If I Were Dead “It would sell like hotcakes!” Who Gets to Publish Their Holocaust Diary?
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Abstract
Renata Laqueur, a Dutch Jew interned by the Nazis in the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen, unsuccessfully attempted to have her diary of the Holocaust published by an American publisher, though her efforts remained unsuccessful until her death in 2011. Some of the publishers’ critiques included concerns that the diary was too understated, not sexy enough and not violent enough. These rejections not only raise questions about which Holocaust stories are told and which are silenced but also shed light on how gender informs this process. Through a trauma and gender-informed close reading of Laqueur's diary and oral-history interviews, this chapter will explore how Laqueur's diary represents an important departure from the limited number of published women's diaries of the Holocaust. This analysis will assert that the very aspects of Laqueur's diary that have polarised critics—its exploration of women's complex moral and ethical choices and their involvement in sexual barter—are precisely the reasons why it merits careful reading.
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ISBN/ISSN
9781032678191
Link
Link to book (paywalled), If I Were Dead “It would sell like hotcakes!” Who Gets to Publish Their Holocaust Diary?
Bibliographic Information
If I Were Dead “It would sell like hotcakes!” Who Gets to Publish Their Holocaust Diary?. . 2024: https://archive.jpr.org.uk/object-4880
