CHAPTER SIX

RUTH IN CONTEXT:

A COMPARISON OF NARRATIVES, THEMES,

AND THE IMPACT OF MEMORIES

Ruth’s case illuminates a number of interesting themes and organizational patterns in narrative and story-telling. The structure of her narrative was particularly unique, perhaps stemming from her inability to remember large chunks of the events she discussed. Building on the theory that absences of information are just as significant as what is explicitly described, Ruth’s narrative will be compared here to the narratives of some of the other interviewees. In her narrative, it was clear that her pattern of elaboration was not necessarily tied to significance or meaningfulness. Indeed, she seemed to elaborate on anything she could remember, which makes it difficult to know which of those sections were hold meaning for her and which were simply told because they could be told. She also showed a tendency to not develop stories about events or circumstances that she perceived to be uninteresting. This also makes it that much harder to understand why Ruth told me what she did.

Ruth constantly made references to either what she definitely could remember or to her lack of memory ability. Indeed, she almost seemed to be presenting an identity, or creating for me a picture of herself as “lost,” “fragmented,” and “uprooted.” There were places in her narrative when it seems centered around someone, or something, else. This also has powerful implications for Ruth’s memorial capabilities and processes of meaning-making. Ruth’s narrative has a clear organization, which can be seen in the point of view she takes from story to story, but also carries with it indications of a disrupted identity. The themes that appear and re-appear throughout the narrative tend to continually point toward this image of herself that she seems to want to project.

Ruth has virtually no pre-war narrative. She jumps from her birth to six years later within three sentences. She mentions her childhood, with herself as the main character, once. Ruth’s narrative of her wartime experiences is longer, but no less disrupted. It is mostly not her own, and shows signs of having been pieced together from fragments of her own memory and larger chunks of the memories and stories of others. Finally, her post-war experience has not even been rendered into narrative form; it is simply not a story she tells. Ruth tends to tell all her stories with both a lack of emotion and a lack of evaluation. Ultimately, she lives in the past, with her emotional reactions, relationships, and coping all perceivable as direct responses to her childhood experiences.

In comparison to Ruth, many of the other survivors I interviewed look quite different. Indeed, it may be possible to understand more clearly what subtle meanings Ruth’s story holds when it is juxtaposed with a presentation of what holds significance in the narratives of the others. The three central differences were clustered around the beginnings of their life narratives, their references to memory and memory inabilities, and the scope of elaboration and emotional evaluation in the stories that were told. Ruth’s narrative stands in stark contrast to those of many of the others in these three contexts.

“Tell Me Your Story”: How Three Others Began Their Narratives

As we saw in the previous chapter, Ruth began her narrative with her birth and turned immediately to her father as a main character and her family’s repeated relocations as a central theme. She did not volunteer information about her childhood, her family makeup, or her religious upbringing—all components that I expected to hear when I asked each of my interviewees to tell their stories to me. These omissions in Ruth’s narrative clearly seem to correspond to, and be a result of, both her lack of memory about certain topics and her perceptions of the significance of these topics in her life. I would argue that Ruth did not discuss her life before the war because it does not play a large part in her life now, either because she does not remember it or because she does not find it particularly meaningful to her present sense of self. If this is the case, one might expect the narratives of some of the other subjects to emphasize different facets of their stories, and for those facets to correspond to their own systems of meaning in their lives.

Below are the beginning segments of three interviews. These were, in effect, the responses that directly followed my request to hear the participants’ “story,” or to have them tell me about their experiences. Although there was slight variation in how the question was phrased across interviews, one can clearly see the differences (and some similarities) between these beginnings and that of Ruth’s narrative. The first example is from my interview with Anita, which she began as follows: “I was born in Vienna, Austria. I was the youngest of three, a brother and a sister. I had [a] very very happy childhood, I came from an Orthodox home. Very traditional Jewish home. Until Hitler marched in in ‘38, everything changed.”[1] At this point, I asked her when she was born, to which she responded, “I was born, 1926,” and then went on with a description of how “everything changed.” Anita begins in a manner somewhat similar to Ruth, and in fact, similar to most narratives: with a geographically-grounded mention of her birth. Interestingly, she does not center her birth in chronological terms, as Ruth did. In fact, I was the one who pushed Anita to place her account in a temporal organization.

The first date comes with Hitler’s arrival in her town, the mention of which comes even earlier in Anita’s narrative than it did in Ruth’s. This appeared to be a pattern in many of my interviews, and I can only assume that Hitler appears very early in these survivors’ life narratives because he came rather quickly into their lives. Although this can be viewed as a similarity across these two accounts, Anita’s narrative generally differs markedly from Ruth’s in content. Anita includes information about her background, although sparingly. She mentions her siblings, where she was in the birth order, the emotional circumstances of her childhood, and her religious background. While this is all done in three sentences, it is clearly and significantly different from Ruth’s narrative in this manner.

Next, we will see the beginning of Lee’s life narrative, which provides an even greater degree of details: “My name is Lee Potasinski and I am a survivor of Hitler’s death camps. I was born in Poland, a city about five hundred miles south of Warsaw. The name of the city is Bendzyn, Poland. Population of fifty thousand, half of which were Jewish. My family consisted of my parents, my sister, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins.” At this point I asked about the age of his sister, and he responded, “My sister was three years younger than I am.” I then inquired as to what year he was born, to which he replied, “1932. Well, just to give you a little bit more background as far as the city. First of all, there was no question, you know, are you observant or are you not observant. Everybody observed. My father was self-employed. He had three stores, two retail ladies and men’s wear, and one wholesale…goods. My grandparents had a grocery store.”[2]

Lee’s initial comments show similarities to both Ruth’s and Anita’s beginnings. He grounds his narrative geographically and not temporally, as Anita did. He also describes where his city of origin is located, rather than just reciting the name, as Ruth did in her narrative. Lee goes on to discuss the city’s population, its Jewish community, and the makeup of his family. Again, I interrupted with a temporally-based question, as I had (or chose) to do with Anita. Lee then presents an even more elaborate background than Anita did, and certainly goes beyond what Ruth offered. He mentions the religiosity of the community in which he lived, in a manner similar to Anita’s discussion of her family’s religiousness.

Lee then comments on his father and his occupation, and even mentions his grandparents’ occupations. In fact, Ruth also spent a significant amount of time in the beginning of her narrative discussing her father’s business. The commonalities here between Lee and Ruth, and Lee and Anita, respectively, are striking. On a continuum of details presented, Lee is clearly on one end with Ruth on the opposite end. There were some organizational tools that Ruth used to order her narrative that neither of the other two utilized. On the other side, there were some facets of description that Lee showed, while Ruth and Anita did not.

One notable difference is Lee’s opening remark, in which he gives his name and then immediately labels himself as a survivor. This could very well correspond to his perception of his identity, in which his sense of self as a survivor could be seen to follow his sense of self-as-individual. However, it could just as easily be an introduction to his Holocaust narrative, which he was telling because I had asked for it. It is significant, however, that I did not find this type of spontaneous declaration of survivorship in many of my other interviews, especially not in the first statements. Lee also describes his “family” as consisting of “my parents, my sister, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins.” While Ruth did not mention her family, as a family, until I inquired about them (giving only isolated stories centered around either of her parents), and Anita mentioned only her siblings and her “home,” Lee takes a rather integrative stance in incorporating his entire extended family into his narrative. This could imply that he had a strong familial presence in his childhood, and his choice to comment on all of them shows the meaningfulness they hold in his life.

The final example comes from Walter, who chose an organizational form with which I had not been presented before. He essentially began in the middle of his life narrative (or at the end of his Holocaust narrative), and worked his way backward:

So you want me to give you a little bit of my background? Okay. Well, I’m going to tell you when I came to the United States and then a back-track. We actually, my parents and I—I was an—I’m an only child. We came to the USA, New York on March the 25^th, 1939. From Germany. We left Germany March 15^th, on a ship called President Roosevelt. I was twelve and a half years old when I got here, when we got here. And I was born July 18, 1926, and what I would like to, sort of say, some of the things that go back the furthest that I can remember and it may be spotty, are my years in elementary school. Which are from 1932 to 1936. Now, those four years, what I can recall were probably no different than going to elementary school here. So we are talking age six to age ten. And so I don’t recall any form of anti-Semitism, prejudice, from either the other students or the teachers.[3]

Walter’s narrative shows the true variety of story-telling strategies. He attempts to introduce his narrative geographically and temporally, but his “back-track” turns into a rather disorganized account of events. Even before he begins, he prefaces his story with information about his family (“I’m an only child”). He then gives the details of his birth after describing briefly the circumstances surrounding his arrival in America. Walter follows this with an admission about his memory capabilities, and then gives a few short comments about his elementary school years and the presence of prejudice in this context. This is perhaps the most striking display of the importance of analyzing why some information is presented in a narrative and why other details are omitted, as well as looking at why the account is organized as it is.

Indeed, I cannot even begin to speculate as to the reasons behind Walter’s choice to begin his narrative with his arrival in New York. The segment above actually comes across as disjointed and discontinuous, in spite of his attempt to order it chronologically. The details are given in a sporadic manner, with no apparent correlation between significance and elaboration. This is seen in his inclusion of the name of the ship and his discussion of how his elementary school experiences were decidedly not unusual or notable. Walter does mention that he is going back “the furthest that I can remember,” which may imply that his narrative is organized more around what he can remember than around the significance a particular memory may hold for him. However, one could argue that what he remembers would, by definition, be imbued with more meaning. Nonetheless, Walter’s narrative seems to exhibit a type of disruption that is in contrast to Ruth’s, one that is presented not as a lack of content, but as a different level of ability to organize what is there in a coherent fashion.

“I Just Don’t Remember”: References to Memory and Memory Holes

While Ruth is unusual in the sense that she remembers very little of her experiences during the war, her case study represents the problems that arise when an individual’s memory does not form a coherent life account and when crucial or especially emotional memories are not accessible. All of my subjects have dealt or are dealing with the difficulties that result from missing or spotty memories. Ruth is unique, however, in that she is facing these problems in nearly every facet of her story. She cannot access or present a cohesive description of any of the experiences she underwent. The central difference between Ruth and the other survivors I interviewed is that while at times, they may not remember specific details about a given experience, Ruth is missing whole events and chunks of experiences.

It is possible, even likely, that the other subjects were not as aware or as honest about the memories they may be missing. Indeed, they may have simply attempted to string together the memories they do have into a cohesive narrative in and of itself, rather than openly acknowledging that portions were missing and that the narrative does not cover “everything.” This is, in fact, one of the most fundamental issues underlying narratives: one simply cannot remember everything.

It nonetheless appears that “forgetting” means very different things for Ruth than it does for many of the others. Ray told me, mirroring the beliefs of many of the others, “I mean, it’s normal that you forget, [not] forget, but that you don’t think of all the things that [happened during the] war. But certain things just stand out more than others. And this is what I mean by forgetting. You never forget anything… some of them, the most important ones, are the ones that remain with you, that you think of over [and over].”[4]

Boris also mentioned the impossibility of forgetting, stating, “How can I forget something of this power? What kind of a person would I be? All my friends, all those kids that I went to school with that did not make it, if I can just wipe it out completely… I cannot be a part of their fate. It would be inhuman to forget something like this.”[5] There is clearly a sense of morality involved in his view of memory, and a feeling of obligation to those who “did not make it.”

Elly similarly discussed the inability to forget, but also added that for her, remembering is not only a moral thing to do but also a satisfying activity. She told me, “Actually I feel that if I remember, I have a certain kind of satisfaction. I have a good feeling, that they’ve not [been forgotten], and you cannot forget. You have to have it. It’s impossible to forget.”[6] She also grounds her ability to remember in its meaning for the victims who cannot do so. Similarly, when I asked Stan if he ever worries that he might forget his experiences, he also used the word “impossible”:

No. No. That I will forget? No, no. Let me put it to you this way. If there was any chance of me forgetting, I would have forgotten. Yes, I may not pinpoint the exact day or the exact hour or what have you. But within the framework of, two, three months, you know, ‘42, ‘43, February, March, December… I mean, don’t ask me to be very specific in terms of days or dates of the month. But to forget, no. It’s impossible.[7]

Thus, one can see the differences between Ruth and many of the other survivors. For them, forgetting is simply not possible; they trust the vividness and the veracity of their memories and cannot conceive of a situation in which they would not be able to access them. Their memory of the Holocaust period is a part of them, a part (if not the key ingredient) of their identity. For Ruth, it is the absence of her memory that governs her identity, and she has little to trust in the face of what she perceives as a betrayal of her by her memory. While the other survivors find solace and a sense of identity in their ability to remember, Ruth finds only constant pain in her inability to reconnect with her past.

Above all else, I found it significant that very few of the other participants discussed “missing” memories as Ruth did. Again, most spoke of their memories of the time period as “vivid,” and many seemed to believe in the infallibility of their memory. What often upset them the most, therefore, was their occasional inability to remember often-minute details about an experience. With some, it appeared that they were unable to access details that they were aware of previously (perhaps recently) knowing. With others, as seen in Stan’s comment above, it seemed that they had rehearsed the overall “gist” of the experience so often that they had simply forgotten the particulars a long time ago.

Regardless of the reasons, many of my subjects seemed almost as distressed about not being able to recall these details as Ruth was about not being able to remember whole events in her life. One can see this relentless attention to detail in the following excerpt from Annie’s interview:

Polish winter. Very cold winter. And so I started to walk, and I still did not really realize completely the situation I was in. And then I met a woman, and we walked together. Did we exchange some words? I don’t know. I don’t remember. Then we saw a man, and I remember this man very vividly. He was standing with a lantern in the entrance to his house. Now if he said anything, or words, I don’t know. I don’t remember. But he let us in. And he sat there for a while, and I remember the inside of the house where he lived very vividly, too. And he gave us two cold potatoes, cooked, or baked, or whatever. And he apologized he hasn’t any bread, otherwise he would have given us some. I wish I could understand that. He was a very nice man. I don’t know who he was. And I don’t know even [remember] exactly the town, or the vicinity where we were. (emphasis added)[8]

Here, Annie describes this scene in such detail that the reader can picture it him or herself. However, the narrative she tells is peppered with admissions of what she remembers and what she does not. She seems frustrated with what she perceives as a partial image or memory of the event. She also sees a stark contrast between the experiences of remembering some things “very vividly” and not being able to access details she seems to believe she ought to know.

However, when I later asked Annie how she feels about her memory abilities and how much of it she thinks has been influenced by post-war reconstructions, she responded, “No, I think my memory’s pretty good. And yes. And, yes, I do, you know, I always fill in some. I forgot many names. And then a name comes back. You know, it comes back, but a lot of things that I was talking already about, and saw, somehow I had like a picture in front of me.” She went on to reiterate that some of her memories are more vivid than others, and as such, preclude any forgetting: “Very vivid, and I’ll never forget them. And they were that vivid from day one, and the minute they happened, like that dream, like that man with the lantern was standing in the door, you know, certain things are just there.”[9]

Two similar excerpts, from the transcripts of Henry and Victor, respectively, show again the frequent references to memory limitations:

We were chased out of the Catholic house. We traveled three days and two nights, or two days and three nights, and the sanitary conditions were non-existent. I really don’t know where I peed, I don’t remember the details, but it was no fun existence. And there was no water, and no food. I think we got a piece of bread, but it didn’t last. And we were packed so tight that…an old man, probably wasn’t more than forty—to me he was old—he stood in front of me. He died after that one day. And he stood for the rest of the trip looking at me. (emphasis added)[10]

[I had a] toothache, and there was a woman working on the farm. We walked over, a group of us because she treated you from a cut hand to anything else you had to do. And she looked at my teeth, I don’t remember what she did. I knew my face was a little swollen. She packed it or whatever she did, it’s such a long time I don’t remember. All I know [is] I was taken care of and I had to wait outside for the rest of the group because we had that soldier guarding us to bring us back. (emphasis added)[11]

In these two passages, as in Annie’s, there is again a powerful attention to detail, with the scenes described as visual images with great precision. These individuals seem to remember a great deal of events and details about them, and yet, there is a sense of disappointment at not being able to remember everything. Again, the same resignation that Ruth exhibits at her inability to access the memories of whole years of her life before the war shows also in these survivors’ frustration at losing specific details.

Below is an unusual case of one of my subjects, Ray, which shows not only the meticulousness of his memory but also his near-absolute faith in its accuracy:

I went over to look at this [barn where] my mother was hiding before they took her away. And it’s interesting. When I got there, I told my wife, ‘Honey, this barn [was] much closer to the road.’ She said, ‘Are you sure?’ Just before I told her this, when we drove into the town, I showed her my school. And I always told her stories, [like] how far I had to walk from the school to my house. And [it] wouldn’t matter whether there was wind or snow, a blizzard, I never missed a day. I always went to school. So when we drove by this [area], I said, ‘Why don’t I show you where I lived?’ I turned around the corner, and there was the house. But the child’s image—I thought that the house was so far away from the school. So when I saw that the barn seemed to be nearer to the road, I thought that maybe it’s just an illusion. When the son [of the man who had helped the family, now deceased] came out, he recognized me, and he greeted me nicely. And I said, ‘Tell me. My mother was hiding in your barns.’ ‘No, they were not hiding.’ I said, ‘Yes, they were.’ He was a kid then. He said, ‘I remember your whole family. I ought to know.’ I said, ‘Look, you went to bed at night, and I brought in my family to this barn. The following morning, early in the morning, they were taken away by the Germans. So maybe you didn’t know about it, but they were in this barn.’ He said, ‘Can’t be this barn. It was moved away, into the country.’ So it wasn’t just an illusion. I remembered every little thing, every corner, or something close. (emphasis added)[12]

As one can see, the variety of memorial abilities among the Holocaust survivors I interviewed is extreme. None, however, exhibited the types of devastating memory incapacities that Ruth did, and none showed the kind of disruption that this has caused her, either in their explicit references to memory or in the level of emotion in their story-telling. Below we will see a number of narratives that show an emotional evaluation that was similarly absent in most of Ruth’s stories.

Post-War Evaluation of Memories and Their Meanings Today

The narratives above show often-intricate event memories and certainly emotional memories. However, they are told in a slightly more distant, separated fashion; the narrator and his or her present life appears slightly removed from the stories and the past in which they exist. In this sense, there is little mention of the memory itself carrying on in the mind of the rememberer (except perhaps in Ray’s narrative), and there is no explicit evaluation outside of the narrative as far as the specific meaning of the memory. In contrast, I found that many of my subjects gave narratives that present evidence of more sensory-based and significantly traumatic memories. As such, the participants’ discussions of these events tended to carry with them more references to the vividness of the memories, their persistence, and their impact on the present-day lives of the rememberers.

Eva describes vividly here her experience in a concentration camp, as well as its consequences for her later life: “I don’t remember thinking! I mean, I remember the filth, and the lice… I remember how we slept, on triple-decker bunks. And…two people to a bunk, head to foot. And the bed bugs, falling at night into your face. And I’ve never never never forgotten this, when you crush them they smell of almond, bitter almond. And, anything that crawls, to this day, sends me over the [edge].”[13] Eva clearly found this facet of her experience particularly traumatic, to the point that her account of the memory is accompanied by a comment on how it affects her “to this day.” The memory itself is also obviously vivid.

Similarly, when I asked David how vivid his memories are, he responded, “Fantastic.” He went on to discuss meticulously his mind’s eye image of the hiding place in which his family stayed for two years during the war, and many “details about World War II”:

I literally, right now, [see] the vision of it, of every little day of it. The type of clothing that I had. Where the pillows [are] lying…the pipe going out to the outside, the color of the table of the bench. The color of the rats that were running around, and where they were. Where the boards were and where the wall was exposed. This is 1942, so it’s sixty years ago… When I talked to my father when he was alive, I remembered more than he did about the people who lived. I almost—fifty percent of the people, I know exactly their names, how they looked, where they lived, where they were. I remember details about World War II, where…[there were] villages that were taken over two or three times. What I don’t remember is something that happened two or three days ago! But the details of that time are not only remembered, but they’re vivid in my mind. I can visualize them.[14]

I then asked David if there are some memories that are more vivid for him than others, to which he replied, “Probably. You know, some things that impressed themselves more on my mind than others.”[15] However, the above excerpt shows a powerful persistence of memory for him, and the almost purely visual nature of these memories. He uses language that suggests this when he speaks of “the vision of it,” and when he says, “I can visualize” the details of the time period. What is interesting here, then, is not just that David’s memory is quite impressive, but that he shows his own evaluation of his memory. He is not simply mentioning what he does or does not remember; he is showing an analysis of what and how he remembers. Just as Ruth peppered her conversation with comments on her memory holes, David refers extensively to his memory abilities.

Boris also showed a great deal of post-war evaluation of his memories, especially in relation to their traumatic nature and their clarity in his mind. Below is a description of what he describes as “the greatest trauma” that he endured:

As a young kid, probably the greatest trauma was as I walked the street one day, I think it was on a Sunday afternoon, when I saw these Ukrainian police—the first time that obviously I saw something like this—shoot four people right in the back of the head. And I was no more than fifty feet away. That was a real trauma. Just to see the way it was done, the way they killed all of them… I ran right away the other way. That was a tremendous trauma. When I think back [on] it, it comes in…sometimes I see it. Yeah, it’s very vivid…their names, their heights, the name of the German…the Ukrainian police are still with me, I mean I knew them.[16]

When I asked Boris the same question that I had asked David regarding the vividness of his memories, he answered, “I’ve got all my memories from that time, everything, yes. Sometimes you sit down, they’ll probably come back when you watch television and something comes around on the news, you know, that’s almost similar to it and then the whole picture starts revolving around. It plays back in my mind.”[17]

Here, Boris follows his references to his memory with a comment on how it impacts him. Similar to Eva, he gives a picture not only of the memory itself, but of how it feels to remember it. He says that the details “are still with me,” and that “sometimes I see” the images. While Ruth simply marked many of her stories with statements about whether she did or did not remember the specifics, Boris mentions the vividness of his memories as well as their impact on him and the significance they consequently hold for him.

This type of evaluation of memories seems to correlate again to the level of meaning the memories hold for the individual. It also shows a degree of integration that seems important to the construction of a cohesive life narrative. When a survivor is able to discuss his memories in terms of their emotionality, their meaning, and their vividness, it seems that he has thought extensively about his memories. It could be argued that the more time an individual spends analyzing his memories, often the easier it is to understand them and thus to integrate them into a greater life story. While this is not always the case, these three particular survivors tended to show a comfort and familiarity with their memories, and a willingness to analyze them for me. Ruth, however, often acted as if her memories were not her own. The few stories that she was able to evaluate in terms of emotionality and from a post-war perspective were clearly the most significant to her. Ultimately, I would argue that the ability to evaluate one’s own memories on these dimensions is both a sign of meaningfulness and of sophistication of memory.

Telling Stories: Elaboration and Detail

One of the most fundamental differences between Ruth’s narrative and the narratives of many of the other survivors I interviewed lies in the actual structure and form of the stories that were told. Catherine Kohler Riessman, in an analysis of interviews she conducted with both men and women who had been through a divorce, delineates three different types of narratives. The first, she writes, is that which is most common and most familiar: the “story.” This form can be graphic or not, but it generally “recreates a discrete moment in time.”[18] It tends to engage the listener, “draw[ing] us into the story-realm not only by what [is said], but by the way it is told.”[19] In addition to the “story,” Riessman discusses the “hypothetical narrative” and the “habitual narrative.” The former is a telling of events that the narrator may have wished to have happened, while the latter is an account of the “general course” of a situation or experience over time.[20] The habitual narrative, Riessman argues, tends to “[relegate] us to a more distant place; we understand, but do not relive” the experience.[21]

Ruth’s narrative tended to follow a course that could be described as a “chronicle.” Many of her accounts of specific events were unelaborated, relatively cryptic, and place-centered. They acted as a summary, with only the necessary information presented in order to convey the essential occurrences. Ruth very rarely offered any emotional evaluation about the events she described. More often than not, she simply listed dates, times, places, and relocations. She thus presented a chronicle of her life, in which she sometimes played an active role and sometimes did not. Ruth often could not remember the discrete events that took place, much less the details of each event. Thus, although there were times during our interview when Ruth was able to tell short stories about some isolated events, the great majority of what she told me about her experiences during the war appears unemotional and distant.

This appears to be perhaps the most powerful division between Ruth and the other survivors with whom I spoke. Many of them have been able to construct what Riessman would refer to as “stories” from their experiences, to tell them and re-tell them, to extract meaning and emotion and knowledge from them. Ruth could often only summarize the stories that others have told to her. She is, therefore, unable to understand her past, unable to make sense out of the emotions that stem from her childhood experiences, and unable to integrate all of this into a life narrative from which a cohesive identity could emerge.

“Stories,” as conceptualized by Riessman, allow the reader to be “drawn into the story-realm” and to emotionally comprehend the experience. While Ruth’s reports were often so unelaborated upon that a picture of the events was difficult, if not impossible, to achieve, the story below, presented by Ray, shows the differences between chronicles and stories:

…one night I was awakened by screams from my neighbor, and the scream was, ‘Hurry call the police!’ This was about four in the morning, and when I woke up, I couldn’t have wasted a minute, or second, to call the police or to get dressed. I went out in my shorts. And when I got out, I saw three individuals running away. And when I got into my neighbor’s house, I found out that these three guys broke into the house, and was sitting at the kitchen table and eating, having a feast. When he came down, he started—he saw them. He let out a scream that he lost his voice for many, many months. Now I’m sure that my instinctive reaction—to run down, and to place [myself in] danger, it was something I happened to do. All I had in my mind was that my friend was in danger and needs help. And this was my response. And this was my response whenever someone needs help, whether it’s to that extent, or minor, or lesser, but I’m always there to help if necessary. I don’t think [it’s safe]. It’s just me. It’s my nature. That’s how I feel… Always ready to help… I always felt—you know, whenever I had [guards] with guns at my head to be shot, I still did not believe that I would be shot. There was some kind of an invisible power that told me ‘You will survive this, too.’ And I did. And there were many times that I was in danger like this, and I always felt I would get out of it. And even now, when something happens… I do feel that nothing will hurt me, yes. I have a strong belief in me, but I could probably be wrong.[22]

This story is detailed, elaborated, and evaluated. Ray describes the event itself, both from the perspective of his neighbor and from his own view of the situation. He then spends a great deal of time evaluating his actions and goes even further to discuss his personality, as when he says, “I don’t think [it’s safe]. It’s just me. It’s my nature.” Even though this story takes place after the war, Ray also ties in a brief description of an experience during the Holocaust. He thus associates the original event with his general behavior tendencies and personality traits, and associates both to his reaction during a similar event that occurred during the war. Ray is presenting an argument about himself here, and the two short stories are given as examples to prove his point. This entire story is offered to build the hypothesis that “I do feel that nothing will hurt me, yes. I have a strong belief in me.” In telling this story in this manner, Ray shows a great deal of sophistication and evolved thinking. Again, he is not just recounting a memory; he is describing all the facets of having this memory and how it fits in his life now.

The Pervasive Impact of Memories and Stories

While the rest of my subjects have all contended with memory failings from time to time, none have experienced difficulty to such a severe degree as has Ruth. All, however, have dealt with the same essential issues: how does one go about reconstructing (or constructing) an identity, building new relationships and the ability to have relationships, and making meaning out of one’s experiences after a trauma such as the Holocaust? All have grappled with the problems of coping with daily life, of integrating the past with the present, and of attempting to make sense out of why they survived while over six million did not. It was clear to me, however, that the effect of memory for those who have it is just as devastating as the lack thereof for Ruth. In order to show the drastic differences in the way some of the other survivors spoke about memory compared with how Ruth did so, below are some examples of the power of memory for Anita, Eva, and Elly, respectively.

At one point during our interview, Anita told me about a memory that has stayed with her “to this day”:

The day we left, and I left, my father was already gone, in Hungary. My mother and my sister were at the train station. For four agonizing hours, the windows had to be closed, the train stood in the station. I stood by the window to look at my mother, I was praying the train should leave already, but I couldn’t go away from that window. Because I was afraid, if I would, if I lose her, I’ll lose her forever. And almost to this day I [can’t] stand anybody seeing me off. Taking me to a railway station, to a plane, I always say, ‘Goodbye, don’t turn around.’ And every time when I was in England, my brother and my sister take me to the station, to the airport, they wanted to [see me off]. I [said], ‘Stay there, don’t go in with me,’ I get out of the car, and I run in.[23]

Anita went further to tell me, “I just couldn’t stand, I had always that vision, after over sixty years. It’s still with me. Seeing my [mother standing there],” explaining that “it’s the only hang-up I remember from it.”[24] This passage is described so dramatically, and recounted so emotionally—the meaning that it must hold for Anita is clear just from the language that is used. She also includes an evaluation of the memory, and discusses a connection between the memory and her life afterwards. Her statement that she “had always that vision, after over sixty years” is a powerful one. This type of comment was simply not present in Ruth’s narrative. Anita later told me that she would not want to forget her memories even if she could (which she believes is impossible anyway), saying that she does not mind having her memories affect her the way they do. She justifies her belief:

Because it’s part of life, it happened, I can’t deny what happened. I can’t turn back the clock, I can’t change what happened. You know. Of course I sometimes, you know, you think, ‘What would I be like if everything could have been normal, and I would’ve stayed in Vienna, what kind of person would I be.’ Of course we all wonder that. But what’s the sense? It happened. Once in a while, while talking with my sister, you know, what we [would] have been. You know? Like what if, what would have been our life like.[25]

Anita describes eloquently the constant impact that such vivid memories can have on her. What I find the most interesting about both of these discussions is the similarity between Anita’s statements about the impossibility of forgetting her memories and Ruth’s statements about the impossibility of remembering. Both mention that they “wonder” about aspects of their lives and personalities; for Anita, these questions are related to the events themselves, and for Ruth, they are related to her inability to remember them. Anita’s vivid memory of seeing her mother at the train station has just as powerful an influence on her present functioning as Ruth’s lack of memories of this nature. Both seem to be haunted by their minds; both continue to react today to issues related to their pasts.

In a similar vein, Eva and Anita both bring up the impact that dreams and nightmares can have on a survivor’s post-war life and functioning. Eva told me that she has “no recollection” of a number of circumstances surrounding the ghetto in which she lived, but she notes that she remembers dreaming: “I remember they were—people tell me where I lived in the ghetto and the name of the block and the number or whatever. I have no recollection. It was very traumatic. And I do remember dreaming, and screaming. And I kept seeing my mother come out of the wall, and behind the closet, or whatever.”[26] Clearly, Eva’s dreams are an unconscious manifestation of her memories. Although she cannot consciously remember some of the details of her Holocaust experiences, the dreams that she has even today are markers of the impact these experiences had on her.

Anita mentioned similarly traumatic dreams: “I do have certain dreams. When it is very cold and snowy outside, and I’m comfortable in my [down comforter], I get the feeling of the people in the concentration camp, freezing. And I, who’s so comfortable in bed. I get those [visions] in my mind, at night. You know? When I’m nice and cozy and the wind is blowing outside and it’s snowy, that I do, those visions, those flashes of it.”[27] Because Anita never spent time in a concentration camp, I then asked her whether she feels guilty about not experiencing what is often perceived as the archetypal “survivor experience.” Even though this particular dream seems to point to a sense of guilt, she told me that she does not feel guilty at all. Regardless of the specific emotional underpinnings, it is clear that Anita’s Holocaust-related memories have had a lasting impact on her. To have “visions” and “flashes” of people and experiences she never knew directly must be emotionally difficult.

Finally, a number of Elly’s comments about her memories and ability to remember are also meaningful to this discussion. Similar to Anita and Eva, she mentioned being constantly haunted by nightmares related to the Holocaust. At one point, she told me specifically, “Almost every surgery I had…I saw Mengele going into my cut stomach.” Even to this day, she has persistent nightmares, coupled with difficulty sleeping and intrusive thoughts about the Holocaust. She said:

Every minute of my life, and I have a minute, I sit down, I think about it. And I think about how the people, how the Jews, they were—these graves, and how they were able to manage and manipulate to kill so many people. And I blame, all the time, all the time I blame the Jewish leaders because they knew it, what [was] happening, and they didn’t organize in time to make something [happen]. How I should say? Protection, or try to put the people to where—they didn’t want to make panic. But if they would have made panic, it would have been much better than let them to go to be massacred and killed, murdered like with no mercy, and like they were not humans, they were less than flies. [28]

Elly’s repeated references to the frequency with which she thinks about the Holocaust are conspicuous in this section: “Every minute of my life,” “all the time I blame…” Her description is also highly emotional and image-based, as when she mentions “these graves” and how the Jews were “massacred and killed, murdered like with no mercy…” She also appears haunted by these images, and she cannot seem to get away from them. However, she told me later, “I feel good when I think about it. It gives me satisfaction. I feel good.”

When I asked her if she ever feels truly happy, Elly answered in the negative and said that “the memory of the loss” keeps her from being happy.[29] Clearly, her memories keep her submerged in the pain that she experienced. Ruth is equally “stuck” in the past, but she is there because of her lack of memory and her feeling that something is missing, that pieces of her life are lost. Elly and Ruth seem to have actually experienced rather similar senses of pain and disruption with surprisingly analogous consequences, but for quite opposing reasons.

The Life Narrative as a Presentation of Identity and Voice

What we have seen throughout this chapter is that memory is a powerful force in the lives and narratives of Holocaust survivors. It drives the identities of all of the individuals whom I interviewed in one way or another, and it is the most central contributor to the construction of stories both about the past and the present. Each of the participants shows a different manner of dealing with and talking about his or her memories, and each has been impacted by these memories in a unique way. Ultimately, what is clear here is that being a survivor of the Holocaust means being beset on some or all levels by memory and its accompanying obstacles. The task for the teller of these memories, therefore, becomes one of building an identity and a “voice” surrounding these issues, or even in spite of them. Henry Greenspan writes:

survivors retell more than specific incidents they witnessed and endured. They also convey what it is to be a survivor—to be a person who has such memories to retell—which includes what it is to be the particular survivor they each, individually, are. In the course of recounting, such self-presentations emerge in various ways: in survivors’ direct reflections about who they are and what they have become; in the narrative identity each assumes while retelling; and, most implicitly, in the tones and cadences of their speech itself. Whether directly or indirectly, all these levels convey who is speaking when each speaks as a survivor—a dimension of recounting I refer to as each survivor’s ‘voice.’[30]

The author’s message has been supported in many of the excerpts I have presented in this chapter. When Anita, or Boris, or Eva evaluated their memories in light of their post-war experiences and lives, they were presenting a picture of what it is like to “be a survivor,” to have those memories, to know those images. When David talked about how he could see every detail and remember every dimension of a certain event, he was not only making a statement about his memory abilities, but also giving a “self-presentation” of who he is and how these memories are a part of his life now.

Indeed, Ruth was certainly offering a picture of herself in the “narrative identity” with which she chose (or needed) to tell her story. It is in all these senses that I reiterate my fundamental argument that we must listen to “who is speaking,” or to the survivor’s self-represented “voice” when we attempt to understand their lives. In the next chapter, I will offer another in-depth case study that will make even more explicit the necessity of truly understanding the presentations of themselves that many of these survivors gave to me.