Beschreibung:
<jats:p>This is a compelling, meticulously argued, subtle, and literate book on an important subject—although the question of what that subject <jats:italic>is</jats:italic> remains oddly open. Gary Weissman interprets a number of authoritative and popular representations of the Holocaust (principally those by Elie Wiesel, Lawrence Langer, Stephen Spielberg, and Claude Lanzmann) as evidence of their—and presumably their audiences'—post-Holocaust “efforts to <jats:italic>experience</jats:italic> the Holocaust” and somehow to recapture that horrific reality in feeling. These efforts, Weissman shows in a measured discussion that contrasts with the high-pitched register of much Holocaust writing, encounter what he sees as fundamental difficulties—and not only because of Primo Levi's chilling reminder that if direct experience is a requirement for authenticity, the only true witnesses of the Holocaust are not those who survived but those who died. The difficulties he identifies vary in the works discussed, and his book's concluding chapter, in which he ends up questioning the warrant for <jats:italic>any</jats:italic> “fantasies of witnessing,” provides only a brief conspectus. He thus leaves his readers to make their own way back to the Holocaust from the post-Holocaust—from which, when the survivors are gone, <jats:italic>every</jats:italic>one will set out.</jats:p>