Different horrors in the same hell: the question of gender in Holocaust literature

Abstract

It is a fact that most canonical examples of Holocaust Literature were written by male authors. Nevertheless and despite its irrefutable value, one should not forget that women too have endured traumatic experiences that due to certain specificities are unique and cannot be represented in great works such as Primo Levi’s If this is a man or Elie Wiesel’s Night. In this essay I intend to shed some light on the controversial topic of male/female duality, demonstrate how the Holocaust experience may have been indeed distinct and how it became representation object and core theme for many first-generation female authors who, after a long latency period, found the strength to break the silence and tried to come to terms with the past through the process of writing. Furthermore, I will present Ruth Klüger’s autobiographical novel Weiter leben, the stage where this survivor bears witness and narrates her traumatic, haunted memories of the past. On the other hand, Klüger also assumes a provocative, sarcastic and defying attitude by examining sensitive matters such as, for example, some Jewish patriarchal conventions which, according to the author’s perspective, seem to deny women their right to hold traumatic memories.