Addicted to the Holocaust – Bernice Eisenstein’s ways of coping with troublesome memories in "I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors"
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Date
2015
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Adam Mickiewicz University
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Abstract
In her I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors published in Canada in 2006, Bernice Eistenstein
undertakes an attempt to cope with the inherited memories of the Holocaust. As a child of the Holocaust
survivors, she tries to deal with the trauma her parents kept experiencing years after WWII
had finished. Eisenstein became infected with the suffering and felt it inescapable. Eisenstein’s text,
which is one of the first Jewish-Canadian graphic memoirs, appears to represent the voice of the
children of Holocaust survivors not only owing to its verbal dimension, but also due to the drawings
incorporated into the text. Therefore, the text becomes a combination of a memoir, a family story,
a philosophical treatise and a comic strip, which all prove unique and enrich the discussion on the
Holocaust in literature. For these reasons, the aim of this article is to analyze the ways in which
Eisenstein deals with her postmemory, to use Marianne Hirsch’s term (1997 [2002]), as well as her
addiction to the Holocaust memories. As a result of this addiction, the legacy of her postmemory is
both unwanted and desired and constitutes Bernice Eisenstein’s identity as the eponymous child of
Holocaust survivors.
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Bernice Eisenstein, I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors, graphic memoir, Jewish-Canadian literature, postmemory, post-Holocaust literature, life writing
Citation
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, vol. 50.2-3 (2015), pp. 39-50
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0081-6272