ABSTRACT
Powerlessness haunts post-Holocaust man. The knowledge that, ultimately, one has no power over one's life, that one can, in a moment, be labeled, numbered, and shipped off towards death creates a startling ever-present vulnerability. To know, intuitively, that all that one has and all that one is is contingent upon an undeclared power not intervening, not changing the rules of life-rules that were once assumed to be incontestable and unchallengeable-keeps one forever suspicious, forever unsure, embattled, entrapped. The truth of Joyce's declaration, "You could die just the same on a sunny day," becomes only one truth that inhabits and inhibits man. Precariousness is now not only a component of bodily well-being but of freedom, of the self's ability to create its own destiny. For those ever-aware of the nightmare of the Holocaust nothing can be assumed stable or sure. The freedom one feels today is only a reminder of that freedom's possible revocation.
