L’héritage familial de la Shoah : approches et perspectives des historiens et des romanciers
The Holocaust as Family Heritage. Approaches and Perspectives of Historians and Novelists

Summary/Abstract: The memory of the Holocaust has been long shaped by the testimonies of camp survivors or other witnesses of the times rather than by historians. Over time, the perspective of the victims continues to dominate research, but eyewitnesses are no longer those who speak out. Descendants of those deported to Auschwitz retrace and put into words their family experience of the Jewish genocide. Nevertheless, revisiting history requires a different approach due to a mediated access to the past, the family/collective forgetting and the “sacred” nature of the experience. Investigation shows the closeness of the practices of historians and novelists and blurs the line between literature and history. Through contemporary narratives of the French historians Ivan Jablonka and Annette Wieviorka and novelists Anne Berest and Santiago H. Amigorena, the article examines historical and literary modes of writing about the family experience with Holocaust, and their intersecting perspectives.

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