D

trT4,3

Htsi x
L OL

For Rene and Hertha

6XS.

ISBN o-3rz-29568-5
available from
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
the Library of Congress.

University Press
First published in the United States in 1996 by Indiana
2oo2
First PALGRAVE MACMILLAN edition: August

ro98765432r

Printed in the United States of America

The Longest Shadow

In the Aftermath of the Holocaust

Geoffrey H. Hartman

olorave
rmacmillan
I

r32

The Longest Shadow

Nine

rg87), 163; in English, Th Neu cotuuaatism: cutlural crilicism and' lh Histofins'Debale

Learning from Survivors

The Yale Tesrimony Project

apolis:

Unive

8).

7. In th

as rePresentations

have been helped by Hay-

and Hisorical Reresmtntian (Baltimore: Johns

den White's
Hopkins University Press, rg87), esp. chap' t.

S.AharonAppelfeld,inWritingandlheHolneau'st,s6.PrimoLevididnotbeginto

write until t*o y.it after his release from the camps, at least in part because of that
same se

Tragedy and the Historian,"

9.
Jeu ind
ro.

r
t

the Archiue is lanning or the rest of the

a direct knouledge of thl amts o! rg j j to

in

The Non-wish
(London: Oxford University Press' 1968)'
Laughter?" in Wriling o'nl' the Holacausl' ed'

rg45 can

be recordd,.

Saul Friedlande esPeciallY

and "The 'Final

no. z (Fall/Winter rg89).

e Holncaust,

Politi, the Twmlielh CmlurY

(New York: Penguin Books, rg88), "Prolog."

rg. Forrunoif Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies HVT58, Yale University Library.

rj.

See Czeslaw

Milosz,

My attention was drawn to

Wrilrs Mahe the Holacattsl

7
e
I

A.r i-po.t^nt

reason for oral testimonies of the Holocaust is to allow sur-

)'

r)
e'

rg89).

quent, affected by the extreme experience they-often for the first

time in
there" always
a grouP sur_
or a tempta_

Archive cannot be collectivized: they disconcert us, and alarm even the interviewers.
Face to face with that world, it is our search for meaning which is disclosed,
as if we had to be comforted for what la1 suffered. For us, who
were nor
there, the classical axiom holds that "Nothing human is alien"; for them,
"Nothing human is entirely familiar." The sense of the human has always

to be restored.

r33

r35

r34

Learning from Survivors

The Longest Shadow

portant to h

of
have done, in the perspectivism
Nor can we rejoice, as modernists

we will soon
do not have

these witness-accounts; that

vi
story off through Point of
rePeating
alike,
disastrouslY
Holocaust historY that emer
If w
Dort the moralizers among us'
to
th. ,.u..h for meaning had be
in which moral choice was systematically
it was like to exist under conditions
n o:
and heroism was rarely possible'2 Tnt:
disabled by the persecutors
to
close
is
revolt'
Ghetto
like tl e Warsaw
curred, as in acts of resistance

cide, with th

ular facts or thoughts as

there not be compensaof perception which the
e sure that the discourse
of written histor so revised and contradictory, sometimes in matters
of fact
but always when it comes to interpretation, is any less mediated? Because
"history" is written by one person, however well-informed, does not mean

miraculous.

Theterm"oralhistory"todescribetheVidoArchive'seffortsuggests
testimonies' their

that although what is ;*';

purpose remains the doc

into view are individual

murderous scoPe and with

gener
the vast PaPer trail, of course'
ab
and
once
at
was
Punctilious
ism
by
dence assembled and interpreted

of
u*q"i" pittt"t' Yet it would remain the picture
da
the
of
orders
and
machine' of t""u"t'atic memos
jargon
a

able to construct u"

selfdocumenting
decrees' tons of masking
of railroad schedules and administrative
T'he
describing Eichmann's rhetoric) '
or "elating clichs" (Hannah Arendt'

vicrimswouldnotU.n""randwouldremainapresenceollf.fr3ugh
continue to be displaced

Attention would
humiliating or atrocious photos'
s
evil, power and indifferen6s-6
with
fascination
from them to a
enigma of the killers and the bystanders'
of professional historians an attiWe occasionally nnJin the response
is also surprisingly i-ro*.'TTy:11:
tude which ,ho*, .otnmitment' yet
ts
materials for history' For oral history
These memoi., tu"tof O" p'i-u'y
to
seem
diaries' Your belated testimoni'es
even less reliable than letts and
are hishlv media"d'
usL q!
spontaneous but
be
De sporrLucwu
survivor has
t:;ti: ;; it contaminated by what the +l,o renrrireplays
or
fades
memory
the req'ireto Holocaust histor moreovet
nearu ur rL4s' i'
r r ^-^-^ ..,r-^
.oll
themcall themwho
srnce slanderers
ment to be exact is even more important'
on every discrepancy.'
selves revisionists will pick
I *iU return to them' It is imuuldit

i::::l:f::.',f,i:i,T:

i:""J.]. wil;i';"-es

L..,

t'uu"*"

outside

in an objectifying manner, can provide a texture of truth that

eludes those who adopt a prema[urely unified voice. Research and criticism
are best done, as clifford Geertz, Michael walzer, and carol Gilligan have

through converging witne

These objectio,t'

it has a trut
being made
or oral docu
local knowle

""

observed, by a "connected critic."

Even if pure spontaneity is an illusion-especially forty to fifty years
after
the event-it is bad faith to simply substitute the dry tones of the academic
historian for the voice of wirnesses. Few historians, actuall would deny this:
and few non-historians would deny value to a written history that leads us
through the mazes of confusing particulars by sifting all sources, including
personal memories, we need that conscientious overview called history because, as Thomas Friedman wrote in the Neu york Times, covering the

Demjanjuk trial: "The memory of evil, no matter how extreme, hs its

limits."5

Deite

these limits, evil is a greater force in etching details on our mem-

ory than the good or ordinary life. The details themselves, of course, are
by no means all about evil.
they faced ann!
hilation, made their minds
ng. Others were
highly selective, or the choi
by personal fac_
tors that infuse and individualize their testimony. But the general accuracy
of recall is astonishing: it has been suggested that in the absence of material
remnants of their previous life (such as photos or personal items with associations), survivors treasured each fragment of memory. Deprived, moreover, of funerals and formal rituals, the very pain of their memories might
often have become an identity mark important to the work of mourning,

r36

r37

The Longest Shadow

Learning from Survivors

and which, necessarily incomplete

in the camps' extended itself into

the

Something has changed: we cannot "do history" as usual'

n be).8 It is hard for me to forget, on

as the narrator hesitates, then relates
lly overnight, of the enrire gypsy popu_
, the teacher's blow and the fate of the
gypsres, may seem incommensurable, yet that
they are not part of a statis_
tical or impersonar narration, that we see the
individuar change as memory
returns, makes rhem equa'y unforgettable.
we undersr"" u",i..j*"
Amry's protest against "the cold stoiage of
history.,, ,,[N]o rememur.rg
has become a mere memory.... Nothing
has healed.... Where is it de_
creed that enlightenment must be free of emotion?,,e

Yet when scars are exposed and emotions

are given so direct a repre_
sentation by a thousand voices, do we not invest
that g.oup, and the f,r.ih..
thousands each person stands for (,,I am my
town archive,,, one of them
remarked) with a grim privilege? Is there an
assumption, however tacit,
thatJewish Holocaust survivors have a monopoly
on sufferirrgl ena ev.n
if there is no such assumption, does the effect of their
testimony tend in
that direction? I hope not; but here a need for interpretadon
shows itself
because of the immediacy of what is recalled.
There is something too forceful in every confession,
irrespective of content' The difference between confession and testimony
has st'l to be defined: I can s
is not meant

history. The
forces rather

remain, of course.

onelimitcomesfromwithintheindividual,whosephysicalsurvivalhad

the singularity or even extreme character of what

was undergone. For injustice has a universal structure: it arouses
feelings of sorrow nd indigna_
tion that can be shared, even when the actual experiences
cannot.
Though it is the case thar the Nazi-inspired Holcaustwas
unique in both
conception and implementation-it instrumentarized
the tittini or ati itre
Jews through camps and factories whose formal product wa, "trr-tti,
horrible truth simply numbs both intellect and heart.
we can ,.rpo.rJ-,o
death only as we remember life: the livingness of a
person, an hour before,
or yesterday, how such a one looked, loved, would speak.
To view these
witnesses on the screen is not to exclude other sufferin!
urrt to be reminded
of every injustice, great or small, that wastes human
life.
This point has particular importance because other
persecuted groups
could come to feer thatJews are seeking to exceptionalize
the uoloJaust at

r38

________ r3g_
Learning rro..,i*wi

The Longest Shadow

the expense of their own historical or continuing suffering. Toni Morrison's
dedication of her novel Beloued to "Sixty Million and more," asks us to recall
the sorrows of enslaved African Americans since the Middle Passage, their
forced transportation to America in inhuman conditions. So it is crucial to
stress that the claim of exceptionality refers to the implementation of an
ideology that singled out the Jews for extermination solely because they
were Jews. All were to be killed, whether by shooting, gassing, or working
them to death-including the children. It is this fact, not numbers, which
made the Nazis'war against theJews an exceptional act of genocide, one
we define by the special if inadequate term "the Holocaust,"
Negroes, twinned with Jews in Nazi caricatures, were also considered a
degenerate race in this sick ideology. Nazi racialism, presented as a science,
established a pseudo-hierarchy of races: the Aryans were the masters, while
those very low on the scale, Slavs, Negroes, etc., were doomed to be enslaved. The Jews, particularly dangerous because they might "pass," were
to be driven out or killed; the conference at Wannsee inJanuary rg4? confirmed and coordinated this policy of extermination.

I have said that the immediacy of these first-person accounts burns

through the "cold storage of history." It gives texture to memory or to images that otherwise would have only sentimental or informational impact.r0
The difference between Holocaust and everyday experience remains, but
now-as also in the way literature rouses the sympathetic imaginationemotion and empathy accompany knowledge. In fact, these personal narratives, though less shocking and fixating than many photos, could overwhelm viewers or arouse inappropriate defenses. This is especially true of
the young: if they feel too vulnerable, if they draw the conclusion, however
unconsciously, that their parents' protection is not reliable, they may defensively identify with whoever is more powerful.
Older persons too occasionally betray discomfort. Are you not, they ask,
invading the survivor's privacy? The question arises even when it is known
that each witness has come forward freel perhaps after years of hesitation;
and that, generall the only pressure exerted is by the children ofsurvivors
who feel testifying is important, both for their parents' sake and the future.
Those who express this reservation feel theirprivacy invaded by such intimate and painful recitals,

Why do we not complain about powerful and painful scenes in film,

drama, or novel? Are these not equally an invasion of privacy? The reason

is simple

though not parricularly

praiseworthy: we fa' back
on the thought
er like closing the eyes when
we .u.,;, toot u.ry
internally. With survivor testimoni.s
tiat sort
If we wish to k
, then we
shown to be hollow or
1:
halfhearted, th;;.;
even anguish.
Fiction is qui different
in its effect. O".t:.:^11'_-mfort,
awareness of it as mimesis,
a recons,.ucrion o. r...""i; '--:'^1:::_\rur
as
a more speculative and
auitude: we can ..r,illT"lt"l'.:n^courages
diatogic

.""";;i;;;;d i,ffi:l::*JH

whi,esurvivor;;i:i,;."'i.:lli,:'liifi
dialogue with s. The

fi i,:::t'"..,;

vivors face .ro, o.rly a living

audiencg
r-than insisting on rhe intra'nsitive
family members and friends

*t

t. .ro,

.n"."1.". o,

p..irfr.a,
h of oral documentation
"
of the Holo.urrr,,
O"ui p.
t survivors in displaced

camps soon after rhe

war, bore the titre r Did, Not
r"t"rr;;i;;;;iT"o",

It is the witnesses who underr

address the Iiving fr
also speak (at some

the dead or in

they
they

) for

their

may be eas bur

,"

."T:,

sra;i fi j"i;T:lf,l;X,,1
an; ;;;;,,..,

ain,

i:::;,:.ili#:1iv"ing,

r1ea1c1re
i. r, i*r, w,tz

So they remember the dead,

remember that they too
were

in

these

i'J::H;:fi ',i,ffiii{*j,ru,vbackt'...ual...,g
au

thentici ty of"a mode

r,"*

;,;*;:::il::

ffJi;

to counteract apathy as_rhai,-"r

weil as forgetfurn.r*-1., apathy
that comes from
emodonat exhausdon bur
also f..; ;; ;;olo ,.^.

vitalism, or irs re_

peated' competent, routinized^ana
gtossf ;twhy of extreme
siruations.
It is important not to sancdfy
witness u..o.r.r* but to see
them as a rep
resentadonal

mode with a special counter_cinemadc

integrity.rs When film
is used for realistic purposes
we remain aware

something impersonated,
artificiar, u.r
ave a way

that it is firm: a simuracrum,

*itt, i. .toru.. of traditional

nar_

of buffering realistic extremes:

they
tor's patrer induces a kind
of dist";;; a";"

porrations,execurions,::I.fi

:i,:,g.:fl

fense by thinking of all

this u, ".u".,r.

i.,

";;;r;"

"#'i:i:,l.i:i:
The
pasr insulares rhose

r40

Learning from Survivors

The Longest Shadow

anonymous victims. But in vide
t5
ally) there is nothing between
really gets going, between the
fect, therefore, can be extraord
tears, when theY come, are comPoun
at the moment of liberation'
hand, as Primo Levi has describd his feeling

prise her father) contrasts with the abnormal circumstances

and suggests

a deeper withdrawal.

and our memories clean from the

we would like "to wash our consclences

"nothing could ever happen

foulness that lay upon them"; on the othe
rub out the past ' ' ' [we feel] that the scars of
fooa ana pure'enugh to
in the memories of those
h" on,.ug. would remain within us f< reve and
in the stories that we
and
it
occurred'
who saw it, and in the places where
should tell. . . . " (The Reauakming)'
or contingencies
It is this very intimac then, s well as condensations
of tongues""confusion
a
called
has
Langer
of recall, and what Lu*."tt
world of
present
the
of
vocabulary
and
the clash between the assumPtio
survivorandinterviewerandtheword-breakingrealitiesoftheconcentrainter-

make each testimony a text in need, of

that a degree of
pretation. Students of the arts have learned' moreover'
In.the classresponse'
identication need not exclude a thoughtful, analytic
introducan
testimonies'
room especiall given the charged ttttt" of the
appropriate'
are
readings
of
discussion, and a follow-ip in the form

;;;;;"iverser6-which

status. He

excrusivery

who
lyzed by su
Those

.t'i '.
aPacr ity

f',ir:li:

for observation was para_

"Human memory," he also writes, "is a marverous but

fa[acious instrument." This is the topic sentence of his first chapter in The
Drouned and the
saaed,. Levi apologizes for the fact that his book
,.susis "drenched,, in
the

rion, a

Thereactivatedconnectionbetweensurvivorsandtheirexperience,which
the interview
themselves to

burden on th
be the result.
tions about the How and the WhY'
interpretation is' A
Let me give a single example Lf no* indispensable
itement
Belgian giit nna, refuge in a Ca
ncident
when her father visits for the first
llection
is so fraughtwith emotion that she w

other line, and omitting everything between), we observe paraller

though
more interesting lapses in the memory-work of orar testimony.
Aside from

thanispossible.Theresultisacontradictioninthenarrative:shetellsus

not know who was oming'

that she hid behind the door because she did
and wished to surprise
and she tells us she hid because she was so happy
not only its emoher father. The contradiction, surely, is understandable;
Since the domiacknowledged'
tional but also its imaginative side can be

nantfacthereisthatsheisinhiding,doublingthemotiveshowsnotonly
hermixtureoffearandexpectation-butdisclosestheunderlyingthemeof
(the child jumping out to surhiding within hiding'r? The normal situation

seems to have gone through a selection by Mengele, as

if he manned his
post p4 hours every day); and there are moments that
recur so frequently
that they seem to be archetypal, whether literally true or not. witnesses,
for
example, often quote a friend or relative who charges them, as the dying

,F

r42

Learning from Survivors

The Longest Shadow

This last tendency' in particula proHamlet does Horatio, to tell his story'
typical enough for most to irlentify
duces a "collective memor" a story
taken long ago and seeking-to
with. It is like being shown a group photo
"That's me"' even though the
say
to
discover oneself in it. One it t-p
be sure'2r
cannot
i*ug. i, so dim or different that one
event do not excel in prothe
after
long
Survivor testimonies recorded
-lhey canbe a source for historical
viding arits de fait or positivistic nistoiy'
strength lies in recording the
information or confirmation, yet their real
milieu of lhe struggle for survival' not only
fry.nofogi.^f and emotional
when interviewers meet to discuss
then but also now. It is no secret that
about difficult cases' The
their work, they exchange interesting anecdotes
companions can become an oversurvivors' identication *i'h th"it lost
different ifconvergent desidentication and produce a confusion between
the survivors to fulll a promise'
tinies. The voice of the dead still calls
the stories of those who perished'
There have even been appropriations of
as

if

theY were one's own story'

the
Another tyPe ofover-identification that affects

Process

ofrecording

who are too protective' They do

comes from viewers (or even interviewers)
interviewers acknowledge'
While
voice'
not always allow the survivors their
the time of victimizaduring
happened
of course, the terrible things that
which is then represurvival'
of
fact
the
by
tion, they often balance tht
as a heroic outcome' There is nothsented as more than accidental, indeed
ing worse in this respect than talk shows
over the terrible past and the brave' so
about it here on the show' Even at more
-ide
heroic meanings is a need of the ove
temptation to "launder" the behavthe
for
innocent,
from
far
survivor. It is
mark left by that stress'
ior of people under extreme stress' and the lasting
yet learned enough
not
have
that in terms of moral response we
suggests

from the Holocaust.

ing comment, we are ex-

inted. Primo Levi again

e" of his g^er-Ieration that
re of the offense imposed like a conolish to think that human justice can
nt of evil; it breaks the bodY and the

spirit of the submerged, it stifles

ignominY uPon the oPPressors
survivors, and swarms around in
as

all. . . . " To take awaY this kind of

nts. But in telling their stories survivors

rhaps even allowing the worst to remain
to face a pasr like that radiates visibly off
ct.

There have been three periods when survivors of the Holocaust recovered their voice and an audience materialized for them. The first was immediately
camps were disclosed. That period did
not lasr:
to be rebuilt, and the disbelief or guilt
^
that cruel
ted rather than integrated the survvor.
What has been aptly called a "latency period', intervened.22 A second open_
ing was created by the Eichmann trial in 196o, and a third came afte; the
release of the TV series Holocaus in 1978. so many lost their lives, will their
life story too be taken away? was the complaint. Any survivor could tell a
history more true and terrible in its detail, more authentic in its depiction.
Thirty-five years after liberation, moreover the survivors and refugees
living in America were fully settled, with grown families and a third generation in the offing. It was late: now if ever was the time to talk; they were
no Ionger hesitant to be recognized and to pass on their experience as a
"legacy."
A grassroots project developed in New Haven, Connecticut, when sensi_
tive neighbors found they knew next to nothing about the survivors in their
midst. By the time Yale offered its support, the "Holocaust survivors Film

Project," initiated in rg79 by Laurel Vlock, Dr. Dori Laub, and William
Rosenberg, had pioneered the videotestimony idea and deposited zoo witness-accounts. The video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at yale was
founded in rgSr and opened its doors in October rg8z.2u
There is no reason why oral testimony projects like yale,s could not also
collect the memories of other groups: those of Vietnam veterans, for
example, or the historical experience of African Americans, Native Americans, or immigrants. The growth ofjournalistic television does not substitute for oral history because of its brief attention span; it cannot replace
careful and sustained listening. The events in Bosnia should not have to
wait thirty years to be documented in detail by the survivors.
If we had stopped to resolve all the questions surrounding our effortincluding that of the exact value of oral history as history-we would never
have proceeded beyond the first experimental tapes. But these proved so
affecting, and the survivors tiere so supportive, that the film project continued, relying on a nondirective interview that encouraged spontaneity.

r44
Learning from Survivors

The Longest Shadow

But the Video Archive does not set out to be an anatomy

of genocide,
or a relentless assemblage of each step in the extermination
process. Using
the interview in a compassionate way we gain a
description

oi the everyday
and psychological mirieu of those caught up in the
Hol,ocaust, not excruding

their life before or after the war in different countries.

The Holocaust is "eventful" history; lt may even be an
event that has
ruptured our sense of what human nature is. Many expressive
details of
these witness-accounts belong, however, to the relatively
non-eventful, nondramatic story of men and women returning to ordinary
life after extreme
circumstances, and working their memories through.iB ,,[T]he
growing
good of the world is partry dependent on unhistoric cts.',2s
It is th"e entire
person who is asked to speak, not only the one recailing
terror and time of
trial. In this, above all, the sociological or cultural value of the testimonies

is clear.
Yet we refuse to "program" the interviews, declining
to guess what special
interests future generations might have. The welling-up oi-"-o.i.,
i,
"..,cial, rather than the imposition of a particular research interest, however
important the latter may be for the overall picture. I will not claim
that the

interviewers

do not have their own strong motivation and therefore an

agenda.3' They too, after all, belong to a specific memory_milieu:
they cre_
ate, in effect, a bridge or channer of transmission between generations
by
this timely, communal work. But in preserving a memory based on memo_

,I
I

,l

t!
'

I
il

the grouP that is

il

creates an ad hoc
relieves traumatic
6

Our edited Programs have an educational PurPose: for thse montages

il

pLt of the audience and pedagogy is crucial. After Claude

Lanzmann-and his shoah does divide the history of Holocaust repreof
sentation into before and after-after Lanzmann, it is hard to think

il,'

young adults are

:llr

Notes

ti"
il;
lll

l,

;ilt

illlr

il

il
il
,ii

J,:

ries, on individual and multiple narratives, they renounce an omniscient

perspective and allow the testimonies freer impact.
I have described what the testimonies are, as a mode of represe'tation,
a distinctive genre combining new and very old elements. My experience
in recording the testimonies is similar to that of Lanzmann, while making
his film. "There was an absolute break between the bookish knowledge
I
had acquired and what these people told me. I understood nothing "any
more."'r I hope that everyone who views the testimonies will agree that
breaking the silence is, for those who endured so dehumanizing assault,
an affirmative step, in part because of their very willingness to ue ordinary
words whose adequacy and inadequacy must both be respected,

til

r. Just one example: a woman teils of her experiences arriving at Auschwitz. The
scene is notorious: bloodcurdling shouts, 4ightmare, the pajamas, ibe elegance
of the

r46
The Longest Shadow

i1
I

ss, dogs, Afte. ajourney already fatar for a part of the mass packed\into the wagons, she
tells us that at a certain moment she passed into "another state" (z second, tl marked
by dissoci
actl d

arrival

at

pened wh
she exper
camP Pnsoner.

s? She

brutall
etveen

r47

Learning
vantage. Fussell quotes

unintelligibility of his di
trying to write a prop

re Second War, on rhe relarive

ld really ger hold ofifyou

were

onder the stuff

slips away mer_
erect ratherarticiar
structures

cury-wise from proper

oI one sort or another

than try to recaplure it

5. primo Levi, mo
Rosenrhal [New york:
S

7. Edirh

P.,

Establishment
Clinical Wurh,

Holocaur
un

), ry?rf.
rchive for

caust Testimonies, yale

8.

a"-i*i*i

of
ed,.

Horo_

I Rea
Origin

g. preface to

the

poinr of view of high

communication entre le
m

donner les moyens, en ras

ur cassette vido, de sauveet I'intelligence des ves

n the world ofthe deportees
lecting all these testimonies
Port which would allow the

g_arder cette possibilit

de s'accrotre." (There

d,ur
cr
and that of the teachers.
...
on video, to safeguard this
understanding ofstudents
tr
ro. This issue of how im
_
tional kind ofeducation,
one
mportant, ofcourse) to
a de
is a

re, go8.
ially, can be part ofan
emoool and cognitive way (also

press, rg4g.
Auschwitz
le voit " Le eonaoi
it, 1965), 66. a.r.-1,'-lltton'nee
ulvor of the.po.l pot regime,
who
o
.es a.similar feeling. ,,Now,
.
really alive or ifJhe died

morte

survivor

himself (he died in lc

rch parodies the at once
commanding and falsely con_

r48

r49

The I-ongest Shadow

Learning from Survivors

of the accounts, which suggests the singularity (rather than interchangeability)
of each
witness's experience and the coilective or asiimilative aspects
of their storis. Cf, Jan
Assmann and ronio Hlsche4 eds. Kurrur und Gedchtnii (Frankfurt
a/M: suhrkamp,

rgBB),gft
zz During this time, however, because of the insensitive way the German Indemnifrcation Law (passed in tg53) was administered, many survivors
were subjected to an
"enforced remembering" that "brought on a distinct feering
of renewed ie.*ecrtio.,
interrogation, disbelief and degradation." see Genlrarions of thz obcausr, ed.
llnewed
Martin S. Bergmann and Milton E.Jucovy (New york: Columbia Univrsity press,
rggo),
6off.

.
o
i

oject, ,,preserving the personal Story:

in the firsr issue of Dimmsions ggg)

ed. M. Liuel, R. Libowitz, urd . e,

24. Financially it proved a difcult choice: what a single made-for-TV film costs is
_
what the Yale Archive existed on the first four years. In rggi, Rtan Fortunoff,s
generous
gift to an endowment fund established by many donors guaranteed the ar.chive .r."to.
and a permanent place in yare's Sterling Memoriar Librar
Revson Foundation had been the main

support some projects.

Till then the charles H.

funding source ofoperations and it continues to

25. Thischapterfocusesontheactofecording,andquestionsofmemoryandedu-

I'idtntit socintz (Patis: Mtaili, r99o)'

rg, l,evi, Th Drouned and the Saaed, trans' Raymond Rosenthal (New York: Summit'

rgBS), Preface.

cation; I do not describe the yale Archive's method of providing intellectuai access
to
the testimonies. For that asPect, see GuitL to Ya[z [Jniversity Librarl Holocaust Video Tstimonis, znd ed. (New Haven: yale University Librar rg94).
6. on this "communar dimension of trauma," an the case that ,,the traumatized
view of the world conveys a wisdom that ought to be heard in its own
terms," see Kai
Erikson's sensitive "Notes on Trauma and community" in American Imago
4g (rggr:
(Maurice Halbwachs) that makes t.ti-or,/ioo
455-j2.On the "
sible despite the t
ndividual, Michael pollzk's LExeri*u r**rro_
lionnaire: essai sur

zf.

sociale is essential.

Helen K., Holocaust Tstimony (HVI5S), Fortunoff Video Archive for Holo_

caust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

28. Because the life history details in the testimonies are neither impersonally micro-historic nor fait d,iuers, they are difcult to categol.ize. we say too easily that they are
comparable to the highly selective detail we find in literary constructs. For an important
discussion of the testimonies' relation to a histore non-unetwntiell, see yannis Thanasseikos, "Positivisme historique et travail de mmoire. Les rcits et les tmoignages
des
survivants comme source historique,,' Buttztin d ln Fond.atott. Auschuiz g6/i7
r9-39.

lgg):

zg. George Eliot, Middlmarch (frnal paragraph).

3o' More interviewers have volunteered from the mental health professions than
from history or sociology. Yet the way the interview is presented makes it a historical

rather than therapeutic occasion. Martin Bergman remarks: "The danger ofbreakdown
have been expected irom therapeutic
consultatio
may be due to the fact that the survivor whose story
is filmed is
elp; he is called upon to bear witness. By being inter_
viewed, he
is doing his share in remembering. That suc inte._
views are conducted because of the subject's involvement with the olocaust gives the

in the videotaped interview is less than would

r50

The Longest Shadow

interview the character less of a personal and more of a social and historical event."
General

3r.
que me

du Cinim, 37 (t985): 374.

absolu entre le savoir livresque quej'avais acquis et ce

comprenais plus rien." In "Le lieu et la parole," Cahins

Ti?r

Holocaust Testimony,
Art, and l rauma
And out of her mouth a stone passed
into my open mouth.
"This is the srone of witesi," she said,

-Allen

"that stops every heart.,'

Grossman, ,,The Ether Dome,,

I ugi.r, uncharacteristically,

with an assertion. Today the relation of knowledge to the means of representation has changed. This
is especialry clear
in the area of the Holocaust. we notice, on the one hand, ^ar, .*i.*s
of
knowledge, a plethora of derail abour rhe "Finar solution',
furnished by the
techniques of modern historiography and the punctilious

and overnfident record-keeping of the perpetrators themselves. on the

other hand,
powerful visual media are at our disposition to convert this
knowredge into
simulacra of the original event.
euestions arise, therefore, about tnJlimrts
of representation: questions less about whether the extreme
event

can be
represented than whether truth is served by our refusal to set
limits to reP
resentation.

It should not be assumed, in other words, that questions about repre_

senting the extreme are only technicar in nature (how can we
frnd, m)aru
strong enough to depict what happened?) rather than scruples
about the
end, abowt the wisdom of recalling what happened. In the
past this scruple
was often declared formulaicaily. so
Jewish chroniclers f ,h" c.rrr^..
hesitate at the threshold: "In trying to tell of the wrath and
the rage, not a
heart has the strength, the hand fails on the page." we tend to
foiget this
heart and this hand. Our endurance is taken for granted, .,
*.li u'
inevitable prurience and curiosity; and the critique of rearism,
^
of its refusal
to set limits, is left entirely to the dogmatists among us.
To take forms of 'representation seriously means to acknowledge their
power to move, influence, offend, wound. That is why the consrvative
theme of representationar imits is important, and why the issue
has been
central to poetics until very recently. At present the question of limits,
in
r5l