Language:
English
Year of publication:
2010
Titel der Quelle:
Canadian Jewish Studies/Etudes Juives Canadiennes
Angaben zur Quelle:
18-19 (2010-2011) 121-157
Keywords:
Rosenfarb, Chawa,
;
Yiddish literature History and criticism
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in literature
;
Yiddish literature History and criticism
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Historiography
;
Gender identity
;
Sex role
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
Abstract:
The literary works by Canadian Yiddish writer Chava Rosenfarb (1923-2011) include her trilogy of novels "The Tree of Life"; short stories, in particular those published in English translation as "Survivors: Seven Short Stories" (2004); and poems which deal with the Holocaust and the traumas of the survivors. Against the background of the gendered approach to Holocaust studies that has been on the rise since the 1980s, Rosenfarb's work seems to challenge basic conclusions made by feminist academics. In her work on the Łódź ghetto, "The Tree of Life", the central place is not given exclusively to women's voices; two of its main protagonists are males. The writer challenges views that during the Holocaust women formed stronger mutually assistive relationship with other women than men did; that the traumas of violated parenthood were particular to women; and that women's postwar parenthood was able to cure the trauma of the loss of children during the Holocaust. One of the explanations for why Rosenfarb was less focused on the specifics of women's suffering during the Holocaust is that she felt herself to be first and foremost a Yiddish writer rather than a female writer, and her main concern was the crisis of the Yiddish language following the Holocaust. In addition, her writings suggest that the gendered difference between the two expressions of anguish is exaggerated by recent schloarship; the victims of the Holocaust, men and women, were above all human beings, and they were Jews.
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