The Life and Death of Jews as Transnational Strangers: Comparative Textual Analyses of Nazi Concentration Camp Survivors

Choi,  Yun-Young

doi:10.22901/trans.2013.6.2.29

In this age of globalization, the meaning and power of the national, ethnic and cultural boundaries are getting blurred and trans-movements are becoming more popular. The new movements are evaluated positively from the perspective of freedom and emancipation. This paper, however, points to another aspect of these movements: the discontent and anxiety of a transmovement drawing upon the darkest historical examples, written by survivors of Nazi concentration camps. The history of European Jews can be regarded as a history of inclusion and exclusion. The national state in the spirit of humanism and enlightenment provided citizenship to Jews, who had previously lived either as wandering Jews or as ghetto dwellers, in both cases just as excluded strangers. After 150 years of assimilation and inclusion, to be considered transnational Jews, with the emphasis particularly upon “Jews,” the label applied by the Nazis, sounded for the Jews somewhat odd, even exclusionary, as was in fact intended. The actual exclusion process enforced by the Nazis had to be executed not only emotionally but also systematically and legally. The texts of survivors of Nazi concentration camps report on how the Jews reacted to this process of exclusion from human boundaries at that time and how they lived an unprotected life as homo sacer in the concentration camps. The texts show ex negatio, how risky transnational movements could be without a corresponding respect for human rights. We see that this lesson is still valid when we look at the new shadow zones of globalization, such as refugee villages. The dangers confronting transnational movements are analyzed in the following texts: La Nuit (Elie Wiesel) and Se questo è un uomo (Primo Levy), both in translation; and Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne (Jean Améry), Der siebente Brunnen (Fred Wander), and weiter leben (Ruth Klüger), all three in the original German.

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