Do I Know My Grandparent? An Exploration of Trauma and the Contrast Between Familial and Institutional Knowledge in My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me and De Derde Generatie.

Abstract

Grandchildren of victims as well as perpetrators of the Holocaust are now producing works about their family history and their relationship as grandchildren to this history. It is a pivotal moment in history, when the last witnesses are dying and a stark contrast appears between familial and institutional knowledge about the Holocaust. This thesis compares two texts by a grandchild of victims of the Holocaust and by a grandchild of a perpetrator of the Holocaust, showing that the intertwining of and contrast between familial and institutional knowledge can be crucial for the development of trauma in posterity, and that subsequent generations on both sides of the Holocaust do suffer from trauma, although these traumas are different in terms of specific feelings and origin. Finally, this thesis shows the tendency to focus only on the victims and their descendants, and the need of descendants of perpetrators for acknowledgement that they, too, are affected by the Holocaust. Ultimately, this thesis aims to point to the necessity of an opening up of the dialogue about and between these two groups of posterity of the Holocaust.