Language:
English
Year of publication:
2002
Titel der Quelle:
Language in Society
Angaben zur Quelle:
31,3 (2002) 309-353
Keywords:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
Jewish children in the Holocaust
;
Holocaust survivors
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Terminology
Abstract:
A linguistic analysis of portions of an oral history account by Holocaust survivor Ilse Kahane found in the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Kahane was born in 1926 in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1942-43 she was interned in a labor camp in Estonia, and then in other camps, including Stutthof and Bergen-Belsen. Focuses on the discursive construction of her relationship with her family and friends. In 1939 Kahane was abandoned by her mother, who, with her second husband, left for the USA. In Kahane's narrative, she portrays the relationship with her mother as devoid of direct contact and expression of feeling. She depicts four of her friends in a camp as "us, " as a collectivity of helpers. The study of linguistics helps to show how survivors' life stories position "others" within both their own lives and more broadly construed matrices of cultural archetypes and historically contingent identities, such as victim, survivor, and bystander.
DOI:
10.1017.S0047404502020250
URL:
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