Admitting the Holocaust
Admitting the Holocaust by Lawrence L. Langer is a collection of essays about the Holocaust and how it is perceived in literature by our culture. Langer explores oral testimonies, diaries and fiction that consider the devastation of the Holocaust a central theme. He takes a look at human values in the light of that devastation. He exhibits the concern between literature and testimony. His hope is that the Holocaust experience will not be sentimentalized in the various forms of literature and media. Langer wants the Holocaust to be presented as "it really was -- evil." Throughout his book Langer makes reference to various other writers novels and articles about the death camps. He criticizes such authors as William Styron and Bernard Malamud. According to Langer ("Beyond Theodicy: Jewish Victims and the Holocaust" and "Malamud's Jews and the Holocaust Experience,"), "too many historical and cultural representations of the Nazis' murderers try, by portraying the Jewish victims as dignified martyrs, to introduce the notion of spiritual redemption into the accounts of atrocities that need to be confronted without moral
" Langer says: "Jews were nullified, not sacrificed, murdered, not martyred. In Admitting the Holocaust, I perceive Langer as having an on-going struggle with the facts versus fiction; the myths versus reality. "colored with a rosy tinge to help them manage the unimaginable without having to look at it naked and ugly face. We can only hope to continue the study so that the Holocaust will be seen as it truly was -- evil. whether they chose or not, men died for nothing. He writes: "Jews were destroyed by humans, not God . " In the essay "Understanding the Atrocity: Killers and Victims in the Holocaust", he says that we will never understand the crimes of the Holocaust, or the roots of the Holocaust unless we can fathom the kind of thinking that allows a human being to consider the destruction of lives as inconsequential. Langer gives much of his focus to the issue of authors, movie producers and others using the events of the Holocaust for the purpose of promoting some type of private agenda such as: women's plight in the concentration camps; the conflicting claims of individual and community survival in the Kovno ghetto; the current tendency to compare the Holocaust with other modern atrocities so that the distinctive feature of each is blurred; and the impulse to put the place less emphasis on the crime, criminals and victims and more emphasis on the question of forgiveness and the "need for healing. They offer thoughtful and provocative questions to complex issues. He also criticizes Polish author, Tadeusz Borowski, ("The Americanization of the Holocaust on Stage and Screen") and points out that the true accountsare those that tell of the graphic details of the destruction of European Jews. " He strives to point out that the media has its limitations in what they put out to the public. " He is offended by memorials such as Yad Vashem in Jerusalem because it was created by the "Heroes and Martyrs Remembrance Authority. " It is more important to Langer that true, graphic, and devastating accounts reach the present and future generations who will undoubtedly try to understand how and why the atrocities of Holocaust could happen. Several times Langer refers to Jean Amery's (Beyond Guilt and Atonement; translated into English-At the Mind's Limit) observation that "no bridge led from death in Auschwitz to Death in Venice.
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Acceptance Essays
