Splinters

Post-Death Experience

This article by Lawrence Langer talks about German atrocities, but he?s not talking about the defending against England on Saturday night. Langer, of course, is writing about the Death Camps. He is one of the best analysers of trauma, particularly in Holocaust Testimonies: the ruins of memory. Rather than presenting grim stories and asking us not to forget, he tries to understand what is unique about such suffering. He begins from the fact that ?witnesses often feel that survival was an abnormal result of their ordeal in the camps, a violation of the expected outcome of their detention. They were not meant to return.? In this way, their post-war life was post-death.