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Facing Death speaks to the heart of why study of the Holocaust, and genocide more generally,
is an important task for any educated member of modern society since it exposes the deeper
vulnerability that exists and persists at the heart of civilization.
Henry F. Knight, author of Celebrating Holy Week in a Post-Holocaust World
Remarkably original because it deals not only with the victims and their testimonies, but also
with the impact those testimonies have upon the scholars and thinkers who study them.
Peter J. Haas, author of Morality after Auschwitz: The Radical Challenge of the Nazi Ethic

stephen s. weinstein series

in post-holocaust studies
a samuel and althea stroum book
university of washington press
Seattle and London
www.washington.edu/uwpress

isbn 9780295999272

FACING
DEATH
CONFRONTING
MORTALITY in

CONFRONTING MORTALITY in
the HOLOCAUST and OURSELVES

This superb volume raises fundamental moral, philosophical, and theological issues about
Holocaust and genocide victims and ourselves. Does depersonalized death have a meaning?
What of our own demise? Pinnock has assembled an international and interfaith group
of scholars from a variety of disciplines, and the fact that these academics interrogate and
respond to each other makes this book a gem.
Alan Berger, Raddock Family Eminent Scholar Chair in Holocaust Studies
and director of the Center for the Study of Values and Violence after Auschwitz,
Florida Atlantic University

FACING DEATH

Sarah K. Pinnock is professor and chair of religion at Trinity University. She is the author
of Beyond Theodicy: Jewish and Christian Continental Thinkers Respond to the Holocaust and
editor of The Theology of Dorothee Soelle. The other contributors are Michael Dobkowski,
Myrna Goldenberg, Leonard Grob, Rochelle L. Millen, David Patterson, Didier Pollefeyt,
John K. Roth, H. Martin Rumscheidt, Amy H. Shapiro, and Lissa Skitolsky.

PINNOCK

What do we learn about death from the Holocaust and how does it impact our responses to
mortality today?
Facing Death: Confronting Mortality in the Holocaust and Ourselves brings together the work
of eleven Holocaust and genocide scholars who address these difficult questions, convinced of
the urgency of further reflection on the Holocaust as the last survivors pass away. The volume
is distinctive in its dialogical and introspective approach, where the contributors position
themselves to confront their own impending death while listening to the voices of victims and
learning from their life experiences. Broken into three parts, this collection engages with these
voices in a way that is not only scholarly, but deeply personal.
The first part of the book engages with Holocaust testimony by drawing on the writings
of survivors and witnesses such as Elie Wiesel, Jean Amry, and Charlotte Delbo, including
rare accounts from members of the Sonderkommando. Reflections of post-Holocaust
generationsthe children and grandchildren of survivorscomprise the second part,
addressing questions of remembrance and memorialization. The concluding essays offer
intimate self-reflection about how engagement with the Holocaust impacts the contributors
lives, faiths, and ethics.
In an age of continuing atrocities, this volume provides careful attention to the affective
dimension of coping with death, in particular, how loss and grief are deferred or denied,
narrated and passed along.

illustration: First Station: Auschwitz-Birkenau, by Arie Galles (1998), from Fourteen Stations / Hey Yud Dalet (Hasem Yinkom Damam).

pinnock-cover-PB.pdf

the HOLOCAUST
and OURSELVES
Edited by
SARAH K. PINNOCK

The Stephen S. Weinstein Series

in Post-Holocaust Studies

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The Stephen S. Weinstein Series in Post-Holocaust Studies carries on the work and
publications of the Pastora Goldner Series (20042007), exploring questions that con-

tinue to haunt humanity in the aftermath of Nazi Germanys attempt to destroy Jewish

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life and culture. Books in this series address the most current and pressing issues of our
post-Holocaust world. They are grounded in scholarship undertaken by the Stephen S.

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Weinstein Holocaust Symposium, whose membershipinternational, interdisciplin-

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ary, interfaith, and intergenerationalis committed to dialogue as a fundamental

form of inquiry and understanding. The symposium and the series are generously

to

supported by StephenS. Weinstein, who, with his wife, Nancy, is dedicated to the work

of tikkun olam, the healing of the world, and whose commitment to combating present-
to this series.
Series Editors

Editorial Board

David Patterson

M argar et Br ear ley

University of Texas

London, England

John K. Roth

M yr na Goldenberg

Claremont McKenna College

Bethesda, Maryland

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day evils in our world has inspired the participants in the symposium who contribute

Hubert G. Lock e
University of Washington
Rochelle L. Millen
Wittenberg University

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The Stephen S. Weinstein Series

in Post-Holocaust Studies

Reconciliation, Justice (2004)

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After-Words: Post-Holocaust Struggles with Forgiveness,

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Edited and Introduced by David Patterson and John K. Roth

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Fire in the Ashes: God, Evil, and the Holocaust (2005)

Edited and Introduced by David Patterson and John K. Roth

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Open Wounds: The Crisis of Jewish Thought in the Aftermath of the Holocaust (2006)

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By David Patterson

Testimony, Tensions, and Tikkun: Reflections on Teaching

the Holocaust in Colleges and Universities (2007)

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Edited and Introduced by Myrna Goldenberg and Rochelle L. Millen

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Disappearing Traces: Holocaust Testimonies, Ethics, and Aesthetics (2012)

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By Dorota Glowacka

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Encountering the Stranger: A Jewish-Christian-Muslim Trialogue (2012)

Edited and Introduced by Leonard Grob and John K. Roth

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Different Horrors, Same Hell: Gender and the Holocaust (2013)

Edited and Introduced by Myrna Goldenberg and Amy H. Shapiro

Losing Trust in the World: Holocaust Scholars Confront Torture (2017)

Edited and Introduced by Leonard Grob and John K. Roth

Facing Death: Confronting Mortality in the Holocaust and Ourselves (2017)

Edited and Introduced by Sarah K. Pinnock

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Facing Death
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Confronting Mortality in
the Holocaust and Ourselves

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Edited and Introduced by

Sarah K. Pinnock

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A Samuel and Althea Stroum Book

University of Washington Press

Seattle and London

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Facing Death is published with the assistance of a grant

from the Samuel and Althea Stroum Endowed Book Fund.
2017 by the University of Washington Press
Printed and bound in the United States of America
212019181754321
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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U n i v ersit y of Washington Pr ess

www.washington.edu/uwpress

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Libr a ry of Congr ess Cata loging-in-Pu blication Data

Names: Pinnock, Sarah Katherine, editor.
Title: Facing death : confronting mortality in the Holocaust and ourselves /
edited and introduced by Sarah K. Pinnock.
Description: First edition. | Seattle : University of Washington Press, [2016] |
Series: The Stephen S. Weinstein series in post-Holocaust studies | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015050878| ISBN 9780295999265 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN
9780295999272 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: DeathPsychological aspects. | Mortality. | Holocaust, Jewish (19391945)
Personal narratives. | Children of Holocaust survivorsPersonal narratives. | Holocaust,
Jewish (19391945)--Psychological aspects.
Classification: LCC BF789. D4 F33 2016 | DDC 155.9/37dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015050878

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The paper used in this publication is acid-free and meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ansi z39.481984.

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Jacket and part illustrations: First Station: Auschwitz-Birkenau, by Arie Galles (1998, 47
75 in., charcoal and white Cont on Arches with barbed wireimpressed wrought-iron frame),
from the suite of fifteen drawings Fourteen Stations/Hey Yud Dalet (Hashem Yinkom Daman),
the latter phrase meaning, May God avenge their blood. The title of the suite refers both to
the Stations of the Cross and to the fact that the Nazi concentration camps and killing centers
were near railroad stations. Galless drawings are based on Luftwaffe and Allied aerial
photographs of those sites. Within this drawing and all the others are invisibly embedded,
hand-lettered phrases from the Kaddish, the ancient Jewish prayer for the dead.

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Dedicated to my mother, Dorothy J. Pinnock,

and to the memory of my father, Clark H. Pinnock

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Contents

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Prologue: Death as Atrocity ix
Sarah K. Pinnock

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Part I. Engagement with Holocaust Testimony

1 Holocaust Victims Speak; Do We Listen? 5

Leonard Grob

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2 Dying in the Death Camps as Acts of Defiance 17

H. Martin Rumscheidt

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3 At What Cost Survival? The Problem of the Prisoner-Functionary 31

Lissa Skitolsky

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4 Witnessing Unrelenting Grief 47

Myrna Goldenberg

Part II. Self-Consciousness of Mortality

5 Living For: Holocaust Survivors and Their Adult Children

Encounter Death and Mortality 61
Michael Dobkowski
6 Bearing Witness to a Grotesque Land 77
Amy H. Shapiro
7 Melding Generations: A Meditation on Memory and Mortality 94
Rochelle L. Millen

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Part III. Ethical and Religious Reflection

8 Experiences of Death: Our Mortality and the Holocaust 113

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9 A Jewish Reflection on the Nazis Assault on Death 128

David Patterson

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10 Auschwitz and Hiroshima as Challenges to a Belief in the Afterlife:

A Catholic Perspective 141
Didier Pollefeyt

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11 Facing Death: What Happens to the Holocaust

If Death Is the Last Word? 156
John K. Roth

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Epilogue: Witnessing Mortality 174

Selected Bibliography 179
Editors and Contributors 183
Index 189

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Prologue
Death as Atrocity

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Sarah K. Pinnock

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I have not really survived death. I have not avoided it. I have
not escaped it....
Death is already in my past... growing old will not bring
me closer to death, but on the contrary, carry me away from it.
Jorge Semprn, Literature or Life

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This volume studies perceptions of mortality in the Holocaust under conditions imbued with death. It poses a number of pivotal questions. What
do the murdered dead themselves reveal about death, when we listen to
them carefully? What does it mean for us to look unflinchingly at the
horror and magnitude of this genocide? How does the Holocaust affect
our thinking about the significance of dying then and now? This project is
based on the conviction that the Holocaust reveals important perspectives
on mortality.
This book approaches the Holocaust through dialogue and responses,
rather than impersonal facts and figures. Scholars can convey information
about genocide without examining experiences and pausing to reflect on
the perspectives of the individuals who lived in proximity to death. Yet
those people who recorded their experience of death offer vital resources
for comprehending the impact of mass murder. The Holocaust is an unusually well-documented genocide, its history distinguished by the amount of

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witness testimonies and reflections available to scholars and the public.

Reading, viewing, and listening to these accounts is a situated endeavor to
which scholars bring their experiences and preconceptions.
The title Facing Death: Confronting Mortality in the Holocaust and Ourselves offers specific insights into the conception of this project. The act of
facing is an encounter, a deed or an action in a social context positioned
after Holocaust mass death. Facing implies looking, listening, and responding. The contributors to this volume turn toward the faces of victims and
survivors whose experiences are shared in writing and speech. This encounter can occur directly in the company of survivors and eyewitnesses or be
mediated by remembrances and spoken or written words of others. All of
the contributors to this book have met Holocaust survivors in person. Some
have sustained long-term relationships, and others have family connec
tions with Holocaust victims, although physical presence is not required to
face others and listen and learn.
Mortality is defined as the state of being subject to death, and there is a
crucial difference between facing death and facing mortality. Death is an
event, whereas mortality involves self-awareness of the condition of finitude. To know about genocide is to know about death, but to confront
mortality involves consciousness of approaching death and concrete anticipation of whatever form it might take. Clearly, facing death occurred during the Holocaust in particular intensity and force. This sense of urgency
coming from extreme situations adds to the significance of investigating
the tension between historically particular and universal issues surrounding mortality.
For the contributors to this book, attitudes to ourselves and our work
come into focus through the lens of the Holocaust. Ordinarily, our work as
academics constructs walls between the personal and the professional,
where we share our research but not our relationship to our subject matter.
There are few formal opportunities to engage in self-reflection about the personal changes that arise from studying the Holocaust, and we do not have
many opportunities to articulate the process of confronting mortality as
we encounter losses ourselves. But this is a sore lack. It is hardly surprising that study of the Holocaust impinges on our nonacademic lives and
is not compartmentalized solely as professional. The motivation to study
the Holocaust arises from various quarters, but it reflects who we are and
shows attentiveness to the persecution of others. As a difficult subject to
face, it is not a choice made casually. Moreover, the authors of this book

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believe that the Holocaust has lasting relevance. This window on scholars
self-reflection makes the book accessible to a broad audience including
anyone concerned with the implications of Holocaust history for today.
Our era is an age of atrocity where the Holocaust is not an isolated case
of genocide. In todays global conflicts, media images of death spread
instantaneously and it is all too easy to find shocking images. As genocidal
situations continue to ariseBosnia, Rwanda, Darfurthe impression of
horrendous suffering intensifies, and reflection on Holocaust mortality
bleeds into confrontation of other atrocities. Holocaust research provides
frameworks for analyzing various facets of genocide; this particular volume offers intimate scholarly perspectives on facing death.
The audience for this book includes non-scholars and nonspecialists,
who will find much to gain. The book covers a range of Holocaust testimony by important figures and provides access to survivor responses for
the general reader. It also addresses the relevance of the Holocaust for
today, an increasingly pressing issue now that more than seventy years
have passed since the end of World War II. Readers are privy to behind the
scenes disclosure drawn from the experiences of the contributors, who con
sider the immediate effects of dealing with mass death over the course of
a lifetime. Personal and professional identities converge in figuring out how
reflection on the Holocaust shapes individual stances toward death and
whether facing the Holocaust helps in dealing with our own ordinary losses.
Extreme circumstances generate striking perspectives on mortality, and
readers will be able to trace major themes running through the chapters in
this volume. This prologue draws attention to four of these trajectories:
reversals between life and death, the inadequacies of language to address
mortality, generational responses of grief and loss, and the challenges of
facing our finitude. Attention to these themes will give readers an advanced
sense of common elements uniting this project.
Reversals between life and death occur in Holocaust conditions of
atrocityand in extreme situations death supersedes life. Survivors
describe how fully immersed they were in death. Camp inmate Sara
Nomberg-Przytyk recounts: After eight months in Auschwitz, I could
look at the dead with indifference. When a corpse was lying across my
path I did not go around it any more, I simply stepped over it, as if I were
merely stepping over a piece of wood.... I had imbibed all of the terrors of
Auschwitz and lived.1 In this experience of utter desensitization, no recognition of or relation to the other exists. It was as if corpses were faceless,

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not human, with no burial or acknowledgment. The concentration camp

prisoners who viewed corpses like deadwood also saw their fate as death,
since they were already like walking corpses before they expired. Sonder
kommando worker Shlomo Venezia speaks of how, after many years, he
can never escape memories of the ovens and corpses. He remarks pointedly that nobody ever really gets out of the Crematorium.2 Alternately, as
Buchenwald prisoner Jorge Semprn puts it succinctly, I have not escaped
death, but passed through it.3 The reversal of life and death was acute for
the captives whom Primo Levi calls the Muselmnner of Auschwitz, who
were utterly resigned. Levi describes them as horrifying and pitiful. He
writes: The drowned form the backbone of the camp, an anonymous mass,
continually renewed and always identical, of non-men who march and
labour in silence, the divine spark dead within them, already too empty to
really suffer. One hesitates to call them living: one hesitates to call their
death death, in the face of which they have no fear, as they are too tired to
understand (italics mine).4 Death had won before the moment of physical
death, and under such conditions the imperative to resist the pressure of
living death can become a moral imperative to survive. For those who survived, death became a constant shadow in memories of their communities
and forebearers who were destroyed.
Another uniting theme is the inadequacy of language about mortality,
including the use of the term death itself. The quotation by Levi above indicates that death is not applicable to someone who is completely dehumanized, starving, mortally ill, and unaware.5 Although we take it for granted,
the meaning of death presumes a sense of identity and dignity, which is
lost under conditions of atrocity. Limitations of language also occur on the
threshold of death. As a concentration camp prisoner, survivor Charlotte
Delbo describes having been thirsty to the point of losing my mind, to the
point of being unable to eat since there was no saliva in my mouth, so thirsty
I couldnt speak.6 Her life-threatening, desperate thirst in Auschwitz,
according to her description, seems to deserve its own proper name. These
limitations of language exist also for bystanders who attempt to comprehend. After the end of the Soviet era, interviews were conducted with eyewitnesses who had watched the killing of the Jews as youths, watching
from the outskirts of a forest clearing or looking out from the windows of
nearby buildings. One elderly Ukrainian describes a mass shooting as
follows: They [Ukrainian Jews] had been taken to a German gendarmerie
where they had been left in a cell overnight, after all their goods had been

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taken from them, including their clothes and gold teeth, and after being
beaten. The following morning they had been pushed out of the gendarmerie in groups of five, naked. They had been taken behind the building
where three very long mass graves had been dug and shot on the spot. Two
among them had been chosen to pick up the bodies and drag them into the
ditches. They piled them on top of each other, one after the other.7 Interviewees had trouble finding adequate words to depict this atrocious cruelty as they describe how the victims were captured, herded, and killed by
bullets next to large burial pits for convenience, while many villagers were
requisitioned by German officials to help. Their bare factual descriptions
betray the success of the Nazis in rendering the Jews faceless. In carrying
the testimony of eyewitnesses forward, scholars continue to wrestle with
the limitations of language to describe painful memories of genocide.
Another central theme in this volume is grief over memories of the dead
in multiple contexts. Survivors carry grief for their Holocaust losses shared
with later generations. But because over seventy years have passed since
the end of World War II, soon there will be no more first generation. The
deaths of the last survivors give an added dimension to grief over Holocaust losses, where the demands of remembering the murdered dead are
already heavy. Grief comes to terms with traumatic loss through a nar
rative process, attempting to reconfigure the broken fragments of memory. When a death involves family or friends, grief is direct, but there is
also indirect grief transmitted in concentric circles to those who remember.8
Dominick LaCapra coined the term empathetic unsettlement to describe
the reaction of witnesses in response to traumatic experiences. This unsettlement is affective, not numbing, but it avoids problematic identification
by recognizing subject positioning and distance from the other.9 Amid
changing frames of reference, grieving applies to disparate losses. Some
authors in this book grieve family members, others grieve survivors whom
they knew personally, while others feel grief connected with reading or
hearing survivors testimonies. Indirect grief arises from the postmemory of generations born after the Holocaust who have close familiarity
with Holocaust narratives transmitted secondhand. Grief arises from visits to historical and memorial locations, as well as encounters with photographs, films, and books about the Holocaust.10 Moreover, forgetting is also
involved in grieving loss, as Holocaust narratives point to those not there,
those who did not survive, those who are both remembered and forgotten
by the survivors who necessarily tell their own tales, not theirs. Within the

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frame of testimony there is always a forgetting: forgetting what was then in

favor of what is now, or forgetting the present in favor of the past.11 As the
historical gap widens, attention to the second and third generations and
comparisons to other atrocities and losses will become more prevalent and
pressing.
Finitudeattention to lifes endis appropriately the last theme in this
sequence. Even though Holocaust survivors may have passed through
death in conditions of extremity, such confrontation with mortality does
not foreclose facing ones own finitude. In a recent memoir, Open Heart,
Elie Wiesel reflects on undergoing major surgery at age eighty-two with an
uncertain medical prognosis, where he faces the double challenge of a lifethreatening illness and advancing age. One might suppose that as a survivor whose career has centered on the memory of the Holocaust, Wiesel had
thoroughly dealt with the reality of death, but no. He raises probing questions, such as: Is it possible to come so close to the end without something
essential changing inside us? Has my perception of death, and thus of life,
not changed? Are there deeds that someone who has undergone this experience would no longer commit, or, at the least, would accomplish differently? I believe that the answer is yes.12 He ponders whether he performed
his duty adequately as a survivor and witness of the Holocaust, a surprising worry given his prolific career. Reflecting on the limits of language, he
worries whether he found adequate words to convey what happened. He
also wonders whether he made enough effort to combat hatred in his role
as teacher, speaker, and writer. In contrast with his earlier idealism about
preventing another Holocaust, he expresses some disappointment, because
as he puts it: For if Auschwitz could not cure mankind of racism, was
there any chance of success ever? The fact is, the world has learned nothing. Otherwise, how is one to comprehend the atrocities committed in
Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia... ?13 He considers unfinished research projects he will not have time for, such as the study of asceticism and the religious acceptance of suffering. In addition, he anticipates grief as a father
and grandfather, when he considers how keenly he would like to see his
grandsons upcoming bar mitzvah and also his younger granddaughters
bat mitzvah. The challenges of aging that Wiesel faces are magnified by his
position as a survivor, heightened against a backdrop of loss, namely, the
death of his father in Buchenwald, the murder of his mother and little sister at Auschwitz, and many other deaths.
Some of the contributors to this volume share Wiesels sense of unful-

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filled expectations. With the double challenge of remembering and educat

ing in an age of atrocity, it is a particular advantage that the authors have
had the opportunity to share their experiences face-to-face. All of them are
members of the Stephen S. Weinstein Holocaust Symposium founded by
Leonard Grob and Henry Knight in 1996 as the Pastora Goldner Holocaust
Symposium. The authors have participated together in seminars, listened to
lectures, shared meals, taken walks, and had conversations about the Holo
caust in Oxfordshire, England, at biennial gatherings held at Wroxton
College. The composition of the symposium group is international, interdisciplinary, intergenerational, and interfaith, with members coming from
Western and Eastern Europe, North America, and Israel. The relationships
built over time have created space for some frank and unguarded responses
to the Holocaust and more openness to confronting closely held assumptions as well as national, religious, ethnic, and gendered identities. Members are committed to maintaining communication and examining deeply
held commitments, especially when there is tension or conflict.
The very idea for this book arose from a past symposium session where
Holocaust scholars reflected on facing death, convened by John K. Roth and
Leonard Grob. This session made a strong impression on me given that I
am a religion scholar whose work deals with religious views of death as
well as the Holocaust. With everyone in the room prepared to speak about
their beliefs, our discussion explored our consciousness of death in general shaped by attention to historical atrocity and religious background. As
we confronted mortality together, I observed remarkable individual and
generational differences in our responses. Some participants were futureoriented, anticipating how Holocaust remembrance and education would
change; others were most concerned about continued historical work and
preserving the record of the past from loss. Some members of the group
reflected on retirement and concerns about whether their efforts addressed
to the Holocaust will matter after they die. While some authors consider
beliefs about afterlife, the focus lies mainly on community and memory as
the vehicles of meaning for the murdered dead and ourselves.
Since the book is built on real-life situations and personal engagement,
Facing Death confronts many difficult questions and provides less closure
than some more narrowly conceived scholarly projects. Because it originated from actual conversation, the opportunity for dialogue is built into
the structure of the volume. Progress on the book transpired in stages.
After completion of the eleven chapters, each contributor received two

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chapters by other authors and was charged with the task of composing two
questions per chapter. These author responses were compiled and digested
by the editor into the versions published here as two follow-up questions.
The original chapter author received the two questions and then wrote a
response that would address the controversies and sharpen the main argument. By including contributors as readers of their colleagues work, the
book offers multiple perspectives and greater continuity.
The process of facing death involves the interrelated aspects of
(1) engagement with Holocaust testimony, (2) self-consciousness of our
own mortality, and (3) reflection on ethical and religious implications.
Correspondingly, this book has a three-part structure under these headings. Rather than giving a detailed summary of the chapters here, stealing
their thunder, it is more expedient to offer one sentence about the perspective taken by each author, following the order of chapters.
The first part looks closely at the testimonies of victims, voices that possess authority in guiding our understanding of mortality. Leonard Grob
reflects on how, in midlife, listening to the deceased prompted him to work
on the Holocaust, and he examines the connections between his beliefs
about the afterlife and the responsibility to remember his father and Holocaust victims. Identifying with perpetrators, but taking his cue from survivors, H. Martin Rumscheidt considers the enigmatic reversal in attitudes
toward dying in the Holocaust, where an active death or suicide could
become an act of self-affirmation rather than destruction. Considering the
Holocaust as a challenge to Socratic ideas of good life, Lissa Skitolsky analyzes the testimonies of Sonderkommando prisoners, who worked in the
crematoria, to show that preserving ones life under genocidal conditions
counts as good even if it unavoidably involves breaking moral laws. The
difficulties in first-person testimony for both survivor and interviewer are
central to Myrna Goldenbergs account of her interviews with a survivor
whose trauma painfully reawakens when she speaks as a witness. The pain
and loss expressed in victims testimonies makes listening demanding,
and the incongruity between their situation and ours makes it hard to
reach a fully satisfying response.
The second part involves reflection on generations after the Holocaust
and facing death as time passes. Michael Dobkowski, the son of two Holocaust survivors, considers the attitudes about mortality that were passed
down to the second and third generations and the difficulty for survivors

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facing death again in old age. Traveling repeatedly to places of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, Amy H. Shapiro considers her shifting reactions to
these sites of loss on subsequent visits and how she holds grief and mourn
ing in tension with healing. Rochelle L. Millen considers family losses in
Poland during the Holocaust, the physical objects of remembrance and the
passing of the last eyewitnesses.
The books third part examines the ethical and religious implications
of Holocaust perspectives on mortality. Bringing together the fields of
Holocaust studies and death and dying, Sarah K. Pinnock compares facing ordinary circumstances of mortality with the pervasive obstacles to
facing Holocaust mass death. David Patterson analyzes the Nazis aims to
eliminate Jewish existence and even Jewish death, in rendering victims
nameless and faceless. Didier Pollefeyt argues that the Holocaust challenges traditional belief in immortality, and he offers a Catholic theological response that includes Hiroshima and other catastrophes. Taking a
cosmic perspective on human life as dispensable, John K. Roth considers
human destruction and finitude juxtaposed with the search for justice and
humanitys uncertain significance beyond death.
It is my hope as editor that the self-consciousness about death exhibited
in this volume generates the same in its readers. The Holocaust offers distinctive perspectives on mortality that complicate what we think we know
and how we forget and remember. At best, it can galvanize us to recognize
past atrocities and our finitude.

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Notes

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Epigraph: Jorge Semprn, Literature or Life, trans. Linda Coverdale (New York:
Viking, 1997), 15.
1 Sara Nomberg-Przytyk, Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land, trans. Roslyn
Hirsch (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 115.
2 Shlomo Venezia, Inside the Gas Chambers: Eight Months in the Sonderkommando
of Auschwitz, trans. Andrew Brown (Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 2009), 155.
3 Semprn, Literature or Life, 15.
4 Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity, trans. Stuart
Woolf (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 90.
5 Ibid.
6 Charlotte Delbo, Auschwitz and After, trans. Rosette C. Lamont (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1995), 142.

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7 Quoted in Patrick Desbois, The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priests Journey to Uncover

the Truth behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2008), 135.
8 Thomas Attig, How We Grieve: Relearning the World (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1996), 8.
9 Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2001), 40.
10 Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative, and Postmemory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 22.
11 Oren Baruch Stier, Committed to Memory: Cultural Mediations of the Holocaust
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 214.
12 Elie Wiesel, Open Heart, trans. Marion Wiesel (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012),
74.
13 Ibid., 5051.

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