Jody - # 9 Rosen

Title:

Rosen, Ilana. Sister in Sorrow: Life Histories of Female Holocaust Survivors from Hungary Translated and Edited by Sandy Bloom (Detroit: Wayne University Press, 2008)

[What is up with that title? "Sister" in Sorrow?!?!?!]

Question:

What was the experience of Hungarian-Jewish women in the Holocaust? Why did these women stay in Hungary postwar? More important, how should we as scholars analyze oral history?

Method:

After conducting oral histories she then picks through the thicket by utilizing her skills and training by looking through the literary-psychoanalytic and phenomenological-hermeneutic lens.

Summary of Argument:  

Approaching from a personal outlook, Rosen begins by illuminating her connection as a second-generation woman attempting to balance historical/personal research that ultimately culminated into a dissertation about the experience of Hungarian women during the Holocaust. While her interviews with a select fifteen Hungarian-Jewish women (condensed from her dissertation) are fully divulged in the last half of the book, Rosen chose to analyze her interviews from the perspective of diverse disciplines: literary-psychoanalytic and phenomenological- hermeneutic. Additionally, she follows gender-based research and explains that women channeled traditional domestic skills as well as the empathetic, communication, and listening abilities into coping with the Holocaust experience. More important, Rosen's expertise fills in the 'block' or vagueness of the interviewer by providing psycho-analytical offerings. She makes it clear that these 'missing' pieces/silences may never be understood - just approached - and these analytical glimpses are possibly just one of the many ways of attempting to understand these interviews. This work offers her attempt at unlocking underlying messages in survivor testimony. Most interesting, (most) survivors who stayed in Hungary postwar did so holding to hope that a missing loved one would return or that they were physically unable to leave [which then puts forth that all survivors would have left if they had the opportunity - ?!?!?]. Continuing this theme - Years later, through these interviews, Rosen shows that those who stayed are overwhelmed by guilt and more pessimistic than those who now live in Israel. And, of course, those 'stuck' in Hungary and not Israel seemingly had less of a chance to cope with Holocaust trauma through the many Israeli forms of release [what a crock].

Comment:

As usual, with most diaries or published oral histories (and maybe why I like non-analyzed Clara's War so much), the interviews should have been at the beginning of the book and the analysis at the end. Or the editor should lay out in the introduction that it would benefit the reader to develop their own view and then be wowed by Rosen's skill afterward. What is significant and distinctive to this work is that the narrative approach to analyze oral history is challenged by this new methodology.

At the same time, I am missing her thoughts on how these women feel being interviewed by a woman who is connected to their histories. Is she too close to her subject? Does this matter? Challenging survivor reluctance, Rosen also states that those interviewed are very "interested in telling me about their experiences (118)," which in my mind is doubtful - there is a plethora of reasons that survivors 'bear witness'. 

Most interesting for me is her argument concerning trauma: one must be careful with pointing to the usual 'trauma argument,' this  is not only refreshing but correct:

Concerning the ties between the Holocaust and trauma, then, while it is clear that the Holocaust entailed tremendous suffering for large portions of many populations and especially those destined for destruction, it is less clear that trauma is necessarily the central term in relating to the ways in which the survivors experienced their suffering in real time and process or relate to it in retrospect. In fact, we should be careful about automatically attaching trauma scholarship to Holocaust studies and narratives exactly because: (1) trauma originally relates to psychic processes and patterns of individuals, whereas the Holocaust - just like other twentieth-century mass-violence events and settings that are often examined through the prism of trauma -engulfed masses, and (2) trauma is caused by abrupt and short-term terrible experience, whereas the Holocaust lasted for years and entailed many repetitions of atrocities that would each count as traumatic in their own right in normal situations. The last point connect to Laura S. Brown's claim against viewing trauma as only an event outside of everyday life. In her feminist view of trauma, such a definition is relevant only to white upper-middle-class males, whereas minorities, the working class, and women are dehumanized by this definition, as it rules out their everyday, secret, or insidious suffering (29-30).

Argument (Chapter Outlines):

1. Brainstorming about the Life Histories of Women Holocaust Survivors
2. Mother-Daughter Discourse: A Literary-Psychoanalytical Analysis of Five Life Histories
3. The Holocaust Experience of Its Listeners and Readers: A Phenomenological-Hermeneutic Analysis of Ten Life Histories
4. A Journey without a Conclusion

Appendix: The Life Histories

Notes:

• 6->Hungary 9->Israel: Difference in narratives due to political approach (15)
• Silence postwar is true except within their own circles (15)
• Methodology: time period vs. literary-psychology (18)
• 5 examples that focus on postwar - told through mother-daughter views (24)
• Looking at the implied and covert (psycho-folklore) (25)
• Careful with pointing to trauma [AMEN!] (30)
• Continual [perceived ?] A/S (39)
• Holocaust brought home through oral history not history (51)
• Denial as survival (71)
• Depth of story dependent on survivors understanding of successful conveyance (122)
• Holocaust never fathomed (128)
• "New historicist reading" work (131)