Grandsons Who Remember: Intersections of Holocaust Heritage and Contemporary Male Positioning

Abstract

Research on the psychological wellbeing and self-positioning of HSG (Holocaust survivors’ grandchildren) remains limited and inconclusive. Given postmodern sensibilities that resist fixed identity categories, it would be hasty to generalize too much about the “third generation” as an identity group. But it is equally hasty to dismiss these grandchildren’s experiences from critical studies of post-Holocaust positioning. Situated in a discussion of HSO (Holocaust survivors’ offspring) studies and relevant theory in psychological, trauma, and gender studies, this project uses 24 semi-structured interviews with adult, male HSG to offer a preliminary collective biography and analysis of Jewish American HSG. It focuses on the subject positioning of contemporary Jewish American manhood as it interacts with varying internalizations of a shared Holocaust heritage. The concept of narrative is central to this project. HSG experience is, in large part, learning to locate oneself within the context of existing stories on personal, familial, and collective levels. HSG construct their own narratives in relation to their pre-history, fantasies that may form in post-traumatic absence, cultural and historical narratives, and the firsthand experiences of coming of age as a contemporary Jewish American man raised in a household of HSO parents. The voices I bring together in this project show that HSG increasingly see their own subject positions as constructed by competing social discourses, such as commercialized gender ideals, family mythology and survival stories, and personal values regarding individual fulfillment. The postmodern zeitgeist offers critical reexamination of how and why subjects become limited or removed from their own potential to operate in the multiple discourses that characterize a particular time and place. Though disparate, HSG are united by a feeling of serious obligation or privilege – a kind of designation to responsibly handle the representative position of bearing the Holocaust legacy.