ABSTRACT
In the late 1940s and 1950s, the predominant representation of the Holocaust was in terms of ‘negation of exile’ (shlilat ha-golah), whereby the old Diasporic way of life was eradicated in favour of the new Israel.2 Thus, for example, in Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer (Giv’a 24 Eina Ona, Thorold Dickinson, 1955), which is set during Israel’s War of Independence, the figure of the Sabra officer is momentarily replaced by that of a meek ghetto Jew precisely at the moment when the same officer is about to kill his enemy. Although much could be said about this particular scene, the essential message is that the trauma of the Holocaust experience has to be contained and repressed in order to survive and to build a new Jewish homeland.
