公共记忆、回忆录和纳粹大屠杀——家庭叙事和遗传创伤

Public Memory,Memoir,and the Shoah:Narrating Family and Inherited Trauma

本文作者作为纳粹大屠杀幸存者的女儿,从自身视角出发,针对幸存者的第二代和第三代后人,考察了回忆录的修辞力量与康复力量。笔者认为,此类回忆录的修辞功用包括个人对遗传创伤康复的叙述,也包括反抗与文献记录等必要的公共行为中的表述。它们发挥的作用是反制并消解当前反犹主义和白人民族主义的表述,同时直面纳粹大屠杀的基本事实越来越淡漠的意识。我利用我的家族史,以及纳粹大屠杀幸存者的两位第二代后人业余作家兼历史学家里贾纳·罗克和伊莱纳·桑塔格的回忆录,来证明第一人称对遗传创伤的描述是一种具有修辞色彩的反抗行为,打破沉默具有令人信服的康复能力。

This article examines the rhetorical and healing power of memoirs found in second and third generation survivors of the Shoah,from my perspective as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor.I argue that the rhetorical function of these memoirs includes both the expression of personal accounts of healing from inherited trauma and necessary public acts of resistance and documentation,that serve to counter and undermine contemporary expressions of anti-Semitism and white nationalism as well as to confront an increasing lack of awareness of the basic facts of the Shoah.I draw on my family history as well as the memoirs of two second-generation Holocaust survivors in particular,by amateur writers and historians Regina Rock and Eleanor Sontag,to argue that these first-person accounts of inherited trauma represent rhetorical acts of resistance and demonstrate the persuasive and healing power of breaking the silence.