Discourse of the postgeneration: Remembrance and identity of the descendants of the perpetrators and the victims of the holocaust

Filozofija i Društvo

关键词: postgeneration;    memory;    remembrance;    trauma;    Holocaust;    crisis of identity;   

DOI  :  10.2298/FID1203078M

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

By analyzing the role of the family in the process of inter/transgenerationalinheritance of trauma and memory (remembrance), the paper is an attempt atproviding an answer to how the un-experienced past affects the lives of thedescendants of the direct perpetrators and victims of the Holocaust, orrather, how it affects the identity forming of the so-called postgeneration.As the temporal distance from the Second World War increases, and as thenumber of those with immediate experiences and memories decreases, theexpressions like memory and remembrance begin to lose their conventionalmeaning. As the research shows, even with the lack of first-hand experience,the descendents of those who survived mass traumatic events are subjectivelydeeply attached to the memory of the previous generation (so much so thatthey label that attachment as remembrance, and they feel their parents’traumas as their own). Given the fact that it is not possible to physicallytransfer the trauma and memory to descendants, the paper analyzes andcompares the terminology that the professional literature has adopted so far,i.e. secondary traumatization (in case of a child), tertian traumatization(in case of a grandchild), as well as echoes of the trauma and postmemory.The main thesis of this paper is that echoes of the memory and echoes of thetrauma cause the so-called identity crisis of the Holocaust postgeneration,that is, only facing the past leads to postgeneration’s coming to terms withit.

【 授权许可】

Unknown