Full Description
Testimonial Montage: A Family of Israeli Holocaust Testimonies from the Cracow Ghetto Resistance explores interconnected testimonies of four Holocaust survivors who were members of the Akiva youth group in Cracow, Poland, who participated in the ghetto resistance. Drawing on literary and photographic discourse, Jelen extracts the contours of personal narrative from the collective voice present in these interconnected testimonies. Attuned to stories of lost youth, sexual exploitation, and the dissolution of community and family, Jelen approaches Holocaust testimonies as one would members of a family with their shared experiences and common background, but also as individuals with their own unique voices. Departing from historical methodologies, Jelen models a different, wholistic approach to Holocaust testimonies, one which seeks to make sense of testimonies in the full breadth of their unfolding, across time, across space, and across genre.
Contents
Introduction: The Cracow Ghetto Resistance and Its Testimonies
Chapter 1: "Sovereign Consciousness": Photography and Audiovisual Testimonies
Chapter 2: "We Knew We Could Never Triumph": Hela Schüpper-Rufeisen (1921-2017)
Chapter 3: "The Accident Which Pursues the Witness": Rivka Kuper (1920-2007)
"The Accident Which Pursues the Witness": Rivka Kuper (1920-2007)
Chapter 4: "I Ran Around between the Legs of All the Elders": Yehudah Maimon (1924-2020)
Chapter 5: "So That My Death Will Be Sweet": Shifra Lustgarten (1923-99)
Postscript: "A Delicate Knowledge"
