Reading trauma: The shattering of the self in the concentration camps-objectification, “like dead,” and regression

Abstract

The Nazi concentration camps were a place of terror, violence, and murder, inmates being brutally stripped of their self-identity and humanity from the very moment of their arrival. This article examines the process and feeling of the "shattering of the self" prisoners experienced by analyzing three of the descriptions/images by which it is commonly depicted in the testimony literature: human objectification, "like dead," and infantile behavior. The first is discussed via ZalmanGradowski's records of his shift as a sonderkommando in Auschwitz, the second via Primo Levi's texts, and the third via Hinde Levy Linzer's Poems from Concentration Camps. These relate respectively to the process of the shattering and collapse, the feeling of dissolution, and the complex process of emotion and cognitive regression. Hereby, I propose reading traumatic texts as a traumatic space via a vicarious introspection based on "construction," "thickening" and "imagination."