This chapter examines zero generation Holocaust writing and painting about transit camps, arguing that the continuous temporality of the diary can be applied both to Felix Nussbaum’s paintings from before, during, and after his time in the Saint-Cyprien transit camp and to Yitzhak Katznelson’s diary from the Vittel transit camp. Nussbaum’s paintings of the 1930s and 1940s offer a visual representation of the effects over time of genocide in a way that parallels the diarists: the open landscapes and beach scenes of his work before the War are replaced by increasingly high walls and hemmed in spaces before the post-genocidal hellscape of his last painting, “Death Triumphant,” painted mere months before his deportation to Auschwitz in late 1944. Yitzhak Katznelson’s work offers a comparative study of zero generation literature produced in two different genres at Vittel. Katznelson produced a long poem in verse, “Song of the Massacred Jewish People” at the same time as he wrote the Vittel Diary, which covers the period of his internment, May to September of 1943 (he and his last surviving son died in Auschwitz in 1944). Together, these two texts show how different genres of zero generation literature produced simultaneously can bring out different aspects of the experience of internment.

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Visions of Death in Transit: Yitzchak Katznelson, Felix Nussbaum, and “Final Letters” from the Holocaust Trains

  • Adam J. Goldwyn

摘要

This chapter examines zero generation Holocaust writing and painting about transit camps, arguing that the continuous temporality of the diary can be applied both to Felix Nussbaum’s paintings from before, during, and after his time in the Saint-Cyprien transit camp and to Yitzhak Katznelson’s diary from the Vittel transit camp. Nussbaum’s paintings of the 1930s and 1940s offer a visual representation of the effects over time of genocide in a way that parallels the diarists: the open landscapes and beach scenes of his work before the War are replaced by increasingly high walls and hemmed in spaces before the post-genocidal hellscape of his last painting, “Death Triumphant,” painted mere months before his deportation to Auschwitz in late 1944. Yitzhak Katznelson’s work offers a comparative study of zero generation literature produced in two different genres at Vittel. Katznelson produced a long poem in verse, “Song of the Massacred Jewish People” at the same time as he wrote the Vittel Diary, which covers the period of his internment, May to September of 1943 (he and his last surviving son died in Auschwitz in 1944). Together, these two texts show how different genres of zero generation literature produced simultaneously can bring out different aspects of the experience of internment.