Imagery from Genesis in Holocaust Memoirs: A Critical Study »

Deborah Lee Prescott holds a Ph.D in English and has done graduate work in both cinema and theology. She is an associate professor of English at Palm Beach Atlantic University.

In the life stories of Holocaust survivors, biblical imagery can be invoked to explicate the unexplainable, to make real the unreal. This text examines the role of Genesis in the autobiographies of survivors. Three main concerns converge: the literary nature of Biblical allusion, the contextual history of the Holocaust, and Midrashic considerations that arise from biblical reference.

Chapters examine references to Adam and Eve's expulsion from paradise, Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel, the Akeda, Jacob's struggle with the angel, and Cain's murder of Abel.

Acknowledgments vi

Preface 1

Introduction: Genesis and Genocide-The Holocaust, Autobiography, and Midrash 5

1 Paradise Lost, Innocence Lost 31

2 God's Ark and Hitler's Cattle Car 51

3 The Babel of Extermination 79

4 Akeda: The Perversity of Silence 100

5 Israel in Auschwitz: A Malediction Forbidding Mourning 131

6 Fratricide 166

Epilogue 181

Bibliography 185

Index 193