Reading Auschwitz Book

Most of us learn of Auschwitz through the writings of Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel. Remarkable as their stories are, they leave many voices of Auschwitz unheard. Mary Lagerwey seeks to complicate our memory of Auschwitz by reading less canonical survivors: Jean Amery, Charlotte Delbo, Fania Fenelon, Szymon Laks, Primo Levi, and Sara Nomberg-Przytyk. She reads for how gender, social class, and ethnicity color their tellings. She asks whether we can—whether we should—make sense of Auschwitz. And throughout, Lagerwey reveals her own role in her research; tells of her own fears and anxieties presenting what she, a non-Jew born after the fall after the fall of Nazism, can only know second-hand. For any student of the Holocaust, for anyone trying to make sense of the final solution, Reading Auschwitz represents a powerful struggle with what it means to read and tell stories after Auschwitz.

Booknews

Comprises narratives written by people who experienced the Holocaust directly. Readers are encouraged to consider gender, nationality, ethnicity, ideology, social class, status, and the situated complexity of each narrative. cloth edition (unseen) (9186-7) $48. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknew.com)