A Study of The Second Holocaust Concept as Depicted in Primo Levi and Charlotte Delbo's Remnant Literature

In our exploration of the Holocaust, the concept of the so-called ‘second Holocaust’ has been presented, which is described by Laub and colleagues (1997) as the pain which is felt among Holocaust survivors being “re-experienced in postwar losses,” in ways which may be without “conscious awareness” of their resurgent trauma (Peskin et al., 1997, p. 1). The manifestation of this phenomenon is found most plainly in survivor’s accounts, as well as – perhaps pivotally – as reflected in the experiences of the children of those who survived the Holocaust, who, along with their parents, are described as being resigned to “attenuated and devitalized lives” (Peskin et al., p. 1).

This work will consider the concept of the ‘second Holocaust’ through the context of the survivor’s literature we have explored, and I will use this as a point from which to present my reflections on this highly-fraught topic, especially as it reflects the subconscious ways in which grief can be expressed, and how people’s deepest pain is often poorly-understood or uneasily-controlled in the aftermath of vast trauma. Through the considerations of the work of Primo Levi and Charlotte Delbo, this work will show that the acute fears and worries that are faced by these survivors in the aftermath of their liberation from the concentration camps inform every facet of their lives to follow. While each would go on to lead productive and fruitful lives, both would also continue to be plagued by the trauma they suffered, especially as such trauma manifest in abstract forms, especially in their dreams. Both of these authors has suffered a terrible ‘Second Holocaust,’ as shown in their work. This work will explore the nature of this resurgent trauma, and attempt to show how this pain is expressed in their works.

Primo Levi and the Fear of Silence

A key piece which has informed my understanding of this concept is Primo Levi’s work If This Is a Man (1947), which goes into extraordinary detail describing the terrible pain and anguish faced by Levi – who was kept at Auschwitz for nearly a year – in which the greater difficulties often pale to the more mundane troubles faced by those who avoided immediate execution. The work contains a strong consideration of the larger psychological effects of the camps, particularly the way in which those kept there were reduced to silence, often by brutal violence at the hands of callous guards, but as often due to the grueling labor they were forced to reform, or a loss of spirit. The work abounds with smaller moments being elevated to life-and-death struggles, including a fight over a piece of bread or a pair of shoes, and throughout the reader is provided with the author’s unique insight into this terrible world. It is perhaps a simple matter to understand the root of this author’s trauma; After all, the Holocaust wrought a terrible toll among its survivors, not least psychologically. To this end, the reader may be unable to readily understand the author’s confusion at the dreams which begin to consume his sleep, in which he was home and telling people of his experiences, only to be met with indifference or confusion or outright denial of his claims.

Though Levi was liberated along with the rest of Auschwitz and was able to go on with his life, it is this fear of denial and confusion among those to whom he has sought to tell his story which form his ‘second holocaust.’ Though this is not commonplace, Levi was able to survive and return to a world in which memories of the holocaust are frequently mixed with skepticism and the slow slide toward diminishment in the popular imagination. The threat of his pain being undone or ‘rolled back’ by the forces of indifference can be seen as an element of the psyche of Holocaust survivors which form – if subconsciously – a core of their trauma in the decades since.

A key point which is established through this work’s consideration of both its author’s time in the camps, as well as with respect to his traumatized life to follow, is whether there was some larger purpose to the suffering that he and his fellows faced at the hands of their tormentors. Levi’s search for greater meaning in his experience is notable for the way in which he is able to imbue his presentation of one of the worst excesses of the twentieth century with a sense of strength, and his philosophical posture informs the larger work.

Levi is not simply a man who has led a terrible experience -- which few would be able to fathom -- and live to tell the tale, nor does the work take the form of a mere list of grievances against the horrors of state-manufactured genocide. Instead, Levi attempts to find greater meaning in his experience, especially with respect to whether it can be use to better-reflect on any aspect of human nature: Pushed to the brink, Levi does not respond with anger or grief, but with quiet introspection. It is in this posture that the work provides some of its greatest contributions to eyewitness history.

In his description of how humanity reacts when every “civilized institution is taken away,” such as in a situation in which the machinations of politics and industry have been put to work in such a profoundly profane manner as The Holocaust, Levi does not despair; Instead, he argues that in this situation, it does not necessarily reduce both the perpetrators and victims to the depths of “brutality, egotism, and stupidity” (Levi, 1947, p. 100). Instead, the primary conclusion that he draws is one of overarching despair, by his observation that “in the face of driving necessity and physical disabilities many social habits and instincts are reduced to silence” (Levi, p. 100).

Though on its face this observation may be argued to reflect his view of the concentration camp system, and the inherent silence which it brought to its worst victims -- battered, perhaps, into silence by their extreme brutality -- these observations can be extended to inform his observations of the world he found upon his escape. Though his descriptions of his pain and sorrow appears to end with his escape, the ‘Second Holocaust’ for which Levi is uniquely unprepared can best be described in the same language he uses to inform his explication of the eternally-deepening sorrow of life inside the camps. When he explains that his rare moments of gallows humor were to be had in “grievous amazement” to see that more, and worse, suffering laid beyond that which was already experienced, an altogether separate type of suffering awaits him in the world of relative peace to follow (Levi, p. 82). This is a turmoil which is internal and often presents in the context of his dreams.

The nature of this second suffering, and indeed, Levi’s ‘Second Holocaust’, is that which is informed by the nature of the suffering he experienced, but one which he fears might not be believed in the aftermath. In this way, Levi expresses his deepest fears that the outside world might render invisible or void his terrible struggles. Far from using the memory of the Holocaust as a means of gaining a greater understanding of human nature, he fears (as is shown in his dreams) that he would find – upon his release – that the observations he made about the larger would be as easily extrapolated to inform the postures, behaviors, and mindset of those who he imagines to have learned about them second-hand. That is, through his dreams of attempting to inform the world about his experiences, he would find their response to mirror the same type of silence that came to cloak the passions and hatreds of his fellow camp survivors, perhaps as a means of silencing him, or as a means of ensuring their own protection from unfamiliar or hostile ideas about humanity.

Whether due to self-protection or disbelief, he fears that he would find that people with whom he would attempt to share his experiences would meet them with “complete indifference” (Levi, 1947, p. 138). Those with the luxury of skepticism (or who perhaps wished not to hear his terrible tale) would instead choose to “speak confusedly of other things among themselves, as if I was not there” (Levi, p. 65). In this way, Levi’s ‘Second Holocaust’ – which takes the form of a recurring dream that he has throughout the rest of his life – is the manifestation of a second suffering, only this time, rather than setting the world aflame with outrage, it has fallen upon deaf ears, that is, takes the form of the “ever-repeated scene of the unlistened-to story” (Levi, p. 65).

In many ways, through Levi’s calculating and focused approach to presenting the details of his suffering, he has sought to imbue his story with greater meaning, as if the Holocaust (far more than a massive crime) might manifest as a teachable moment for all humanity. In his writing, and by his observations, Levi contributes to just that. However, he continues to suffer the fate, if only in dreams, of a man who faced oblivion and the deepest depths of human cruelty, and then returned to find that no one would believe his story. In this way, perhaps, it is his ‘Second Holocaust’ which drove Levi to write If this is a Man in the first place, as an expression of defiance or a ‘lashing out’ against this horrible but pervasive fear. Extrapolated to a wider primarily-Jewish population of Holocaust survivors, this fear (that the world would not believe them, or ignore their plight) may serve to explain the continued prevalence of Holocaust survivors’ accounts and other literary eyewitness works.

Charlotte Delbo and Mourning the Self

A second and very similar example of such resurgent trauma memory is found in Charlotte Delbo’s Auschwitz and After, in which this author, after having been interred at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Ravensbruck, uses short vignettes and poetry to describe her experiences, especially the hunger and thirst, as well as the beatings and deprivation she and her fellow interred persons faced in these concentration camps. In a depiction, however, which mirrors Levi’s work, she describes a series of events which befall those who had survived to return home: Amid stories of a woman who could never get warm (no matter how many layers she piled on), or an innocent man accused of betraying his resistance comrades upon his release, it is Delbo’s own account which serves to support the ‘second holocaust’ idea so strongly.

In this work, she explains that she has dreams in which she has escaped from the concentration camp, only to choose to return of her own volition. In this way – like Levi – Delbo torments herself by these dreams, through her continuous and subconscious ‘fallout’ from the pain she suffered; Acute trauma has informed this survivor’s life, and as such provides an extraordinary means of understanding the experience of holocaust survivors as being plagued by the loss of the self.

More so than the fear of returning of her own free will, the work is compounded by the trauma of Delbo and the other survivors, who she describes as a pitiable lot, whose suffering has been so great and their pain has been so strong that they have been indelibly marked by their experiences in the concentration camps for the rest of their lives. She explains, near the end of the first book, in a section titled “none of us will return,” is a statement of overriding fatalism about the existence of those who survived the Holocaust, for so great was their suffering: “What difference does it make,” she asks, referring to the quality of life which is lived outside the camps, throughout the course of a resurgent and perhaps defiant life as a survivor, in light of how “none of them will return, since none of us will return” (Delbo, 1995, p. 18).

This remark may seem paradoxical at first, but reflects the profound changes that each of the survivors went through, as well as the fears – among each of them – that they were not the same people they were before they left. This idea forms the core of Delbo’s conceptualization of her ‘Second Holocaust,’ with the idea that so much of her was removed, forcibly, in the camps, that she was no longer the same person she was when she entered them. In looking over pictures of surviving victims of liberated concentration camps, one may notices first the horrible gaunt and emaciated forms of those individuals, but most haunting to me is always these individuals’ eyes. These are people bereft of hope, even though some photographs from this period were taken by the liberating Allied forces. Through Delbo’s writing, one may far better understand the impact of the Holocaust on those who survived; This was not merely a time of great trauma from which they had some difficulty in coping after their trauma was complete. In many ways, not only was their trauma so great, but their escape so completely improbable, that they are not the same people.

Though this idea may seem like hyperbole, there is far more to it than that; Delbo herself argues that she understands her great fortune in the fact that she failed to recognize herself in her memories of Auschwitz, as if that person – who underwent those horrors – was a different person, and by having escaped to tell the tale, she was a different person than that version of herself who had suffered so horribly.

This fear brings this consideration back to the crux of Delbo’s ‘second Holocaust,’ her frequent dreams of returning to the camps, as if drawn there by manic compulsion. In this context, this cannot be seen as any sort of masochistic desire, she has patently no reason to wish to return for any reason, and yet still she dreams of returning to the camps. There are many reasons why this might be the case, but I believe the simplest explanation lies in the dissociation that has been described, as well as the loss of self, of personality and humanity, that she suffered through her traumatic experience.

Trauma is a complicated beast, and it manifests in many ways, not all of which are rational or can be easily-described with tidy arguments from reason or causation. I believe – as there is little evidence in this work to indicate why she dreams this way, and it is likely that she does not know herself – that Delbo dreams of returning out of a desire to rescue a version of herself that she left behind. This is an irrational concept, but dreams are rarely rational. Delbo mourns for the lost version of herself who was – if not literally – then figuratively killed in the camps, and as a result feels a unique type of survivor’s pain: She survived, and by rights should feel happy to have survived, but instead, she only recognizes the many parts of herself which never returned home, and feels their loss acutely, along with the many others she lost as well.

Both the experience of Levi and Delbo will inform their lives as survivors, as well as the connections they make with their own children. It is through the lens of the ‘second holocaust,’ to this end, that second-generation survivor’s works (such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus) can best be contextualized. In that work’s depiction of a distant father initially reluctant to tell of his experiences in the concentration camps, an understanding might be found through positing the idea of the ‘Second Holocaust’ as applying in this instance, as it does so acutely in Levi’s dreams as well.

The father from Maus, as well as Levi and Delbo, are victims for whom the pain they suffered is a constant element in their lives. That this pain manifests so clearly in distressing dreams (either ones of mourning for parts of themselves that are lost forever, as with Delbo, or in overriding fear that their experiences of monstrous cruelty will fall on deaf ears, as per Levi) is an indication that they are plagued with pain that will never dissipate, no matter how long they continue to survive their experiences.

I believe that Holocaust survivors did not receive the psychological help that they needed to reconcile their experiences, and it is apparent that many survivors returned too quickly to lives of relative ‘normalcy’ for which they were unprepared. In both of these examples, a view of the long-term consequences of trauma can be seen, in the form of a self-inflicted psychological torture felt subconsciously and abstractly and which serves to compound their existing pain. I was profoundly affected by each of these works, as – in their own ways – each revealed that the scars of suffering are never easily-healed and often manifest in complicated and subtle ways.