Sounds of Defiance: The Holocaust, Multilingualism, and the Problem of English (review)

In Sounds of Defiance, Alan Rosen has explored with keen insight the process by which the English language has affected the representation of Holocaust experiences. The author’s consideration of texts from various genres across several decades supports an extensive investigation of the “different tongues” spoken in the various lands where Jews dwelled (p. 4).

Because the diverse populations victimized at the hands of Nazism are represented by equally diverse language codes—and within this framework, English was the primary voice of neither victim nor perpetrator—Rosen proposes that “every language is going to be unfaithful to the camp experience” (p. 6). The use of English in many facets of Holocaust representation, then, deeply impacts the value of Holocaust self-representation (testimonies and memoirs penned by Holocaust survivors) as well as the readers’ ability to appreciate and understand.

Rosen’s method of presenting his conclusions chronologically provides a useful and worthy tool for any reader interested in the profound influence of language on experience. Each chapter of the text takes as its focus a work from a particular genre, such as memoir or fiction, or a medium such as film. Through these works, the author examines the role of English with respect to other key languages—Polish, Hebrew, German, and Yiddish—that formed the multi-ethnic Holocaust landscape.

Rosen begins by noting the existence of “mongrel languages,” composed of bits and pieces of different language codes stitched together to allow serviceable communication among prisoners who did not “share a common tongue” (p. 5). These fabricated, imperfect languages would fittingly come to represent the fragmentation of Holocaust victims—that is, the accelerating disintegration of their dignity and self-worth—and would generate questions concerning the appropriateness of choosing one specific language as the medium for all Holocaust representation. However, survivors wishing to articulate their experiences might choose English for its “neutral, uncorrupted” quality (p. 12). As a foreign language, English may create for the survivor an ironic sense of distance from his or her experiences; furthermore, as Rosen suggests, the use of seemingly “imperial English” may provide the survivor with “a means to rule rather than be ruled” (p. 15).

Beginning in the 1950s, many interviewers of Holocaust survivors attempted to retain the unique languages of the victims. For the interviewer, though, English served as a buffer, as a “retreat to a language of a different kind of world” from the one described by the interviewee (p. 24). Other interviewers painstakingly translated the survivors’ testimonies from their native languages into English, calling into question the integrity of this representation of survivors’ experiences. Here, Rosen argues that the effort to bring English “into the limelight” calls attention to its “uncertain position” as a language of collective understanding and expression (p. 61).

The ownership of language remains central to any discussion of expression and communication. To maintain within written documents the accuracy of language as spoken during the Holocaust, some writers choose to incorporate dialect or accent—for the use of “impeccable English” would leave “no room for the past to enter” (p. 82). As Rosen argues, “a mother tongue cannot be abandoned without losing what is essential” (p. 93). Thus, to speak in English is to eradicate valuable memory, while the use of regional languages allows for its recovery.

In his analysis of Eichmann in Jerusalem, Rosen notes Hannah Arendt’s observation that “drastically different versions of the trial . . . were reported to the world” (p. 110). English may have been a suitable language for Arendt to use in writing her report of the trial because of her distance from it; Rosen notes that for Arendt, English may have been “the perfect vehicle by which to reinforce law’s propensity to place distance between trauma and its aftermath” (p. 111). However, Rosen suggests that Arendt’s use of “force” in using her own “adopted language” to convey these events may elicit similarities to “a victim-perpetrator...