French And American Studies Of The Shoah: A Comparison

88 SHOFAR Spring 1996 Vol. 14, No.3 FRENCH AND AMERICAN STUDIES OF THE SHOAH: A COMPARISON by Karla Grierson Karla Grierson, a native of Brandon, Manitoba, teaches French literature at the University of Cergy-Pontoise in France. She is presently finishing a doctoral dissertation at the University of Paris IlIon accounts by survivors of Auschwitz. I. Political and ethno-religious focus: "Holocaust literature" vs. litterature concentrationnaire In comparing commentary and research relating to the ramifications of National Socialist (hereafter, NS1 ) crime in France and the United States, the most important difference between scholarly approaches in the two countries concerns the identification of the object of inquiry. In other words, what has been recognized in America as "Holocaust literature" and "Holocaust studies" since at least 19702 is still best known in France under the less specific heading of litterature concentrationnaire . When I say "less specific," I am alluding to the tendency to downplay the fact that specifically Jews were targeted for NS deporta11 prefer this abbreviation, commonly used among current-day German intellectuals, to the term "Nazi,» which has taken on lurid, B-movie associations. 2Irving Halperin, MeSSe1lgers from the Dead: Literature of the Holocaust (philadelphia : Westminster, 1970) is the earliest American study that I know of. Halperin discusses texts written after the war by Jewish survivors of NS deportation and genocide such as Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel, as well as documents written during the war (Chaim Kaplan's Warsaw Ghetto diary, for example). French and American Studies of the Shoah 89 tion, labor and concentration camps and killing centers.3 This specificity is expressed by the terms "Holocaust" and "Shoah," which refer directly to the genocide perpetrated against the Jews of Europe! Until approximately the mid-1980s-when there occurred a change of paradigm, in which the decisive event was probably the release of Claude Lanzmann's film Shoah in spring 1985-French scholars and intellectuals, as well as the public, seem to have half-ignored the fact that the NS deportation and extermination campaign was largely what Lucy Dawidowicz has astutely called it: a "war against the Jews.,,5 The expressions litterature concentrationnaire and univers concentrationnaire , borrowed from David Rousset's testimony and analysis of the same name concerning his experience in Buchenwald, echo a far more political than ethno-religious perception of the event.6 The reasons behind this focus may be traced back at least partially to the body of testimony written in France. French historian Annette Wieviorka has explained that the initial wave of these documents, written and published immediately after the war, may be divided into three categories: ontological, political, and patriotic.7 They present the NS deportation and extermination campaign respectively as an outgrowth 3"Killing centers" is the tenn devised by Raul Hilberg, The Destrw.:tion of the European Jews, rev. and definitive ed., 3 vols. (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985 [orig. ed. 1961)), pp. 361-989 et passim. 'Preferring not to partake in the debate concerning the tenninology to be employed when naming the NS deportation and genocide of the European Jews ("Holocaust," "Shoah," "Khurbn," "Catastrophe," "Event," "AuschWitz," etc.), 1 have chosen to use interchangeably the two most widely accepted, "Holocaust" (usual in North America) and "Shoah" (habitual in France). "Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews 1933-1945 (London: Penguin, 1990 [orig. ed. 1975)). 6David Rousset, L'univers coru:tmtratiormaire (paris: Minuit, 1965 [orig. ed. 1946)). English trans. by Ramon Guthrie, The Other Kingdom (New York: Fertig, 1982 [orig. ed. 1947)). 7Annette Wieviorka, Deportation et genocide: entre Za mbnoire et Z'oubli (paris: PIon, 1992), p. 317. See as well Wieviorka, "Jewish Identity in the First Accounts by Extennination Camp Survivors from France," trans. Fran~o.ise Rosset, in Alan Astro, ed., Discourses ofJewish Identity in Twentieth-Cefltury France (Yale Freru:h Studies 85 (1994)), pp. 135-51. 90 SHOFAR Spring 1996 Vol. 14, No.3 of human nature,S a political phenomenon9 or a demonstration of German barbarity,lO giving no quaner to the analysis of the genocide perpetrated against Jews per se. As Wieviorka points out: These uses of memory leave no room for the genocide of the Jews. None of these visions is capable of integrating...