ABSTRACT
Survival has been a preoccupation of contemporary popular culture, and many forms of survival-from survival in the wilderness to survival of everyday life challenges-have sometimes been confl ated with survival of the Holocaust (see Chapter 1). In this book I hope to have placed such unwarranted comparisons in proper perspective. At the same time, I have also tried to scrutinize survival of the Holocaust by subjecting it to sociological interpretation. This eff ort goes against the grain of some observers, Elie Wiesel among them, who have been concerned that social science discourse or any literary narrative will inevitably fail to communicate the nature of the evil and horrifi c suff ering that were the Holocaust.2 Even Gerald Markle, a sociologist no less, discourages sociological generalizations about Holocaust survival. Each account “stands alone,” he argues, “paints its own picture . . . [T]here is no common theory . . . [or] grand narrative . . . which capture[s] survivors’ particular experiences, no universal story . . . [or] list of variables which, once identifi ed, would light that awful darkness.”3
