Reshaping Memory: Counter-Narratives in Kindertransport Literature

This study examines the literary narratives (both non-fictional and fictional) of child Holocaust survivors who were evacuated on one of the Kindertransports to Britain focusing in particular on the writing of Karen Gershon, Ruth Barnett, and Josef Eisinger. My focus is on the Kinder's numerous retellings of their experience across different genres. I demonstrate that by transposing their story from one genre to the next the Kinder's narratives make observable the constructive process of memory and its mediated character. I argue that by continuously rewriting their Kindertransport experience, Gershon, Barnett, and Eisinger shed light on generally silenced elements of their evacuation. Their retellings challenge the British celebratory narrative, and reshape discourses around the history and memory of this rescue operation. Together, Gershon, Barnett, and Eisinger's accounts provide alternative perspectives on the Kindertransport based on their age, gender, emigration, and postwar relationships with surviving parents and relatives. Each of their corpuses encourages new dialogues in Kindertransport studies and introduces different literary genres to Kindertransport literature. Gershon's publications, ranging from her poems on the Jewish condition to her novels on the estrangement of German Jewish refugees in Britain, complicates perceptions of the redemptive celebratory narrative by complicating Britain's hospitable image. Barnett's corpus, which began with her academic publications in the field of psychology and eventually came to include an autobiography and a play, challenges the selective celebratory narrative around the Kinder's survival and adaptation in Britain by describing the after-effects of the partitioning of families on the Kinder. Eisinger's memoir, Flight and Refuge, composed of his wartime diary entries and retrospective commentary on these entries, exposes the power dynamics at stake in the deportation of older male Kinder from Britain to Canada. His narrative addresses the transnational character of this operation and the Kindertransport memory of Britain's former colonies, despite the centrality of Britain in the memorialization of the Kindertransport. In addition to introducing new paradigms in Kindertransport studies, my analysis of Gershon, Barnett, and Eisinger's respective corpuses confirms the importance of literary representations of the Kindertransport in preventing its narrative from remaining an oversimplified and solely celebratory one.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Cultural Mediations

Grantor dc:publisher

Carleton University

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Allard, Marie-Catherine

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright © 2023 the author(s). Theses may be used for non-commercial research, educational, or related academic purposes only. Such uses include personal study, research, scholarship, and teaching. Theses may only be shared by linking to Carleton University Institutional Repository and no part may be used without proper attribution to the author. No part may be used for commercial purposes directly or indirectly via a for-profit platform; no adaptation or derivative works are permitted without consent from the copyright owner.

Language dc:language.iso

en

DOI

10.22215/etd/2023-15373

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:carleton.scholaris.ca:20.500.14718/41739