| dc.description.abstract | This dissertation identifies publications of post-Holocaust Jewish narratives as a new emerging
field in Holocaust Studies in the largest country of Latin America. By examining eight memoirs
written in Portuguese and published in Brazil in the first two decades of the twentieth-first
century, I provide an analysis of how survivors recalled the traumatic events, and lived, operated,
and experienced life in their new country. Chapter 1 provides the political background before the
aftermath of the annihilation of European Jewry through a brief history of the changing political
systems in Brazil from 1930 to 1945. Focusing on policies passed during the Vargas Era (1930 –
1945), I show the nativist, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant views that were brewing in the cabinet of
the Estado Novo. In Chapter 2, I introduce the writings of survivors Aleksander Laks, Arie
Yaari, Henry Katina, Michael Kleinsinger, Michael Stivelman, Nanette Blitz Konig, Sabina
Kustin, and Samuel Rozenberg. I identify the reoccurring features in these writings, which
allows me to group them together as part of a new genre in Holocaust literature. I begin with the
writers’ unique focus of providing the historical context of Jewish life in Europe prior to World
War II. Then in Chapter 3, I focus on the survivors’ recalling of their experiences during the
Holocaust by placing the eight memoirs into three categories: survival in hiding, in camps, and in
death marches. In Chapter 4, I address the way in which the survivors recall the aftermath of
World War II, and their immigration journeys to Brazil. I also address the way in which
survivors deal with their memory in their writings, in terms of the legacy of the Holocaust in
Brazil. The last chapter addresses the concern mentioned in the memoirs about Nazi presence in
Brazil. I single out a a group of permanent residents, as well as frequent visitors, who formed a
network of former high-ranking Nazi officials and collaborators who arrived in Brazil from the
late 1940s to the early 1970s. Using newspapers reports, Brazilian governmental documents,
CIA reports, and immigration registration cards, my dissertation identifies the activities of a
handful of former-Nazi war criminals. Ultimately, this dissertation sheds new light on Jewish
narratives created in Brazil for a Brazilian audience that is not familiar with the history of the
Holocaust, and it analyzes questions of memory and legacy in the aftermath of the Holocaust. | |
