Table Of ContentProbing the Limits of
~ Representation
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NAZISM AND THE "FINAL SOLUTION"
Edited by
Saul Friedlander
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
1992
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Copyright C> 1992 by the Pt•sldent and Fellows o{ Haivard College
Introduction copyright C> 1992 by Saul Friedlander
All righu reserved
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Probing the limit• of representation, Nui,m and the "Fin&! Solution'
edlted by Saul Friedlander.
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Includes index.
ISBN 0-674-7076.5-6 (&lk. paper), ISBN 0-674-70766-4 (pblc )
I. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)-Hlstoriogniphy.
2. Holocaust. Jewish 0939- l!MS)-lnftuenct\.
.J. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in lilt'tatllre.
I. Friedlindor, Saul, 1932- .
080(.3, P76 I 992
940.53'1~cl!O 91-29009
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Acknowledgments
The conference on ''Nazism and the 'Final Solution's Probing the
Limits of Representation" which led to this volume was held at the
University of California, Los Angeles, on April 26-29, 1990; it was
organized under the auspices and with the help of the Department of
History at UCLA and the "1939 Club~ ofL os Angeles. The conference
was made possible by the generous financial assistance of the Center
fo.r Sooial Theory and Comparative History at UCLA; the Critical
Studies and the Hun1an Sciences Focused Research Unit (UCLA); the
College of Letters and Science (UCLA); the German Academic Ex_
change Program; and the University of California Humanities Re
search Institute, Irvine.
The papers of all the commentators at the various sessions could not
be included in this volume because ofs pace constraints. Their intellec
tual input during the conference and in the preparation of this volume
has been considerable. Their names are mentioned with gtatitude;
Peter Baldwin (UCLA,), Edward fleren$On (UCL,\), M!ln<lDna Birn
baum (UCLA), Robert Boyers (Skidmore College), Philippe Burrin
(Graduate Institute of lntemational Studies, Geneva), Arnold David
son (Chicago), Denis Donoghue (New York University), David James
Fisher (UCLA), Michael Geyer (Chicago), Wulf Kansteiner (UCLA),
Rudy Koshar (University of Southen1 California), Peter Loewenberg
(UCLA), Leo Loewenthal (UC Berkeley), Charles Maier (Harvard),
Peter Novick (Chicago), Froma Zeitlin (Princeton).
Finally, as convener of the conference, 1 would like to thank espe•
cially my two assistants, Beatrice Kansteiner (Durnin) and Wulf Kan
steiner, without whose help it would have been difficult to organize
the event.
Saul Friedlander
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Contents
Introduction 1
Saul F~d/.ander
1 German Memory, Judicial Intertogation, and llistoricai
Reconstruction: Writing Perpetrator History from
Postwar Testimony 22
Christopher R. BrOW!llng
2 Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth 37
Hayden White
\ 3 On Emplottnent: 'lwo Kinds of Ruin 54
Perry Anderson
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History, Counterhistory, and Narrative 66
Amos Funkenstein
5 Just. One Witness 82
Carlo Cinzburg
6 Of Plots, Witnesses, and Judgments 97
Martin/av
7 Representing the Holocaust; Reftections on the
Historians' Debate 108
Dominick LaCapra
I
8 Historical Understanding an.d Counterrationality:
I
The Judenrat as Epistemological Vantage 128
Dan Diner
9 History beyond the Pleas-ure Principle: Some lnoughts
on the Representation of Trauma 143
Eric L. Santner
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10 Habermas, Enlightenment, and Antisemitism 155
Vincent P. Pecora
11 Between Image and Phrase, Progressive History and the
•Final Solution" as Dispossession 171
Sande Cohen
12 Science, Modernity; and the ..F inal Solution· 18.5
Mario Biagioli
x_.13 Holocaust and the End of History: Postmodern
""'Historiography in Cinema 206
Anton Kaea
14 Whose Story Is It, Anyway? Ideology and 1'sychology
in the ,Representation oft he Shoah in Israeli Literature 223
Yael S. Feldman
15 Transiating Paul Celan's ''Todesfuge":
Rhythm and Repetition as Metaphor 240
John Felatlner
16 "The Crave i'n the Air": U11bound Metaphors
in Post-Holocaust Poetry 259
Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi
17 The Dialectics of Unspeakability: Language, Silence,
and the Narratives-of Oes1,1bjectili~tion 277
PeterHaidu
18 The Representation of Limits 300
Berel Lang
,/1 9 The Boole of the Destruction 318
✓
Geoffrey H. Hartman
Notes 337
Contributors 399
Index 401
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On111r nl from
UNIVERSITY OF MIG--IIGAr.l
Introduction
SAUL FRIEDLANDER
When I -t Into our or,1~ olBc.e thJs morning, ii WU • temble ffl0!$; ii had
J
~n requisitioned as a dressing room for the [m uskal n,vue. 11M, revue .ii
talc!ngov,r the whole camp. Thtte are no overalls for people on outside duty,
but the :revue bu .ii • ovenll t..llet•- .o day and night people sewed ovenlb
with Uitle pulred ,leeves ror the dancert. Wood &om the synagogue In Asien
bu been sawed up to make a stage ... Ob, Maria, Maria-Before the last
tra,uport, the people who were due to leave worked all day K>r ,th-, ttvue.
Everything here bu an indescribably clownish madness and sadnes•.
kiter &om Etty Rlllesum to a friend, Westerliorlt camp (Holland), 2 Septe m•
ber 1943. liiUesum died In Auschwitz on JO November 1943.
Most of the contributo is. volume~sual interlocutors
in discussions of e Holoca ·D!Uhough a few ofthem are scholars
who have dealt elltensively with issues related to Nazism and the ex
termination of the Jews of Europe, the majority are not. The aim here
is not to deal with a specific historical aspect of these events or with
their particular expression in literature, in the arts, or in philosophy.
The underlying assumption is that we are dealing with an event of a
kind which demands a global approach and a general reftection on the
difficulties that are raised by i representati
Thas project evokes some dou ts w ich are not easily dispelled. Can
the extermination of the Jews of Europe ~&he o~ct of theoretical
discussions? ls, it not unacceptable to debat rmal d fil)s&act ~sues
in relation to this catastrophe? It would be if ese abstract issues were
not directly related to the way contemporary culture reshapes the im
age of this pasl Present memory of Nazism and its orimes is directly
inftuenced by global intellectual shifts intrinsically: linked to the ques
tions raised in this volume. The necessity of such discussion is thus
clear; it Will be evident, moreover, that none of the contributors has
forgotten the horror behind the words.
The ba.~ic problem we. shall be dealing with has been on the minds
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of many since the very end of the war, and Theodor Adomo's (often
misunderstood) utterance about writing poetry after Awchwitz has
turned into its best-known point of reference. Nonetheless, the chal
lenge has become more perceptible during the last two decades, as the
result of an ongoing shaping and reshaping of the image of the Nazi
epoch, During the seventies, film and literature opened the way to
some sort of "new discourse: 1 Historiography followed and the mid
eighties witnessed heated debates about new interpretations of the
''Final Solution~ in history (the best-known of these debates being the
German "historians' controversy/ and, In more general terms, about
the proper historicization of National Socialism, that is, of"Auschwitz."
lo these various domains new narratives about Nazism came to the
fore, new forms of representation appeared. In many cases they
seemed to test implicit bounc4ries and to raise not only ;iesthetic and
intellectual problems, but moral issues too. The question oft he limits
q-,repre~•:~r Nazism and its crimes has become a recurrent
theme in re at1on to various concrete subjects. Here the overall aspect
of this problem is our main concern.
The immedaate incentive for the conference leading to this volume
was a debate which took place in 1989 on '"History, Event, and Dis
course,'' during which Hayden White and Carlo Ginzburg presented
opposing views on the nature of historical truth, The echoes of such a
debate were reinforced by still-lingering COl)troversies on the histori
cization of Nazism. The e~ermination of the Jews of Europe, as the
most extreme case of mass criminality, must challenge theoreticians of
historical relativism to face the corollaries of positions otherwise too
easily dealt with on an abstract level. Of course the basic questions
.asked here refer also to forms of representation other than the histor•
ical.
The very nature of this project called for the expression of a great
divetSity of views, some of which I have reservations about. Therefore,
this Introduction is not merely a traditional presentation and pulling
together of the themes rai$ed by the contributors from the point of
view of a "neutral" editor; it is equally the expression of a persona.I
stand.
f
'!be ext~nninati~n of the J~ws of Europe is _as ~ssible to both rep
resentation and interpretation as any other h1stoncal event. But we are
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Introduction
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dealing with an event whioh tests our traditional conceptual and re~
1
resentational categories, an "event at the limi~. ..
What turns the "Final Solution" Into an event at the limits is the
very fact that it is the most radical form of genocide encountered in
history: the willful, systematic, industrially organized, largely success
fuJ attempt totally to exterminate an entire human group within
twentieth-<:entury Western society. Jn Jiirgen llabennas' words;
"There [in Auschwitz) something happened, that up to now nobody
considered as even .possible. There one touched on something which
represents the deep layer of solidarity among all that wears a human
face; notwithstanding all the usual acts ofbe-.i.stliness of human history.
the integrity of this common layer had been taken for granted . . .
Auschwitz 1w changed the basis for the continuity of the conditions of
life within history.''t
It would seem self-evident that such a monstrous marufestation of
human "potentialities" would not be forgotten or repressed. If one
adds the.fact that the_ perpetrators invested considerable effort not only
in camouflage, hut in effacement of all traces of their deeds, the obli
gation to bear witness and record this past seems even more compel
ling. Such a postulate implies, quite naturally, the imprecise but no
less self-evident notion that this record should not be distorted or·ba
nalized by grossly inadequate representations. Some claim to "truth~
appears particularly imperativl]t suggests, io otbec words, that tbei;t
e limits to representation whu;h should not be but can easil be
tra !!:? c arac eristics of such a transgression are,
owever, is far more intractable than our definitions have so far been
able to encompass.
It may be that we feel the. obligation of keeping the record of this
past through some sort of "master-narrative," without actually being
able to define its necessary components. The reason for the sense of
obli ar but the difficulty in establishing the elements of
1
such a maste.r-narr11tiv e pt on the simplest faclulll level) may stem
is event, perceived in its totality, may sis•
nify more than the sum of its components. Our problem thus appears
to center on intangible but nonetheless perceived boundaries. The di
lemma we are identifying 1s not one of gross transgression (the dental
of the Holocaust, for instance). The intractable criterion seems to be a
kind of uneasiness. The problem is neither narrowly scientmc nor bla
tantly ideological: one cannot define exactly what is wrong with acer-
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Saul Friedlander
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tain representation of the events, but, as Christopher Browning sug
is _
gests, one senses when some interpret~r R:{)Wsentation
~ Can it be that this kind of reaction is due to the sensitivity or
~nsitivity found among a specific generation-be it among
Jews, Germans, or others still deeply sensitized to the Nazi epoch? l
would agree with Dominick LaCapra that in this case the problem of
"transfetence" is indeed more Widespread and complex by far than for
most nther historical events, and is not limited to the contemporaries
of those years.
l shall come back to the transference question. O•uur_:r ceg_eiinrtta:t-diileti11m14.
can be defined as confronting the issues raised b · istorical relativism
and aesthetic experimentation in the f.tre of two poss1 y con rary con
straints: a need for "truth," and the problems r.tised by the opaqueness
of the events and the opaqueness of langµage as such. This dilemma
leads us to consider some of the following points;
The implications of historical relativism in general;
The implications of the construction of any number ofh istorical nar•
ratives about Nazism and the .. Final Solution; as long as the facts
are not falsified (this is the gist of various arguments regarding the
historicization of Nazism and the "Final Solution');
The existence or nonerjstence of limits to literary and artistic rendi
tions of the Shoa,h (in general terms);
The contradictory implications of specifio approaohes to this last
type ofr endition.
Let me dwelt. on this IIISI: point as it is linked to contrary epistemologi
cal, aesthetic, and ideological positions: "postmodemism," as opposed
to traditional and modernist modes of repre$entation.
First, some obvious problems of limits, as understood here, have
already appeared in the wake oft he @plication ofp ostmodern aesthet
ics to the rendition of Nazism and the Shoah, fron1 Luohino Visconti
and Lina Wertmiiller lo Hans Jurgen Syberberg in film, from Michel
Toumier in literature to some of the paintings of Anselm Kiefer, among
others. An argument could obviously be made for the necessity ofide
ologjcal ambiguity and aesthetic experimentation in the face of events
which seem to escape usual categories ofr epresentation.
Second. postmodern thoughfs rejection of the possibility of identi
fying some stable reality or truth beyond the constant polysemy and
self-referentiality ofl inguistic constructs challenges the need to estab-
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