Accessed VIA Project Muse through Michigan State University, April 2008. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/history_and_memory/v012/12.2sicher.html
This article discussed numerous topics about Jewish identity and memory of the Jewish Holocaust during World War II. Sicher focused on literature and other media portrayals of this time in history to illustrate his points. The article described how Jewish identity is impacted and sought after by and through memories of the Holocaust whether first-hand experiences, generational knowledge passed down, or imagined through media. Sicher seems to hold a critical eye about how the legacy of the Holocaust is interpreted and passed on in today's generations.
Sicher contrasts narratives about and experiences of the diaspora of the Jewish people in Eastern Europe to other narratives and experiences of victims from such atrocities as domestic abuse, rape, and other war casualties to name a few. Sicher also discusses the Jewish Holocaust's place in history as "an open question whether the Nazi genocide is to be understood as exceptional, a hiccup in normalcy, or routine barbarism which exists cheek by jowl with high culture" (p59). Developing a personal idea about the place in history will ultimately impact how narratives are written and thus the impact on one's identity from writing or reading these narratives.
The article is well-written and very informative, although lengthy and rather wordy at times. Although this article did not focus on children's literature specifically, it did highlight many important ideas relevant to the current and future generations of Jewish people which ultimately affects children's literature with this focus. I found this article useful when I thought about the biographies I selected for my collection. This included Peter Lane Taylor's "The Secret of Priest's Grotto: A Holocaust Survival Story," for example. Sicher says that the obligation to tell the story of what happened is a stronger force in continuity than public memorials and ruins that "stand as mute" because these "sites of memory have been neglected, destroyed, or altered" (P61). In "The Secret of Priest's Grotto," those authors and site archaeologists take efforts to preserve the caves as best as possible, which combats the idea of a mute site of memory. This as well as the stories told "cannot revive the dead, but they can rescue them from oblivion" (P70). The victims of the Holocaust need to be remembered as truth and history and not just a fictionalized time that is used to sell movies, plays, books, and etc. "The Jewish writers of the second generation are in effect attempting a rescue of memory, and in the return to a past which they have not experienced they are reconstructing their biographies and life histories in narratives of identity which can then be transmitted to the next generation" (P70). The desired identity to be rescued and transmitted is one of "moral leadership and an almost heroic pride.. in a macho society that worships prowess and success (63)." This is an utterly significant idea to be portrayed through Jewish-American children's literature and I believe that it is in texts like "The Secret of Priest's Grotto."
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