Trauma in First Person Diary Writing during the Holocaust [Hardcover]

What are the effects of radical oppression on the human psyche? What happens to the inner self of the powerless and traumatized victim, especially during times of widespread horror? In this bold and deeply penetrating book, Amos Goldberg addresses diary writing by Jews under Nazi persecution. Throughout Europe, in towns, villages, ghettos, forests, hideouts, concentration and labor camps, and even in extermination camps, Jews of all ages and of all cultural backgrounds described in writing what befell them. Goldberg claims that diary and memoir writing was perhaps the most important literary genre for Jews during World War II. Goldberg considers the act of writing in radical situations as he looks at diaries from little-known victims as well as from brilliant diarists such as Chaim Kaplan and Victor Klemperer. Goldberg contends that only against the background of powerlessness and inner destruction can Jewish responses and resistance during the Holocaust gain their proper meaning.

Preface
Introduction: If This is a Man
Section I: Reading Holocaust Diaries
1. Holocaust DiariesBetween Life Story and Trauma
2. Reading the Diaries as a Critique of Holocaust Historiography
3. The Dynamic of the Text between the Two DeathsA Theoretical Model for the Reading of Traumatic Text
Section II: From Autobiographical Time to Documentation Time: Victor Klemperer's Diar
4. The Life Story of Victor Klemperer
5. The Disruption of Life-Story Time in the Klemperer Diaries
6. From Autobiographical to Documentary Diary
Section III: The Jewish Self and the Nazi Other: Chaim Kaplan's Warsaw Diary
7. Chaim Kaplan and his Diary
8. The Jews and Nazi Law
9. Between Perpetrators and Victims: The Gray Zone of Consciousness in the Diary of Chaim Kaplan
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index