GEOFFREY HARTMAN
Shoah and Intell ectual Wi tness
The
culture of rell1ell1br;lIlce is at high tide, but we cannot foresee how far
it will reach, or how lI1uch will remain valu able. At present, three genera–
tions are preoccupied with Holocaust lI1el1lory. They are the eyewitnesses;
their children, the second gcneration, who have subdued sOll1e of their
ambivalence and are eager to know their parents better; and the third gen–
eration, grand-children who treasure the personal stories of relatives now
slipping away. l30nds of love reinforce the golden chain of oral tradition,
which had been in danger of breaking, because of terrible and burdensome
experiences that cou ld not be integrated into fal1lily life. Among the first
generation there are also child survivors, the last direct witnesses, whose
significance increases when we focus on adolescence and pedagogy.
As the tide recedes and eyewi tnesses pass from the scene, public mem–
ory of the Shoah, so cruc ial to conteillporary thought, is increasingly
affected by new events and contexts-by the continuance of history.
According to an old saying, truth is the daughter of tillle; we might also say
that whatever leads to disclosurc, there is always a difference in the recep–
tion of that disclosure between a cOl11munity that feds close to the event
and the public at large.
In
another twenty or f<Jrty years a community sensitive
to
matters
touching on the Shoah will be lIlore of a public; that is, it will respond in
a more complex or self-reflective way. I wish to call
illlelic(/llaill'iflless
an
active reception that is relevallt both for our till1e and the encroaching
future, that could address with similar force a cOll1munity and the public. I
will be looking at the possibility of intellectual witness in those who did
not directly experience the Nazi era as well as in survivors whose wri tings
are extant and exemplary.
The idea of intellectual witness is overdetermined. "Witness," unless
employed in a specificall y legal or religious sense, is usually limited to eye–
witness testimony. l3ut then we would not ordinarily qualifY it by
"intellectual," since it is the immediacy, the sheer, wounding weight of
experience that counts.
In
Tilc LOII,f!.CSf Siladolll
I used the expression "sec–
ond generation wi mess," a concept that made sense because the pressure of
the event on the sons and daughters of the survivors was such that "wit–
ness" seemed justified. Almost imperceptibly, however, the phrase
