Embattled Selves: An Investigation into the Nature of Identity through Oral Histories of Holoca Survivors - Hardcover

Jacobson, Kenneth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 087113571X ISBN 13: 9780871135711

Publisher: Avalon Travel Publishing, 2000

Synopsis

Nazi Germany's Final Solution confronted Jews caught in its web with the ultimate challenge to identity - all those who fit the Nazis' purportedly racial notion of "Jew" were placed under sentence of death, irrespective of how they lived, what they believed, or who they took themselves to be. Their very origins having become an inexorable threat to their existence, these people were forced to come to grips - consciously or unconsciously, in word or deed - with their Jewishness. Embattled Selves presents the life stories of fifteen men and women who discovered, concealed, embraced, or rejected their Jewishness as a result of Nazi persecution. Theirs are atypical stories, the stories of people whose physical and spiritual survival came to depend on the mutability of the self. In these pages we meet those who shed their Jewishness to become lost in the crowd; those who, never having considered themselves Jews, had Jewishness thrust upon them; those who defiantly proclaimed their Jewishness despite the consequences; and those who went beyond concealment to join the forces of genocide. Told against the backdrop of the horrors of World War II, these narratives combine the tantalizing suspense of adventure stories with the vivid detail of the best of oral history. Throughout, however, the focus is on identity. The words these survivors speak as they recreate the historical and mental universe in which they lived, as they tell of the choices they made and the paths they took, dramatically highlight questions that concern all of us. In today's world of ethnic reawakening and shifting political boundaries, these stories have a particular urgency.

About this title

From the Author

Universal Questions of Identity are the Focus
My intention in writing Embattled Selves was to focus far more on universal issues of identity than on the specific experience of European Jews between 1933 and 1945. I was interested in showing the way individuals' lives are shaped by several fundamental and compelling questions: What is essential to who one is and what is not? How much does being a member of a group make one who one is as an individual? How much can one change and still remain the same person? What is the price of change? What price will one pay not to change?

To me, the book's 15 life histories are flesh-and-blood allegories: The narrators illustrate, in recounting their thoughts, feelings, and choices, how each of their lives is an attempt to come to grips with these vital questions--during a historical period in which the questions themselves could be a matter of life and death. I have limited my own observations to a handful of brief, interpretive passages meant mainly to suggest how the stories connect with the identity theme; it was most important to me to present the narratives in a way that would not interfere with readers' forming their own intellectual and emotional relationships to those who speak.

Synopsis

Profiles Holocaust survivors who disguised themselves as Aryans, converted to Christianity, declared themselves Jewish when they could have hidden the fact, or only learned of their ancestry from the Nazis.

Edition details

• Publisher: Avalon Travel Publishing
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 087113571X
• ISBN 13: 9780871135711
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 358