Post-Holocaust Subjective Memories of the Eastern Carpathians Ethnic Diversity Cover Image

Post-Holocaust Subjective Memories of the Eastern Carpathians Ethnic Diversity
Post-Holocaust Subjective Memories of the Eastern Carpathians Ethnic Diversity

Author(s): Dorota Burda-Fischer
Subject(s): Social history, WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), History of the Holocaust, History of Antisemitism, Ethnic Minorities Studies, Theory of Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: Stanisław Vincenz; Aharon Appelfeld; memory; Holocaust; oblivion; Polish-Jewish coexistence;

Summary/Abstract: The article examines subjective memories of two writers, Stanisław Vincenz and Aharon Appelfeld, who both omit central historical aspects while describing their Holocaust experiences. The works of the Polish writer Stanisław Vincenz and an excerpt from a work by the Israeli writer Aharon Appelfeld are interpreted while considering the role of historiographic metafiction in modern literature. Though the experiences of both authors are fairly different, their silence may be treated as an act of conscious forgetting, or as a mindful choice of Holocaust recollection. It is suggested that this silence actually offers a valuable perspective for both literary and historical research. While Appelfeld’s experience of the Holocaust was different from that of Vincenz, the silence of the authors carries profound meanings. Reading Vincenz and Appelfeld as historiographic metafiction is to read their silence.

  • Issue Year: 22/2019
  • Issue No: 43
  • Page Range: 81-106
  • Page Count: 26
  • Language: English