Rage in Holocaust Literature and Film

Focusing on the internal transformations of Holocaust survivors as they recount their stories of suffering, loss, and endurance, "Rage Is the Subtext" highlights the healing potential of literary testimony. Susan Derwin explores how the explicit concerns expressed in the works of Primo Levi, Saul Friedländer, Binjamin Wilkomirski, Imre Kertész, and Liliana Cavani conceal more unsettling undercurrents of rage, which become discernible through the formal properties of the text.

Drawing on the analytical writings of D. W. Winnicott, Jean Améry, and others, Derwin identifies the volatile emotional undercurrents encrypted within testimonial narratives, which are linked to experiences of social abandonment. She argues that after their liberation, many survivors were beset by an unresolvable ambivalence: on one hand, they bitterly blamed their communities for deserting them during the Holocaust, while on the other, they desperately yearned for reconciliation with those very communities in order to heal.

Derwin locates the healing effect of literary testimony in its capacity to represent the survivors' reactions to their traumatic experiences, while simultaneously concealing other, more unsettling responses from view. She contends that the act of bearing witness became a crucial activity for survivors, as it allowed them to contain and metabolize their rage, paving the way for an engaged life to become possible.

Rage, Derwin suggests, is the subtext that runs through the survivors' accounts, shaping the formal properties of the texts. Beneath the explicit concerns expressed in these works, an unspoken reserve of anger and resentment towards the communities that abandoned them during the Holocaust emerges as a central, yet often obscured, aspect of the survivors' testimonies.

By unveiling these underlying emotional currents, Derwin's analysis sheds light on the complex psychological and social dynamics that Holocaust survivors navigated in the aftermath of their traumatic experiences. The healing potential of literary testimony, she argues, lies in its ability to represent and mediate these powerful emotions, enabling survivors to engage with their past in a way that ultimately facilitates their reintegration into the world.

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