A scholarly exploration of children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors
On March 11, 2025, Rutgers University
Press released At Home with the Holocaust: Postmemory, Domestic Space, and
Second-Generation Holocaust Narratives by Lucas F. W. Wilson, PhD. At
Home is 188 pages long, inclusive of an index, end notes, and a
bibliography. The book's goal is to analyze how children and grandchildren of
Holocaust survivors are traumatized by their parents' and grandparents'
experiences. The book focuses on how homes – that is, houses and geographic
locations – can transmit trauma from one generation to the next.
In an online biography, author Wilson says, "I am the
Justice, Equity, and Transformation Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of
Calgary." On a University of Calgary page, Wilson follows his name with
"Pronouns: he/him/his." In an
interview, Wilson says, "My work has largely centered on the
Holocaust, but given the rise in anti-queer and anti-trans violence, public
policy, and legislation, I redirected my attention on a main catalyst of
homophobia and transphobia today: white Christian nationalism … Both the Holocaust and conversion therapy are
inextricably connected to Christianity … The Christian scriptures and Christian
theology laid the seedbed for the Holocaust … Christianity has so easily lent
itself to such hatred." Christians have "genocidal intentions"
toward GLBT people, Jews, and "Indigenous folks in North America."
Wilson, though young, is an
exceptionally successful scholar, enjoying a degree of financial support and
accolades that most scholars can only dream of. "I have received several
fellowships and awards for my work." An incomplete list of his honors: The
Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi's Dissertation Fellowship; a European Holocaust
Research Infrastructure Fellowship; The Rabbi Ferdinand Isserman Memorial
Fellowship from the American Jewish Archives; a Regent Scholarship, two Edwin
L. Stockton, Jr., Graduate Scholarships from Sigma Tau Delta International
English Honor Society, an Auschwitz Jewish Center Fellowship, and a Zaglembier
Society Scholarship awarded by The Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for
Holocaust Studies.
At Home with the Holocaust has received high
praise. Scholar and author Victoria Aarons says that the book "makes a
vital contribution to the research on second and third-generation Holocaust
descendants and the complex ways in which traumatic memory is passed along
intergenerationally." Alan L. Berger, the Raddock Family Eminent Scholar
Chair in Holocaust Studies at Florida Atlantic University, says that At Home
"breaks new ground."
I can see how At Home with the
Holocaust meets the needs of a reader happily immersed and unquestioningly
invested in academic trends in writing styles, thought processes, ideology, and
ethics. I am not that reader. This book exemplifies serious problems in
contemporary academia, as I will detail in the review, below. First, a word on
why I care about this topic.
As soon as I saw the Rutgers University
Press ad for this new book, I was eager to read it. I have been swimming in the
water of post-World-War-Two trauma for my entire life. I'm a baby boomer, a
drop in the post-World-War-II demographic surge. I didn't give it much thought
in my childhood, but I was surrounded by post-war trauma.
On August 14, 1945, Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captured "V-J Day in Times Square." A sailor is kissing a young woman wearing a medical uniform – white dress, white stockings, white shoes. The photo expertly captures the ecstatic jubilation of the end of worldwide horror and atrocity.
