In Paper Love: searching for the girl my grandfather left behind, Sarah Wildman provides a paradigmatic example of how the thrust of Holocaust studies will move forward in the twenty-first century.
We have had scholars investigate the wider phenomenon of the Holocaust like Raul Hillberg and Claude Lanzmann. Of course, their work is extremely important, and should be studied, but the negative consequences of the ‘big picture’ analysis of the Shoah is the abstract nature of the results – the mind simply can’t comprehend the enormity of the events.
Paper Love is a painfully individual account, placing a human face on the Shoah. Wildman, in fleshing out a single woman’s life from memory, documents and letters, plucks a life from oblivion.
It is as if Valerie Scheftel died once, and was at risk of dying again until Wildeman gave her life in narrative form. An amazing feat – taking a person who existed in half-light and placing her firmly into the light of memory.
We have had scholars investigate the wider phenomenon of the Holocaust like Raul Hillberg and Claude Lanzmann. Of course, their work is extremely important, and should be studied, but the negative consequences of the ‘big picture’ analysis of the Shoah is the abstract nature of the results – the mind simply can’t comprehend the enormity of the events.
Paper Love is a painfully individual account, placing a human face on the Shoah. Wildman, in fleshing out a single woman’s life from memory, documents and letters, plucks a life from oblivion.
It is as if Valerie Scheftel died once, and was at risk of dying again until Wildeman gave her life in narrative form. An amazing feat – taking a person who existed in half-light and placing her firmly into the light of memory.
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