Book Review

The Language of Silence: West German Literature and the Holocaust, By Ernestine Schlant

Bosmajian, Hamida

2001

Overview

Schlant distinguishes the silence of the Holocaust -- a silence over the horror of direct experience -- from the silence about the Holocaust -- the silence of perpetrators and the succeeding generations that attempted to address that silence. Those attempts have been undermined for decades by Germany's \"inability to mourn,\" even as our knowledge, interpretations, and understanding of Nazism and the Holocaust have increased since 1945. Schlant argues that \"coming to terms\" with the past is not equivalent to \"working through,\" for \"it leaves the victims and the crimes as unmourned as they have always been\" (p. 14). In the 1980s the subtexts emerged as part of German public discourse in the episode of Bitburg, the Historikerstreit over the uniqueness of Nazi crimes, the Jenniger affair, and literary disputes over Germany's continued relation to \"Auschwitz.\" Schlant rightly sees German fictional narratives as a \"seismograph of a people's conscience and unstated assumptions.\" The unification of Germany has \"not brought a lessening of the awareness of the Holocaust\" -- Auschwitz will remain, though the context is changing. That change is evident in writers such as Peter Schneider, who attempt to represent Jews and Germans as \"individuals with their own voices\" engaged with friends in moments of crises, even confrontations, but also capable of genuine human relations. Here, Schlant affirms \"the language of silence ceases to exist\" (p. 224).

• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Subject: Crime / German / German literature / Holocaust / Jews / Literature / Mitscherlichs, Alexander / Ortheil, Hanns-Josef / Schlant, Ernestine / Silence