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Library of Congres~ Cataloging in Publication Data

Felinan , Shoslland.
Tes tilllony : cri ~cs of witnessing in literature , psychoanalysis,
and llistory " Shoshana Felm an and Dori Laub .....1.D .
p. em.

Iild utks illd ex.

ISRI\ fJ-415·YO:l'J 1-2 (c loth) ISBN (H 15-9I1J ~1 2·0 (pdper )

I . I'sychodlldlysis and literalllr~ L Authors ·- f'sycholllh'Y­

:l. PsychiC trauma . I. Lallb , Dori. [I. Title.
PN56 f>'JLF-t'i 1991
tlU I '.92-dc20 9[ -:32891

British library cataloguing in publication data al~o available

 Heariflg Wilnes..'.'

frighten us . Th ey pose for LIS a riddle ami a threat from which we

(anllot tum away . We are indeed profoundly terrified to truly face the
traumas of our history, much like the survivor alld the listeller are .
What can we leam Irom the realization of our fear? What call we
THREE

learn from the trauma , from the testimony and from the very proces s
of our listening?
An Event Without a Witness:

In the wake of the atrocities and of the trauma that to ok place in Truth, Testimony and Suroival

th e Second World War, cultural values, political conventions, social

mores, national identities, investm en ts , families and institutions have OORI LAlJB, M.D.
lost their meaning, hilve lost thei r context. As a watershed event, th e
Holocaust entailed an implicit revolution in all values, a reevaluation
or , to use a Nietzschean terlll, a " transvaluat ion" of which we have
not yet measured the array of cultural ililplications for th e future .
Within today's "cu lture of narcissism,"· whi ch may itself be explain ed
I would like to propose some refiections on the relation of wit ­
as a historical diversilln , a triviali zation, a philosophical escape fwm,
nessing to trutli, in referen ce to the historical experience of th e Holo­
"nd a psychological deni,,1 of, the depth and the subversive power OJ
caust. For a long time now , and from a variety of [lerspectives, I I have
the Holocal lst experience, th e survivors, as ass ert en; uf life out of tile
been concretely involved in the quest of tes tifying and of witnessing­
I 'cry disintegration anI! deflatio/l of the old ClJlture, unwittingly embody
and have come to conceive of the rrocess of the testimony as , esse n­
a w/Illrul shock va/uc that has not yet been assimilated . Their very
tially, a ceaseless struggle. whi ch I would like here to attempt to
Lte-assertioll, paradoxically enough, constitutes as yet another thr ea t sketch ouL
in that it is the vehicle of an inexorahle histori cal transvaluat ion. th e
irnpliciltiolls of which we have yet to understand .
I
My Positiofl as a Witness

I recognize three separate, distinct levels of witnessing in relation

to the Holoca ust experi ence: the level of being iI witness to oneself
within the experience; th e le l'el of being a witness to the testimoni es
()f others ; and the level of being a witlless to the process of witnessing
itself.
Tile first level, that of being a witness to oneself, proceeds fro In
my autobiographicill awa ren ess as a child survivor. I have distinct
Inemories of my deportation, arrival in th e camp , and the subsequent
life my family and I led there. I remember both these evell ts and the
feelings and th oughts they provoked, in minllte detail They are 110t
filCIS that were glea ned fwnl somebody else's tell ing me i1bout theill.
The explicit details ( including names of places alld reople), which I
so vividly remember, are a constant source of amazement to Illy

'As the cufoulldt'r uf the FOrtl1110fl Video Archive lor HoiocUllSI Tl'.ti"lunies"1 Y"le :
"Cf (hri s tupller Ld.~(.,:11. Thr.: CII/fllr.: " f .V Uf('/ SSt ,\ 'III. New York: I'\ulr on. 1978, i\S all Intcrvlt.: ....·el uf the s u rv ivors whu g ivt: restimony, as a pSyLilOH1 \d lyS I .....'110 lreats
Hl)loCilHs t slirvivurs and Ih""l r dlildrell , Lind a.s a t: hilc l sur vivur mysell.

H
75
 An Evelll H1ithoul a Witlle.slt
An E,''!nl Withoul a Willies .!>

mother in their accuracy and general comprehension of all that was

happening.
[lut the~e are the memories of an adult. furiollsly enough , the
events are remembered and seem to have been experienced in a way
that was far beyond the normal capacity for recall in a young child of
nly age . It is as though this proces~ of witne~sing is of an event that
happened on another level , and was not part of the mainstream of the
conscious life of a little boy. Rather, these memories are like discrete
islands of precocious thinking and feel ahnost like the remembrances
of another child, removed , yet connected to me in a complex way.
This es~ay will be based in part on this enigma of one child's
memory of trauma . The rememiJrances of yet another child survivor,
knowll to me quite intimately (from having been his later interviewer
and friend) and therefore subtly related to my own in the quality of
their precociousness, will serve as a connecting, reemerging thread
in the latter part of the essay.
The second level of my involvement in the process of witnessing
is lily participation, not in the events, but in the account given of
them, in my role as the interviewer of survivors who give testimony
to the archive' , that is, as the immediate receiver of these testimonies.
My function in this setting is that of a companion on the eerie journey
of the testimony . A!; an interviewer, I am present as someone who
actually participates in the reliving and reexperiencing of the event.
I aiso become part of the struggle to go beyond the event and not be
submerged and lost in it.
The third level is one in which the process of witnessing is itself
being witnessed . I observe how the narrator, and myself as listener,
alternate between moving closer and then retreating from the experi­
ence -with the sense that there is a truth that we are both trying to
reach, and this sense serves as a beacon we both try to follow. The
traumatic experien ce has normally long been submerged and has .~

become distorted in its submersion . The horror of the historical expe­

rience is maintained ill the testimony only as an elusive memory that
feels as if it no longer resembles any reality. The horror is, indeed,
compelling not only in its reillity, but even more so, in its flagrant
distortion alld subversion of reality. Realizing its dimensions becomes
a process thdt demands retreat. The narrator and I need to halt and
reflect on these memories as they are spoken, so as tu reassert the
veracity of the past and to build anew its linkage to, and assinlilation
into, present-day life.
"TJli~ es.'iUY unll oe Utl.\('1.1 (J/I {//I) enigullt uf un e till /d's flIC!fIlf)r y of IrUl IfT /(} .,
-TIle Fl)rlltlluH Vitl en ~r(hive for Holo('ausl Tcslll1lolli es at Yal e, IOlilld cd III IY81.

76 77
 An fven' \i/;,houl a Witness
1he Imperative to Tell
Toward the end of her testimony at the Video Archive for Holocaust
Testimonies at Yale, one woman survivor made the statement: "We
wanted to survive so as to live Olle day after Hitl er, in order to be able
to tell our story ."
In listening to testimonies, and in working with survivors and their
children , I came to believe the opposite to be equally true. The survi ­
vors did not only need to survive so that they could tell th ei r story;
they also needed to tell their st ory in order to survive. Th ere is, in
each survivor, an imperative need to tell and thus to come to kn ow
olle's story, un impeded by ghosts from the past against which olle
has III protect oneself. One has to know one's buried truth in order
to be able to live one's life.
This imperative to tell and to be heard can become itself an all­
consuming life task . Yet no amount of telling seems ever to do justi ce
to this inner co mpulsion. There are never enough words or the r ig ht
words, there is never enough time or the right time, and never enough
listening Or the right listening to articulate the story that cannot be
fully captured in th OIl~h(, m emory and speedL The pressure thus
continues unremitting ly, and if words are not trustworthy or ade quate,
th e life that is chosen call become the vehicle by which the struggle
to tell continues. The above-mentioned survivor did so by con­
structing her life in stich a fa ted way, that it ca llle to be a testimony
to her loneliness and bereave ment ill spite of the fact that her world
was fill ed with loving people and in spite of her remarkable gifts- her
creativity, her warIlltb, her generosity, her eloquence and her love of
life.
Hers was a life in which the new family she created, the children
she bore, had to give continuance and meaning, perhaps provide
healing and restitution, to the so suddenly and brutally broken family
of her childhood- parellts, brothers and children, several of whom
died while she WiI-<; holding them in her arms. In her present life, she
relentlessly holds on to, and searches , for what is fami liar to her fr om
her past , with only a dim awa reness of what she is doing . Her own
children sh e experiences with deep disappointment as unempathic
strangers be cause of the "o therness " she senses in them , because of
their re fusal to substitute for, and completely tit into , the world of
parents, brothers and children that was so abruptly destroyed.
Yet hers is a story that cOli ld never be told in the way she chose
to tell it, that is by structuring her whole life as a substituti on for the
mourned past , because th ere could not be an audience ( eve n in
711
AI' fue,,' Withoul u WUness
her family) that was generous , sensitive and self·effacing enoll!ih to
obliterate its own ex istence. and be no thing but the substitutive actors
of her unexplica ted Illernory. Her specific attempt to tell her story by
the very conduct of her life led to an unavoidilble dead end , in w hidl
tht: light against the obliterati on of the story could only be at the cost
of the obliteration of the audience.
The Impossibility of Telling
In this case as illmallY others, the imperative to tell the story 01 the
Holocaust is inhabited by the impossibility of telling and, ther efore,
1 silence ahout the truth commonly prevails . Many of the survivors
i interviewed at the Yak Vid~o Archive realize that they have only
begun the long process of witnessing l1ow--forty years after the event.
Some have hardly spoken of it, but even those who have talked inces­
santly feel that they managed to say very little that was heard. None
find peace in silence , even when it is their choice to remain silent.
Moreover, survivors who do not tell tbeir story be come victims of a
distorted memory, that is . of a forcibly imposed "external evil," which
causes an endless struggle with and over a delusion .' The "not telling"
of the story serves as a perpetuation of its tyranny . The events become
more and more distorted in their sil ent retenti c)1l and pervas ively
invade and contaminate the survivor's daily life . The longer the story
remains untold, the more distorted it becomes ill the survivor's COI1­
cC()litln III 1\, so m uch so that the survivor doubts Ihe reality of the
actual events.
This power of distortion in present-day life is demonstrated by the
loss of a sense of human relatedness experienced by one woman
survivor ( interviewed. She desl;ribed herself as "someone who had
never known feelings of love." This f e~ ling of lac:k encompassed all
the pe ople in her life. Her family. in cluding her children, were never
abl e to thaw her heart, or penetrate the bars of her "self -imprison­
ment." Becallse of this self-infticted emotional imprisonment, sh e
foulld herself surrounded by hatred and disdain for and by all those
closes t to her. Ironically, throughout thos e yea rs she spent all her
free time , and stili does , caring for the termin ally sic.:k and old. But
these anguished people she cares for make her feel precisely that she
cannot Jove them enough .
JA~ an examp le for (h e curt: 01 thi::; uelusioll, I shall quu te lh t: tllteq.>rdalioll !Ilildt:
by a psychoallalysl 10 d survivor [laliell!. "Hil ler s nilli c IVaS nOI only Ih e killing ()ll h ~
Jews, bUI gd l ing Ihe Jews 10 believe Ihal lhey d('served Il. ·'
79
 An Event Withoul a lVilTless
As a teenager during the war, she had lost most of her family and
witnessed many awesome events. Among them was the choking to
death of a sinall baby who had cried too loudly, as well as the burning
alive of several of her close relatives. These relatives had been put
into a bonrded up wooden shack that was set afire . Toward the end
of the war, she participated as a partisan III the hunting down and
killing of loca l collaborators . During this period, her fellow partisans
captured and turned over it seventeen-year-old German youth to her.
She was given free hand to take revenge . After all that she had wit­
nessed and lived through, this woman bandaged the German's wounds
and turned him over to the row group. When asked why she had done
this, she replied : "How could I kiJl him-he looked into my fClce and
I looked into his."
Hild ~h c been fully able to grasp the truth about herself, and not
perceived herself as someone "with a heart of stone" but as a co mpas­
sionate, loving person, she might h;we lived her life differently. Her
previous inability to tell her story had hlarred her perception o f
herself. The untold events had become so distorted in her unconscious
memory as to make her believe that she herself . and not the perpetra­
tor, was responsible for the atrocities she witnessed . If she could not
stop them, rescue or comfort the victims, she bore the responsibility
for their pain. In other words, in her memory of her Holocaust experi­
ence, as well as in the distorted Wily in which her present life pro­
ceeded from this memory , she failed to be an authentic witness to
herself. This collapse of witnessing is precisely, in my view. what is
cc ntral to the Holocaust experience.
II
An Event Withotll a Wihless
On the basis of the many Hol ocaust testimonies I have listened to,
would like to suggest a certain way of looking at the Holocaust
that would reside in the following theoretical perspective: thilt what
precisely made a Holocaust out of the event is the unique way in
which, during its historical occurrence, the eUf:nt produced 110 wit­
llf:SS eS. Not oilly. in effect, did the Nazis try to extermilla.te the physicnl
witnesses of their crime: but the inherently incomprehensible and
deccptive psychological structure of the event prec luded its own
witnessing, even by its very victims.
A wltlless is a witness to the tru th of what happens during an event.
80
An Evenl Withoul a Wilness
During the era of the Nazi persecution of the Jews, the truth of th e
event could have been recorded in perceptiun and in mcmory, either
frOiIl within or from without, by Jews, or any olle of a number of
"outsiders." Outsider-witnesses could have been , for illstance, the
next-door neighbor , a friend , a business partner, cOlrllllunity institu­
tiolls including the police and the courts of law, as well as bystanders
and potential rescuers and allies Ironl other countries.
Jews from all over the world, especially from Palestine <lIld the
United States , could have be en sllch possible ()utside witnesses . [ven
the executioner, who was IOtally oblivious to the plea for life, was
potentially such all "outside" witness. Ultimately, God himself could
be the witness. As the event of the Jewish genocide unfoldcd , however ,
IIlnst actual or potential witnesses failed one-by-one to OCCLlIJY their
position as a witness. nfld at a certain point it seemed as if th ere was
no one left to witness what was til king place.
In addition, it was inconceivable that any historical insider could
remove herself sufficiently from the co ntaminating power of the event
so as to remain a fully lucid, unaffec ted witness, that is, to be suffi­
ciently detached from the inside, so i1S to stay entirely outside of the
tra pping roles, and the COli sequent identities, either of the victim
or of the executioner. No observer could remain untainted, that is,
maintilin an integrity-a wholeness and a sel-larateness-thal could
keep itself LJncolllpromised, unharmed, by his or her very witnessing.
The perpetrators, in their alternpt to rationalize the unprecedented
scope of the des tructiveness , brutally imposed upon their victims a
delusional ideolugy whose grandiose coerc ive pressure totilily ex­
cluded and eliminated the possibility of an unviolate<i, unencumhered ,
and thus sane. point of reference in the witness.
What I feel is therefore crucial to emphasize i~ the following: it was
not oilly th e reality of the situation and the lack of responsiveness of
bystanders or the world that (lCCOl.lllts for the fact that history was
taking place with no witness: it was also the very circumstance of
belHg illSiclt: fhe euent that l!ladt: IInth" Ikable tht! very notion that a
witness could e.xist. that IS, sonleOfle who cuuld step outside of the
coercively totalitarian and dehumanizing frame of reference in which
the event was taking place , ilnd provide an independent frame of
reference through which the event could be observed. One might say
that there was, tilus, h istorically no witness to tile Holocilust , either
from outside or from inside the event.
What do I mean by the notion of a witness from inside'! To under­
stand it one has to conceive of the world of the Holocaust as a world
in which the very imagination of the Other was no longer possible.
8 I
 An Event Without a Witlless
There was nu lunger an other to which une could say "Thuu" I in
the hope of being heard, of being recognized as a suhject, of being
allswered. The histurical reality of the Hulucaust became, thus, a
reality which extinguished philosophically the very pussibility of ad­
dress, the possibility of appealing, ur of turning to, another. But when
one cannot turn to a "yuu" one cannot say "thuu" even to uneself. The
Holocaust created ill this way a world in which une could not hear
witnes.s /0 oneself". The Nazi system turned out therefore to be fool­
proof, not only ill the sense that there were in theory no outside
witnesses but also in the sense that it convinced its victims, the
potential witnesses from the inside, that what was affinned abollt
their "utherness" and their inhllillanity was correct alld that their
experiences were 110 longer communicable even to themselves, and
therefore perhaps never touk place. This loss of the capacity to be a
witness to onesel( and thus to witness from the inside is perhaps the
true meaning of annihilation, for when one's history is abolished,
one's identity ceases to exist as well.
The Secret Order
Survivors often claim that they experience the feeling of belonging
to a "secret order" that is sworn to silence. Because of their "participa­
tion" ill the Holocaust they have become the "bearers of a secret"
(GeheimnisstrCleger) never to be di'v1i1ged. The irnpllcations of this
imagini:!ry complic ity and of this cOllviction of their having beell
chosen for a secret mission are that they believe, out of loyalty, that
their persecution and execution by the Nazis was actually warranted.
This burdensome secret belief in the Nazi propagated "truth" of Jewish
subhumanity compels them to maintain silence. As "subhurnans," a
positioll they have accepted and assumed as their identity by virtue
of their contamillation by the "secret order," they have 110 right to
speak up or protest. Moreover, by Ilever divulging their stories, they
feel that the rest of the world will never come to know the reul truth,
the one that involved the oestruction of their humanity. The difficul ty
that prevents these victims from speaking out about their victill1iza­
tion emphasizes even more the delusional quality of the Holucaust.
This delusion, fostered by the Holocaust, is actually lived as alluncon­
4S t..:e Marlin Buber, The { (JI1J Ille Th{)u Edinuurgh: -I'. and T Clark, I ~).S:L See also
the Llisrus::;ioll ()I Paul Cela!l',:; poetry a.:; "~tIl ev ent d i rec ted tu ..... Jrd the rent~ J.(ioll 01 a
yuu" ill chapter I
82
An fvent Wi/hor.,t a Wltn"s.
scious alternate truth, hy executioners, victims and bystanders alike.
How can such deadlock be broken"!
The Emperor's New Clothes
It is in children's stories that we often find the wisdom of the old.
"The Emperor's New Clothes" is an example of one Stich story about
the secret sharing of a collective delusion. The emperor, though
naked, is deluded, duped into believing that he is seated before his
audience in his splendid new clothes. The entire audience participates
in this delusion by expressing wonderment at his spectacular new
suit. There is no one in the audience who dares remove himself from
the crowd and hecome an outcast, by pointing out that the new clothes
are nonexistent. It takes a young, innocent child, whose eyes are not
veiled by conventionality, to dec.lare the emperor naked. III much the
same way that the power of this delusion in the story is ubiquitous,
the Nazi delusion was ubiquitously effective in Jewish communities
as well. This is why those who were lucid enough to warn the .Jewish
communities about the forthcoming destruction either through infor­
mation or through foresight, were dismissed as "prophets of doom"
and labeled traitors or madmen. They were discredited because they
were not conforming by staying within the confines of the delusion.
It is in this way that the capability of a witness alone to stand out frolll
the crowd and not be Hooded and engulfed by the event itself, was
precilided.
The silence about the H(') locaust after the war might have been, in
turn, a continuation of the power and the victory of that delusion. As
in the story of "The Emperor's New Clothes," it has taken a new
generation of "innocent children" removed enough from the experi­
ence, to be in a position to ask questions.
III
Across the Gap
l3el.ause tile ev ellt that had no wilness 10 lis trut h essenlially did
no t ex ist, an d lltus signi fied its own death , I ts own reduct ion to silence .
any instance of its su rv ival inevitably implied the presence of so me
sort of illformal discourse, of some degree of uliconscioliS witnessing
that could nut nlld its voice or its expression during the event.
83
 An Event lJr1thout a lVitfJ es.'i'
And indeed. against all odds, attel npts at be aring witness did take
pla ce; chroniclers of course existed alld the struggle to Illaintain the
proc ess of recording and of salvaging and safegu arding evidence was
ca rri ed on relentl ess ly. Diaries were written and buri ed in the ground
so as to be historical ly preserved, pictures were taken in se cret ,
Inessengers and escapees tried to inform and to warn the world of
what wa s taking plilce. However, these attempts to inform oneself and
to inform oth ers were doomed to fil iI. Th e histOrical imperative to
bear witn ess co uld esse ntially nut be met during th e actua l occurren ce.
Tile degree to which bearing witness was required, entailed SUdl
all outstanding measure of awareness and of com prehension of the
event· ·-of its dimensions, consequences. and above al l. of its radi ca l
utilern e" to all known frames of referen ce- that it was beyond the
limits of hllman ililility (and willinglless ) to grasp , to transmit, or to
imagine. There was therefore no concurr ent ··knowin g" ur assimilation
of the history o f the occurrence. Th e event could thlls Iinimpededly
proceed u) though there were no witness ill g whatsoever. no w itn essing
til at could decisively impa ct on iI. '
Th e experience oi encountering today th e abu ndance of the retro­
spective testimonies about th e Ho illcaust is thus doubly significant
and doubly moving . It is no t by chance th at these tes timonies-eve n
if they were engende red during the event-beco me rece iva ble only
IOduy; it is not by chance that it is only now , be/Cltedly. that th e event
begi ns to be histo ri ca lly grasped and seen. I wish to emphasize this
historical gap which the event crea ted in the collective witnessin g.
This emphasis does not i'1'alidate in any way the power and the valu e
of the individual tes timonies. but it underscores the fact that these
testi mo nies were no t transmitt able , and integra tabl e, at th e time. It is
all the more imperative to re cognize ancl to enhance today the value
and the morncn tuolls contriiJutions of th e testimonies and th e wit­
nesses who preserved evidence often by riskin g their lives. The ulti­
mate historical transmission of th e tes timuni es beyo nd and throu gh
tlte histori cal gap , indeed emphasizes the human will to live and the
human will to kn ow even in the most rad ical ci r cUinstances designed
for its obliterati on and destrll ction .
The perspe ctive I propose tri es to highlight , however. what was
ultimately miss ing. not in th e courage of th e witnesses nor in the depth
of their emo ti onal responses, but in the human cognitive capacity to
'illl1d th ere ueell such effec ti ve , 1l1Olc naJ W lll l ~sshlg , th e event would havl:' imu to
ch;;n gc.: it:-i tpurs,,-, and th t: .. tin..,1 solutlt)ll" co u ld 1l 0 ( ha'.it.: b~ t: : : 11 cCHr icd out to the f'xtelll
th ai it \"';jS, ill full vi e \'" 01 Ihe CI VIlized wurld .
84
An Eve,.t Without a Witn~ ,"is
perceive alld to assimilate the totality of what was really happenil lg
at the time .
Witnessing and Re:>toration
Yet it is essential for this narrative that cOllld not be artiwlu ted, to
be to ld, to be transmitted, to be il ea rd . Hence the importan ce 01
histor ical endeavllfs like the Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
at Yale , designed to enable the survivors to bear witness, to enable,
tilat is , the act of IJearing witness ( whi ch the Holoca ust invalidated )
to take place, belatedly. as though retroac tiv ely .
Such endeavors make up for the survivors' need for witnesses, as
well as for the histori ca l lack of witneSSing, by setting the stage for a
reliving , a reoc currence of the event, in the presence of a witness . In
lact, the listener ( or the interviewer ) becomes the Holocaust witn es s
before the narrator does .
To a certain extent, the interviewer-listener takes on the respOIlsi­
bility for bearing witness that previously the narrator felt he bore
alone, and tilerefore could not carry out. It is the encounter and the
coming toge ther between the survivor ami the listener. whi ch makes
possibl e something like a repossession of the act oi witnessing. This
joint responsibility is the source of the reemerging truth.
The Video Archive might, therefore , be thought of as helping to
create, after the fact , th e missing Holocaust witnes s, in opening up the
historica l co nceivability ( the retrospective condition o f possibility ).
01 the Holocaust witness. The testimony constitutes in this way a
con ce ptual breakthrough, as well as il historical event in its own
right, a historica l rerovery which I tend to think of as a "historical
retroaction ."
What ultilnately matt ers in all processes of \"itness ing , spasmodic
and continllous, conscious and unconscious , is not simply the infor­
mation, the es tablishment of the lacts, but th e experience itself of
Iiuing thro ugh tes timony , of giving testimony .
The testimony is, therefore, the proce ss by whi ch the narrator ( the
sllrvi vor) reclili ms his pos ition as a witn ess : reco nstitutes the internal
"thou, " and thus the possibility of a witness or a listener inside himself.
In my experi ence. repossessing one 's life story through giving testi ­
mony is itself a form of action, of change, which has to ac tually pass
through, in o rd er to continue and c01llplete tile proces s of survival
after liberation . The event mllst be reclaimed because even if sll ccess ­
85
 An Evellt WithofJt a Witness
fully repressed, it nevertheless invariably plays a decisive fOrillative
role in who olle comes to be, ilnd in how one COllles to live one's life.
IV
The IcOIl
To illustrate the importance of the process of witnessing and of
giving testimony and the struggle involved in it, I would like to relate
the story of a man who is currently a high-ranking officer in the Israeli
army and whom I interviewed during a sabbatical year he spent at
Yale.
As a little boy of about five years old, he was placed with his parents
in the Plashow labor camp, in the vicinity of Krakow city. A rumor,
which eventually materialized, began spreading that all children were
going to be rounded up for extermination. The parents started to
make plans to devise ways to save their son by smuggling him out of
the camp. They would talk about it at night when he should have been
asleep, but he overheard them . One night , while the guards were being
distracted, they indeed managed to get hi III out of the gate. His mother
wrapped him up in a shawl and gave him a passport photograph of
hersell as a student. She told him to turn to the picture whenever he
felt the need to do so. His parents both promised him that they would
come and find him and bring hilll home after the war. With that. and
with an address where to go, he was sellt out into the streets. The
address was a whorehouse, a marginal institution itself and therefore,
more hospitable to the homeless . He was received with open arms.
For years he used to speak of the whorehollse as a hospital, with the
color white featuring predoillinantly in his memory , because the first
thing he was given on arrival was a white glass of milk, and, in his
imagination, the place could not be anything but a helping hospital.
Eventually his hideout became too dangerous and he had to leave . He
roamed the streets , joined other gangs of boys and found refuge in
the homes of generous, gentile families who took him in for periods
of time. The task of making it from day to day preoccupied hiln
completely and in moments of solitude he would take Ollt his mother's
picture and talk to her.
In one of the gentile houses he stayed in (living Oil the papers of a
child that had died ), the family was ill the habit of praying together
every evening . Wilen everybody knell and prayed to the crucifix, the
86
An Event Without a Witfless
~
Menachem S. and I,is mother, Krakow, 1941)
lady of the house, who may have suspected he was Jewish, was kind
enotlgh to allow him to pray to whomever he wished. The young boy
would take out the photograph of his mother and pray to it, Saying.
"Mother, leI this war be over and come and take me back il5 you
promised," Motller indeed had promised to come and take him hack
after the war, and not for a moment did he doubt that promise.
In my interpretation , what this young vagabond was doing with the
photograph of his mother was, precisely, c.:rt"ating his firsl witness,
alllith e creation of that witness was what enabled him to survive his
years 011 the streets of Krakow . This story exemplifies the process
whereby survival takes place through the creative act of establishing
and maintaining an internal witness who substitutes for the lack of
witnessing in real life.
This eariyinternal witness in tum played a crucial role not only in
his actual physi(al survival but also in the later adult testimony the
child survivur gave to himself and to others by augmenting his ability
to create a cohesive . integrated narrative of the event. This testimony
to himself came Lo be the story of the hidden truth of his life, with
whic h he has to struggle incessantly in order to remain authentic to
himself.
87
 Arr Event Without a Witness An Event Withollt a Willles,<

A Passage through Difference,

or the Broken Promise

Knowing one's real truth, however, can also be very costly, as

is demonstrated by what happens to the little vagabonu hoy after
liberation. He manages miraculously to find his parents, but whell he
and his parents are reunited, they are not the people he remembers:
they no longer even resemble the image he has carrieu in his mind
for so long, His mother does not look like the person in the photograph.
His parents have come back as death camp survivors, haggard and
emaciated, ill striped uniforms, with teeth hanging loose in their gums ,
Their return does not bring back the lost safety of childhood the boy
hill) so ardently prayed for. He finds that he can only address them as
Mr, and Mrs. , not as Mom and Dad, I read this story to mean that in
regaining his real 1Il0ther, he inevitably loses the internal witness he
had found in her image. This loss of his internal witness to whom he
has addressed his daily prayers causes the boy to fall apart , He begins
to have a nightmare that will recur all his life. In it he tinds himself
011 a conveyor belt moving relentlessly toward a metal compactor.
Nothing he can do will stop that conveyor belt and he will be carried
to his end, crushed to death by the machine . Every time he has this
dream, he wakes up, totally disoriented and utterly terrified. Because
he has lost the life-sustaining internal witness he foulld in his mother's
image, after the war, he becomes, paradoxically enough, a mere "child
victim" deprived of the holding presence of a witness. Many of the
things he consequ ently does, as he grows up to be a man, are desper­
ate attempts to subdue the abandoned child victim within himself. As a
high -ranking officer in the Israeli army be becomes known for repeated
acts of IJravery, risking his life as he rescues wounded soldiers under
heavy tire. In speaking about these brave acts, he will later state , Mmachem S., 1~42

however , that he did not consider them brave at all. They simply
pMtook of his feeling of being invulnerable, He was convinced he
could walk in a hail of bullets and not be hit. III my understanding,
this conviction is part of a psychological construction which centered
his life on the denial of the child victim within himself. He becumes
illstead an untouchable and self-sufficient hero. Because he had lost
his inner witness and because he could not face his horrors without
a witness, he was trapped. He could neither allow himself to experi­
ence the horrors nor could he move away from the position of the
child victim, except by relentlessly atteillpting to deny thenl.
It was years later that I happened to meet him and invite him to
give his testimony to the archive at Yale, This provoked a crisis in
him. At first he refused. A prolonged struggle with himself ensued,
My initial reaction WIls, "NO," My wife said, "Why don't you think it
over'! ... What are you afrilid oL'" I 5aid, "I'm scared that everything
will co me back, my nightondres, and so on ... "She said , "You've lJeen
living with this thing for Ulirty-hve years after the war, and you're still
afraid, You never talked about it. Wily don't you try the other way!" We
spellt a tot of time talking about It; I began to set' the togic, This
partil'ular night wt' went to bed very early in the morning, hecause we
had talked very far into the night , and the next night I had my nightmares

88
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89
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