Ecologies of Witnessing : Language, Place, and Holocaust Testimony / Hannah Pollin-Galay.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pollin-Galay, Hannah, author.

Series:

Yale scholarship online.

Yale scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sociolinguistics.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945).

Holocaust survivors--Personal narratives.

Holocaust survivors.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Sources.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Historiography.

Witnesses.

Psycholinguistics.

Language and history.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 335 pages) : illustrations, map

Place of Publication:

New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

An innovative reassessment of Holocaust testimony, revealing the dramatic ways in which the languages and places of postwar life inform survivor memory This groundbreaking work rethinks conventional wisdom about Holocaust testimony, focusing on the power of language and place to shape personal narrative. Oral histories of Lithuanian Jews serve as the textual base for this exploration. Comparing the remembrances of Holocaust victims who remained in Lithuania with those who resettled in Israel and North America after World War II, Pollin-Galay reveals meaningful differences based on where survivors chose to live out their postwar lives and whether their language of testimony was Yiddish, English, or Hebrew. The differences between their testimonies relate to notions of love, justice, community-and how the Holocaust did violence to these aspects of the self. More than an original presentation of yet-unheard stories, this book challenges the assumption of a universal vocabulary for describing and healing human pain.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

1. Bad Testimony: Making and Breaking the Rules of Witnessing

2. Solidarity: Kin, Party, Neighborhood

3. The Victim-Perpetrator Encounter

4. Accent as Archive: Yiddish and Language Biographies

5. Places and Non-Places

CONCLUSION

Appendix 1. Witness and Testimony List

Appendix 2. General Timeline of the Holocaust in Lithuania

Appendix 3. Timelines of Vilna, Kovna, and Shavl Ghettos

NOTES

ILLUSTRATION CREDITS

INDEX

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2018.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 20. Sep 2019)

ISBN:

978-0-300-23553-1

0-300-23553-4

OCLC:

1047729235