Cathy S. Gelbin, Falmer Concluding remarks on Potsdam’s Archive of Memory
Various interdisciplinary approaches and analysis of specific narratives
The first part of the volume points to the various interdisciplinary approaches to survivor testimonies, the second part then includes analysis of specific narratives by considering the temporal gap between the experience of persecution and survival more than 50 years ago, and the present narration of these events. Biographical survivor narratives combine the three levels of the events themselves, which objectively occured in the past, with survivors’ subjective experience of these events at the time of their occurence and their interpretation by survivors in the present narration in extremely complex ways. According to sociologist and biographical researcher Gabriele Rosenthal, biographical narrations are divided into those actual experiences in the past and and their subjective perception by the individual; the narration itself represents a construction and reinterpretation of these subjective experience from the present perspective (Rosenthal 1995).
Due to the complex relationship between the actual events, their individual perception and their narration, survivor testimonies cannot simply function as one-to-one mirrors of the unfolding of historical events as it is commonly understood (see also Laub 1992, and Young 1988). Biographical narratives rather point to individual modes of understanding those historical events, while at the same time transcending individual life stories. As Gabriele Rosenthal contends, biographical interviews occur at the juncture of biography and society, since they reflect the socially available patterns of understanding historical and personal experiences both while these events occur and while they are retrospectively narrated. Individual patterns of understanding biographical experience, as well as the belated construction and reinterpretation of this experience in the testimony is thus socially based and therefore allows for wider conclusions.
Post-war (West)German culture and politics have overwhelmingly Focused on Jewish death and Jewish suffering. The image of the Jew as victim also surfaces in much of traditional historiography with its reliance on historic documents created by the Nazi perpetrators. Particularly in Germany as the land of the perpetrators, survivor narratives thus supplement or in some instances undermine these predominant modes of discourse surrounding the Shoah. In this context, survivor testimonies disrupt the objectifying fixation of Jews in their roles as helpless victims and instead testify to Jewish agency and daily resistance in the face of genocide. Such testimonies therefore enable survivors to participate in and shape the public discourse on the Nazi past.
Because our interviews incorporate survivors´ entire lifespan from childhood until today, they confront non-Jewish Germans with an often uncomforting and unsettling reminder of the vibrancy of pre-war European-Jewish life and of the Nazi past, but also of a continued Jewish presence in Germany today. Survivor narratives thus touch on essential aspects of identity for the second and third generation born after the Shoah, regardless of their parents´ and grandparents historical positionings.
Socially constructed nature of survivor testimonies
The socially constructed nature of survivor testimonies becomes apparent when comparing narratives by survivors who lived in former East and West Germany after 1945 and continue to live in the respective regions. The participation of witnesses from East and West Germany in our project allows for an interesting analysis of the historically different understandings of the Shoah in both German states between 1945 and 1989 and their impact on narrative structures in survivor testimonies. Those survivors living in East Germany after 1945 formed approximately one third of our interviewees. The great majority of this particular group originated from assimilated families and had identified primarily as German, not Jewish, even prior to the Shoah. Many of them returned from the concentration camps or from emigration to the Eastern part of Germany for decidedly political reasons.
As literary scholar Lawrence Langer has remarked, each testimony is unique in its variety of narrative and interpretative patterns. At the same time, many testimonies by survivors living in East Germany after 1945 display a number of striking similarities in comparison to the West German counterparts, which most likely result from the much stronger identifications of those East German survivors with their German (socialist) state. James E.Young, too, has observed comparative narrative structures among witnesses partaking in similar political beliefs; according to Young, these affinities do necessarily result from a shared experience of persecution, as for example a concentration-camp internment at the same time and place, but rather from the fact that those narrators drew on the same political tradition and its patterns of interpretation.
Many narrations by survivors living in East Germany after 1945 seem prone to political argumentation, thus tending to efface the personal experience of persecution and the emotions connected with it. In other words, the emotional quality of these narratives frequently seems different from interviews with other survivors. At the same time, the narrative pattern of political argumentation, which lends from already established modes of public discourse, may represent a structure to even speak about the essentially unspeakable events of persecution, loss and survival. Such modes of narration may thus enable survivors to recontextualize their experience within a larger discourse of social and historical meaning, and allow them to reconnect with those rational modes of understanding the world which tended to collapse in the seemingly irrational and unpredictable camp experience. This reading of the function of political modes of narration is supported by the surprisingly large number of interviewees from former East Germany, which by far exceeded their share in the general German-Jewish population.
Particular issues of former child survivors and interviewees of "mixed" Jewish and non-Jewish ancestry
Another important Focus of our research was the large participation of former child survivors, as well as those interviewees of "mixed" Jewish and non-Jewish ancestry in our project. Fifty years after the Shoah, those who survived the Shoah as children now form the majority of survivors still alive and physically able to speak about their experiences. In recent years, the particular issues of child survivors have become a major Focus of investigation in the fields of literary, historical and social studies, as well as psychology and psychoanalysis.
For the purpose of these concluding remarks, I will therefore turn to the question of survivors from "mixed" Jewish and non-Jewish families, whose specific plight was neglected frequently by researchers. The Nazis discriminated German citizens of Jewish and Christian lineage as "Jewish mongrels" ["Juedische Mischlinge"]. This group was collectively spared from annihilation, even while its forced sterilization was planned by the infamous Wannsee Conference in 1942, and restricted socially, i.e. in terms of education, occupation and marriage opportunities, by countless laws and regulations. In late 1944, most "Mischlinge" were interned in forced-labor camps in Germany. One striking feature of this group, however, is its lack of a collective experience as existed in the case of those defined as "Jews". "Mischlinge", as the Nazis termed them, were separated by a number of aspects, such as generation and gender. For many of those who were adults in 1933, the Nazis’ seizure of power represented a radical disrupture of their hitherto complete social integration. They had already grown up in assimilated families, in accordance with sociologists’ contention that intermarriage already constitutes a marker of assimilation; they were baptized in one of the Christian faiths and often had no religious or cultural ties to Judaism, and sometimes no longer even a knowledge of their Jewish descent. In contrast, children from intermarriage families who experienced their formative years under National Socialism were faced with complete ostracism. They were not able to achieve the education and social status which older "Mischlinge" already had and, in the case of social status, were sometimes able to keep throughout the Nazi period. In addition, the more unstable personal identities of children led them to accept a variety of partially competing models of identity, such as racial, religious and nationalistic ones (Oberlaender 1993); i.e. children tended to internalize racist and thus self-destructive constructs of identity more than adults, and in addition were confronted more severely with incoherent notions of identity.
Narratives by former "Mischlinge" in part also differ strongly according to gender. I will return to the question of gender at another point. In the case of "Mischlinge", gender-specific experiences can result from the conscription of many men into the German Army until 1940, even though they were not allowed to rise through the ranks. As a case study in our book demonstrates, the temporary and partial participation of male "Mischlinge" in German warfare could result in an identification with the perpetrators, thus rendering the relationship of these witnesses to the Nazi state and their victimization by it extremely ambivalent. However, these ambivalences, too, are part of the history of persecution. As one of the first oral-history projects dealing with the Shoah, we explicitly included former victims of Jewish and non-Jewish lineage and were therefore able to interview many individuals belonging to this group which largely had kept silent so far. For them, the stigma of "miscegenation" and with it the shame of "racial" and sometimes political ambivalance had not only shaped their lives during the Nazi period, but continued into the postwar period with its absolute binary constructions of German perpetrators and Jewish victims. We explicitly included the histories of former "Mischlinge" and were thus able to record a large number of respective narratives.
Educational purposes and gender-specific patterns in testimonies
As a last point, I would like to mention an edition of videographic testimonies prepared for eduational purposes. The visual component of these narratives, as well as their chilling emotional impact, render them especially beneficial for working with them in a pedagogical context. In 1998, an edition of six exemplary tapes addressing topics such as internment at Auschwitz, as well as survival in hiding and in emigration, were produced for use in schools, universities etc. The video edition comes with a booklet containing suggestions for the employment of the audio-visual materials in the classroom. We are certain that teachers will include the videographic media into their work with students, thus helping to transmit the voices of survivors to the Third Generation.
One of the questions that arose again and again during our analysis of videographic survivor testimonies pertained to the possible existence of gender-specific memories of the Shoah - a topic I would like to suggest for further research. These questions were sparked, among other sources, by the 1986 book by literary scholar Marlene Heinemann, Gender and Destiny. Women Writers and the Holocaust, which examined gender-specific patterns in autobiographies by female and male survivors of Nazi concentration camps (Heinemann 1986). Objectively speaking, differences among the experiences of women and men during the Shoah may result from the strict separation of genders in the camps. More specifically, women arriving at Auschwitz pregnant or as guardians of young children were immediately sent to their deaths in the gas chambers. Historian Joan Ringelheim sees a gender-specific aspect of persecution altogether in the reproductive function of women, in this case Jewish women, since they potentially gave birth to the next generation and were thus particularly targeted for annihilation (see Joan Ringelheim, "Verschleppung, Tod und Ueberleben," in: Wobbe 1992). Ringelheim’s examination of preserved lists of mass deportations and shootings, as well as of demographic data of men and women in Displaced-Persons’ Camps after the war, further allows for the conclusion that less Jewish women than men were able to survive the Shoah.
According to literary scholar Marlene Heinemann, however, gender-specific differences not only mark the actual experiences of female and male survivors, but also the very narrative tropes employed by them. Heinemann finds that women tend to emphasize the importance of friendship and solidarity among camp inmates more than comparative autobiographical narratives by male survivors. According to the author, these differences result from the traditional role of women as mothers and mediators in familial relationships. However, Heinemann’s investigation of survivor autobiographies does not clarify whether these differences among men and women regarding social contacts in fact existed in the camps, or whether they represent idealized constructs of femininity in society which resurface in survivors’ retrospective recounting of their experience. After all, solidarity among inmates also plays a major role in narratives by politicized survivors, including both women and men. Due to some gender-specific differences in the nature of persecution as outlined above, an examination of questions of gender in the narratives themselves certainly seems essential to me, yet to my knowledge there exists no in-depth and satisfying analysis of this matter to date. I would therefore like to alert other researchers’ attention to this topic for further consideration.
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Short biographical note
Cathy S. GelbinPh.D., grew up in East Berlin in a German-American family. Following secondary school (Abitur) and training as an occupational health inspector, she moved to West Berlin in 1985, completing her studies of theater science, German language and literature and Jewish studies at the Free University of Berlin in 1989. From 1989 to 1995, graduate studies and research at Cornell University (USA), where she received her Ph.D. in 1997. From 1995 to 1997, research associate at the Moses-Mendelssohn-Zentrum für Europaeische Juedische Studien (Moses Mendelssohn Center for European Jewish Studies) at the University of Potsdam (Germany). Since 1998, Gelbin has been working at the Centre for German-Jewish Studies, University of Sussex (Great Britain), with funding from the ANNE FRANK Fund, Basel, Switzerland. In September 2000, she will be taking up a position as lecturer in the Department of German Studies at the University of Manchester. Her publications include works focusing on German-Jewish identity in the work of Elisabeth Langgaesser, on the analysis of video interviews with Shoah survivors, and on the topic of "Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung" (coming to terms with the Nazi past) in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
Cathy S. Gelbin
Director of Research and Educational Programmes
Centre for German-Jewish Studies
University of Sussex, Arts B138
Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QN
U.K.
Tel. 0044 (0)1273 67 88 37,
Fax. 0044 (0)1273 877-285
Email C.Gelbin@sussex.ac.uk
URL http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/cgjs
Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum, Potsdam
URL http://www.uni-potsdam.de/u/mmz/000mmz.htm
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Citation Cathy S. Gelbin, Concluding remarks on Potsdam´s Archive of Memory. In: Trauma ResearchNewsletter 1, Hamburg Institute for Social Research, July 2000.
URL TraumaResearch.net/focus1/gelbin.htm
Copyright © 2000, Cathy S. Gelbin and trauma newsletter, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author and the trauma newsletter. For other permission questions, please contact via email the editor Cornelia_Berens@his-online.de
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