Nostalgia in Life Writing: Tracing the Uses of Nostalgia in Select Holocaust Trauma Memoirs

Abstract

The article seeks to develop a theoretical analysis and interpretation of the role of nostalgia in German Holocaust memoirs. The intervention of advertising by appropriating nostalgia into marketing has led to an effacement of ‘algia’ or the pain that nostalgia implicates. The modern perception of nostalgia as a positive emotion has affected the idea of yoking nostalgia to traumatic experiences. The current paper analyses whether nostalgia plays a conspicuous role in the trauma narratives of Holocaust survivors. The paper is divided into three sections: first, an overview of the term ‘nostalgia’ through the ages is attempted to comprehend the problem of attaching nostalgia to trauma narratives. Second, textual analysis of The Boy on the Wooden Box (2013) by Leon Leyson and I will Plant you a Lilac Tree (2005) by Laura Hillman is undertaken to establish the presence of nostalgia in the narratives. Third, the major uses of nostalgia in the select texts are condensed into five categories: nostalgia functions as a tool of Ideological State Apparatus (ISA), relieves survival anxiety, improves resolute decisions, aids in preserving nostalgic objects and operates as an intermediary between individual and collective memories in the primary texts. Svetlana Boym’s binary classification of nostalgia is applied to the texts to provide an insight into the nature of nostalgia invoked. The study concludes that restorative nostalgia disrupts progress but augments the nostalgic individual’s determination to survive and recreate the perfect past. Reflective nostalgia provides the awareness that the past is irrevocable, and that change is inevitable.