ABSTRACT
What does it mean to survive or to inherit traumatic events that have failed to be processed with a longue durée of many decades? This chapter focuses on historical catastrophes that have been forgotten or denied and eluded the assumption of responsibility, judicial recognition, or acknowledgment by both national and transnational bodies. We look specifically at the work and the reception of one unknown very young writer and her poetic testimony, in the context of other artists who were deported to Transnistria, an area that was annexed by Romania during the Second World War and became a “forgotten cemetery” in which hundreds of thousands of Jews, Roma, and political prisoners perished. Yet, just as Transnistria’s history fails to fit common conceptions of Holocaust persecution and murder, much of the vibrant intellectual and artistic activity that took place in its ghettos and camps also largely fails to fit the paradigms of Holocaust art or literature. Little remains known about both visual and literary artists from Transnistria’s wartime era. Our research into their work aims to illuminate this little-known chapter of Holocaust history, while also asking larger questions about possibilities of repair and redress in the aftermath, and the needs of those of us in the postmemorial generation who inherit these painful histories.
