EDITH KURZWEIL
TESTIMONIES AND STUDIES
I
never imagined that the Holocaust would become a subject of study
after being swept under the rug for nearly four decades. After I arrived in
New York, in September 1940, no one showed much interest in my
odyssey. By the late 1970s, however, colleagues who specialized in
studying "survivors" wanted to interview me, to uncover the emotional
scars. In the 1940s, of course, I was a typical teenager, and thus preferred
to forget my nightmare immediately, to fit into America; and no one
then was concerned about what this might do to my psychic growth.
But recently, research on "survivors" has become almost as popular as
post-modernism and feminist theory.
Among the latest batch of books: the sociologist Zygmunt Bau–
man roots the event in the nature of modern society itself, in rational
management. Another sociologist, Steven Lowenstein, sets out to under–
stand the German-Jewish community he grew up in with his refugee
parents - New York's Washington Heights. Most likely he interviewed a
number of the forty contributors to Abraham Peck's compendium, who
were asked to recall the circumstances of their flight, and to comment
on the German-Jewish bequest to America, its relevance to democratic,
and to Jewish, values. David Rosenberg asked twenty-seven young fellow
writers to focus on "imagining" the Holocaust. To avoid
"overdramatizations" and "underremembering," he wanted them "to
personalize the Holocaust, and to represent the interplay of history,
memory, and myth against a cardboard background." And the Austrian
Gerald Szyszkowitz depicts the "underremembering" of his countrymen
'Zygmunt Bauman,
Modernity and the Holocaust.
Cornell University Press, 1989.
David Rosenberg, ed.,
Testimony: Contemporary Writers Make the Holocaust Personal.
Ran–
dom House, 1989.
Abraham
J.
Peck, ed., The
GemJan-jewish Legacy in America,
1938-1988:
From Bildung to
the Bill
of
Rights.
Wayne State University Press, 1989.
Steven M. Lowenstein,
Frankfurt
011
the Hlldson:
The
Gennan-jewish Commullity
of
Wash–
hlgton Heights,
1933-1983,
Its Stnlcture and Culture.
Wayne State University Press, 1989.
Gerald Szyszkowitz,
Putigam or the Art
of
Forgetting.
Ariadne Press, 1990.
