Transformation of Persecution in Holocaust Survivor Testimonies

Roy Schwartzman

More than fifty years after subjection to anti-Jewish persecution, Holocaust survivors embody divergent responses to the conflict that endangered their existence. Narrative analysis of oral and written testimonies by survivors reveals three major modes of creatively reclaiming personal agency: avoiding violence by delimiting the realm of control, embracing violence through forcible dispensation of justice, and expanding agency by exercising personal ability in the economic realm. The first-person narratives of Jewish survivors illustrate this autopoeisis, or creative redirection of conflict. The testimonies reveal transformation as an ongoing process of working through rather than working out conflict, an approach that accords well with the Judaic moral principle of tikkun olam, the imperative to repair a fractured world.