28
Friday, April 1, 1983
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Volume Presents Clear View of Effects of HolOaust
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By DR. PETER MARTIN
"Versions of Survival —
The Holocaust and the
Human Spirit" by Lawrence
L. Langer (State University
of New York Press) is like a
fresh wind, sweeping away
the confusing, contradic-
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tory, dense fog caused by the
volumes of literature writ-
ten about survival of the
human spirit after the
Holocaust.
But what a paradox it is to
use the word "fresh." Once
the clarity of vision is
achieved, it causes a sick-
ness of the spirit of the
reader. To lose the myths by
which we live, to lose the fog
of words that allows more
than an endurance of the
reality of the Holocaust, is
an experience to shake one's
soul.
One must admire
Langer's courage that
allows him to face the
wasteland of the extermina-
tion camp and to keep this
painful vision clear and
unwavering throughout
this book. No platitudes, no
false hopes about being
masters of one's destiny,
cloud the issues.
He remains faithful to
the experience of the vic-
tims, to what it was like to
lose their ability to
mobilize hope and to
lapse into a state of
realistic hopelessness.
He decries the writings of
the survivors who speak
of "the" survivor as if he
or she were a representa-
tive type and who falsify
the experience by the
very singularity of their
view.
In an extermination camp
like Belzec almost no one
survived, and Treblinka
and Chelmno, very few.
To quote Langer: "One
can perhaps imagine it, one
can even try to describe it,
but how faithful to the ex-
perience of victims are our
attempts_ to reconstruct
les ssmIgig 0
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THURSDAYS
10 00-8 45
from the psychological rub-
ble of despair those atti-
tudes and actions that
presumably support survi-
val?"
The reader of this review
must focus on the word "vic-
tim." Langer, here, is not
speaking of the survivors.
Indeed he tears apart some
of the writings of survivors.
Even here a distinction
must be made. Those who
survived a work camp did
not have the experience of
those few who survived an
extermination camp. And
those who survived an ex-
termination camp did not
have the experience of those
who didn't.
Langer shows how
post-Holocaust language
has been used as a refuge
by such celebrated
authors as Bettelheim
and Viktor Frankl. The
danger that he sees is that
we conjure up a principle
where none existed and
reduce the complex sur-
vival ordeal to a matter of
mere inner strength, of cl-
inging to values that
somehow insured con-
tinued existence. This
view ascribes to victims
an inner weakness and
implies an implicit ap-
proach too infamous to
consider.
But to accept pure chance
as the key to survival is to
admit into the universe of
atrocity a randomness that
damages our precious
image of the civilized mind.
The totalitarianism of the
death camps unleashed, in
the inmate, asocial im-
pulses too fragmentary and
destructive to be har-
monized into a unified
theory of survival. Many of
the highly respected, and
publicized theories of survi-
val that ignore this evi-
dence are too abstract to
merit unqualified endorse-
ment.
Langer doesn't ignore the
evidence and relentlessly
uses it as a guideline. He
never wavers. He states: it
is almost pointless to sub-
ject to analysis behavior of
victims, for whom, beneath
the illusion of hope, lay the
daily and sometimes hourly
possibility of selection for
the gas chamber. Our words
have lost their meaning and
ability to describe such con-
ditions.
The horrors of the
death camp leave Langer
with a sense of humanity
so violated and violating
that there is nothing and
no one to identify with.
He speculated that this is
one reason why the
Holocaust is a theme for
investigation, especially
among humanists and
men of devout convic-
tion. The agony of the vic-
tims cannot be easily
adapted to a tragic or
religious view of exist-
ence.
Langer clarifies his posi-
tion by a chapter on Elie
Wiesel, the prolific writer
who saw simple faith and
simple atheism go up in
smoke at Auschwitz. His
writings find him unable to
leave his experiences be-
hind as the ghosts of the ex- ner that it snatched victory
terminated continue to from the jaws of defeat.
haunt him.
This was not available to
The year in Auschwitz the Holocaust victims. The
and Buchenwald is a recur- Nazis arranged for their
rent leitmotif in Wiesel's deaths as a humiliation and
work. Langer believes that degradation. No affirma-
Wiesel ridicules, by impli- tions of the spirit, human or
cation if not intention, the divine was possible! The
thesis set forth by Frankl, angel of wrath and evil won
Bettelheim, and others that an irrevocable victory dur-
it was possible to live in the ing the Holocaust.
camps and afterward by
Survivors' attempted af-
values inherited from one's firmations of the spirit
precamp existence. Wiesel stumble over this immova-
sees the rupture between ble rock. It not only leaves
"then" and "now" as so com- the formation of human's
plete, that the ghosts of vic- character without an article
tims, hovering in an inter- of belief, coherence, pur-
mediate realm between the pose, and universal order
two, are themselves doomed but threatens it by the in-
to wander in an impossible coherence and chaos of the
search for a means of rejoin- victims' deaths.
ing the fragments of their
In the latter part of the
splintered reality.
book, Langer leaves
Wiesel's literature reaf- Wiesel and his endless
firms Langer's conclusion search for the truth
that a situation of unparal-
(which Wiesel recognizes
leled brutality ensures the may not have been made
futility of conventional to be revealed) and
moral gesture to control it.
moves to the post-
He states, "In Wiesel's Holocaust poems of Nelly
world, the ghosts of the Sachs and the pre-
victims persist, while the Holocaust voice of Ger-
spirit of silence hovers in trud Kolmar.
the wings, reminding the
Langer translated from
survivor-spokesman, like the German Kolmar's work
a mocking director of a in 1960 and Sachs' work in
failed tragedy, of the 1971. He states that to avoid
poverty of his words."
changing the victims of sur-
The dilemma of the sur- vivors into ."characters" de-
vivor seems to be how to fined by epithets, Nelly
fashion a possible future out Sachs virtually discards ad-
of an impossible past — a jectives from her poetic
problem incapable of a vocabulary (such as "ob-
satisfactory solution.
ject," "pitiful," "heroic"),
Wiesel's writing confirms and that this is the type of
another of Langer's princi- writing appropriate to an
ples derived from his unspeakable event.
studies of the writings of
In contrast, Kolmar used
survivors. Langer con- the adjective as a literary
cluded' that there is a bulwark against an
marked difference between encroaching terror that she
what is humanly possible was unwilling or unable to
under conditions of extrem- define.
ity and what the retrospec-
Langer uses the poetry of
tive consciousness would these two poets to reveal the
like to believe is humanly foundation-stones of the
possible.
conclusions presented in the
Wiesel does it by warning first portion of this book.
his reader to regard with
Langer's use of poets to
caution even as reliable a forge an image of the
witness as himself because human compatible with
he drifts into a sentimental- the anguish that the
ity that one can only regard survivor-victim of the
as the momentary lapse of a Holocaust endured is
stubbornly clear-sighted in- reminiscent of what
telligence.
Freud said when asked
The writer of this book about psychoanalysis.
review considers Wiesel "Ya nah, die Dichter
to have many qualities of haben das alles
genius. The one that is gekannt." (Oh well,
most impressive to me is Writers have always
known about these
his rare capacity for hon-
esty. In being honest, he things).
Langer concludes his
has to fight against his
own needs for some book by writing: "The
humanistic vision of the Holocaust has bequeathed
choiceless choice in the to Nelly Sachs a crippled
universe, which limps
death camps. A "beauti-
ful answer" may be noth- towards health on the
ing more than an illusion, hesitant crutches of her
but is often necessary to sturdy verse. In dialogue
maintain one's sanity in with herself, her dead, her
the face of an inhuman readers, and her art, she of-
fers both epitaph to a world
meaningless reality.
destroyed and epigraph for
To this reviewer, at-
tempting to understand the the altered cosmos she
experience of the victims, helped to imagine from its
Norse mythology and ruins:
folklore came to mind. Their I write you —
belief was that good and evil You have come into the
existed in this world but the world once more with the
forces of evil always over- haunting strength of letters
came the forces of good. The that probed for your reality
manner in which they ac- Light shines
cepted their deaths at the and your fingertips glow in
hands of Evil was to live and the night from darkness like
die in such a glorious man- these lines.