Admitting the Holocaust essays

Admitting the Holocaust essays Admitting the Holocaust by Lawrence L. Langer is a collection of essays about the Holocaust and how it is perceived in literature by our culture. Langer explores oral testimonies, diaries and fiction that consider the devastation of the Holocaust a central theme. He takes a look at human values in the light of that devastation. He exhibits the concern between literature and testimony. His hope is that the Holocaust experience will not be sentimentalized in the various forms of literature and media. Langer wants the Holocaust to be presented as it really was evil. Throughout his book Langer makes reference to various other writers novels and articles about the death camps. He criticizes such authors as William Styron and Bernard Malamud. According to Langer (Beyond Theodicy: Jewish Victims and the Holocaust and Malamuds Jews and the Holocaust Experience,), too many historical and cultural representations of the Nazis murderers try, by portraying the Jewish victims as dignified martyrs, to introduce the notion of spiritual redemption into the accounts of atrocities that need to be confronted without moral oversimplification. He rejects the works of Malamud who found in suffering a source or spiritual strength, a moral advantage.In the essays A Tainted Legacy: Remembering the Warsaw Ghetto and Ghetto Chronicles: Life at the Brink Langer criticizes accounts that present heroism, suffering and religious experience as a central theme. He writes: Jews were destroyed by humans, not God ... in a historical, not religious, moment of suffering ... whether they chose or not, men died for nothing. He finds it unimaginable that any sane person could write, It is a great privilege to have been chosen to bear this. (Etty Hi...