c’est le règne du cadavre . eugène minkowski, 1948 Skeleton, skeleton, where are you going? What are you doing? You walk unsteadily, limping, ridiculous, swaying from one leg to the other, bending to compensate for the action of your vanished muscles, trying with each step to keep your balance, arms extended before you, seeking something to lean on, your head wobbling, your penis dangling. françois wetterwald, Les Morts inutiles, 1946 Nicht erle Wormer soll mein Lieb ernarhen Die reine Flamme — die soll ihn verzehren Ich liebte stets die Worme und das Licht Darum verbrennet und begrabt mich nicht [So that the worms not eat my body, The purifying flame will help consume it, Its light preserves me forever from the worms, Because, cremated, they can grab me not] Painted sign-board above the Buchenwald crematorium CON T EN AckNOWLEDGMENts xi ABBREVIATIONS xvii ts INTRODUCTION my french “jewish question” 1 Writing History/Inventing History? A Still Warm Corpse Stücke/ Figüren/Rhetoric The Limits of Knowledge and Memory FIGURE 1 the real 14 Who Knew What and When Did They Know It? The French Resistance and the “Jewish Question” Military Planning for the Liberation of the Camps and Prisoner Repatriation The Liberation of the Western Camps Medical Liberation Allied dp Policies The Nazi A-Bomb: The Continuing Jewish Problem FIGURE 2 condensation 55 The Return The Lutetia Hotel War Crimes Forensics, 1945–1947 From Testimony to Medical Discourse, 1945–1948 The Psychology of Captivity, 1945–1946 Medical Dissertations on Concentration Camps and Deportee Pathology, 1941–1946 A Medical Field in Search of Itself, 1945–1953 FIGURE 3 displacement 90 The Pathology of Catastrophe The Somatologists, 1945–1948 The “Halakhists,” 1936–1948 International Congresses on the Pathology of Deportation and Related Issues, 1946–1952 The fir Medical and Scientific Congresses, 1954–1981 Minkowski: Psychopathology in Psychiatry and Holocaust Research, 1952–1982 The Scandinavian School of kz Syndrome, 1952–1980 Polish Perspectives on kz Syndrome, 1945–1961 The Israeli Holocaust Problem and Early Research, 1948–1969 FIGURE 4 inversion 144 The Failure of “Liberation Psychiatry,” 1944–1947 The Impossible Profession: Aspects of French Psychoanalytic History, 1926–1980 Niederland, Krystal, and the Transformation of Concentration Camp Syndrome, 1963–1988 Vicissitudes of the Figure of the Survivor, 1976–2005 FIGURE 5 dilemma 175 Trauma and Traumato-Culture, 1945–1990 Memory, Remembering, Commemoration, and Witnessing, 1949–2004 Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust, 1945–? FIGURE 6 conclusion: prosthesis 201 NOTES 209 BIBLIOGRAPHY 231 INDEX 263 Ack NOWLEDG This is the part where the writer of a book thanks the many people and organizations in various countries who assisted with access to the research materials that provide the core information for a work of nonfiction. And these invariably convey a picture of the friendly folk and helpful institutions who do smooth the writer’s way.