Transcript April 3rd Discussion

May 19, 2008 Humanities Core Course
Today's Plan
1)
Office Hours
2)
Your Research Papers
3)
Kluger's Still Alive
Office hours will be Thursday at 12:30-2:30
More questions about your research papers?
Nobody?
Okay, now we return to Kluger's Still Alive.
A “fun” group activity.
Okay, now, I purpose we go over the Study Questions.
13. What do you make of her comments on p. 71 and elsewhere that
her readers are most likely female?
- Multiple answers possible. When the German version came out,
Kluger got a lot of letters from men who read the book and who were
offended by this claim. She is also the author of a much-excerpted
book called “Frauen lesen anders” or “Women read differently.” It
reminds me of Virginia Woolf in “A Room of One’s Own” who
assumed (more correctly) that her readers were women. But is *this*
chick lit?
14. What is Theresienstadt? Name 2-3 things that happen to her
there. Why is she so annoyed by the colleague’s wife who says
it was not so bad?
- There was some controversy as to whether Theresienstadt was a ghetto
or a camp and she addresses this. Parts of it were actually shown to
representatives of the public as a “model camp,” but Kluger points out
that it was a prison and very cramped w/o adequate facilities. Gisela
is comparing T-stadt with the worst reports of Jewish suffering under
Hitler and thus concluding that it was ok.
15. What is Zionism and what does it mean to her in the camps?
- You probably think of Zionism in terms of violent events in the Middle
East and these particular references are not invested with current
politics. It is the mid-1940s and she is a Jewish child in a series of
concentration camps, who would love to emigrate to Eretz Israel.
16. (79-83) Antigone was able to bury her brother. What happened
to Schorschi?
- She laments that they do not have “clear knowledge” about his death.
This absence of certainty allows her mother to hope.
17. (92-93) The section on the discussion of claustrophobia is
crucial to understanding the book. Why is this socially
awkward for her? Where does she see connections between her
memories and theirs?
- Her memories of claustrophobia are connected with a very unpleasant
past and mentioning the circumstances would stop the conversation.
Survivors’ experiences are not part of polite conversation but she is
trying to bridge the gap between her friends’/her readers’ experience
and hers.
18. (104-109) Kluger gives us an extended commentary on DOING.
Follow the narration of the GOOD DEED that seems
unmotivated but which saved her life. How do you understand
this?
- Multiple answers possible. Some may see it as not surprising that a
woman helped a child survive, but given the circumstances she was
used to by then, this was a significant departure from standard
operating procedure and it is apparently the reason she is Still Alive.
19. (112) Why does she tell us what happened to the remaining
members of the Theresienstadt family camp?
- This is the confirmation of the good deed and don’t miss the fact that the
others in her transport were gassed.
20. (114) Describe her thoughts on seeing the little boy from the
train.
- She speaks of “simultaneity” and how differently the two children were
living being on different sides of the Nazi regime. Also she will later
compare Martin (Walser) to the boy. Walser is a very prominent
German novelist (seen as the German John Updike) who has also
generated a lot of controversy by speaking out on the use of
Ausschwitz as a “moral bludgeon.” He and Kluger have been publicly
at odds since he published a novel “Death of a Critic” (Tod eines
Kritikers) whose protagonist was the thinly disguised Jewish
intellectual Marcel Reich-Ranicki. Many readers, including Kluger,
found it to be anti-Semitic and she published an open letter criticizing
the portrayal.
21. Where does her sister Susi enter the picture?
- Her mother adopted a child in Auschwitz. This is one of the few
expressions of unalloyed admiration (though she qualifies it
somewhat on 123) for her mother and it is important to realize that in
spite of the criticism of her mother, the narrative describes a woman
who (mostly) protected her child from murderous Nazis.
22. How do Susi, Alma, and Ruth escape? Why is their story not
like that of Huck Finn? (138)
- They run from the march, feel exuberance, and join a huge number of
mobile Germans and Poles. The reference to (not) Huck Finn is
meant to qualify the expressions of happiness, exuberance since
they had escaped, but were still in danger. “not a humorous journey”
23. What does the National Socialist Women’s Verein (Club) do and
what happens to them. Explain the manna reference.
- They distribute sandwiches (manna) to refugees whom they think are
German and give Kluger much comfort. Later they are punished as a
Nazi organization. These Nazi women seem to support the point
Kluger made earlier about the gender gap in evil-doing (115-116).
The Ladies Auxiliary distributes food, whereas the men’s organization
murders.
24. What happened with Einstein? (161)
- A friend wrote to him, received encouragement, wrote again and was
rebuffed by his secretary, whom Kluger later encountered at
Princeton. It is a failure of kindness but significant under the
circumstances.
25. (181) “The Holocaust had no name as yet.” When did it acquire
one?
- In the seventies.
26. (214) How does this end?
- Is
it redemptive?
Cool?