Trauma in First Person

Amos Goldberg is Chair of the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His major fields of research are the cultural history of the Jews in the Holocaust, Holocaust historiography, and Holocaust memory in a global world. The Hebrew edition of Trauma in First Person won the Eggit prize for Holocaust literature and research in Israel.

"This is a book that deserves to be read well beyond Holocaust studies. Goldberg's theoretical insights into "life stories" and his readings of law, language and what he calls the "epistemological grey zone" . . . provide a stunning antidote to our unthinking treatment of survivors as celebrities (as opposed to just people who have suffered terrible things) and to the ubiquity of commemorative platitudes."—Times Higher Education supplement"Every decade or so, an exceptional volume is born. Provocative and inspiring, historian Goldberg's volume is one such work in the field of Holocaust studies. . . . Highly recommended."—Choice"Amos Goldberg's Trauma in First Person: Diary Writing During the Holocaust is an important and thought-provoking book not only on reading Holocaust diaries, but also on what that reading can tell us about the extent of the destruction committed against Jews during the Holocaust."—Reading Religion"Though there is much lip service paid to the importance of interdisciplinarity among today's academics, with Trauma in First Person, Amos Goldberg has produced such a rare work."—Alexandra Garbarini, author of Numbered Days: Diaries and the Holocaust"Amos Goldberg's work offers an innovative approach to the subject matter of Holocaust diaries and challenges well-established views in the whole field of Holocaust studies. This is a comprehensive discussion of the phenomenon of Jewish diary writing during the Holocaust and after."—Guy Miron, author of The Waning of Emancipation: Jewish History, Memory, and the Rise of Fascism in Germany"This is an important contribution to trauma studies and a powerful critique of those who use the "crisis" paradigm to study the Holocaust."—Dovile Budryte - Georgia Gwinnett College, Holocaust and Genocide Studies

• PrefaceIntroduction: "If This is a Man"Section I: Reading Holocaust Diaries 1. Holocaust Diaries—Between Life Story and Trauma2. Reading the Diaries as a Critique of Holocaust Historiography3. The Dynamic of the Text between the Two Deaths—A Theoretical Model for the Reading of Traumatic TextSection II: From Autobiographical Time to Documentation Time: Victor Klemperer's Diar4. The Life Story of Victor Klemperer5. The Disruption of Life-Story Time in the Klemperer Diaries6. From Autobiographical to Documentary DiarySection III: The Jewish Self and the Nazi Other: Chaim Kaplan's Warsaw Diary7. Chaim Kaplan and his Diary8. The Jews and Nazi "Law"9. Between Perpetrators and Victims: The Gray Zone of Consciousness in the Diary of Chaim KaplanConclusionBibliography Index