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characteristic of a certain contemporary discourse of the Holocaust, and
goes on to quote Berel Lang's point that "all literary representations of
the Holocaust are violations of the facts of history" insofar as they do
not let the facts speak for themselves. And because literary representa–
tion also denies historical facts, Hungerford says that she locates the dis–
cussion within "the larger cultural project." But this relativizing and
theorizing, which accords with trendy, postmodern scholarship, con–
fuses rather than clarifies what happened.
Lang, in
The Future of the Holocaust: Between History and Memory
(1999),
explains how history and memory together shape views of the
Holocaust, and assumes that another Holocaust is possible, because
"the past will in some form reappear in the future whether we wish it
to or not." Moreover, he maintains that questions about what induced,
produced, and sustained the Nazi genocide bring forth new evidence
about the event's impact: investigating its roots and consequences in
Germany, and then in Austria, France, and Poland, its tentacles have
come to stretch out to nearly all the "nations of the world." According
to Lang, individual memories now take on a collective burden, because
immediately after their liberation Holocaust survivors were too badly
wounded to talk; and because the second and third generations, when
casting it as part of their own past, do not recall a world before that
genocide, it takes on a sharper edge for them. Other historians classify
interpretations as "intentionalist" (they see a direct relationship
between ideology, planning and policy) and as "functionalist"{they link
decisions to specific contexts)-when made in Hitler's name by loyal
followers .
Under the circumstances, such a widening of the debate is justified.
But this is precisely why I am leery about "representations of the Holo–
caust."
It
happened.
It
remains a historical fact.
It
was an attempt to
eliminate every single Jew-which might well have succeeded had the
war gone on any longer or been won by the Third Reich instead of the
Allies. Indeed, anti-Semitism, from mild to virulent forms, existed long
before the Holocaust. As did greedy rulers and other individuals who
managed to "legally" deprive Jews of their human rights and property.
But never before had there been such systematically mechanized
slaughter.
THE DESCENDANTS of survivors, increasingly, have been fictionalizing
their parents' and grandparents' generation's ordeals. And so do a
