| Description |
1 online resource (xii, 335 pages) : illustrations, map |
| Contents |
Bad testimony: Making and breaking the rules of witnessing -- Solidarity: Kin, party, neighborhood -- The victim-perpetrator encounter -- Accent as archive: Yiddish and language biographies -- Places and non-places -- Conclusion |
| Summary |
This book reassesses contemporary Holocaust testimony, focusing on the power of language and place to shape personal narrative. Oral histories of Lithuanian Jews serve as the textual base for this exploration. Comparing the remembrances of Holocaust victims who remained in Lithuania with those who resettled in Israel and North America after World War II, the analysis reveals meaningful differences based on where they chose to live out their postwar lives and whether their language of testimony was Yiddish, English, or Hebrew. The differences between their testimonies relate to notions of love, justice, community -- and how the Holocaust did violence to these aspects of the self. The argument illuminates the multiple places that the Holocaust can fill in Jewish historical memory. Beyond the particular Jewish case, the book raises fundamental questions about how people draw from their linguistic and physical environments in order to understand their own suffering. The analysis challenges the assumption of a universal vocabulary for describing and healing human pain |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Hannah Pollin-Galay is Senior Lecturer (U.S. equivalent: Asst. Professor) in the Department of Literature at Tel Aviv University, where she is also Incoming Director (Fall 2020) of the Goldreich Family Institute for Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture. She researches and teaches in Holocaust Studies, Yiddish literature and all the ways that these two fields intersect. The theoretical side of her work focuses on the connection between language, memory and embodiment. In the context of teaching, she has also begun exploring American Jewish literature and humor |
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Print version record |
| Subject |
Sociolinguistics.
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Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
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Holocaust survivors -- Personal narratives
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Witnesses.
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Language and history.
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Psycholinguistics.
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sociolinguistics.
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psycholinguistics.
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HISTORY -- Europe -- Western.
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HISTORY -- Holocaust.
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Holocaust survivors
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Language and history
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Psycholinguistics
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Sociolinguistics
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Witnesses
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| Genre/Form |
Personal narratives
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Personal narratives.
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Récits personnels.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| LC no. |
2017960441 |
| ISBN |
9780300235531 |
|
0300235534 |
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