Der Autor über sein
Buch: Universal Questions of Identity are the Focus
My intention in writing Embattled
Selves was to focus far more on universal issues of identity than on
the specific experience of European Jews between 1933 and 1945. I
was interested in showing the way individuals' lives are shaped by
several fundamental and compelling questions: What is essential to
who one is and what is not? How much does being a member of a group
make one who one is as an individual? How much can one change and
still remain the same person? What is the price of change? What
price will one pay not to change?
To me, the book's 15 life histories
are flesh-and-blood allegories: The narrators illustrate, in
recounting their thoughts, feelings, and choices, how each of their
lives is an attempt to come to grips with these vital
questions--during a historical period in which the questions
themselves could be a matter of life and death. I have limited my
own observations to a handful of brief, interpretive passages meant
mainly to suggest how the stories connect with the identity theme;
it was most important to me to present the narratives in a way that
would not interfere with readers' forming their own intellectual and
emotional relationships to those who speak.
From 280 interviews, Jacobson has
culled the oral histories of 10 men and 5 women who discovered,
concealed, embraced, or rejected their Jewishness in the face of
Nazi Germany's final solution in Europe during World War II. These
people were in a position of having to choose between a Jewish and a
non-Jewish identity or to find a way of making the two coexist.
There were those who assumed a non-Jewish persona in an attempt to
foil the Nazis, and those who revealed or insisted on a Jewish
connection even when it put them at peril. And there were those who
had Jewishness thrust upon them--those who had been unaware of their
Jewish background before being threatened because of it or who had
known of it but had wanted no part of it. In these compelling
stories about 15 Holocaust survivors, Jacobson raises fundamental
questions about attitudes, conscious choices, and what
ultimately is essential about relationships. George Cohen (From
Booklist)
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