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“Kill Your Ordinary Common Sense and Maybe You'll Begin to Understand”: Aharon Appelfeld and the Holocaust
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 October 2009
Extract
When Aharon Appelfeld emigrated in his early teens to the Land of Israel on the eve of the establishment of the state, he and other Holocaust survivors his age felt ashamed of their experiences of suffering in the war, which seemed to them to be so meaningless and insignificant in comparison to the constructive tasks of nation building that had been undertaken by the yishuv.
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- Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 1988
References
1 Appelfeld, Aharon, Masol beguf rishon (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1979), pp. 87–88. The translations of passages from this collection of essays by Appelfeld are mine. Appelfeld portrays the difficulties of young Holocaust survivors in adjusting to their first years as immigrants to the Land of Israel in his novel Mikhvat haor (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1980). See the analysis of this novel in Gershon Shaked, Gal ahar gal basipporet haivrit (Jerusalem: Keter, 1985), pp. 27–32.Google Scholar
2 Appelfeld, Masol beguf rishon, p. 88.
3 Ibid., pp. 88–89.
4 Ibidy., p. 19.
5 Ibid., p. 20.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid., p. 20–21.
8 Ibid., p. 21.
9 Ibid., p. 15.
10 Ibid., pp. 91–92.
11 Appelfeld is quoted in an interview as stating, I dont think that any Holocaust survivor can free himself of the impression that the world is essentially dominated by an arbitrary and merciless force. See Esther Fuchs, Encounters with Israeli Authors (Marblehead, Mass.: Micah Publications, 1982), p. 59. In analyzing Appelfelds earlier fiction, Gershon Shaked notes that in his writings Appelfeld continues the tradition of pre–Holocaust Jewish writers to convey the horrors of modern Jewish experience. See Shaked, Gershon, Gal bedash basipporet haivrit (Merhavia and Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim, 1971), p. 157.Google Scholar
12 Appelfeld, Masol beguf rishon, p. 19.
13 Camus, Albert, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (New York: Alfred A. Knopf and Random House, 1955), p. 93.Google Scholar
14 Ibidy., p. 94.
15 Ibid.
16 The essay may be found in H.N. Bialik, Kol Kitvei H.N. Bialik (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1938), pp. 191–193. For an English translation of the essay by Jacob Sloan, see Alter, Robert, ed., Modern Hebrew Literature (New York: Behrman House, 1975), pp. 130–137.Google Scholar
17 Leon I. Yudkin has noted an affinity between Bialiks discussion of the language of poetry in his essay Gilluy vekhissuy balashon and Appelfelds fictional style. See Yudkin, Leon I., Escape into Siege: A Survey of Israeli Literature Today (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), p. 118.Google Scholar
18 See , Shaked, Gal ahar gal basipporet heivrit, p. 33, and Alan Mintz, Hurban: Responses to Catastrophe in Hebrew Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), pp. 207–208.Google Scholar
19 An earlier shorter version of Badenheim, ir nofesh was published under the title Badenheim 1939 in Moznayim 36 (1972): 21–35. For an English translation of this version by Betsy Rosenberg, see Spicehandler, Ezra and Arnson, Curtis, eds., New Writing in Israel (New York: Schocken Books, 1976), pp. 69–100. The later, expanded version, which this paper analyzes, was first published under the title Badenheim, ir nofesh in Siman keriah 3 ^ (1974): 287–334. An English translation of this version by Dalya Bilu was first published under the title Badenheim 1939 (Boston: David R. Godine, 1980).Google Scholar
20 Alan Mintz traces Appelfelds attempts in his earlier fiction to link the responses of the victims to the Holocaust with that of those who did not experience the Holocaust: Appelfelds goal is our knowledge of [the Holocaust] world; he wants us to accept the reality of it against instincts of evasion every bit as strong as his characters. To the extent to which Appelfeld succeeds in rendering this given and determined world fictionally plausible, to that extent he manages to purchase our acceptance of his characters humanity. See Mintz, Hurban, p. 214. For recent reflections by Appelfeld on his fiction and on his role as a Holocaust survivor writer, see Philip Roth, A Talk with Aharon Appelfeld, in New York Times Book Review, 28 February 1988.
21 The page numbers of passages refer to Aharon Appelfeld, Badenheim 1939, trans. Dalya Bilu (Boston: David R. Godine, 1980).Google Scholar
22 Appelfeld writes of the traumatic experience of his parents generation of assimilated Jews who were forced by the Holocaust to face the Jewish identity from which they had been fleeing. See Appelfeld, Masot beguf rishon, pp. 9–11.Google Scholar
23 Ibid., p. 18.
24 Bialik, Revealment and Concealment in Language, in Alter, Modern Hebrew Literature, p. 133.