Limit Experiences EASTERN EUROPEAN CULTURE, POLITICS AND SOCIETIES Edited by Irena Grudzińska-Gross and Andrzej W. Tymowski VOL. 14 Jacek Leociak Limit Experiences A Study of Twentieth-Century Forms of Representation Translated by Alex Shannon Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. The Publication is founded by Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Poland as a part of the National Programme for the Development of the Humanities. This publication reflects the views only of the authors, and the Ministry cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. Cover illustration: Magdalena H. Gross Printed by CPI books GmbH, Leck ISSN 2192-497X ISBN 978-3-631-67274-7 (Print) E-ISBN 978-3-653-06856-6 (E-PDF) E-ISBN 978-3-631-70996-2 (EPUB) E-ISBN 978-3-631-70997-9 (MOBI) DOI 10.3726/b15362 Open Access: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives 4.0 unported license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc-nd/4.0/ © Jacek Leociak, 2019 Peter Lang – Berlin · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Warszawa · Wien This publication has been peer reviewed. www.peterlang.com Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................ 9 Experience as an Organizing Category ........................................................... 12 Inspiration ............................................................................................................ 17 Subject and Structure ......................................................................................... 24 Sources and Research Method ......................................................................... 28 Part I ....................................................................... 35 1 Topography and Existence Romantic Heroization ........................................................................................ 36 Ironic Criticism ................................................................................................... 63 Divided City ........................................................................................................ 79 Metaphors of the Ghetto ................................................................................... 91 Taking an Aryan Tram through the Warsaw Ghetto .................................... 100 .............................................................................................. 123 2 Bombardment Bombardment and the “Morale of the Civilian Population” ...................... 125 The Target: Civilian Morale ........................................................................ 125 Bombardment in the Second World War ................................................. 129 Preliminary Stage ............................................................................... 130 First Stage: From May 1940 to November 1941 ............................ 131 Second Stage: From February 1942 to the Middle of 1944 .......... 133 Third Stage: From the Summer of 1944 to War’s End .................. 135 Bombing and Morality ................................................................................ 138 The Experience of Bombardment .................................................................... 140 Total War ....................................................................................................... 140 The Speed and Completeness of Destruction .......................................... 145 6 Contents The Moment of (Macabre) Transformation ............................................. 149 Ambivalence ................................................................................................. 152 The (Re-)Construction of Memory ................................................................ 157 Accounts by Victims .................................................................................... 159 Perpetrators’ Accounts ................................................................................ 162 Observers ...................................................................................................... 164 German Attitudes ........................................................................................ 168 Victor Klemperer – Józef Mackiewicz – Kurt Vonnegut ........................ 170 Timothy Garton Ash and Kevin Alfred Strom ........................................ 174 Winfried Georg Sebald – Jörg Friedrich – Frederick Taylor ................. 175 Part II ................................................................................................................ 183 3 Looks Faces in extremis .............................................................................................. 189 Before Marching off to the Front .................................................................... 204 Damaged Photographs of (from) the Holocaust .......................................... 210 Let Us pause for a moment on the Matter of Damage ............................ 211 Types of Damaged Photographs ................................................................ 214 Kinds of Damage ............................................................................... 216 The Private Photograph ................................................................................... 216 Clandestine Photographs ................................................................................ 220 Interpretive Tropes ........................................................................................... 221 Damage as a Stigma of the Holocaust ....................................................... 223 Damage as a Vestige of the Holocaust ...................................................... 224 Damage as a Metonym for the Holocaust ................................................ 224 Children of the Holocaust: Obverse and Reverse ........................................ 226 The Boy from the Warsaw Ghetto ............................................................. 226 A Boy from the Łódź Ghetto ...................................................................... 230 Farewell .............................................................................................................. 236 Contents 7 ...................................................................... 245 4 Encounters with a Corpse The Postmortem Dissection ............................................................................ 247 Between the Grotesque and the Sublime ...................................................... 271 In the Arms of Eudoxie’s Corpse ............................................................... 271 The Earth Discloses Its Corpses ................................................................. 277 Contemporary Antigone ................................................................................. 282 Ancient Tradition ........................................................................................ 283 The Inhumanity of the Twentieth Century .............................................. 286 “A City Engulfed by Plague” ....................................................................... 288 The Cemetery That Is Not a Cemetery ..................................................... 290 Rescuing Funeral Rituals ............................................................................ 294 Rachel-Antigone .......................................................................................... 296 Exiting the Grave .............................................................................................. 301 Epilogue ............................................................................................................... 329 Bibliography ...................................................................................................... 331 Index ..................................................................................................................... 355 Introduction Pain wrenches us from our everyday routine and allows us to experience the limits of our corporeal existence. It takes us to the brink, beyond which there is only the threat of death and the horror of corpses. The word turns into a cry, babble, howl. And in the end – into silence. And yet, the encounter with pain, with suffering and danger, brings recognition. Death confirms that life has meaning. Like a powerful beam of light, limit experiences provide an outline to our human shape, they draw it out from the shadows. This book is about breaking the kind of stereotypical thinking by which the macabre is merely something horrible and repulsive; the paralyzing fear of death is simply overpowering; and what is terrible and injurious is only destruction. The pathologist does an autopsy in order the reveal the secrets of the functioning of the human organism. The anatomy of a dead body provides truth about the living body. It is the goal of this book to show that limit experiences do not leave only a vacuum in their wake; that it is possible to represent them; that, through the examination of their various forms, we can reach the essence of