EL TRIBALISMO Y LA EVOLUCIÓN DEL CONCEPTO DE COLECTIVIDAD EN LA

In addition to language hindering the survivor there is the interaction with the listener, or more particularly, the ‘unhearing’ listener. The following interchange between two interviewers and a woman called Hanna

Holocaust testimony and history 175 illustrates the difficulty posed by the unhearing listener. Hanna is a survivor who experienced two deportations to Auschwitz, as well as imprisonment in other concentration camps. As the interview draws to a close, the discussion turns to how Hanna survived.

Interviewer: You were able to survive because you were so plucky… Hanna: No dear, no dear, no…no, I had no…How shall I explain to you? I know that I had to survive, even running away, even being with people constantly, especially the second part, the second time, being back in Auschwitz. That time I had determined already to survive— and you know what? It wasn’t luck, it was stupidity.

(At this the two interviewers laugh deprecatingly, overriding her voice with their ‘explanation’, as one calls out, ‘You had a lot of guts!’) Hanna: (simultaneously) No, no, no, no, there were no guts, there was just sheer stupidity. I just, you know…(More laughter from the interviewers.)6

The intelligibility of survivors’ testimony depends on the listener as much as it does on the speaker. Stories or accounts of experience make sense, or are seen to be plausible if they draw on shared background knowledge and a common vocabulary of motives. This common ground does not exist for the survivors and listeners who were spared the survivors’ experiences. At other times, competing agendas fracture the testimony which has been offered. Drawing on the perspective provided by psychoanalysis, Dominick LaCapra has noted:

The Holocaust presents the historian with transference in the most traumatic form conceivable—but in a form that will vary with the difference in subject position of the analyst. Whether the historian or analyst is a survivor, a relative of survivors, a former Nazi, a former collaborator, a relative of former Nazis or collaborators, a younger Jew or German distanced from more immediate contact with survival, participation or collaboration, or a relative ‘outsider’ to these problems will make a difference even in the meaning of statements that may be formally identical.7

Dori Laub, a psychoanalyst who has taken oral testimony from many survivors while collecting material for the Video Archive for Holocaust Testimony at Yale, writes about the debate provoked when a group of historians, psychoanalysts and artists viewed a videotaped interview with a woman in her late sixties. This woman was narrating her experiences in Auschwitz, in particular, her memories as a witness of the Auschwitz uprising.

‘All of a sudden’, she said, ‘we saw four chimneys going up in flames, exploding. The flames shot into the sky, people were running. It was unbelievable.’8

176 Interviewing

In fact, only one chimney had been blown up, not four. Because of this error, the historians in the group were loathe to give credence to the woman’s testimony. Her memory was fallible, they argued. The facts must be correct, particularly in light of revisionist views about the Holocaust.

Others saw the matter differently. They took the view that every survivor of the Holocaust has a different story to tell, not because people’s experiences varied, but because the individual ways in which they as victims and survivors grasped and related their experiences comprise the actual core of their story. They argued that the woman was testifying not to the number of chimneys which were destroyed, but to something else more radical, more crucial: the reality of an unimaginable occurrence. One chimney blown up was as incredible as four. The woman was testifying to an event which momentarily shattered the framework of overwhelming oppression.9

Because of these difficulties (and for many other reasons as well), there are survivors who have remained silent. For some, silence has its source in the pain from which the survivor seeks protection. For others, silence is a way of respecting those who died. It can separate the private from the public.

I will be doing everyday duties, living everyday life, but my mind will be in a different world. At that time I live with the feelings I imagine my parents and sisters had before they died. I go into a different part of myself, a part I never speak about. It has nothing to do with anyone else.

It’s mine.10

Silence can be a sanctuary which protects speakers from themselves and from their listeners. It encloses feelings and experiences which may attract censure because they are unfamiliar, alien or threatening to the listener. The sense of impotence and powerlessness experienced by the targets of the Nazi programme of genocide, feelings of having been defiled, diminished and humiliated may remain unspoken because the listener’s response may be disbelief, contempt, abandonment, misunderstanding or pity. Sometimes, the survivor who speaks of this Holocaust world sees in the eyes of those who listen a judgement that perhaps the survivor should have acted differently. As Primo Levi writes,

Consciously or not, (the survivor) feels accused and judged, compelled to justify and defend himself.

Silence also protects the listener.

GIVING TESTIMONY: TRANSFORMING THE UNSPOKEN TO