Echoed Identities: Charlotte Delbo and Primo Levi’s Perception of Self in their Concentration Camp Autobiographies.

Abstract

Survivors of the Holocaust experienced a traumatic time where their individuality was threatened. The fact that they emerged from the concentration camps alive is miraculous and can be analyzed in many different ways. This study analyzes different categories of identity and how they manifest themselves in two autobiographies by Charlotte Delbo and Primo Levi. The survivors’ pre-war identities were altered and, after liberation, they reentered the world with different outlooks on life. Identity can be studied through many different lenses, four of which are personal, social, persecuted, and survival. Noticeably, these four types are not all inclusive, nor specific to Holocaust victims, but are vividly revealed in Delbo’s and Levi’s texts. The way memory affects a traumatic retelling of a story also influences how the texts are written. Identity can take shape in many different forms and the study of them not only establishes consciousness of self-identity but also shows how trauma affects an individual’s perspective after overcoming a violent experience.