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Introduction
As genocides and other atrocities against human beings continue to occur around the world, searching for lessons from the Nazi Holocaust poses important challenges to scholars. Because witnesses to the Holocaust are becoming fewer and historical distance from the events of the Holocaust has grown, there is an upsurge of interest in collective memories of this catastrophe and in memorialization of this epoch. Growing recognition that multiple perspectives are needed to fully appreciate the complexity of these events has led to a multidisciplinary approach to literature on the Holocaust. Publications range from historical and philosophical treatises to eyewitness accounts and clinical studies. There has also been a growing empirical interest by social scientists in adaptation of survivors in the aftermath of their horrendous experiences.
Conceptual Background of Collective Memories
Collective memories are representations of important shared experiences by social groups ranging from families to nations. Collective memories are formed when groups encounter significant threats and adverse events or victories over adversity that imprint onto the collective consciousness of a group. Such collective memories have been referred to by Emile Durkheim as collective conscience.
When traumatic events are experienced by only certain members of a group, there may be difficulties in assimilating collective memories of that subgroup by the larger community. These difficulties are compounded when the experience of the subgroup is totally outside the lived experience of the mainstream group. In the case of the Nazi Holocaust, the savage and systematic annihilation of millions of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and mentally ill people was not only inconsistent with the lived experience of civilized society, but was, and still is, unfathomable to most. Since collective memories are forged through emotional experiences and reactions, this makes it even more difficult to share collective memories by groups whose members were not direct participants in the event.
Victims of collective trauma often experience stigma and consequently may mistrust mainstream groups who view them as “others” or even as “damaged goods.” Coming forward and identifying themselves as victims of atrocities can be humiliating to members of a traumatized group. For example, child survivors of the Holocaust find it difficult to share the deep wounds of abandonment by parents en route to death camps, or abuse by those entrusted to care for them. To protect survivors, it is not uncommon for international gatherings of trauma victims to admit only survivors to discussions of atrocities endured.
After a long period of minimal attention to collective memories of the Holocaust, there has been a growth in awareness in recent years, centered on Holocaust memorials and Holocaust-related curricula, across the United States. There has also been belated attention to the Holocaust in Western Europe and in countries allied with Germany during World War II, including Japan. However, such attention is far from being a global phenomenon. Survivors of the Holocaust typically applaud even belated recognition of this dark chapter in human history, primarily in an effort to bear witness and ensure that such examples of inhumanity will not occur in the future. While they may be reluctant to discuss their personal trauma, they are invested in building collective memories.
Academic observers have also been interested and at times baffled by the meaning of this belated focus on the Holocaust as a manifestation of collective memory. Some authors aim to minimize the importance of deriving lessons from the Holocaust. In his controversial book, The Holocaust in American Life, Peter Novick argues that there are no useful lessons to be learned from the Holocaust and that collective memory in the case of the Holocaust is a function of political agendas independent of the historical facts or moral indignation about genocide. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michiko Kakutani characterizes this view as “deliberate cynicism.”
The subsequent narrative reflects the first author’s lived experience in encountering such cynicism. It is hoped that its narration can add to a greater understanding of the fundamental paradoxes in approaching collective memories of the Holocaust through the lenses of both survivors and academics.
The personal world of collective memories: Reflections of a child survivor
We stepped off the train at Oxford and were transported to a magical academic town full of romantic ivy-covered buildings, crowned by proud steeples, enjoying a rare bath in British sunshine. This world looked beckoning, benign and steeped in ancient traditions of understanding. It is here that we were to take part in a joint gathering of scholars and of survivors focusing on “The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide.” Here I was, a professor from Cleveland, Ohio and child survivor of the Holocaust from Budapest, Hungary. I came to these meetings with my American-born husband, also a professor and also full of eager anticipation, to attend a conference on “Remembering for the Future.”
I felt a strange mixture of emotions. I was happy to be a visitor in this quaint and beautiful bastion of the academe I am so much a part of. I hoped that I could gain academic insights into the building of collective memories regarding this dark but significant chapter of human history. And, yes, I was also anxious about the prospects of “feeling” and “remembering.”
As a child survivor, only three years old while interned with my mother in the Budapest ghetto and later hidden with her for months in a dark, damp cellar of a church – remembering the Holocaust does not come easily to me. I mostly remember stories about our survival retold so many times by my parents. I recall stories about the Hungarian “nyilas” or Nazi who shoved the butt of his gun in my back as my mother begged him to spare my life. I believe I remember the Russian soldier who lifted me on his shoulder and handed me bread as I went around begging for food after liberation. But that was long ago.
However, I have much more recent and clear memories about very different experiences: participating in prior conferences dealing with the Holocaust. As an academic, I have presented findings of our studies of elderly Holocaust survivors documenting both the long-term pain of living with memories of the Holocaust and the personal triumphs in leading productive lives when survivors awake from their nightmares. In presenting papers at scientific conferences, I had always been concerned that noting the vulnerability of survivors could re-victimize and stigmatize them. In speaking about their resilience, I was worried that findings could be misused to trivialize the enormity of survivors’ sufferings. I tried to straddle the pursuit of scientific knowledge with the sensitivity of being a survivor. Sometimes I even wondered if my feelings and memories as a survivor should be suppressed while pursuing “objective” scientific understandings.
