Language:
English
Year of publication:
2009
Titel der Quelle:
Shofar; an Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
27,2 (2009) 1-23
Keywords:
Gruenbaum, Eliezer
;
Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
;
Nazi concentration camps
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Personal narratives
Abstract:
Eliezer Gruenbaum (1908-1948) was a son of the Polish Zionist leader Yitzhak Gruenbaum. As a communist, Eliezer refused to emigrate to the Land of Israel before World War II with his father. He was imprisoned by the Vichy French, deported to Auschwitz, and later to Buchenwald. In Auschwitz, he was chosen to be a kapo at Birkenau. After the war, rejected by both Holocaust survivors and communists as a traitor, he emigrated to the Land of Israel, and in 1948 died in the war for Israeli independence. Before his death, he wrote memoirs on Birkenau. Pp. 5-14 contain a translation of excerpts from his memoirs; pp. 14-23 contain comments. His text is a psychological struggle to work through his controversial past. The authors surmise that, by writing, he tried to overcome the chasm between his identity as a prisoner and victim, and his attempt to identify himself as a person authorized to judge prisoners for their passivity and lack of resistance. He fails in his dual wish to belong - he is doomed to remain displaced.
Note:
Includes an English translation of a memoir fragment by Gruenbaum (pp. 5-14).
URL:
Locate this publication in Israeli libraries
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