With All the Force of Literalness: Ruth Klüger’s Survivor Testimonies in Erwin Leiser’s We Were Ten Brothers and Thomas Mitscherlich’s Journeys into Life

Prager, Brad

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-83422-7_13

Brad Prager³

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Abstract

Anyone who interprets filmed survivor testimony must contend with the idea that the traumatic memories of those who speak about their survival rest on an unstable ground, as well as with the fact that neither the faces nor the voices of the survivors are identical with filmed traces of Holocaust violence. Ruth Klüger, author of weiter leben, is featured in Erwin Leiser’s Zehn Brüder sind wir gewesen (1995), as well as in Thomas Mitscherlich’s Reisen ins Leben (1996). This chapter examines how we assess filmed testimonies of survivors relative to our conceptualizations of victims and those witnesses who speak for them. Klüger’s own written and spoken reflections about these distinctions elucidate key differences between figurative representations and ones that appear to have a force of literalness.

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Notes

1.
Levi (1988, 83).
2.
Levi (1988, 84).
3.
Hunter (2018, 67).
4.
Caruth (1995, 5–6).
5.
Wieviorka (2006, 108).
6.
Wieviorka (2006, 110). Wieviorka is quoting an article from Libération, April 20, 1995.
7.
Shenker (2015, 6).
8.
Walker (2005, 142).
9.
Walker (2005, xviii).
10.
See, for example, Agamben (1999); see also Trezise (2014, esp. 134–156).
11.
A revised English language version of Klüger’s memoir appeared several years later, in 2001, under the title Still Alive. Her last name on that edition appears without an umlaut. On the differences between the German and English versions, see Schaumann (2004).
12.
Leiser (1996, 227). On the spate of anti-Semitic attacks prior to the release of Leiser’s Mein Kampf , see Schönbach (1961).
13.
See Klüger (2012, 128–136) and Kluger (2003, 103–109).
14.
Exceptions to this are films by Irmgard von zur Mühlen, who had produced and directed several Holocaust documentaries including Majdanek 1944—Opfer und Täter (1986) and The Liberation of Auschwitz (1986).
15.
Mandel (2006, 4).
16.
Mandel (2006, 4).
17.
Levi (1988, 82–83).
18.
Thomas Mitscherlich is the biological son of Alex but not Margarethe Mitscherlich.
19.
Mitscherlich , in Johr (1997, 224).
20.
Mitscherlich , in Johr (1997, 228).
21.
Ellis Carter’s footage, seen in Mitscherlich’s film, appears in the film Lest We Forget (1945), which documents the liberation of Buchenwald, and which is archived at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn1004371. See also the footage “Buchenwald Survivors: German Civilians View Camp”, shot by Carter and Arthur Mainzer. https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn1000302.
22.
Morris (2003, 294).
23.
Klüger refers to this same poem at the end of a 1986 English language review of Shoah, which she published under her maiden name. See the final paragraph of Angress (1986).
24.
Kluger (2003, 184–185).
25.
On Klüger’s self-fashioning as a “countermonument”, see Prager (2015, 145–147).
26.
See Caruth (1995, 6).
27.
Klüger (2012, 239; my translation).
28.
Kluger (2003, 184–185).
29.
Levi (1988, 75–76).
30.
Schwab (1826, 579).
31.
Kluger (2003, 38–39).
32.
Kluger (2003, 39).
33.
Hartman (1995, 540).
34.
Klüger (2012, 127).

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School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA
Brad Prager

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University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany
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Gerd Bayer

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Prager, B. (2021). With All the Force of Literalness: Ruth Klüger’s Survivor Testimonies in Erwin Leiser’s We Were Ten Brothers and Thomas Mitscherlich’s Journeys into Life. In: Freiburg, R., Bayer, G. (eds) The Ethics of Survival in Contemporary Literature and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83422-7_13

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83422-7_13
Published: 15 December 2021
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