Implications of the Holocaust for a Woman: Was Life After Auschwitz Possible for Sophie Zawistowska?
Implications of the Holocaust for a Woman: Was Life After Auschwitz Possible for Sophie Zawistowska?

Author(s): Natalija D. Perišić
Subject(s): History, Fascism, Nazism and WW II, History of the Holocaust
Published by: Institut za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju
Keywords: Holocaust ; Trauma ; Survival ; Identity ; Choice; Auschwitz; Holocaust survivor
Summary/Abstract: William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice is a fictional story narrated by Stin- go, a young writer-to-be at that moment. After settling into a rooming house in Brooklyn in the summer of 1947, Stingo meets Sophie, a beau- tiful woman in her late twenties. The occasion of their first encounter is emotionally challenging for Stingo – he is immediately attracted to Sophie, he witnesses a horrible fight between her and her lover Na- than Landau, and he also learns that Sophie is a Holocaust survivor: “I saw for the first time the number tattooed on the suntanned, lightly freckled skin of her forearm – a purple number of at least five digits, too small to read in this light but graven, I could tell, with exactitude and craft.”1 The three (Stingo, Sophie, and Nathan) begin spending time together. The story reveals Nathan Landau, a wealthy New York- er with a Jewish background, as a promising scientist employed with Faiser, only for it to be discovered that Nathan is actually a doorman there, has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and abuses drugs. His occasionally extremely violent behaviors, first of all towards Sophie, can be now “explained.” Their relationship during the story is one of obsession and impulsiveness, with ups and downs, and one that finally ends in their joint suicide.

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