Language:
English
Year of publication:
2022
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of Modern Jewish Studies
Angaben zur Quelle:
21,1 (2022) 75-98
Keywords:
Perechodnik, Calel,
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Personal narratives
;
Jews Diaries
;
Speech acts (Linguistics)
Abstract:
The diary of Calek (Calel) Perechodnik is unbearable to the liberal mind. Some critics have even characterized it as the “birth of a monster.” It tells the story of a Jewish policeman in occupied Poland during the Second World War who took part in the execution of his own wife and young daughter. In its sobriety, bitterness and irony, the diary depicts the Holocaust as an event in which the horrendous and monstrous become routine, and hence relations among people and even among family members are solely defined according to power relations and interests. In comparing diary excerpts with speech act theory and with the prose of Franz Kafka, this article examines how language divorces itself from any norms and thereby creates terror. It shows how the failure of speech has been imbued with our reception and understanding of the Holocaust, where destruction is incommensurate with revenge and redemption, and commensurate only with the gray and the banal.
DOI:
10.1080/14725886.2021.1872203
URL:
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