Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThis is a book that deserves to be read well beyond Holocaust studies. Goldberg's theoretical insights into "life stories" and his readings of law, language and what he calls the "epistemological grey zone" . . . provide a stunning antidote to our unthinking treatment of survivors as celebrities (as opposed to just people who have suffered terrible things) and to the ubiquity of commemorative platitudes.
* Times Higher Education supplement *
This is an important contribution to trauma studies and a powerful critique of those who use the "crisis" paradigm to study the Holocaust.
-- Dovile Budryte - Georgia Gwinnett College * Holocaust and Genocide Studies *
Every decade or so, an exceptional volume is born. Provocative and inspiring, historian Goldberg's volume is one such work in the field of Holocaust studies. . . . Highly recommended.
* Choice *
Amos Goldberg's Trauma in First Person: Diary Writing During the Holocaust is an important and thought-provoking book not only on reading Holocaust diaries, but also on what that reading can tell us about the extent of the destruction committed against Jews during the Holocaust.
* Reading Religion *
Table of ContentsPreface
Introduction: "If This is a Man"
Section I: Reading Holocaust Diaries
1. Holocaust Diaries—Between Life Story and Trauma
2. Reading the Diaries as a Critique of Holocaust Historiography
3. The Dynamic of the Text between the Two Deaths—A 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
