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This book is about zero generation witness literature: texts written by those who died in the Holocaust and who knew, at the time of their writing, that they would not survive. As such, they offer a unique perspective that differs from the more widely read and taught literature written by first generation survivors like Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi. These texts were produced across the concentrationary universe and include: the ghetto diaries of Dawid Sierakowiak (Lódz) and Chaim Kaplan (Warsaw); transit camp work, such as the paintings of Felix Nussbaum (Saint-Cyprien) and the poetry of Yitchak Katznelson (Vittel); anonymous letters thrown from cattle cars; Sonderkommando writing and photography from Auschwitz; non-Jewish letter-writing from Gestapo prisons by Helmuth-James and Freya Von Moltke (Tegel); and the literary work of Hannah Szenes, from her diaries in Palestine to her last poetry and letter in a Budapest prison the day of her execution.
List of contents
Chapter 1. Death Sentences: Writing Resistance in the Shadow of Execution.- Chapter 2. Apprehensions of Death in the Ghetto: The Holocaust Diaries of Dawid Sierakowiak and Chaim Kaplan.- Chapter 3. Visions of Death in Transit: Yitzchak Katznelson, Felix Nussbaum, and Final Letters from the Holocaust Trains.- Chapter 4. Holocaust Epistolarity: Zero Generation Letters as Witness Literature.- Chapter 5. Autobiography in Auschwitz: Buried Manuscripts as Tragic Self-Portraits of the Sonderkommando .- Chapter 6. Hannah Szenes as Zero Generation Writer.
About the author
Adam J. Goldwyn is Professor of English at North Dakota State University, USA. He is the author, most recently, of
Homer, Humanism, Holocaust
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2022),
Rae Dalven: The Life of a Greek-Jewish Immigrant
(2022), and
Witness Literature in Byzantium
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).
Summary
This book is about “zero generation” witness literature: texts written by those who died in the Holocaust and who knew, at the time of their writing, that they would not survive. As such, they offer a unique perspective that differs from the more widely read and taught literature written by first generation survivors like Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi. These texts were produced across the concentrationary universe and include: the ghetto diaries of Dawid Sierakowiak (Łódź) and Chaim Kaplan (Warsaw); transit camp work, such as the paintings of Felix Nussbaum (Saint-Cyprien) and the poetry of Yitchak Katznelson (Vittel); anonymous letters thrown from cattle cars; Sonderkommando writing and photography from Auschwitz; non-Jewish letter-writing from Gestapo prisons by Helmuth-James and Freya Von Moltke (Tegel); and the literary work of Hannah Szenes, from her diaries in Palestine to her last poetry and letter in a Budapest prison the day of her execution.
