Trauma Beyond Time: Temporal Constructs in Holocaust Testimonies

Trauma Beyond Time: Temporal Constructs in Holocaust Testimonies challenges our understanding of what it means to be a Holocaust survivor, arguing that the term “post-Holocaust” fundamentally misrepresents survivors’ experiences. Through careful analysis of Holocaust literature and testimony, this book reveals how trauma persists across generations, defying conventional historical timelines. For those who perished, there can be no “after” to the Holocaust―their stories were violently ended. Yet for survivors, the Holocaust didn’t simply conclude in 1945. Their experiences demonstrate how trauma continues to shape lives decades later, making “post-Holocaust” a misleading concept that fails to capture their ongoing reality. Using the multigenerational testimony of the Tabak family as a case study, this research shows how trauma disrupts linear time, creating a continuous present where past horrors remain alive. The author examines Holocaust diaries that end abruptly with their authors’ deaths, alongside memoirs that document how survivors navigate a world forever altered by their experiences. Perhaps most profound is the examination of intergenerational trauma, where descendants inherit the psychological imprint of events they never personally witnessed. For these individuals, there is no “before” the Holocaust―only its ongoing echoes through family memory and inherited trauma. By reconsidering how we frame survivorship, this book calls for a more nuanced, trauma-informed approach to Holocaust studies that honors the continuing reality of survivors’ experiences.

Sarah Seiselmyer-Snyder holds a PhD in history of ideas with a concentration in Holocaust studies from the University of Texas at Dallas. She specializes in public memory, testimony, and intergenerational trauma within genocide studies. She currently is a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University. Additionally, she teaches history, memory studies, and anthropology classes at Ithaca College and Goodwin University, and is developing curricula on the Bosnian Genocide while coediting a volume, Genocide Studies: Through the Eyes of Intergenerational Survivors. Her background includes conservation work at the Memorial and Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau.