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612-822-4611
Zero Generation Holocaust Literature: The Art of Non-Survival

Zero Generation Holocaust Literature: The Art of Non-Survival

Hardcover

Series: Holocaust and Its Contexts

Literary CriticismGeneral European HistoryWorld War II

ISBN10: 3032030609
ISBN13: 9783032030603
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Published: Oct 20 2025
Pages: 253
Weight: 1.03
Height: 0.63 Width: 5.83 Depth: 8.27
Language: English

This book is about zero generation witness literature: texts written by those who died in the Holocaust and who knew, at the time of their writing, that they would not survive. As such, they offer a unique perspective that differs from the more widely read and taught literature written by first generation survivors like Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi. These texts were produced across the concentrationary universe and include: the ghetto diaries of Dawid Sierakowiak (Lódź) and Chaim Kaplan (Warsaw); transit camp work, such as the paintings of Felix Nussbaum (Saint-Cyprien) and the poetry of Yitchak Katznelson (Vittel); anonymous letters thrown from cattle cars; Sonderkommando writing and photography from Auschwitz; non-Jewish letter-writing from Gestapo prisons by Helmuth-James and Freya Von Moltke (Tegel); and the literary work of Hannah Szenes, from her diaries in Palestine to her last poetry and letter in a Budapest prison the day of her execution.

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World War II