Daddy's War: Greek American Stories

4. Grappling with Daddy’s War: Speculations for Extending Theories

[ 4 ] Grappling with Daddy’s War Speculations for Extending Theories witnessing to trauma, continued I attempt here to make sense of the family stories gathered in the earlier sections of this book in a more speculative register. I will use Laub’s account of his witness’s testimony to the explosion of four crematoria chimneys in Auschwitz that was considered in chapter 3 as a roadmap for returning to my father’s story of arrest and deportation. Laub devotes more than four pages of his text to his experiences with this witness to the crematoria explosion. She remains anonymous, as do his colleagues who view her testimony. This discussion is embedded in a chapter called “Bearing Witness or the Vicissitudes of Listening ,” in which Laub makes two main points about giving testimony to “massive psychic trauma”: one, that the testifying itself can become the place, the occasion, by which the witness him- or herself comes to know the event for the very first time; and two, that the listener enables that event of cognition to take place and in doing so becomes a participant and coowner of the event (Felman and Laub 1992, 57). For Laub, then, what the historians missed by focusing on the factual inaccuracy of what the woman had to say is that she is witnessing to history—to GRAPPLING WITH DADDY’S WAR [ 219 ] the “breaking of the frame” of Auschwitz through any degree of resistance —and also that she is experiencing that breaking of the frame itself through, in, and at the moment of her testifying. Perhaps this discovery stands out for Laub because of another discovery : that she had worked in the “Canada” commando; Laub deduces this from her account of leaving each morning separately from the others and returning in the evening with shoes and clothing she could give to her fellow inmates. When Laub asked the witness if she knows the name of the commando, she replied she does not, and when he followed up by using the term he knows, “Canada commando,” she also replied “no” that she has never heard of “Canada commando.” Furthermore , reports Laub, she is “taken aback, as though startled by my question ” (Felman and Laub 1992, 60). In Laub’s interpretation of this interaction , he had “probed the limits of her knowledge. . . . We did not talk of the sorting out of the belongings of the dead. She did not think of them as the remainings of the thousands who were gassed. She did not ask herself where they had come from. The presents she brought back to her fellow inmates, the better, newer clothes and shoes, had for her no origin” (60). This backing off on both their parts from what she does not know allows her to testify to what she does know. It permits too the listener, Laub, to take in what she knows and in part comes to know through the very act of her speaking. Laub concludes that lack of knowledge can have some benefits in the testimonial process, offering two examples of such benefits. In the first instance, the woman does not know where the clothes come from, and when Laub realizes this, his not probing further allows her to testify that she was doing good: by giving the inmates she knew clothing and shoes, she was increasing the chances they would survive. In the second example, Laub comments on the limits of his own knowledge about the fate of the inmates who started the revolt and the extent of the Polish underground’s betrayal of that attempted revolt. He hypothesizes that had he known and posed questions to his witness about these [ 220 ] GRAPPLING WITH DADDY’S WAR disturbing facts “such questions might have in effect suppressed her message . . . might have interfered with my ability to listen and to hear. . . . And whether my agenda would have been historical or psychoanalytical , it might unwittingly have interfered with the process of the testimony . In this respect, it might be useful sometimes, not to know too much.” Knowledge is necessary, he goes on to say, for the listener “to be able to pick up the cues.” “Yet,” he decides, “knowledge should not hinder or obstruct the listening with foregone conclusions and preconceived dismissals should not be an obstacle or a foreclosure to new, diverging , unexpected information” (Felman and Laub 1992, 61). Tall order . It is some comfort to me...