ABSTRACT
The French poet André Breton once wrote: “Life is other than what one writes.” 1 He did not mean that writing is a lie, but rather, that writing is always one step behind or ahead of or next to the lived experience—all the more so when that experience took place decades ago. This essay will attempt to follow up on some of the theoretical implications of Breton’s remark. What happens to the gap between facts and writing when the latter is concerned with issues of great collective significance such as the Holocaust? In what kind of writing do facts matter most, and why?
