Descent into Hell Portfolio - Holocaust Eyewitness Testimony

Part One

A 1,500 word essay which accounts for the importance of Primo Levi’s If This is a Man

Primo Levi’s If This is a Man (1987a) is a Holocaust testimony that even seventy years later is a powerful reminder of what it means to be human. The author’s preface asserts this idea in the opening pages, “Many people – many nations – can find themselves holding, more or less wittingly, that ‘every stranger is an enemy’” (1987a: 15). Levi’s witness account within If This is a Man presents the cathartic power of testimony and explores the idea of surviving to write on behalf of those who cannot. Bearing witness to the atrocities of the Holocaust is extremely important for the survivor, but also imperative for the reader, a notion that will be evaluated within this paper. The form of testimony generally approaches mass genocide and other fatal events in a more emotional manner, compared to that of secondary documents and history works. However, Levi’s testimony takes a more direct, disassociated and scientific approach to bearing witness, something that is not typical or expected of survivor testimony. This unconventional choice made by Levi is another reason for the piece to not be overlooked, and is important to be respected and understood on its own terms.

Levi’s tone throughout If This is a Man is deposited early within the authors preface, and remains this way for the entirety of the testimony. The opening lines of the preface read, “It was my good fortune” (1987a: 15), in reflection to him being deported later during the Holocaust, rather than earlier. Immediately there is a sense of detachment from Levi. Similarly, an example from his chapter Kraus also gives the same tone, “When it rains we would like to cry” (1987a: 137). These words are direct and transparent. There are no lengthy or passionate descriptions; Levi has limited himself to relay his experience only if necessary and in objective and formal ways. The realism of his descriptions are filled with emotional and moral power, stripped back of any elaborative depictions. The testimony as a whole operates as a more objective piece, despite being a witness account. This was an intentional decision that Levi explains here, “I thought my words would be most believable and useful the more they appeared to be objective.” (1987b: 186). Therefore, the reason for Levi’s tone derives from his fear and uncertainty that he would not be believed had he of presented more emotion in his account, it had to conform to the expected aesthetics. So, despite If This is a Man on the surface, appearing merely as the prototypical survivor account, there is hidden meaning and ambiguity that argues this. It appears Levi is restraining the awful scenes he encountered during his experience, and as a result he represses his trauma, despite this being his personal testimony. The scientific detachment Levi possesses may also run parallel into his career as a chemist prior to the Holocaust, giving further insight into exactly why he may have written this way. Nonetheless, the impartial tone Levi forefronts only adds further meaning to his testimony of the pressures to objectify survivor accounts in order to be synonymous with believability and accuracy.

Throughout If This is a Man are a range of paradoxes and fragmentations. However, this is to be expected. As Levi explains, he has written this testimony to satisfy need, “Hence its fragmentary character: the chapters have been written not in logical succession, but in order of urgency” (1987a: 13). Also important to consider alongside this, Levi wrote his account immediately after liberation based on notes he wrote and remembered during his time there. Levi’s level of urgency and pressure to document his experience concludes for him, the legitimacy of his testimony, but, for the reader, this is a raw reading. The hidden ambiguity in his testimony appears to be the result of his obligation to bear witness and communicate his experience. According to Levi, “In my opinion, one should not write in an obscure manner, because a piece of writing has all the more value and all the more hope of diffusion and permanence, the better it is understood and the less it lends itself to equivocal interpretation.” (1985: 159). As a result, Levi’s depiction of Auschwitz-Birkeanu is a restrained but unflinching account. His written accounts virtue derives in, and is substantially inseparable from, his moral values. Lepschy and Lepschy underline this, “Levi’s use of varied narrative tenses and multiple vocabulations add up to a highly literary verbal texture which nonetheless produces an impression of limpidity and transparency.” (2007: 133). Furthering this idea, the literary techniques add meaning to the text. The transparency of Levi’s account alongside the direct, dark nature of how he displays this only develops understanding of how dehumanising and unimaginable the Holocaust was for him. He went to vast lengths to distinguish testimony away from literature, particularly the conceptions and expectations of literature, labelling himself as “The writer who is not a writer” (2002: 101). Levi understood and differentiated the two forms of writing because he knew how dominant survivor testimony is compared to other types of text regarding the Holocaust. There is a unique place for the histiography of the Holocaust based upon the capacity of Levi’s testimony.

Importance of memory and the reoccurrence of dreams, both in and out of Auschwitz are also apparent in Levi’s If This is a Man. As Primo Levi has highlighted, “It has been observed by psychologists that the survivors of traumatic events are divided into two well-defined groups: those who repress their past en bloc, and those whose memory of the offence persists, as though carved in stone.” (1981: 8). This idea proposed by Levi and psychologists generally, will be analysed for its conformity, in relation to Levi’s own testimonies dream and memory sequences. Chapter five Our Nights is an instance of this dream within testimony that arguably does not fit distinctly into either of Levi’s defined groups, but rather, both. Beginning with “I seem to be sleeping on the tracks of a railroad” (1987a: 65), Levi proceeds to an extensive account, “My sister looks at me, gets up and goes away without a word.” (1987a: 66) and “My dream stands in front of me, still warm, and although awake I am still full of its anguish” (1987a: 66). This memory is a harrowing example of the way Levis mind found meanings in dreams, and also exposes the mental decline/tests the Holocaust made victims endure. Likewise, dreams of food in an attempt to salvage hunger were also common, “Dancing before my eyes I see spaghetti” (1987a: 80). As Levi explains, “Prisoners, to relieve the pangs of hunger, would eat potato peelings, raw cabbage leaves or rotten potatoes” (2015: 50). Although Levi addresses his dreams and is therefore not completely repressing them, the fragmented and desperate nature of them leads to an argument that the repression is still there. In addition, the form of testimony is an account of only what the survivor remembers or wants to tell, therefore the form in itself causes trauma to possibly be repressed unknown anybody other than the victim. Important to consider in this context is that Levi died of suicide, as ruled by the coroner. Elie Wiesel, a known survivor of the Holocaust and writer of testimonies himself also claimed “Primo Levi died at Auschwitz forty years later” (Wood, J. 2019). For a survivor to fully bear witness of their full taunting experiences is a notion that is near impossible to achieve in the few pages of a book, and Wiesel’s thoughts echo that. However, this is not to disregard the latter defined group Levi proposes. Memory can still persist and have a sense of permanence, without being elaborative. Although Levi takes a less obtrusive approach to his testimony that is not to say that other testimonies are not ‘carved in stone’. All testimony, including Levi’s, should be accounted for their importance despite the angle, tone and devices they write with and from. Testimony is a sensitive and unique form that cannot be replicated and therefore should not be expected to do so.

Primo Levi’s If This is a Man is an example of a testimony that rejects testimonial expectations of concise prominence with elaborate descriptions of events while also refraining from being the prototypical survivor. The underlying elucidation of his restraining and transparent testimony is just as effective as other works of bearing witness. The unrefined experience Levi establishes gives a primary understanding to what the monstrosity of the Holocaust was like, and the pressures to account this after liberation. Levi’s testimony is important to be read on its own terms, but also to be analysed in the broader understandings of his position when writing it. His survivor account is, as Philip Roth encompasses, “One of the century’s truly necessary books” (1987a: front cover).

References

Carter-White, R. (2012). Primo Levi and the Genre of Testimony. Transactions of the Institute of the British Geographers (Via JSTOR). 37(2). 287-300.

Lepschy, A, L. & Lepschy, G. (2007). Primo Levi’s Language in Gordan, R, S, C Ed The Cambridge Companion to Primo Levi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 133-136.

Levi, P. (1981). Moments of Reprieve: A Memoir of Auschwitz. Turin: Einaudi.

-- (1985). Other Peoples Trades. London: Abacus.

-- (1987a). If This is a Man/Truce. London: Abacus by Sphere Books.

-- (1987b). Appendix to the annotated edition of Se questo é un uomo. Translated by Sachs, D, M. Primo Levi, Opre, Volume Primo. Torino: Einaudi. 186-187.

-- (2002). The Black Hole of Auschwitz. Cambridge: Polity Press.

-- & Benedetti, L, D. (2015) [1946]. Auschwitz Report. Brooklyn: Verso.

Sachs, D, M. (1995, September). The Language of Judgement: Primo Levi’s “Se questo é un uomo”. MLN: Comparative Literature (Via JSTOR). 110(4). 755-784.

Wood, J. (2019). Wall Street Journal. The Tragedy of Survival. Centro Primo Levi New York. Retrieved from http://primolevicenter.org/wall-street-journal-the-tragedy-of-survival-2/

Part Two

A comparative analysis of Filip Müller’s survivor testimonies in both his written account Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers, and his oral account in Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah

Both Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985) and Filip Müller’s Eyewitness Auschwitz (1979) are imperative to consider when researching and remembering Holocaust survivor testimonies. With Filip Müller being a survivor of the Holocaust and a survivor of the Sonderkommando (SK) more specifically, it is interesting to read his personal and direct account in his book, compared to his spoken and almost visual account in Lanzmann’s Shoah. This piece will compare these two types of testimonies from the same survivor to understand the atrocities of the Holocaust and to also discuss the importance of testimony, and how it takes many forms. The relationship between form and language within written testimony compared to spoken testimony will be explored to understand how the dynamics between the two testimonies vary, within the context of Holocaust survivor representation.

Müller’s written testimony Eyewitness Auschwitz and his spoken testimony in Shoah both begin his story already situated within Auschwitz. This is firstly important to understand and acknowledge. By Müller intentionally choosing to begin both testimonies already in the camp, it does not allow for the listener and reader to have any understanding to his life prior to him being a victim. Without knowing what his life was like before his experience in the Holocaust is an interesting approach Müller has taken and must not be overlooked. His full reasoning is unknown, but can be speculated. Müller‘s choice to begin with his Holocaust experiences rather than his freedom and life prior to this, may be the result of the direct effects he experienced during the Holocaust. For instance, the dehumanisation and lack of individualism presented in the Holocaust which lead each victim being seen and treated as animals rather than people with agency. With this in mind, it is understandable that Müller began both his book and his spoken account with his Holocaust testimony instead of his life pre-Holocaust. Victims of mass genocide, such as Müller, may find difficulty in addressing their past due to so much of it being literally and emotionally stripped away from them.

Similarly, this may also be due to his trauma following the Holocaust, leaving him in a state where he cannot look back to who he was before, or at least discuss this. For Müller to tell his story, he almost has to relive these events, and, due to the experience of reliving the events, the accounts he testifies are fragmented and could explain why he begins directly with the Holocaust in his testimonies. This trauma is evident in his interviews for the documentary Shoah, for example, whereby in his testimony Müller discusses the hope victims held even moments before entering the chambers, “It was obvious that hope flared in those people.” (1985: 2:50:14). While Müller says this, his body language and expressions on screen truly mirror his haunted experience. He sporadically moves his head and arms as if to replicate the hope, shock, and desperation that each victim felt in that exact moment. Trauma theory can be read along Lanzmann’s Shoah as a whole, and the documentary has been described by critic and researcher Larissa Allwork as this, “a radical experiment in the aesthetics of absence, trauma and voice which correlates closely with the questions asked by psychoanalytic theory” (2016: 5). Therefore, to approach the comparison between both the written and spoken accounts through the lens of Holocaust trauma theory and ideas deems appropriate here. To visually see Müller’s testimony and the emotion directly, brings different levels of emotion compared to the written account, Eyewitness Auschwitz. While the opening of his spoken testimony in Shoah does state he was twenty when he arrived, this was prompted by the interviewer, and then moved passed. Strikingly, Shoah begins Müller’s testimony without him presently being shown on screen. Lanzmann has chosen to edit in scenes shot from the Auschwitz-Birkeanu grounds as Müller talks us through them, as if the spectator is experiencing what Müller is saying. Similarly, at the beginning of Müller ‘s testimony, only his voice is heard. Lanzmann has edited a zoom shot of the grey death wall, a known image circulated in post-war depictions of Auschwitz, alongside Müller beginning his oral testimony. Here, Lanzmann has created an edit that blends past with present, and also gives truth to Müller ‘s account. This decision also gives a geographical and educational purpose that a book cannot explicitly achieve without imagination from the reader. However, despite Müller’s testimony Eyewitness Auschwitz taking the form of a book, it arguably holds more detail and emotion than the on-screen documentary. Müller’s account is powerful yet short in his Shoah testimony, differing from Eyewitness Auschwitz which accounts for his experience start to finish.

Eyewitness Auschwitz details Müller’s testimony powerfully through first-person written language. The form of a testimony being first-person narration sets the foundations for the content of the testimony to really be believed and for the most pure, true emotions to be experienced. Müller presents his experiences as a victim of the SK through repetition. An instance of this is in the opening pages of chapter one, No Return. Within this chapter, Müller describes his routine within the camp as a ‘sport’. Alongside this, there is a constant repetition of sport/military-like jargon such as “At the double!” “Lie down!” and “Jump!” (1979: 3). Müller relating his Holocaust experience to these sorts of activities furthers the notion that the indoctrination and control attempted to rationalise this behaviour into normal everyday work. Likewise, the link between the two themes of Holocaust and sport, despite them being at the antithesis of one another, also presents the coping mechanisms that Müller may have taken in order to feel human and his desperation to have a normalised routine. The repetition also highlights the rule and control that the SS guards held over the Jewish victims. They had to answer and obey to the SS guards because anybody who failed to do so would be killed. Physically seeing this repetition on the page and labouring to read the same words over and over again, possibly even having loss of breath, is a key literary technique Müller has employed here. The technique to have the repetition reflect Müller’s position in the camp allows the reader to almost journey with him and attempt to sympathise and understand his survivor story, amongst many others who would have experienced the hardships of the Holocaust in this manner. However, Shoah also incorporates elements of repetition parallel to testimony too. During Müller’s interview for the documentary, he repeats the term “struggle” several times. The term is used in relation mainly to what he calls “The death struggle” (1985: 1:01:41). Müller explains this is instinctive and therefore it can be understood as something universal that all victims who are subject to SS guards and Nazi control will recognise and encounter. To hear and see Müller, a survivor of the words he relays, break composure and run his words into repetition is powerful alone, despite the word he says. When analysing further, although this may not have been his intention, it is important that the word he repeats is “struggle” because that is something that is synonymous with the victims of this genocide. Although, it is a step further that Müller repeats this. It is almost a way to stress to the audience the severity of his endurance and the horrific events he lived.

A topic that both texts deal with, and often common within bearing witness for testimony, are the traumas experienced within survivor guilt. As discussed by Adam Brown, “When physical recovery took hold, many continued to be affiliated with ‘survivor guilt’ in the general sense of living while so many others did not.” (2017: 328). With this in mind, an allegorical chapter that embodies this idea is The Tragedy of the Family Camp. This is a memory that Müller extensively describes during both Eyewitness Auschwitz and Shoah and therefore is a vivid memory in his accounts from his time there. During this sequence Müller stresses how “Death had come menacingly close” (1979: 113) and how he felt ready to go. In alliance with this, during Shoah, he also says “my life was meaningless” (1985: 2:51:37). This seems to be a pivotal moment for Müller and seems to be the specific memory that compelled him to document and bear witness to not only his personal experience, but on behalf of all victims that could not testify themselves. This idea of survivor guilt paired with testifying is particularly important when understanding this point in Müller’s life within the camp, whereby the Czech Jews are being moved into the undressing room and then onto the gas chambers. As Müller tells this story during Shoah, he pauses often and then turns to complete silence before he breaks down and is reduced tears. Following this he also asks, in a futile request, if the cinematographer and interviewer could “Please stop.” (1985: 2:51:37). This is captured with Müller in an extreme close up as he recalls and then relieves that moment. He outlines in both Shoah and Eyewitness Auschwitz that there was a victim named Yana stood with him in the chamber at the point he decided he was ready to die. In Shoah he explains that the woman said to him, “So you want to die? That’s senseless. Your death won’t give us back our lives” (1985: 2:53:14). Writing on the same experience, in Eyewitness Auschwitz he tells this moment again, “We think your decision is pointless: for it helps no one”, “You have to return to the camp and tell everybody about our last hours…perhaps you’ll survive this terrible tragedy and then you must tell everybody what happened to you” (1979: 113). This presents the bravery and perseverance of the victims, even during their last moments. For Müller, this presents the pressure to bear witness. As summarised by Michael Nutkiewicz, “Testimony takes up a position of unparalleled importance. Bearing witness to a crisis or trauma can teach us about the depth if the catastrophe; it is the act of communicating to others and in the name of others” (2003: 8). Therefore, to listen and read Müller ‘s testimonies we must understand the underlying purpose of this. To adhere to Nutkiewicz’s point, the form of testifying and bearing witness though the lens of a Holocaust survivor almost becomes something that is expected. Stevan Weine develops this idea, “[Survivor’s testify] not because they understand it as a form of psychotherapy for their own suffering, but because they see that in telling they are participating in a collective process of truth telling. Paradoxically, this makes individual healing possible” (2002: 11). These ideas proposed by both Weine and Nutkiewicz forefront the notion that survivor testimony functions to provide truth in traumas experienced by victims during the fatal events of the Holocaust, but, also as a means of healing. In relation to The Tragedy of the Family Camp testimony, it becomes clear that this is a moment Müller vividly remembers and as a result, authentically presents how Auschwitz-Birkeanu operated and the devastating results of this.

The explicit nature of Müller’s accounts, particularly in his written testimony, Eyewitness Auschwitz is another point of consideration. When reading Müller’s work, there is an unfortunate but frequent use of explicit language to explain what he remembers from the death camp. Müller refrains from hiding the truth in the brutality he and so many victims experienced at the hands of Nazi and SS perpetrators. He does not attempt to passively bear witness but instead takes a matter-of-fact stance to his testimonies, and this is significant for a handful reasons. With Müller being part of the SK, it would be difficult to avoid these types of images. Examples of this from his written account include “As the doors opened, the top layer of corpses tumbled out like the contents of an overloaded truck” (1979: 116) and “after some time we came to regard anybody arriving at the crematorium as doomed to die” (1979: 74). In a similar way, Müller’s oral testimony during Shoah also involves hauntingly direct depictions of SK experience, “They fell out like blocks of stone, like rocks falling out of a truck” (1985: 1:03:07) and “Children had their skulls crushed” (1985: 1:03:47). This is a view of the Holocaust that only the SK would recognise as they saw the inner, privatised atrocities of the chambers, and some lived to tell their experience. The explicit descriptions of what he witnessed shows, in the most honest and accurate way possible, exactly how the Holocaust was for the victims. In addition, testimony and being involved with the SK interacts differently than if you were not part of the SK. Seeing death multiple times daily could also lead to some form of desensitisation. Müller reports in both of his testimonies the sheer amount of death he witnessed while being in the SK, and therefore, that may also explain his use of explicit terms. It is crucial to see these unambiguous sequences, as they were, not how people may expect them to be. Nicholas Chare and Domonic Williams encompass this point more clearly,

“There has always been an interest in the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz-Birkeanu. They were crucial to conceptualizing key aspects of Shoah. The SK provided some of the first evidence of the gas chambers, testimony that was central to several of the trials immediately post-war.” (2019: 3)

Due to SK survivors being part of only a minority of victims who can address this type of witness bearing, there is an also a cause for ethical concern surrounding this and the problems that come with that. There is a demand for SK victims to recall their life in the camps, a testimony that is limited to them which leaves it impossible for anybody else, survivor of the Holocaust or not, to bear witness. This leads to an added pressure on SK survivors, such as Müller, because their memories are specific and unique. Therefore, these explicit moments of Müller’s testimonies raise the question of ethics, and for the expectation to be achieved. Revisiting these moments are presumably very sensitive to Müller and this leads his testimonies to likely cause upset and trauma.

Co-existent to the notion of SK testimony being ethically concerning, the ethics surrounding the reliability of testimony is also important. Although testimony is paramount in understanding the Holocaust first-hand, both oral and written accounts have been criticized in their full reliability. Shoah can be questioned under this idea due to the documentary form it delivers. Lanzmann would have had a vast amount of control over what was presented and cut from on the documentary, therefore affecting the testimony to be understood in full. Likewise, the experience of being interviewed and understanding that words will be projected to the world could also change what Müller may want to say. Written testimony also has some of the same affects. Although Eyewitness Auschwitz is a personal testimony that Müller has written and had more control over, it still does not confirm the reliability of it. Müller’s experience lasted three years in the chambers but his testimony only lasts one hundred and eighty pages. Because of this, Müller’s testimony cannot reflect the entirety of his true experience. Benjamin Frankel explains, “While their [testimonies] importance is undeniable, survivor narratives are filtered by the emotional trauma of the Holocaust, which can distort memories and limit perspectives” (1999: 8). However, this is not to claim that the testimonies do not have meaning and purpose. Both Michael Nutkiewicz and Jean-François Lyotard further this in relation to oral accounts. Nutkiewicz states that, “Oral testimonies communal, didactic and therapeutic nature make it a unique platform for these conflicting forces to work themselves out by transforming narratives of suffering into narratives of witnessing” (2003: 1). Lyotard, in a similar way, also highlights the importance of spoken testimony,

“Shoah is an exception, maybe the only one. Not only because it rejects representation in images and music, but because it scarcely offers a testimony where the unpresentable of the Holocaust is not indicated, be it but for a moment, by the alteration in the tone of a voice, a knotted throat, sobbing, tears, a witness fleeing off camera, a disturbance in the tone of the narrative, an uncontrolled gesture.” (1990: 26)

Nutkiewicz and Lyotard both foreground the unique importance of oral testimony that cannot be replicated anywhere else. Specific to Müller’s account in Shoah, the need to bear witness as a form of transforming and reshaping narratives, similar to Nutkiewicz’s point, is explored within the documentary. Arguably more explicit, the ideas Lyotard highlights appear in Müller’s interview throughout most moments, particularly that discussed previously where Müller is reduced to tears. The genuine, transparent emotions and gestures Müller displays in Shoah strongly suggest that the accounts are honest and truthful, regardless of the claims in their reliability.

In conclusion, as Nutkiewicz epitomizes (adapted from Wiesel), “The Holocaust cannot be described, it cannot be communicated, it is unexplainable.” (2003: 17). The Holocaust is a mass genocide that only those who lived it can speak on, making testimony extremely important. Shoah and Eyewitness Auschwitz provide different insights into Müller’s SK Holocaust experience that would not be accessible anywhere else. Müller ‘s oral testimony is abrupt, unfiltered and brings a different experience to understanding survivors stories. His written testimony is an equally powerful survivor account where Müller has documented his harrowing experience. Eyewitness Auschwitz is especially interesting as he logged his experiences immediately after liberation, therefore making his accounts as raw as possible, despite the testimony being released many years later. Therefore, testimony serves and operates as a personal experience of healing, and a universal experience of educating and understanding. In addition, both oral and written testimonies also legitimize what the victim is bearing witness to, which should not be overlooked.

References

Allwork, L. (2016, 10 December). Interrogating Europe’s Voids of Memory: Trauma Theory and Holocaust Remembrance Between the National and the Transnational. Holocaust Intersections in the 21st Century Europe, Fondazione CDEC. 1-22.

Brinkley, R. & Youra, S. (1996). Tracing Shoah. PMLA (Via JSTOR). 111(1). 108-127

Brown, A. (2017, 5 July). Witnessing Moral Compromise: ‘Privilege’, Judgment and Holocaust Testimony. Life Writing (Routledge). 14(3). 327-338.

Chare, N. & Williams, D. (2019). The Auschwitz Sonderkommando: Testimonies, Histories, Representations. 1st Ed. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 3-221.

Frankel, B. (1999). The Reliability of Survivor Narratives of the Holocaust. History in Dispute, Vol 11: The Holocaust, 1933-1945. 11(1). 1-15.

Lanzmann, C. (Director). (1985). Shoah. [Documentary]. France, UK: British Broadcasting Corporation, Historia.

Lyotard, J. (1990). Heidegger and “the Jews”. Translated by Andreas, M. & Roberts, M. 1st Ed. Minneapolis: Univ of Minnesota Press. 25-26.

Müller, F. (1979). Eyewitness Auschwitz: Three Years in the Gas Chambers. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee Publisher.

Nir, B. (2018, 19 November). Transgenerational Transmission of Holocaust Trauma and Its Expressions in Literature. Genealogy. 2(4). 6-9.

Nutkiewicz, M. (2003, 30 January). Shame, Guilt and Anguish in Holocaust Survivor Testimony. The Oral History Review (ProQuest). 30(1). 1-22.

Weine, S. (2002). Universes of Testimony: Considerations for Bosnia-Herzegovina in Trauma Training Textbook. Budapest: Soros Publishers. 10-11.