by Inga Clendinnen
published by Text Publishing, Melbourne 1998, reprinted 2000
rrp AUD19.70; 250 pages, including Illustrations, Notes, Bibliography and Index

Reviewed by Hilary Ash

How is it that I, a Jewish woman who has grown up alongside survivors and their children, am so impressed with this exploration of the Holocaust written by a non Jewish Melbourne academic historian? There is no lack of Jewish writers on this subject. I have read works by several, including the definitive Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Hannah Arendt. But not many others. The material overwhelms me. Most writers doubtless fight with their feelings of being overwhelmed in order to write about it. As did Clendinnen. She is clear about that.

And that is not all Clendinnen is clear about.

Clarity is one of the hallmarks of her writing, in her task, her feelings about the task, about the areas of difficulty, and the difficulties faced by other writers. She is clear about her own values bearing on the topic, and about the values of Holocaust writers and participants, as well as how values and perceptions have been shaped by it. As the title suggests, this book is about the expressions of others, based on their experience or research.

Clendinnen's capacity with language proves equal to her project. I often found myself re-reading a sentence because it encapsulated so much, such as: "[after the War] most of those [Auschwitz SS] interrogated before a legal tribunal discovered memory to be a diminishing resource." And at the service of her capacity with language is her unrelenting pursuit of meaning in aspects of the horror which have paralysed other courageous writers. Her efforts to understand the experience of victims do not stretch our sympathies, although she does ask some difficult questions about the vagaries of memory. Clendinnen also maintains that however inhuman the behaviour of the perpetrators might be, both high officers and underlings, it is vital to search for their humanity. That, she sees as the role of the historian, and she finds she must call on the work of writers from other disciplines, such as biography and anthropology, to deepen her search. At one point she concludes that "if the men [in green tunics] were ordinary after all, that recognition does nothing to diminish the horror of their actions. It increases it."

And yet even Clendinnen, for all her courage and effort to find human threads in every member of that grisly chapter of our history, finds "the gratuitous yet stylised cruelties of men like Kramer continue to confound me".

The last chapter addresses artistic representations of the Holocaust. Clendinnen's view is that the Holocaust does not offer itself to the artist. Some rare exceptions exist, and she cites this poem by Dan Pagis:

Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car

here in this carload
i am eve
with abel my son
if you see my other son
cain son of man
tell him that i

and the short stories of  Tadeusz Borowski. Clendinnen concludes her book with a poem by a recent Polish Nobel Laureate, included at the end of this review, which she feels encapsulates her entire book.

With her eloquent writing, so eminently readable, Clendinnen has set me thinking deeply and differently about the Holocaust, as well as about other professional and personal matters. Questions arose, for example, about violence in couples and the need to seek the human aspect of all parties; I came to inspect my lifelong avoidance of Holocaust films and most Holocaust art. I found this book deeply moving. As it relates so powerfully to issues of violence and its expression in extremis, with specific reference to justifications of wartime behaviour, I bring it to your attention. I hope you will find a copy.

(ps: Besides winning the NSW Premier's History Award for General History, reading the Holocaust was named a Best Book of 1999 by the New York Times.)

Could Have          

It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Nearer. Farther off.
It happened, but not to you.

You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others.
On the right. The left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny.

You were in luck - there was a forest.
You were in luck - there were no trees.
You were in luck - a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
A jamb, a turn, a quarter-inch, an instant. . .

So you're here? Still dizzy from
another dodge, close shave, reprieve?
One hole in the net and you slipped through?
I couldn't be more shocked or
speechless.
Listen,
how your heart pounds inside me.