Drawing upon the analytic writings of D. W. Winnicott, Jean Améry, and others, Derwin identifies the volatile affect encrypted in testimonial narrative with experiences of social abandonment. She argues that, after liberation, many survivors were beset by an irresolvable ambivalence: on one side, they bitterly blamed their communities for abandoning them during the Holocaust; on the other, they desperately needed reconciliation with those communities in order to heal. For this reason, bearing witness became a crucial activity that contained and metabolized the survivor's rage so that an engaged life could become possible.

Susan Derwin is associate professor in the Department of Germanic, Slavic, and Semitic Studies and chair of the Program in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

“Susan Derwin’s book has the potential to initiate a new debate in Holocaust studies that focuses on rage as a suppressed affect not only in the memoirs of survivors but also in critical discussions. Her focus on rage adds an important aspect to trauma studies, especially since the link between trauma and rage has been relegated to the margins of Holocaust studies and trauma studies more generally.” —Gabriele Schwab, Chancellor’s Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine