Psychoanalytic and Cultural Aspects of Trauma and the Holocaust: Between Postmemory and Postmemorial Work

209 Pages·2022·11.525 MB·English

by  Rony Alfandary, Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz

Psychoanalytic and
Cultural Aspects of Trauma
and the Holocaust
Psychoanalytic and Cultural Aspects of Trauma and the Holocaust presents
interdisciplinary postmemorial endeavors of second-, third-, and fourth-
generation Holocaust survivors living in Israel and in the Jewish diaspora.
Drawing on a wide range of fields, including psychoanalysis, Holocaust
studies, journal and memoir writing, hermeneutics, and the arts, this book
considers how individuals dealing with the memory, or postmemory, of the
Holocaust possess a personal connection to this trauma. Exploring their
role as testimony bearers, each contributor performs their postmemorial
work in a unique and creative way, blending the subjective and the objective.
The book considers themes including postcolonialism, home, displacement,
and identity.
Psychoanalytic and Cultural Aspects of Trauma and the Holocaust will be
key reading for academics and students of psychoanalytic studies, Holocaust
studies, and trauma and cultural studies. It will also be of interest to psycho-
analysts working with transgenerational trauma.
Rony Alfandary, Ph.D., is a clinical social worker, psychoanalytic psycho-
therapist, and photographer. He is a lecturer at the School of Social Work
at the University of Haifa and the former director of the Post-Graduate
Program of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at Bar-Ilan University, Israel.
His recent publications include Exile and Return: A Psychoanalytic Study
of Lawrence Durrell’s The Alexandria Quartet and Postmemory, Psychoanal-
ysis and Holocaust Ghosts: The Salonica Cohen Family and Trauma across
Generations, both published by Routledge.
Professor Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz is the director of the Arnold and
Leona Finkler Institute of Holocaust Research, the Abraham and Edita
Spiegel family professor in Holocaust Research, the Rabbi Pynchas Brener
professor in Research on the Holocaust of European Jewry, and professor
of Modern Jewish History in the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Department
of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University, Israel.

Psychoanalytic and
Cultural Aspects of
Trauma and the Holocaust
Between Postmemory and
Postmemorial Work
Edited by Rony Alfandary and
Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz
Designed cover image: © R. Alfandary, ‘A Suitcase Full of
Postmemories’
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Rony Alfandary and
Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz; individual chapters, the
contributors
The right of Rony Alfandary and Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz
to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of
the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Alfandary, Rony, editor. | Baumel-Schwartz, Judith Tydor,
1959– editor.
Title: Psychoanalytic and cultural aspects of trauma and the Holocaust :
between postmemory and postmemorial work / edited by Rony
Alfandary and Judith Tydor Baumel-Schwartz.
Description: First edition. | Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY :
Routledge, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2022034037 (print) | LCCN 2022034038
(ebook) | ISBN 9781032228884 (hbk) | ISBN 9781032228891 (pbk) |
ISBN 9781003274650 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)—Psychological aspects. |
Generational trauma. | Holocaust survivors—Family relationships. |
Children of Holocaust survivors—Mental health. | Holocaust
survivors—Mental health. | Holocaust survivors—Biography.
Classification: LCC RC451.4.H62 P79 2023 (print) | LCC RC451.4.H62
(ebook) | DDC 940.53/18019—dc23/eng/20220923
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022034037
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022034038
ISBN: 978-1-032-22888-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-22889-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-27465-0 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003274650
Typeset in Times New Roman
by codeMantra
To all our family members whom we lost in the Holocaust
but whose memory lives with us forever.

Contents
List of figures ix
List of contributors xi
1 Aftermath: Memory, Postmemory, and Postmemorial
Work After the Holocaust 1
RONY ALFANDARY AND JUDITH TYDOR BAUMEL-SCHWARTZ
PART I
Cultural and Psychological Aspects of
Postmemorial Work 7
2 Searching, Searching, Searching… Are
There Any Relatives in the Room? 9
RONY ALFANDARY
3 Then Came Hitler: A Lifetime of Choices on My Path of
Postmemorial Work 31
JUDITH TYDOR BAUMEL-SCHWARTZ
4 Reflections on Postmemory – With Some
Notes from Ireland and Greece 44
RICHARD PINE
5 Traumatic Childhood and Growing Up in the Shadow of
Trauma: When Post-Trauma Meets Postmemory: The Story of
David, a Holocaust Survivor 60
MAIA JESSICA SHOHAM
viii Contents
6 From Stone Tomb to Flourishing Vineyard: Moving from
Silent Testimony to Living Creativity in “Creating Memory”, a
Bibliotherapy Initiative for Third Generation Holocaust Survivors 72
BELLA SAGI
7 Never Forget – The Net Will Remember: Connective Memory
as a Form of Postmemory in the Age of Digital Platforms 87
OSHRI BAR-GIL
PART II
Postmemorial work in Literature and Art 109
8 Letting the Monster In? Illustrating the Holocaust in
Contemporary Israeli Children’s Picture Books 111
ERGA HELLER
9 “Where’s the Little Girl? What Little Girl? Was There
Ever a Little Girl?”: From Narrative Memory to Emotional
Postmemory in Nava Semel’s Book And the Rat Laughed 124
NAAMA RESHEF
10 The Presence of Absence; Postmemory in My Life 137
NAOMI SHMUEL
11 I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors: Second Generation
Postmemory in Animated Documentary 146
LIAT STEIR-LIVNY
12 “If It’s ME Reading the Signs”: Carl Jung’s Synchronicity and
the A-Causal in Holocaust Postmemory at the Movies 157
MICHELLE LISSES-TOPAZ
13 Writing the Erasure 175
ILANA EILATI SHALIT
Index 187
Figures
1 Bondy and Benjamin Cohen 18
2 Bondy and Edmond 18
3 Edmond and Benjamin 19
4 Bondy, Benjamin, and Bondy’s mother, Mazeltov 19
5 Bondy, Benjamin, and Rosette 20
6 Parc Zoologique de Paris (Lion) 21
7 Librairie Hachette (Le Paradisier) 21
8 La Grande Marque Française Cambodge 22
9 Labortorie Bouty Le Sirop de Gaïarsol 22
10 Blecao Hippocampe 23
11 Bon Points S’ Germian 24
12 1939 – Benjamin’s billet de satisfaction 24
13 Postcard to Benjamin 25
14 Benjamin’s diary 26
15 Benjamin’s témoignages de satisfaction 26
16 Benjamin’s Bookmark, July 1942 27
17 The list that started our journey 88
18 Map location of our virtual journey based on the stations
mentioned in her notes 89
19 The first page of testimony 97
20 The second page of testimony 97
21 List of people from Drujsk who were murdered.
Automatically linked by the Yad Vashem algorithms 98
22 Consolidation suggestion at the Yad Vashem archive. The
human needs to connect the dots for the machine 98
23 Screenshot of connected archives search from Jewishgen.
org website. Each line is a search in records found in
different databases 99
24 Savta Hanna and Me 101