Recovering the Lost Canon: Public Memory and the Holocaust

BOOK REVIEWS

REVIEW ESSAY

RECOVERING THE LOST CANON: PUBLIC MEMORY AND THE HOLOCAUST

Roy Schwartzman

Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?By Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman. With a foreword by Arthur Hertzberg.Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000; pp. xviii + 312. $27.50.

The Future of the Holocaust: Between History and Memory. By Berel Lang. Ithaca,N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999; pp. xiv + 198. $45.00 cloth; $17.95 paper.

History and Memory After Auschwitz. By Dominick LaCapra. Ithaca, N.Y.: CornellUniversity Press, 1998; pp. ix + 214. $45.00 cloth; $15.95 paper.

The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation, Aftermath. Edited by Omer Bartov.London: Routledge, 2000; pp. x + 300. $85.00 cloth; $24.99 paper.

Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive. By Giorgio Agamben. Trans.Daniel Heller-Roazen. New York: Zone Books, 1999; pp. 175. $25.00.

Trauma and Life Stories: International Perspectives. Edited by Kim Lacy Rogers,Selma Leydesdorff, and Graham Dawson. London: Routledge, 1999; pp. x + 262.$90.00.

Women^s Holocaust Writing: Memory and Imagination. By S. Lillian Kremer. Lincoln:University of Nebraska Press, 1999; pp. xi + 278. $45.00 cloth; $24.95 paper.

T. S. Eliot begins The Waste Landhy alluding to the ambivalence associated withJesus's resurrection. He characterized the month of April, with its celebration ofEaster, as "mixing/ Memory and desire, stirring/ Dull roots with spring rain."^The combination of regret over the crucifbdon with the joyful anticipation of

Roy Schwartzman is Associate Professor of Communication at Northwest Missouri State University in

Maryville, Missouri.

© RJjetoric & Public AffairsVol. 4, No. 3, 2001, pp. 542-580ISSN 1094-8392

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rebirth provokes Eliot to use Easter as an occasion to plead for spiritual regen-eration. His juxtaposition of memory and desire reveals an enigma at the coreof human relationships with the past. Memory is often accompanied by pangsof regret, since lost time cannot be recovered.

The insertion of desire changes the complexion of memory. Rather than anattempt merely to duplicate what has already occurred, memory might be a way toground hope for the future in historical precedent. When linked with desire, mem-ory transforms from a sterile preservation of what was into a productive basis forshaping what could be. Some reconsideration of memoria as a rhetorical canon mustoccur to illuminate this transformation of memory from retrospect to prospect. Asrecently as 1995, scholarship on public memory was labeled "nascent," so a rehabil-itation of memory seems long overdue.^

The rhetorical treatment of memory has fallen far short of the redemptive visionadumbrated in TJte Waste Land. Indeed, the fate of memoria as a rhetorical canoncould be described as a wasteland. Arguably, the study of memory never recoveredfrom the blow dealt by the written word. Memory degenerated to memoria technica,tricks to recall long lists of information that could impress audiences, but hardlyserved any significant social function. Rhetorical theorists devoted far less attentionto this canon than to any other, and they concurred that it involved only mnemonictechniques for reciting speeches.^ The predominant classical understanding ofmemoria limited this canon to a capacity for reproducing facts, with no attention tohow those facts might invite different interpretations. The typical testimony to thepower of memory related feats of recall, the ability to reconstruct prior events.'̂

The Holocaust offers an appropriate site to study the productive employment ofmemory. Arguably the most horrifying event in human history, the Holocaust pre-sents an extreme challenge for turning remembrance into a productive activity toenrich human experience rather than solely to perpetuate regret or agony. Indeed,if memory can aid in cuUing the lessons from this tragedy, then the Holocaust couldprove the decisive example for reconsidering the role of memory in fostering peace-ful human interaction.

Several recent books about the Holocaust illustrate attempts to revive and enrichmemory, thereby restoring memoria to its rightful place as one of the five canonsnecessary for effective discourse. Far from treating issues of the Third Reich as "afootnote for historians," the rehabilitation of memory should offer insight regard-ing how remembrance of the past can assist in formulating responses for future actsof intolerance and hatred.^ The Simon Wiesenthal Center offers a tacit recognitionthat such a project could yield worthwhile results, titling its monthly magazineResponse to accompany its admonitions never to forget the Holocaust.

Despite their wide diversity, the books examined in this essay revolve around acommon center: the collective representation of memory. How memory getspreserved in monuments, literature, testimonials, and historiography falls squarely

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within the purview of rhetoric. While the mechanics of an individual's memoryprovide subject matter for psychologists, public memory enacts an ongoing, evolv-ing discourse that struggles with what roles the past might play in the present andfuture. Thus the testimonials, exhibits, and other artifacts of collective memoryserve as narratives and as arguments for how to represent and commemorate thepast.^

ASSEMBLING FRAGMENTS OF MEMORY INTO RHETORICS OF

REMEMBRANCE

The Holocaust provides a crucial juncture for considering collective memories asinterpreters contend with its significance for contemporary Jewish identity, ongo-ing German blame and guilt, and what it suggests about the potential for peacefulcoexistence among all people. Omer Bartov's anthology of essays about theHolocaust spans the entire scope of scholarship and testimony. Each selection isframed by an introductory essay by the editor that explains how the piece's argu-ments fit into ongoing discussions about the Holocaust. Bartov's collection enactsone role of memory: to reassemble the past to fit present needs. Every chapter is arecent reprint; the oldest is a snippet from the 1985 edition of Raul Hilberg's mon-umental The Destruction of the European fews. The selections are grouped themati-cally, centering on anti-Semitic and racial theories that led to the Holocaust,implementation of Nazi racial policies, and reactions that range from war crimestrials to denials. I will concentrate on the portions of the book most directly rele-vant to public memory, returning to the selections at opportune moments through-out the discussion.

Bartov's own essay confronts why so many Germans later avoided dealing withthe Holocaust at all, omitting it from history books and not acknowledging anymemory of it as part of a collective past. Until very recently, much German schol-arship tended to overlook the victims. Even the most carefully documented histo-ries of everyday activity in the Third Reich chronicled the experiences of theperpetrators. By not acknowledging the victims as individuals, their memory hasbeen preserved—if at all—as a faceless mass of objects while the perpetrators aredescribed in minute detail. Thus the question arises: whose experiences does historypreserve, and who fails to qualify as memorable?

By far the most disturbing selection comes from the war diary of Felix Landau.A very early (1931) member of the Nazi Party, he became a minor SS official andorganized Jewish slave labor. The diary provides astonishing firsthand evidence ofhow memory can mask atrocities as normal events, justifying outright murder as amundane job duty: "On 17 July 1941 nothing much happened. I messed aroundwith the Jews some more—and that's my work" (196). This comment occurs twoweeks before Landau casually mentions: "At 12.00 the Council of Elders reported to


me that all the uniforms were ready. Since I had twenty of its men shot for refusing towork everything's been running smoothly." He then moves without transition tohow he must send money home to his family. "I also sent some toys to my wife forthe children" (201). These remarkable juxtapositions show how memory activelyserves to modify and dilute traumatic events. The fact that a devoted husband andfather can refer to organized murder mere hours after its commission as all in aday's work reflects more than the trite banality of evil. It demonstrates that verbal-izing past experience permits coping with those events, in this case by normalizingthem. Memory thus contributes to self-persuasion, coloring the past to suit presentneeds.

Landau's diary proves that memory can distort, but memory also fades and frag-ments. The remnants of remembrance serve several rhetorical purposes. From anepistemological perspective, mnemonic fragmentation is detrimental. Piecemealmemories constitute only an incomplete representation of the past that begs for cor-rection to restore wholeness to the original events. From a rhetorical perspective, thegaps and inaccuracies that pockmark memory simply represent the fragmentednature of human experience without an ultimate guide, be it God, Reason, or theForm of the Good, to make sense of it all. This rhetorical version of memory acceptsfragmentation and would evaluate remembrance not solely by its accuracy but by itscreative ability to reconcile past with present. Kim Lacy Rogers and colleagues affirmthat studying how memories are recounted "entails investigating discontinuities andfragmentation" (15), recognizing their presence in articulated memories whileunderstanding their roots and reasons. Memorialization does not necessarily entailrecreating the past, since the horrors of the concentration camps can be only repre-sented, not reproduced, in a memorial. Instead, the crumbling remnants of thecamps evoke the attempted destruction of those deemed unfit to live, and the slowerosion of the buildings may represent humanity's gradual tearing down of thehatred that spawned these structures. Indeed, this decaying mediation between pastand present may hold the key to understanding first-hand accounts of theHolocaust, as Giorgio Agamben explains.

MEMORY AND THE RESPONSE TO THE UNSPEAKABLE

Agamben, a professor of philosophy at the University of Verona, takes as his pointof departure not the physical ruins of the camps, but instead the ruins of theinmates, the detritus of humanity known as Muselmdnner. These shadowy figuresrecur in witness testimony. Although literally translated "Muslim," this Germanterm has no suitable English equivalent. It designates people who became nonhu-man: mute, vegetative witnesses to the horrors of the concentration camps, unableto speak or otherwise interact with others. Their faces remained expressionless, andthey usually remained immobile, not even tending to basic personal hygiene.

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Agamben argues that to understand the concentration camps requires understand-ing how "the paradigm of extermination" gives way to a deeper paradigm: the trans-formation of individual humans into nameless objects (52). This type oftransformation breaks so radically with past instances of immorality that BerelLang claims in The History of the Holocaust: Between History and Memory that thehistory of evil itself must be rewritten to accommodate such atrocity (26-39).

The Muselmanner embody the difficulty of testimony about the Holocaust.Dwelling on "the threshold between the human and the inhuman," they furnish liv-ing examples of the boundary conditions that infuse public memory. How canevents in the past be represented but not recreated in the present? How can wordscapture the most traumatic events in life? How can the fullness of past experiencebe recaptured by individual voices? How can one person testify in someone else'sbehalf, especially when that person has died? Indeed, the Muselmann exemplifiesthe epistemological quandary of testimony about the Holocaust. "The Muselmannis a limit figure of a special kind, in which not only categories such as dignity andrespect but even the very idea of an ethical limit lose their meaning" (63). TheMuselmann, therefore, occupies the logical limit of human existence: a human inname only, stripped of all individuality, dignity, and self-sufficiency.

The quest to become a living witness, to testify that such unimaginable crueltyactually happened, provided some prisoners with a motive to survive. If an inmatedid survive, however, what symbolic resources could convey the fuU measure of theexperience? Lawrence Langer states that survivors' reluctance to teU their stories"betrays not only a disinclination to speak about such things, but the absence of anidiom and a context of values to enable such a discussion" (in Bartov, 245).Ironically, the witnesses to the Holocaust must testify not in the name of truth orjustice, but for the sake of giving voice to those who did not survive. In essence, thetestimonials act as proxies for the people who cannot bear witness. Firsthand wit-nesses have experienced a defining event in their Lives, yet its violation of all imag-inable moral, religious, and experiential norms makes the event itself impossible torepresent faithfully in language.

For Agamben, memory of the Holocaust confronts aporias at several levels. Atthe level of the witness, survivors bear witness not only to their own experiences,but also to the experiences of those who are not present. The testimony itself is anattempt to give voice to the voiceless. At the symbolic level, a truly accurate descrip-tion of the Holocaust must confiront the rupture of customary polarities that definemorality—good/evil—and definition itself, since genus-differentiae rely on clear-cut categories. Definitional distinctions crumble in what Primo Levi called "the grayzone" that "did not conform to any model; the enemy was all around but also inside,the 'we' lost its limits, the contenders were not two, one could not discern a singlefrontier but rather many confused, perhaps innumerable frontiers, which stretchedbetween each of us" (in Bartov, 254). Agamben points out the quandary of the


Sonderkommando units, prisoners who tended the crematoria (24-25). Do theyqualify as victims, collaborators, perpetrators, or something in between?

To his credit, Agamben raises the most penetrating questions regarding publicmemory and resists offering facile answers. He does suggest that, contrary toNietzsche, beyond good and evil lies a cleansing sense of shame. To feel shameabout the Holocaust (or anything else) requires recognition of solidarity with thevictims plus acknowledgment that some attempt at rectitude is worthwhile. Shamedwells in the gray area between being subject to moral obligations and being a sub-ject that can bear responsibility for improving upon the past.

Although Agamben poses important questions about how to situate theHolocaust ethically and epistemologically, the outlines of a rhetorical approach tomemory require further clarification. In their detachment of history from the idealof value-neutral accounts that extinguish the narrator, Berel Lang and DominickLaCapra identif)^ the Holocaust as a site where rhetoric and memory can reunite.Lang explicitly makes this connection, claiming that "the histories of rhetoric" qual-ify as territory within which "the Nazi genocide also warrants a place" (29). As Langobserves, memory—unlike history—always belongs to someone. Memories neverdetach from the person who remembers. Memory, therefore, seems to take a backseat to history because historians reconcile individual memories into an overarch-ing narrative. Lang rejects this "Displacement Model" in favor of a "DialecticalModel" that explicitly recognizes the centrality of communication. For Lang, mem-ory is not the raw material for history. Instead, memory is "a social construct,depending for its expression on a principle of exchange and collaboration" (9).History and memory assume an equal footing. The impersonal, detached, objectivenarration of history and the personal, involved, individual perspective of memorycomplement each other. LaCapra agrees with these sentiments, caUing for a view ofmemory that elevates it beyond raw material for historians. He challenges histori-ans to connect their "modes of empirical research and analysis with a more dialogicengagement with the past that furthers the attempt to work through problems thatremain alive as forces in the present" (68).

The entrance of memory into a public forum can reach two extremes.Forgiveness may offer a way to expunge painful memories. The adage "forgive andforget" implies an erasure of the past through forgiveness. Revenge occupies theopposite extreme. Memory becomes a catalyst for punishing those who wrongedothers. Using Simon Wiesenthal's The Sunflower as his springboard, Lang confrontsthe question of whether forgiveness should be granted by parties other than the vic-tims. One view holds that only the wronged parties themselves can forgive. But howcan a perpetrator who feels genuine remorse obtain forgiveness except by apologiz-ing to the very people who were harmed (an impossible task if the harm was mur-der)? Furthermore, doesn't everyone deserve a chance at expiation? If third partiescan grant forgiveness, then who would be entitled to grant forgiveness in the case of

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crimes against humanity (a problem Alain Finkielkraut adumbrates in his contri-bution to the Bartov anthology)? Indeed, indiscriminate forgiveness seems to con-flate all magnitude of crimes. If everything deserves forgiveness, then why recognizedegrees of wrongdoing? Lang cautions: "When forgiveness is immediate and with-out limit, there is no consistent reason why moral categories as such—either con-demnation or approval on moral grounds—should be sustained at all" (141). Langlimits but does not renounce forgiveness. His grappling with the issue serves as themost penetrating and sophisticated treatment of forgiveness relative to theHolocaust.

Revenge also receives thoughtful, nuanced analysis. Revenge may exemplifyFreudian displacement, especially when later generations are punished for evilstheir parents committed. For example, I know a Jewish liberator of the Ohrdrufconcentration camp who staunchly refuses to buy any German automobile to thisday. Revenge shows how memory becomes an active construct, an extension of thepast into the present. The ability of memory to transcend the past renders it morethan retrospective. "But memory involves, together with a look backward, thecapacity to reiterate or 're'-present what is recalled there; that is, by a purchase onthe future. Without the capacity for this projection forward, memory would be inthe past as well as of it" (Lang, 159).

In History and Memory After Auschwitz, Dominick LaCapra critiques several dif-ferent ways memory has entered the public forum. Claude Lanzmann's film Shoahliterally re-creates memory as witnesses agonize about their experiences whileLanzmann relentlessly probes to elicit specific descriptions. Unlike the gruesomescenes of corpses in Night and Fog, the past emerges through the stories of thosewho lived it rather than through graphic film footage. Witness testimonial con-structs history. LaCapra suggests that elicitation of memory should concentratemore on working-through rather than acting-out human suffering. The Freudianconcept of working-through emphasizes that one must actively engage the past tohelp explain current behaviors and emotions. Publicly aired suffering can serve pro-ductive roles, but working-through moves beyond dramatizing toward reconcilia-tion with the past. Thus mourning and ritualized memorialization become part ofhow memory can heal as well as harm. In recording v^hat witnesses experienced,Lanzmann pays little attention to how those memories can serve as a springboardfor comprehending the Holocaust and its effects.

Art Spiegelman's cartoon series Maus raises similar issues about appropriateways to articulate memory, especially since he recounts his father's story. By draw-ing Jews as mice, Nazis as cats, and Poles as pigs, does Spiegelman trivialize theHolocaust? More generally, do visual and verbal images of testimony render narra-tives more effectively than the words alone? Maus does contain graphic images ofviolence and suffering, although the "images are displaced in that they operatethrough metaphor and allegory in a contemporary re-enactment of an Aesopian


gesture" (174). A central question concerns the legitimacy and effectiveness of "thecarnivalesque as a modality of memory with respect to the Shoah" (174).Representing the sublime of human sacrifice, suffering, and cruelty through the"low culture" medium of cartoons epitomizes the paradoxical nature of publicmemory that Agamben embraces.

LaCapra's critical analyses illustrate the difficult relationship between what hecalls "primary memory" and "secondary memory" (20). The firsthand accounts thatcomprise primary memory have the powerful force of the eyewitness and personalcommitment. Unfortunately they contain gaps, inaccuracies, and idiosyncrasies.Secondary memory consists of work by historians, critical analysts, and artists suchas Lanzmann and Spiegelman. It suffers from detachment and distortion of evi-dence through time, but gains objectivity and the ability to corroborate claims morethoroughly. Anyone seeking to understand the past must negotiate the relationshipbetween these forms of memory.

GENDERED MEMORY

Nowhere is the negotiation of primary and secondary memory more challengingthan the choice of whose memories reach public awareness. LaCapra notes thatLanzmann's Shoah hardly recognizes women at all (128). Until very recently, fictiondealing with the Holocaust has been in much the same situation. Although muchsuperb literature about the Holocaust, both testimonials and fiction, has been writ-ten by women, relatively little attention has been given to how memories of theHolocaust might be affected by gender. Omer Bartov's anthology includes a selectionfrom the memoirs of Heda Margolius Kovaly to help correct this omission. The twomost commonly read authors of Holocaust testimonials, Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi,are male. Furthermore, the most obligatory survival account in every Holocauststudies curriculum, Wiesel's Night, focuses on the relationship between Wiesel andhis father. For all its originality. Art Spiegelman's celebrated Mans chronicle, writtenin the comix (serious cartoon) genre, approaches second-generation Holocaustexperience the same way: as a son's attempt to reconcile his relationship with hisfather.

In Women's Holocaust Writing: Memory and Imagination, S. Lillian Kremer sowsthe seeds of gendered understandings of the Holocaust, bringing to fruition manyinsights that earlier testimonies, anthologies, and critical analyses had merely sug-gested. Exploring the "hitherto unmapped" territory of American women writingabout the Holocaust, the author seeks to elaborate the "ways gender significationinforms fictional Holocaust texts" via "depictions of gender- and culturally shapedHolocaust responses" (ix-x). Kremer immediately tackles whether gender-specifictreatments of the Holocaust are justified. Rejecting the claim that women'sHolocaust interpretations represent an alternative to male-centered narratives.

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Kremer sees the experience of misogyny as a complement to racism. Thus womenwho must grapple with this dual discrimination could aid in cross-applying thelessons learned about coping with sexism to the experiences of racism.Furthermore, women tend to discuss the Holocaust more as a loss of family andother human connections, while for men the Holocaust achieved most of its dehu-manizing effects by robbing them of autonomy. Bartov concurs, recognizing "muchgreater talk of solidarity" in women's narratives (9). Restoration of connectednessrather than invigoration of competitiveness could shed important light on the avail-able means of coping with traumatic experiences.

Kremer's book offers biographically informed analyses of Holocaust-related writ-ing by Ilona Karmel, Elzbieta Ettinger, Hana Demetz, Susan Fromberg Schaeffer,Cynthia Ozick, Marge Piercy, and Norma Rosen. Kremer interviewed all the writerspersonally, collecting extensive authorial commentary on their works and theirapproaches to the Holocaust. Methodologically, Kremer's book testifies to somethingthe author vigorously asserts in conversations: effective criticism requires someunderstanding of the author's biographical background and intentions. Kremer'sapproach goes against the grain of close textual readings as conducted by the NewCritics or by theorists who would argue that authorial experience and intent have noprivileged status as interpretive evidence. Indeed, Kremer strongly believes that tounderstand an author's attempts to cope with a fundamentally significant event suchas the Holocaust requires delving into how that experience affected the author.

Gender-specific treatments of the Holocaust do risk downplaying the universal-ity of the tragedy, its indelible imprint on everyone who lives in its shadow. AsKremer observes, however, the coping mechanisms of women may enrich every-one's inventional capacity to find ways of transforming traditionally gender-specificbehaviors and aptitudes into universally helpful tendencies. For example, Kremerfinds that women could successfully fmd ways to generalize from their familial rolesas mothers and caretakers, creating impromptu extended families amid the hodge-podge of camp inmates. On an individual level, women who experienced the con-centration camps evince some gender-specific survival mechanisms. Judith MagyarIsaacson, an Auschwitz survivor, tells audiences she addresses at her pubHc appear-ances that her greatest fear was not death but rape. Apparently some maintenanceof control over one's own body preserved a degree of autonomy, some sense ofwithholding one's self firom the absolute control of the Nazis. Unlike most men whohad derived much of their identity through their professions and now lost thatidentity by being forced laborers, women such as Isaacson felt they could preservesomething—their own bodies—from their captors. As long as something remainedinviolate, the persecutors were not omniscient. Indeed, the female body itself offersan important added dimension to the Holocaust's challenges to humanity. Womenhad to confiront not only the risk of rape, but the horrors of childbirth, the challengeof menstruation, and gynecological experiments.


In addition, Jewish women, who did not bear the physical mark of circumcision,were left with wide ranges of ways they might resourcefully escape detection (16).Thus it is not surprising to find women trying to manage fatherless households,deciding how to keep the remainder of the family intact. Women authors alsodevote greater attention than their male counterparts to the fate of children. Inwomen's narratives, the children become more individualized as characters. Part ofthis tendency may be because women often had to make the difficult choice of howand whether to hide children, send them to non-Jewish families, help them escape,or equip them to pass as "Aryan." From a feminist perspective. Holocaust literaturecan offer a broad spectrum of women's experiences and roles.

Overall, the literature Kremer examines shows how fiction also can bear witness,"engaging memory as something more than recollection," equipping everyone withadditional resources for converting unspeakable horrors into discourse that canforge greater human community (237). The fact that such inventional resources canemerge from fiction testifies to the benefits of expanding the scope of memorybeyond empirically verifiable re-creations of past events.

DISMEMBERING REMEMBERING

Although the characters in women's Holocaust fiction evince the resourcefulnessoften overlooked in historical accounts, memory also bears connections withhuman anguish. Berel Lang claims: "Suffering and pain are the surest incentives formemory . . . " (175). This rather pessimistic point underscores how public memorycan reinflict past pain and trap one in the past or help transcend it, releasing onefrom the prison of silence. When a victim shares her or his story, it may add adimension to history, since history does tend to be written by the victors rather thanthe victims. Traumatic memories can aid not only the narrator who can find areceptive audience, but also the practice of history itself. Dominick LaCapra observesthat memories of victims could disrupt the complacent self-image of a society ascaring and beneficent toward everyone (8-9). The therapeutic effects of memory,however, can disappear if someone dismisses the victim's narrative. Dismissal ordis-membering, as in Holocaust denial, in effect negates the authority of the witnessby refusing to acknowledge the life-defining experience.

The studies collected in the anthology Trauma and Life Stories approach mem-ory from the standpoint of coping. Each of the nine case studies deals with how sur-vivors of traumatic events can deal with the damage those experiences haveinflicted. The studies cover a wide range of populations and events: Guatemalanwar widows, wartime experiences in the Malvinas (Falklands), lynchings in theMississippi delta, guerilla warfare in Zimbabwe, sexual abuse victims inPennsylvania, violence in South Africa, political prisoners in Czechoslovakia, andpersecuted Ethiopian Jews. This eclectic collection concludes with essays covering

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false memory syndrome, methodological recommendations, and book reviews ofpublications dealing with traumatic memories. The enormous scope of this volumeprecludes detailed analysis of each essay, so I will concentrate on its main points ofrelevance to rhetoric and public memory.

Trauma and Life Stories could serve as an important methodological resource forresearchers who investigate representations of memory through enthnography ororal histories. The editors quickly observe that their objective is not only to probe thepsychological effects of traumatic memories and the dynamics of recollection, butalso to explore "the representation of these memories in the language and form oftheir life stories" (1). The choice to emphasize how memory is constructed throughdiscourse makes the book's orientation thoroughly rhetorical. All the research in thisvolume shares the same methodological approach: testimonials of those who expe-rienced the events are privileged as authoritative accounts, not simply of the eventsbut of how witnesses have undergone and interpreted the events. Significantly,recovery from damaging memories is not a private, individual process. Instead, cop-ing with traumatic memories takes the form of working out the repercussions ofevents by public, symbolic processes: individualizing and naming the victims, shar-ing stories of suffering and triumph, establishing commemorative rituals, and otheracts (6). The notorious instances of supposedly recovered memories that turned outto be false do not negate the importance of formulating and preserving collectivememory. The function of collective memory perhaps relates more directly to its rolein coping with trauma than to its construction of a single, authoritative account ofpast events.^ Thus the historical function of representing the past takes a back seat tothe rhetorical function of working out a relationship with the past.

Another important kinship with rhetoric is the cognitive role of the narrative.Echoing Walter Fisher's claims about the centrality of narratives in communication,the essays in Trauma and Life Stories approach "storytelling as a construction ofmeaning—an attempt to come to terms with or master intensely disturbing experi-ences" (8). Testimonials, therefore, should be checked for accuracy, but always withthe codicil that they represent ways to deal with momentous experiences, apartfrom their factual precision. Extensive use of personal narratives also engages fem-inist theory, which has recognized the political and social significance of discursivegenres previously classified as private and nonrhetorical (9). Diaries, family pho-tographs, conversations, memorials in the home, and other unpublicized commu-nicative acts broaden the realm of potential subjects for rhetorical analysis. Finally,eliciting and scrutinizing narratives complement current moves in communicationstudies to restore silenced and marginalized voices. Many people who have under-gone traumatic events could not or would not discuss their experiences because todo so might revivify past horrors or risk renewed persecution. Recording and dis-cussing the victims' side, however, can help correct skewed or biased historicalaccounts by adding the perspectives of those whose views have been muted. The


study of how memories are represented therefore opens a space for listening to thesevoices (12-13).

Although valuable, the life stories approach does present methodological chal-lenges. How are the narratives selected that will form the basis of study? Since theform of trauma may affect the way a narrative is constructed and told, which nar-ratives receive priority and why? Self-selection bias may creep in as well, since themost vocal narrators may recount the most conventional and socially accepted sto-ries. Furthermore, the articulation of a coherent story may indicate some degree ofpsychic health, so those who most need to cope through storytelling may be theleast able to construct a sensible story. Thus the most repressed narratives are theleast likely to emerge. Take, for example, the Muselmdnner described earlier. Theirstories may prove critically important for understanding the source and nature oftheir trauma, yet their memories and entire beings have been numbed to muteness.

Life stories may appear idiosyncratic and resistant to systematic scrutiny. Yet thetools that rhetorical scholars wield should prove adequate to the task. As Trauma andLife Stories demonstrates, classifications into genres and other meaningful groupingsare possible and practical. The important lesson that narratives offer is that the formsof stories can diverge in the ways they represent experience (15). When approachingthe Holocaust, for example, witnesses use art, drama, novels, poetry, and many othersymbolic resources to convey their stories. Furthermore, not all narratives willprogress linearly or even consistently. No single form of symbolic representation, suchas the platform speech, assumes primacy. In his essay about Ethiopian Jews, GadiBenEzer explicitly acknowledges work on "the rhetoric of trauma" (30). Examiningnarratives of traumatic events can proceed by mapping the patterns of stories aboutthe same set of events. BenEzer identifies thirteen indicators that a narrative mightchronicle traumatic events (34—36). These signals range fi-om nonverbal signs of dis-comfort to emotional numbness in the narration. Such indicators not only couldincrease the sensitivity of researchers who interview storytellers, but could serve asways to mark a story as traumatic and offer appropriate counseling to the narrator.

The narration of life stories invites consideration of an ugly phenomenon thataccompanies their articulation: denial of the stories and arguing against their verac-ity. Holocaust denial, however, represents a much larger phenomenon than anattack on witness testimonies. Under the guise of impartial historical scholarship,deniers have made concerted efforts to discredit all evidence attesting to theHolocaust. One reaction to the deniers has been to ignore them entirely, assumingthat refutations would draw attention to their efforts. But this ostrich-like strategyseems to have failed. The deniers persist, and their doubts about the Holocaust con-tinue to receive attention from mainstream media as potentially credible view-points. For this reason, argues Berel Lang, the worst response to Holocaust denial issilence (190-92). Perversions of memory, Lang contends, call for more aggressivepublic discussion of how to evaluate historical evidence and what role memory

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plays in evaluating and coping with the past. The lesson of such discussions is thatmemory has a moral as well as a factual dimension, since public memory articulatesa relationship between the witness, the past, and the present audience.

Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman wrote Denying History: Who Says theHolocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? to confront Holocaust denialhead-on. The book serves as a layperson's orientation to the historiographic meth-ods that discredit Holocaust denial. In the process, the book becomes a resource forunpacking the persuasive strategies the deniers use in their attempts to invalidatecollective memory. Shermer and Grobman resort not only to historiography, butalso interview several principal deniers, who generally seem to be courteous andotherwise "normal."

The authors immediately distinguish between history and pseudohistory, defin-ing the latter as "the rewriting of the past for present personal or political purposes"(2). This bifurcation invites trouble. After all, the eyewitnesses who were interviewedin the Rogers et al. anthology related their historical accounts not for the grand pur-pose of revealing the course of world events, but to grapple with their personal lossesand suffering. More generally, every reinterpretation of the past to some extentreflects a degree of personal or political rationale. The fundamental poverty ofHolocaust denial does not lie in its alleged ideological contamination of virginallyobjective historiography. Rather, Holocaust denial contains methodologicallyunsound historical research and sloppy argumentation alongside its anti-Semiticagenda. Berel Lang argues in The Euture of the Holocaust: "One has only to analyzerhetorically the specific statements of Holocaust-denial to recognize in them almostalways, if not necessarily, standard features of the antisemitic tradition," includingminimizing the Holocaust compared to non-Jewish atrocities, making gratuitousanti-Jewish comments, and accusing opponents of participation in pro-Jewish con-spiracies (191-92). By defining history as both the sequence of past events and theirinterpretation, Shermer and Grobman recognize that history has a rhetorical ele-ment in its arguments for plausible renderings of the past.

The mistake most people make when confronted with Holocaust denial is thatthey adopt the argumentative standards established by the deniers: lack of conclu-sive evidence means that a claim shotild be discarded. The key to effective historicalargumentation, however, is to insist that the preferred historical explanations offerthe best available account of events. Assuming a stance akin to the scientist whorejects the idea of the crucial experiment—a single test that decisively proves or dis-proves a hypothesis—the historian formulates explanations from the convergenceof evidence (31-35). This phrase forms the core concept of Denying History.Holocaust deniers seize upon minor inconsistencies and dubious individual gaps inhistorical accounts. Genuine historians look at the evidence as a whole, letting thepreponderance of factual data guide construction of theories that provide the mostlikely explanations.


Denying History offers important insights regarding the agenda of Holocaustdenial. The deniers share a tendenq^ to use conspiracy arguments, claiming thatJews and sympathizers with Jewish causes have concocted facts about theHolocaust. The rhetorical virtue of conspiracy theories is their irrefutability.Opposing arguments get disqualified, for example, because the alleged facts sup-porting the Holocaust are tainted by Jewish interests. It is more than coincidentalthat the efforts of historical revision focus disproportionately on an event that iden-tifies Jews as some of the primary victims. The specific argumentative tactics ofHolocaust deniers primarily center on attacking gaps or disagreements regardingspecific events as prima facie reasons to disbelieve the veracity of all events relatedto the Holocaust. Thus if several witnesses give conflicting reports, the deniers castdoubt on the event rather than seek a best fit among the different accounts. In short,the denial movement systematically dismembers accounts of the past, rarely articu-lates a coherent position, and stresses what is unknown (103).

Shermer and Grobman repeatedly identify witness testimony as especially vul-nerable to the tactics of deniers. Since human memories are shaped by so many fac-tors, particularly by the voluminous information that has surfaced in the decadesafter the Holocaust, witnesses are bound to make mistakes, forget details, or getconfused. These problems will become more common as witnesses age. Deniersshift the burden of proof to each witness, as if any one piece of evidence could provethe Holocaust. The problem, as Agamben realizes, lies in the inherently fragmentarynature of testimonials. Some of the evidence is missing or destroyed, so the pastmust be reconstructed. Since no reconstruction is utterly faithfiil to lived experi-ence, the deniers actually deny the methods of historical rationality.

The authors of Denying History produce a wide array of different kinds of evi-dence to discredit the deniers: documents, photographs, blueprints of crematoria,eyewitness testimony of perpetrators and prisoners. Since history is contingent,legitimate "revision" occtirs whenever new facts or interpretations cause modifica-tions of conclusions (238). Historians assume the obligation to assemble explana-tions that account for the preponderance of evidence (172). No assemblage ofevidence invariably points to a single conclusion, especially since other evidenceawaits discovery. The deniers fail to explain this massive convergence of evidencetoward the conclusion that the Nazi regime was intentionally geared toward sys-tematic extermination. The deniers mistakenly treat memory as verifiable if andonly if an individual piece of evidence can establish indubitably that an event hap-pened. Memory does not operate that way. Reconstruction of the past involves cre-atively reassembling its fragments so they cohere in sensible combinations.

BOOK REVIEWS 557

T H E M O R A L OF T H E STORY

Returning to LaCapra's concept of working-through the past through public mem-ory, perhaps Holocaust remembrance should clear a path toward creating enoughhuman solidarity to support the articulation of memory as a means of coping withthe past. LaCapra questions the uncritical celebrations of diversity, calling fordeeper consideration of the various kinds of differences among people and how toresolve them. Difference does not amount to radical incommensurability, but to thepossibility that understanding and moral codes are possible even while admittingthe absence of universal truths. One important difference is ethical: recognizingthat survivor testimony deserves recognition as a legitimate way to work throughpainful memories even if the testimony emerges as fragmentary or inaccurateaccording to canons of historiography.

Lawrence Langer notes that oral testimonies of survivors beg for "interpretiveremembering" (in Bartov, 248). We try to feel the humanity of deceased relativeswhen survivors display photographs of family and friends. The testimonies wrestlewith "how to establish a connection between consequential living, and inconse-quential dying" (248). How does one preserve the will to live and contribute to soci-ety while maintaining the memory of senseless death?

The books examined in this essay extend far beyond issues of public memory, yetall offer insights regarding how to articulate remembrance of the past. TheHolocaust poses vexing challenges in this area, since any symboHc representation ofsuch an ultimate evil risks trivializing or glorifying the barbaric deeds. On YomHaShoah, the annual Jewish commemoration of the Holocaust, communitiesthroughout the world issue the command: "Remember!" ("Zakhor!"). In response,one could answer, "Yes, but how?" The answer must lie beyond the dry recital offacts and dates, in making the past resonate in the present and future. Berel Langoffers an eloquent insight: "If 'Zakhor' is an imperative, the need to know howmemory works is no less pressing than the need to determine what it is that mem-ory should remember" (160). Perhaps memory springs to life in the reaffirmationof testimony, the recognition that the narrator has a personal stake in recountingthe past. Memory blossoms wherever the past has not become passe.

NOTES

1. T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, in Selected Poems (New York: Harcourt, 1964), 51.

2. Barbie Zelizer, "Reading the Past Against the Grain: The Shape of Memory Studies," Critical Studiesin Mass Communication 12 (1995): 215.

3. Edward P. J. Corbett, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student (New York: Oxford University Press,

1990), 27.


4. Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, trans. H. E. Butler, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press, 1920), XI.ii.11-13.

5. Emil L. Fackenheim, foreword to The Jewish Emergence from Powerlessness, by Yehuda Bauer(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), viii.

6. Bruce E. Gronbeck, "The Rhetorics of the Past: History, Argument, and Collective Memory," inDoing Rhetorical History: Concepts and Cases, ed. Kathleen J. Turner (Tuscaloosa: University ofAlabama Press, 1998), 49, 57.

7. Zelizer, "Reading the Past Against the Grain," 229.

Recovering the Lost Canon: Public Memory and the Holocaust

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