“Holocaust Literature: Humanity Reborn”

If holocaust literature strives to portray the paradoxical (the representation of the unrepresentable, the expression of the inexpressible), maybe it too is a paradox. Confessions of the unspeakable, the unthinkable in written word. And yet it exists, tangible, published. In memoir and fiction and essays, these expressions and representations brought to life by countless authors, countless survivors. The witnesses to apocalypse found. No, holocaust literature is only a paradox when it is misunderstood, when the intentions of these authors, men and women like Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Sara Nomberg-Przytyk, are mistaken for historical value alone. To represent the unrepresentable, to represent the holocaust, would be paradoxical; but holocaust literature only represents personal experience. The holocaust in its entirety is inexpressible, beyond comprehension. But individual stories and the individuals themselves are not. We, the readers, who hunger sixty years later to understand the holocaust, we are responsible for creating this paradox, for we expect the impossible from these texts. These works are pieces of human experience, maybe even pieces of humanity itself. Experience, not explanation. holocaust literature is unique to each author, for each experience is unique, each story lived differently, told differently. In a sense, maybe the term "holocaust literature" is the paradox: it is literature instead about individuals transformed in the face of inhumanity's darkest hour.