The inscription of the holocaust onto the body, seventy years later: From dehumanization of the subject to revitalization of Jewish identity

Abstract

Antisemitism and the perception of Jewish identity as threatening Otherness lead to the Holocaust, the sum of nazi criminal executions directed towards Jews in World War II. After the Holocaust had ended, the survivor generation, and also the generations born after the war, were left to their own struggle with the trauma as the effect of everything that had happened. This paper aims at shedding a light on the relation between the Holocaust and the surviving generations, as well as on the way the Holocaust inscribed itself onto the bodies of those who survived, and those who were later in the position of definining their identity in relations to it.