On Experience, Memory, and Knowing: A Post-Holocaust (Auto)Biography

Abstract

In this article I describe how my studied recollections of how I learned about my father’s life, in the Holocaust and beyond it, have led me to make my scholarly work, existing for years apart from myself, much more a part of myself. I describe what it meant to me, years back, to learn of my father’s life—a personal narrative that for much of my life I purposefully separated from my professional narrative of what (I thought) it meant to learn and teach in scholarly ways. I describe my efforts to rethink and revise this distinction, and how, as it blurred, my understanding of my work began to change.