posted on 1999-01-01, 00:00authored byAdrian Lisa. Parr
Examines the testimonies of Holocaust survivors from Melbourne's Jewish Holocaust Testimonies Project. The trauma of having "survived" the experiences of the Holocaust precipitated a tension within language, imagery and narrative structure as the survivors often struggled with a form of mnemonic incapacitation. As such the testimonies confront the linearity of storytelling and history, and ultimately of identity as having a fixed essence. Concludes that memory summons the past within the present, it does not simply recall it.