The Wilkomirski Affair

The Wilkomirski Affair PDF Author: Stefan Maechler
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 0307493245
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 514

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Book Description
This is the definitive report on Fragments, Binjamin Wilkomirski's invented "memoir" of a childhood spent in concentration camps, which created international turmoil. In 1995 Fragments, a memoir by a Swiss musician named Binjamin Wilkomirski, was published in Germany. Hailed by critics, who compared it with the masterpieces of Primo Levi and Anne Frank, the book received major prizes and was translated into nine languages. The English-language edition was published by Schocken in 1996. In Fragments, Wilkomirski described in heart-wrenching detail how as a small child he survived internment in Majdanek and Birkenau and was eventually smuggled into Switzerland at the war's end. But three years after the book was first published, articles began to appear that questioned its authenticity and the author's claim that he was a Holocaust survivor. Stefan Maechler, a Swiss historian and expert on anti-Semitism and Switzerland's treatment of refugees during and after World War II, was commissioned on behalf of the publishers of Fragments to conduct a full investigation into Wilkomirski's life. Maechler was given unrestricted access to hundreds of government and personal documents, interviewed eyewitnesses and family members in seven countries, and discovered facts that completely refute Wilkomirski's book. The Maechler report has implications far beyond the tragic story of one individual's deluded life. It explores our feelings about survivor literature and the impact these works can have on our remembrance of the Holocaust.

The Wilkomirski Affair

The Wilkomirski Affair PDF Author: Stefan Maechler
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 0307493245
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 514

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is the definitive report on Fragments, Binjamin Wilkomirski's invented "memoir" of a childhood spent in concentration camps, which created international turmoil. In 1995 Fragments, a memoir by a Swiss musician named Binjamin Wilkomirski, was published in Germany. Hailed by critics, who compared it with the masterpieces of Primo Levi and Anne Frank, the book received major prizes and was translated into nine languages. The English-language edition was published by Schocken in 1996. In Fragments, Wilkomirski described in heart-wrenching detail how as a small child he survived internment in Majdanek and Birkenau and was eventually smuggled into Switzerland at the war's end. But three years after the book was first published, articles began to appear that questioned its authenticity and the author's claim that he was a Holocaust survivor. Stefan Maechler, a Swiss historian and expert on anti-Semitism and Switzerland's treatment of refugees during and after World War II, was commissioned on behalf of the publishers of Fragments to conduct a full investigation into Wilkomirski's life. Maechler was given unrestricted access to hundreds of government and personal documents, interviewed eyewitnesses and family members in seven countries, and discovered facts that completely refute Wilkomirski's book. The Maechler report has implications far beyond the tragic story of one individual's deluded life. It explores our feelings about survivor literature and the impact these works can have on our remembrance of the Holocaust.

A Life in Pieces

A Life in Pieces PDF Author: Blake Eskin
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393324457
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
An account of the rise and fall of the author of Fragments.

Fragments

Fragments PDF Author: Binjamin Wilkomirski
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 168

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Book Description
Memoir of a small boy who was separated from his family at the age of three or four-years-old after his father was killed during a round-up of Jews in Latvia, and was sent to the Majdanek death camp where he was discovered by Allied soldiers in 1945.

The Wilkomirski Affair

The Wilkomirski Affair PDF Author: Stephan Maechler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description


Young and Free

Young and Free PDF Author: Joanne Faulkner
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1783483083
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Tracing the complex yet intimate relationship between a present-day national obsession with childhood and a colonial past with which Australia as a nation has not adequately come to terms, Young and Free draws on philosophy, literature, film and testimony. The result is a demonstration of how anxiety about childhood has become a screen for more fundamental and intractable issues that vex Australian social and political life. Joanne Faulkner argues that by interpreting these anxieties in their relation to settler-colonial Australia’s unresolved conflict with Aboriginal people, new ways of conceiving of Australian community may be opened. The book engages with philosophical and literary characterizations of childhood, from Locke and Rousseau, to Freud, Bergson, Benjamin Agamben, Lacan, Rancière and Halbwachs. The author’s psychoanalytic approach is supplemented by an engagement with contemporary political philosophy that informs Faulkner’s critique of the concepts of the subject, sovereignty and knowledge, resulting in a speculative postcolonial model of the subject. Cover artist credit: Lyndsay Bird Mpetyane Artwork title: Ahakeye (Bush Plum)

The Pragmatics of Literary Testimony

The Pragmatics of Literary Testimony PDF Author: Chantelle Warner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 041550130X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
In this book, Warner examines a number of German-language literary works that are connected to diverse social movements of the last forty years and have in some way been pivotal in discussions of authenticity, autobiographicality, testimonial representation, and referentiality. By presenting a model for an integrative stylistics approach, such as is needed to understand non-fictional, poetic effects such as authenticity, this book participates in current discussions within fields of literary linguistic scholarship. Of particular interest to those in the fields of German Studies; stylistics; and autobiography, testimony, and life-writing.

Witnessing the Disaster

Witnessing the Disaster PDF Author: Michael Bernard-Donals
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299183637
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Witnessing the Disaster examines how histories, films, stories and novels, memorials and museums, and survivor testimonies involve problems of witnessing: how do those who survived, and those who lived long after the Holocaust, make clear to us what happened? How can we distinguish between more and less authentic accounts? Are histories more adequate descriptors of the horror than narrative? Does the susceptibility of survivor accounts to faulty memory and the vestiges of trauma make them any more or less useful as instruments of witness? And how do we authenticate their accuracy without giving those who deny the Holocaust a small but dangerous foothold? These essayists aim to move past the notion that the Holocaust as an event defies representation. They look at specific cases of Holocaust representation and consider their effect, their structure, their authenticity, and the kind of knowledge they produce. Taken together they consider the tension between history and memory, the vexed problem of eyewitness testimony and its status as evidence, and the ethical imperatives of Holocaust representation.

Aversion and Erasure

Aversion and Erasure PDF Author: Carolyn J. Dean
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501707493
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description
In Aversion and Erasure, Carolyn J. Dean offers a bold account of how the Holocaust's status as humanity's most terrible example of evil has shaped contemporary discourses about victims in the West. Popular and scholarly attention to the Holocaust has led some observers to conclude that a "surfeit of Jewish memory" is obscuring the suffering of other peoples. Dean explores the pervasive idea that suffering and trauma in the United States and Western Europe have become central to identity, with victims competing for recognition by displaying their collective wounds.She argues that this notion has never been examined systematically even though it now possesses the force of self-evidence. It developed in nascent form after World War II, when the near-annihilation of European Jewry began to transform patriotic mourning into a slogan of "Never Again": as the Holocaust demonstrated, all people might become victims because of their ethnicity, race, gender, or sexuality—because of who they are.The recent concept that suffering is central to identity and that Jewish suffering under Nazism is iconic of modern evil has dominated public discourse since the 1980s.Dean argues that we believe that the rational contestation of grievances in democratic societies is being replaced by the proclamation of injury and the desire to be a victim. Such dramatic and yet culturally powerful assertions, however, cast suspicion on victims and define their credibility in new ways that require analysis. Dean's latest book summons anyone concerned with human rights to recognize the impact of cultural ideals of "deserving" and "undeserving" victims on those who have suffered.

Holocaust Literature: Lerner to Zychlinsky, index

Holocaust Literature: Lerner to Zychlinsky, index PDF Author: S. Lillian Kremer
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780415929844
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 778

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Book Description
Review: "This encyclopedia offers an authoritative and comprehensive survey of the important writers and works that form the literature about the Holocaust and its consequences. The collection is alphabetically arranged and consists of high-quality biocritical essays on 309 writers who are first-, second-, and third-generation survivors or important thinkers and spokespersons on the Holocaust. An essential literary reference work, this publication is an important addition to the genre and a solid value for public and academic libraries."--"The Top 20 Reference Titles of the Year," American Libraries, May 2004

Bloodscripts

Bloodscripts PDF Author: Elana Gomel
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
ISBN: 9780814209493
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
We live in an increasingly violent world. From suicide terrorists to serial killers, violent subjects challenge our imaginations. We seek answers to our questions on this subject in literature, cinema, and electronic media. In Bloodscripts, Elana Gomel examines how popular culture narratives construct violent subjectivity. Using such various narratives as mystery, horror; detective, and fantasy fiction as well as accounts of the atrocities perpetuated by serial killers and the Holocaust, Bloodscripts offers a new map of the genres of violence and links the twin obsessions of postmodern culture: crime and genocide. Bloodscripts is a stimulating, original, and accessible account of the narrative construction of the violent subject. It proposes a narrative model that will be of interest to literary critics, cultural scholars, criminologists, and anyone trying to understand the role of violence in postmodern culture.