Content area
Full Text
Ernestine Schlant. The Language of Silence: West German Literature and the Holocaust. New York. Routledge. 1999. x + 277 pages. $20.99.ISBN 0-415-92219-4 (92220-8 paper).
Having survived the war in Germany myself as a child and belonging approximately to the same generation as the author, and having also pursued a professional career "abroad," I can identify with Ernestine Schlant's painful questioning search for understanding the West German language of silence about the Holocaust. I have also suffered from the pain and silence during all those years following the abominations of the war that may have initiated the subsequent deconstruction of the highest ideals of Western civilization through the barbarism of the Holocaust.
The third postwar generation is now living in Germany, and their country is still...