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Discourse Studies

DOI: 10.1177/14614456030054005

2003; 5; 535Discourse StudiesDeborah Schiffrin

We Knew Thats It: Retelling the Turning Point of a Narrative

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A B S T R A C T A paradigmatic means of conveying a turning point in a narrative

of danger is the line we knew thats it (Labov, 1972). In four tellings of a

single narrative about danger during the Holocaust, a narrator varies this line

in ways that maintain its collective focus on knowledge, but alter what is

known. An analysis of changes in the we knew [x] line reveals its

relationship with the changing structure of the narrative and with the shift

toward multi-vocalic means of external evaluation. Also suggested is the

relationship of the overall narrative changes to the changing place of

Holocaust discourse, narrative and oral history in memory culture, and the

larger discourse of resistance and survival.

K EY W OR DS : collective memory, constructed dialogue, identity, narrative, oral

history, performance

1. Introduction

Danger of death stories have a special significance in sociolinguistic research on

everyday oral narrative. In his seminal introduction to this area of study, Labov

(1972; Labov and Waletzky, 1967), pointed out the advantages of studying nar-

ratives that answer the question Have you ever been in a situation where youve

been in serious danger of being killed? When you said to yourself this is it? A

positive answer to such a question makes a strong claim I was in extreme

danger and I was able to survive and justifying such a claim is expected to lead

to a fully formed narrative, complete with abstract, orientation, complicatingaction, resolution and coda, richly layered throughout with evaluation. Equally

important, the narrators involvement in the drama of the story itself, rather

than the interview procedure per se, is expected to lead to the use of a casual

style that could reveal the patterns of the speakers vernacular, rather than a

formal style suited to the demands of a research interview.

Stories of danger do sometimes achieve all that they promise and more (see

examples in Labov, 1972, 1981, 1997). In addition to being highly developed

A R T I C L E 535

We knew thats it: retelling the turningpoint of a narrative

D E B O R A H S C H I F F R I NG E O RG E T OW N U N I V E RS I T Y

Discourse StudiesCopyright 2003

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narratives, dramatic and full of evaluation, they are stories in which charactersare polarized on opposite ends of a moral continuum, events escalate to the point

of near irreparable adversity, and the conflict between good and bad ends with a

dramatic (maybe even triumphant) resolution of the danger. So powerful are

these stories that listeners sit, spellbound, unwilling (or unable) to move until the

story is completed.

When I began studying the oral histories of Holocaust survivors several years

ago, I found myself wondering whether the stories told within them fit into the

paradigmatic expectations of danger of death narrative. The mere ability to

provide an oral history automatically positioned one as having survived the

threat of death not just once, but usually many times. Yet these stories were not

typically stories of triumph. Early stories in which one rebelled against the

burgeoning restrictions imposed by the Nazis were replaced by stories in whichone puzzles over ones luck or ponders the arbitrariness of the means by which

Nazis selected some people for life and others for death.

Research on Holocaust survivors and survivor discourse (Eitinger, 1998;

Greenspan, 1998, 1999, 2001; Hartman, 1994; Langer, 1991; Reiter, 2000)

likewise suggests that survival is rarely portrayed as an accomplishment, let

alone as heroic. Even at the moment of liberation, when it was clear that the

Nazis were no longer in absolute control over ones destiny, many survivors felt

defeated, sometimes to the point of feeling the most extreme of dualities

that one self has died, another self has lived (Greenspan, 1999: 459; Langer,

1991: 489). Indeed, survivor identity (and discourse) remain split decades after

liberation. Although some survivors are portrayed as heroes, symbols of hope,

recovery and redemption (Greenspan, 1999; see also Langer, 1991: 16371),other survivors are portrayed as ghosts, shells of their former selves, silent,

estranged.

I was thus surprised to find a variant of the classic narrative realization of the

danger of death we knew thats it in an episode from an oral history from a

survivor (Susan Beer) whose life story I had been studying. In the episode, Beer

had been recounting how her family, desperate to escape the increasing persecu-

tion and deportation of Jews from 1944 Budapest, decides to participate in a

secret rescue mission (organized by disenchanted German soldiers) to return

refugees to liberated Slovakia (their homeland). It turns out that the plan is really

a trap. The Gestapo capture and imprison the family, then deport them to

Auschwitz.

Since I had access to four oral histories provided by Beer, I checked to see howshe had reported this turning point in the groups experience in all four versions.

I found the following variants:

1982 and we knew thats it

1984 and we knew right away that we were ...

yknow it was uh- a scheme, to get us, to get the money

1995a And we felt if its supposed to be a secret mission,

how could there be spotlights

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1995b And we knew right away when theres a secret mission

you dont turn on floodlights.

Each variant of the turning point in Beers capture story internalized (through

knew or felt) a collective (we) reaction. This was surprising: how and why

would someone report the epistemic or emotional state of a group? Also surpris-

ing was the content of the groups internal reaction. The simple thats it in

1982 was replaced in 1984 by a description of the captors real goals (to get us,

to get the money). In the two 1995 versions, Beer focused on the still more

complex contrast between what the group had expected (a secret mission) and

what they actually encountered (spotlights, floodlights), the latter providing

evidence of the true nature of the supposed rescue mission.

In this article, I analyze the four versions of we knew [x] in Beers capture

story. After discussing the knowledge/action relationship in narrative, life storyand oral history, I describe Susan Beers life, life story, and oral histories. My

comparison among the four different versions of we knew [x] begins with an

overview of its relation to other structural and evaluative changes and then

focuses on changes in form, meaning and use of we knew [x] itself. My conclu-

sion discusses the relevance of the analysis for the study of Holocaust discourse.

2. Oral history narratives about the Holocaust

The four versions of Beers capture story provide an ideal site for examining

knowledge and action in narrative, life story and oral history. Since narratives

typically recount what happened, representations of events might seem more

central to the actual telling of a story than representations of knowledge. Forexample, we speak of events as providing the foreground within the complicat-

ing action of a narrative, but states of mind as background orientation clauses

that either preface or interrupt the action. Whereas events can be established for

credibility, internal states are inherently private and unprovable, thus illustrating

the two different kinds of reality that linguists and philosophers have spoken of

as transparent vs. opaque contexts.

Analysis of Beers four variants of we knew [x] will show that reporting a

mental state, and thereby creating a referentially opaque context, plays a critical

role in narrative. Talking about knowledge can reveal story world characters

reactions to what has already happened, help an audience understand what

happened and why it was significant, and orient listeners to what is about to

happen next. Analyses of knowledge statements in narrative are also relevant totwo broader analytical domains: the distinction between narrative competence

and narrative code; the mediation of life story/oral history by ex post facto

information and experience.

2 . 1 N A R RA T IV E A N A LY S IS

Two perspectives on narrative are important for my analysis and its interpretation. 1

Schiffrin: We knew thats it 537



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First is a competence-centered perspective that analytically privileges theinternal rules and logic through which we organize experience. Here the focus is

on the potential of narrative form as a means of organizing and constructing

experience (e.g. Polkinghorne, 1988). For psychologists, sociologists, and

anthropologists who adopt this perspective, narrative is akin to a template that

underlies a possible text. Within this template, people and their actions are (1)

organized into a structured representation of what is expected to happen; and (2)

emplotted in a structured representation of what actually does happen. The

structured representations central to this perspective move fluidly between cogni-

tion and culture. Narrative templates serve as individual repositories for personal

memory and experience, and, as cultural resources for knowledge and collective

memories. Although one can investigate the modus operandi of individual

consciousness (Chafe, 1990) and ways of thinking (Bruner, 1986), suchprocesses can also be conceptualized, and studied, at collective levels (Tonkin,

1992, Wertsch, 1998): they can operate as persistent and communal systems of

knowledge, beliefs, and ideology.

Second is a code-centered perspective that focuses primarily on the language

of narrative. Scholars whose research is rooted in sociolinguistics (both varia-

tionist and interactional) and conversation analysis view narrative primarily as a

mode of language-based action and means of social interaction. Despite

wide variation in methodology and assumptions about the co-construction of

structure and meaning (cf. e.g. Jefferson, 1978, to Labov, 1997), this perspective

analytically privileges the language of stories, i.e. the code in which they are

conveyed. Narratives are assumed to be (1) relatively bound units of talk, whose

beginnings, middles and ends are formally and functionally different from oneanother; (2) composed of a set of smaller units (e.g. clauses, utterances,

idea/intonation units) that are sequentially arranged in regular patterns; and (3)

often performed through the speech of one person, at one time, to one audience,

in one setting.

The distinction between narrative competence and code parallels, at a

broader and more theoretical level, the knowledge/action distinction on which I

will focus in Beers story: a narrative schema (knowledge) is transformed into the

language used to recount (action) a story. Just as knowledge and action are inter-

twined in Beers story, so too, narrative competence and code complement one

another in narrative theory and research: analyzing narrative language can

provide information not only about how stories are told, but also about how

experience is organized. As I explain below, however, narratives about theHolocaust (and indeed other traumatic events, both personal and collective)

reveal several potential tensions between experience and language.

2 . 2 N AR R AT I VE S A B OU T T H E H O LO CAU S T

In the early post-Second World War years, the death of 6 million Jews was not

frequently distinguished in academic, mass media, or private discourse from the

general discourse of the Second World War (Dawidowicz, 1981; Hertzberg,




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1996). Although Jewish survivors themselves were sometimes vocal about theirexperiences within their own communities, they maintained a relative silence in

relation to the outside world. When personal stories of the Holocaust began to

appear in oral history projects in the 1970s, observers noted that what had been

experienced was not easily reconstructed or conveyed through language. Dori

Laub, a psychiatrist who helped initiate one of the first Holocaust testimony

projects, observes:

Because of the radical break between trauma and culture, victims often cannot find

categories of thought or words to contain or give shape to their experience. That is,

since neither culture nor past experience provides structures for formulating acts of

massive destruction, survivors cannot articulate trauma even to themselves. (1998:

802)

Laubs comments suggest that traditional narrative templates (categories ofthought) could not provide the discursive scaffolding through which survivors

could call forth the language (words) necessary for emplotting their cata-

strophic loss of community, friends, and family. According to Lawrence Langer

(1991), a literary scholar who has written extensively about Holocaust

testimonies, stories about loss, suffering, atrocities and overwhelming death

during the Holocaust are buried in different sites of personal memory (e.g. deep,

anguished, humiliated) in which the Holocaust remains simultaneously part of

but separate from ones current life world. Other observers address the limita-

tions not of narrative schemas, but of language itself, noting the trope of silence

pervading Holocaust literature (Horowitz, 1997) or the turn to visual or physical

media as alternative means through which to represent traumatic memories

(Hirsch and Suleiman, 2001).A breakthrough into narrative language is thus viewed as a pathway toward

overcoming the trauma of the experience. As Dominick LaCapra, a historian

who has applied psychoanalytic theory to trauma, observes:

when the past becomes accessible to recall in memory, and when language functions

to provide some measure of conscious control, critical distance, and perspective, one

has begun the arduous process of working over and through the trauma. (2001: 90)

Mediating trauma through narrative templates and narrative language, then,

can enable survivors to confront, cope with, and possibly overcome, the pain of

their past. Wieviorka (1994: 25) conveys this contradiction: victims are cer-

tainly beyond words, and yet, dispossessed of everything, words are all they have

left. Words which will be the sole trace of an existence.By the 1990s, what came to be called the Holocaust had become a centralizing

symbol for American Jews (Novick, 1999) and a familiar topic in American

discourse (Schiffrin, 2001). Among the many social, political and cultural fac-

tors contributing to, as well as simultaneously indicating, this transformation in

collective memory were oral history projects. What had begun as a handful

of projects in the late 1970s had grown to roughly 180 collections of tens of

thousands of Holocaust oral histories.




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2 . 3 H O LO CA US T O R AL H I ST O RI E S

Like all oral histories, those now told about the Holocaust serve different func-

tions. In addition to providing material for public commemoration (e.g. video

sections appear in documentaries and museum exhibits), oral histories serve

scholarly interests (e.g. for historians and sociologists). Oral histories also serve

an autobiographical function: they provide a venue for Holocaust survivors to

tell their life stories, sometimes for the first time. This blend of commemorative,

scholarly and autobiographical functions creates complex participation frame-

works that create identities that are both relatively concrete (e.g. interviewee,

storyteller) and abstract (e.g. witness to a 20th-century tragedy). Participants

thus balance the need to provide historical facts with the desire to create video

clips that show and sound well on a screen, but still manage to respect the

privacy of what can be a highly personal and painful story. Because oral historythus depends on the shifting balance between the personal and the social,

between biography and history (Portelli, 1997: 6), it is an inherently multi-

vocalic genre (Portelli, 1997: Chapter 2).

Multivocality arises in oral histories in relation not only to participant shifts

in footings and goals, but also in relation to the means by which information is

acquired and when it is done so (Schiffrin, 2003b). Although interviewees

explicitly identify some information as retrospective knowledge (e.g. what we

didnt know then was that . . . or we only learned later that . . .), other ex post

facto information is seamlessly integrated into the overall texture of what is said.

Included in the latter is the incorporation of English itself (a language that most

survivors did not know during the Second World War), survivor myths

(Wiervocka, 1994) and others experiences that have become importantemblems or icons of collective (rather than personal) experience (Schiff et al.,

2001).

Even more sweeping than the influx of ex post facto information is the

non-chronological impact of time. Langer (1991: 40) observes that Holocaust

testimonies embed memories and reflect experiences in ways that are concerned

less with a past than with a sense of that past in the present (my emphasis). The

fluidity between past and present is taken further in Brockmeiers analysis of

how autobiographical representations of past deeds end up having more of a

teleological (goal-oriented) focus in our stories than they did in our lives, and still

further in Mishlers (forthcoming) development of Ricoeurs (1980) view that

time itself moves forward and backward. As Mishler (forthcoming) suggests, a

double arrow of time infiltrates not only the way we tell stories about whathappened (i.e. narrative code), but also the arrangement of events into a plot,

and how both event and plot are cognitively defined and located within memory

(i.e. narrative competence). Although the double arrow of time is especially

evident in turning points (pivotal transitions) within life stories (Mishler, 1999),

the overall process pervades narrative as an ever-widening context of later

experiences that provides gradual understandings of what happened and leads

to reconstruction of the meanings of past experiences.




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The nexus between posterior knowledge (what I know now) and prior action(what I did then) helps define Beers capture story as a turning point in her life

story. When the plan to escape fails, and the family is captured and taken to a

Gestapo prison, what had previously been viewed as dangerous can be recon-

structed as less so simply because of its contrast to the terrible dangers (e.g.

Auschwitz, a death march) that followed. A knowledge/action nexus also under-

lies the plot of the capture story itself: Beer has to present the plans to escape after

having realized that the plan to gain more freedom has actually led to the total

loss of freedom. It is this reconfiguration of schema that is articulated in the

collective voices of we knew, the turning point in the capture story.

2 . 4 S U M M A R Y

In sum, Beers story of capture provides an ideal site for examining knowledgeand action in narrative, life story and oral history. The story is pivotal in recon-

structing the meanings of earlier events within her life story, as well as the more

recent past in which the family had anticipated greater freedom. The four

retellings of the capture story add still another advantage. It is not only time and

circumstance that add to the ever widening contexts of later experiences that

reconstruct the meanings of the past, but also story telling itself. Thus Beers first

public telling of her capture becomes part of the scaffolding of knowledge that

underlies how she will retell the past again.

3. Life and life story

Susan Beer (then Suzanna Eisdorfer) was born in Budapest in 1924. She grew upin Topalcany, a small town in what was then Slovakia. When the Germans seized

control of Slovakia in 1943, discrimination against Jews in Topalcany escalated:

families had to give up their material possessions and their civil liberties; Beers

father (a physician) was forbidden to practice medicine; deportations began. It

was after Beer received an order to report for a transport to a labor camp that her

parents arranged for her to go illegally to Hungary, a country that was then safer

for Jews. Beers parents eventually escaped to Hungary also and they all lived

clandestinely with false identities until the incident to be focused upon here.

In 1944, under the leadership of Adolph Eichmann (head of the Gestapo

section dealing with Jewish affairs), the fulfillment of the Final Solution for Jews

in Hungary was fully underway. Jews had been forced into ghettoes; deportations

then proceeded geographically. After Beers father was caught with false identifi-cation papers (and narrowly managed to escape from his captors), he led his

family toward a decision to take a chance on what was supposedly a mission of

rescue organized by a small contingent of disenchanted German Wehrmacht

who wanted to return Jews (for a fee) to a small part of Slovakia supposedly

liberated by partisans. The mission was really a trap: the family was captured and

spent 31/2 weeks in a Budapest prison. Being captured and imprisoned ended the

familys period of relative success in avoiding active persecution by the Nazis. It




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also began their transition to total immersion in the Final Solution: the family leftprison aboard a train to Auschwitz. Thus Beer and her family were three of the

almost 450,000 Jews from Hungary (220,000 Jews from Budapest alone, one-

third of the population) who had been sent to Auschwitz by July 1944 (Cesarani,

1999; Rothkirchen, 1986).

Beer and her parents survive Auschwitz. She and her mother are together on

a death march; they suffer starvation, dehydration and disease in other camps

and hiding places. After liberation, Beer and her mother are re-united with Beers

father, who has again begun practicing medicine. Beer marries a fellow survivor

and moves to the United States; her parents (because of restrictive immigration

laws) move to Canada.

Beer spoke about her life in four oral history interviews. Whereas two inter-

views were conducted in the relatively early days of such projects (1982, 1984),two were conducted more than ten years later (1995), one by the Shoah

Foundation, the other by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Since

this is exactly the period of time during which Holocaust discourse developed as

a more public genre, we may be able to find two kinds of linguistic change in the

four versions of her stories: first, as a template develops through which language

can fit experience; second, as a performance develops through which language

can be fit to audience.

The story to be analyzed here the story of capture was not in and of itself

one in which the family overcame an immediate threat to their lives. These

threats followed after the family was captured, imprisoned, and then transported

to Auschwitz. Yet it is a pivotal transition in Beers life story. Being captured ends

a phase in the familys life during which they had been able to escape the ever-widening scope of Nazi persecution.

The capture per se is also the last phase of a longer narrative in which Beer

recounts the events that led up to the capture. Space prevents analysis of these

earlier orientation phases here (but see Schiffrin, 2003b; forthcoming). However,

since what occurs in these earlier phases is crucial to understanding the changes

in the capture per se, I summarize these changes below.

As noted above, Beers family was desperate to flee Budapest. After Beers

father had escaped from the police who had found him with a false identity card,

the family quickly left an apartment where they had been living clandestinely.

The family stayed with a Rabbi when Beers father made arrangements for the

family to be part of what he (and they) believed was a plan to return them (and

others) to a section of Slovakia liberated by partisans. The first phase of the over-all narrative describes the arrangements in detail: who will help the family

escape, why, where, when, and how. At the point that we hear this phase of

the story, we assume that the plan is not only necessary, but also plausible

(it can be done) and credible (it is, in fact, a plan to rescue the family). After

being blessed by the Rabbi with whom the family is in hiding, Beer anticipates

what will happen as the family escapes. Neither of these early phases of the story

gives any indication that the plan is actually a trap to capture the family. What




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happens in the last phase what I am calling the capture story is a completesurprise.

Although all four versions of Beers story provide basically the same informa-

tion, the form in which they do so differs. In the 1982 version of Beers story,

the early phases are recounted in a stanza style (Gee, 1989). In stanza-based

narratives, the speaker recursively builds up a theme, whose links are based on

form (e.g. parallelisms) and/or content (e.g. repetition, paraphrase). Between the

recursive thematic development is information that comments upon, elaborates

and provides a framework within which to understand the theme. The two

initiating phases in the 1982 text contribute to a theme of escape. Between the

first event (the father arranges the plan to escape) and the second event (the

Rabbis blessing sanctifies the plan) are lengthy descriptions and explanations

that reinforce the escape plan by establishing its necessity, credibility andplausibility. The capture in the 1982 text has a very different structure than the

initiating phases: the capture is recounted in a linear structure, identifiable

through relationships of temporal juncture between events. Post-1982 versions

of both the initiating phases and the capture are uniformly recounted in a linear

structure. Initiating phases have event clauses that appear in temporal order.

Lengthy descriptions and explanations that appeared in the 1982 text are

condensed or removed. Thus the textual contrast between what was expected

(freedom) and what actually occurred (capture) is no longer textually marked.

4. Retelling what happened and what we knew

In this section, I examine variation in we knew [x] in the four versions of Beerscapture story. After an overview of how we knew [x] is integrated into the four

different capture stories (4.1), I concentrate on the form and meaning of the we

knew [x] variants themselves (4.2). The four versions appear together in Appendix

1; an overview of their structural and evaluative changes is given in Appendix 2.

4 . 1 A C T I O N : F RO M R AP ID C HA N GE T O C UM UL AT IV E C HA OS

All four versions of Beers capture present basically the same information. The

group is about to meet their rescuers in a park when they are confronted by

lights. They realize that this is not the rescue for which they have prepared. They

are kicked into a truck and taken to prison. Despite these referential similarities,

change in grammatical and lexical aspect, verb collocation, clause type, and

lexical choice work together to alter the subjective depiction of the experiencefrom rapid change (1982 version) to cumulative chaos (post-1982 versions).

4.1.1 Capture in the 1982 text In the 1982 version of her capture story, Beer

uses a sequence of event clauses to show how the plan to escape to Slovakia

turns out to be a trap.2 I have arranged them in a table to show their syntactic

parallels. E indicates a clause that reports a sequentially ordered occurrence;

numbers indicate the inferred order of occurrences:




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conjunction subject verb phrase

E1 (1) and we came into this little park

E2 (2) and the flashlight lit into our eyes

E3 (3) and we knew thats it

E4 (4) and they kicked [us] into the truck

E5 (6) and they took [us] to the Gestapo headquarters in Buda

The sequential structure of the capture story differs from that of the earlier

phases in which Beer described and anticipated the plan to escape. Whereas

earlier phases were thematically organized in a stanza structure, the capture

appears in a linear structure and is almost completely action-based. Each of the

parallel structures of the five E-clauses typifies the simple syntax of a paradig-matic narrative clause (Labov, 1972). The use of and to link the parallel struc-

tures further unites the sequence of events and highlights a series of spatially

grounded experiential transitions. The transition begins with a change in

physical space (into the park), continues with perceptual space (into our

vision) and mental space (what we knew), and ends with another shift in physi-

cal space (into the truck, to the Gestapo headquarters). The progression of

these transitions without interruption iconically creates a sense of rapidity: all

this happened quickly, one thing after another.

The event sequence also dismantles the plans that had been detailed so care-

fully by Beer. Rather than go back and deconstruct each detail of the earlier plan,

however, what Beer does is reveal the true intentions of the captors by displaying

their duplicity through actions that are experienced by the group. The proximaldeictic come (and we came into this little park (E1 (1)) reinforces the park as

the groups destination and defines it as a physical center of reference. The

anaphoric tie between this little park (1) and a park (in an earlier anticipatory

line we were supposed to meet in a park) helps establish E1 as a contrast

between what was expected and what actually happened. When the flashlight lit

into our eyes (E2 (2)), the group is physically confronted by evidence that their

entry into the park has not initiated the arrangements that they had anticipated.

We knew thats it (E3 (3)) the turning point in the story is embedded

within this portrayal of the capture. Like the other clauses, we knew thats it (3)

is syntactically simple (both the main clause and its complement) and is con-

joined by and within the string of clauses. We knew thats it is also similarly

grounded in the experiential and deictic center of the group. In addition toextending the spatial grounding of the experience from physical and perceptual,

to cognitive, it also symbolically moves the group knowledge back to the deictic

center of the collective story world through a shift to the present tense of

reported speech: thats it, rather than that was it.

What the group actually knows is not specified. Although both that and it

are indexical, thats it does little more than establish the completion of a prior




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experience (note the role of distal that rather than proximal this) and a transi-tion to something quite different. It says nothing specific about what it was in

that experience that provided the evidence for so sharply punctual a turning

point. Nor does it tell us what happens next. This we learn through the next

E-clause: they took us straight to the Gestapo headquarters in Buda (E5 (6)) is a

transitional action that bridges the story world of the capture with the upcoming

story world of imprisonment.

To sum this far: the violation of expectations appears in the capture story as a

linear sequence of events in which the groups experience is physically, perceptu-

ally and cognitively recreated. Recall that the initiating phases of the overall

1982 story of being captured had followed a stanza-based narrative structure.

The radical shift to a linear structure creates a break from prior textual conven-

tion that replicates the contrast between what was expected and what actuallyoccurred. Thus, we knew thats it is part of a rhythmic chain of events whose

simplicity and brevity not only create a sense of rapidity, but also contrast with

the descriptive sequences and informative details provided earlier. By altering

what had been prior textual structure, Beer iconically represents through her

story world the schematic violation of her life-world.

4.1.2 Capture in the post-1982 texts Post-1982 versions of the capture differ in

several crucial ways. The main change involves event structure: aspectual

adjustments of stativity/activity and addition of semantically/pragmatically

compatible events. These linguistic changes shift the overall mood of the capture

from rapid change (e.g. this happened so fast that we barely knew what was

going on) to cumulative chaos (e.g. so many confusing things were going onat once that we barely knew what was happening). It is within these different

experiential contours that changes in we knew [x] appear.

The first several clauses of the capture story illustrate adjustments in aspect:

the type of occurrence (e.g. duration, boundaries, goal-orientation) represented

by the verb (lexical aspect) and its morphological modifications (grammatical

aspect) as embedded in the grammatical structure of the sentence. For example,

the 1982 text is the only version in which the group actually enters the park in

an E-clause. In the post-1982 texts, Beer transforms this accomplishment into an

ongoing activity through progressive aspect (italicized) and dependent clauses

(initiated in bold):

1982 (1) E1 we came into this little park

1984 (a) E1 and we were coming to that park(b) and as soon as we approached that truck

1995a (1.) and as we were getting closerto the park at night

1995b (A) and as we were approaching the park

The progressive verbs and dependent clauses in post-1982 versions bring the

group to the place where they are about to meet, portraying them in activity that

is logically necessary to the anticipated meeting. This shift has two evaluative




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consequences. First, it suspends the action that is supposed to lead into thegroups meeting with their rescuers, thus preventing them from accomplishing

the first part of their anticipated goal. Second, it creates an overlap between

entry to the park and the lights shine, the first piece of evidence that the group

is caught. This overlap portrays the captors as ready to pounce on the group as

soon as possible: it not only highlights their efficiency and preparedness, but also

intensifies their zeal for their mission.

Aspectual variation (again italicized) in the next event the lights shine works

along with lexical and syntactic differences to present the perceptual evidence for

capture as enduring, encompassing and inclusive:

1982 E2 (2) and the flashlight lit into our eyes

1984 E2 (a) flashlights were lit into our eyes,

1995a E2 (1.) we see spotlights, aiming at us.1995b E1 (B) there were big floodlights turning on us.

In the 1982 text, the flashlight lit continued prior canonical narrative syntax:

flashlight was the subject of the relatively punctual action lit. With the 1984

shift to the passive, what happened can be interpreted as more durative. The

1995 texts invoke even more durative interpretations. In the 1995a text, two

grammatical features add duration: the use of historical present in we see and

the progressive aiming (Schiffrin, 1991). In the 1995b version, duration is con-

veyed through the existential predicate there were and the progressive turning

on us.

The aspectual shift towards endurance is complemented by lexical and gram-

matical shifts that present the perceptual evidence for capture as encompassing

and inclusive. The lexical shift from flashlight(s) (1982, 1984) to spotlights

(1995a) and floodlights (1995b) enlarges the physical scope of the trap,

increasing the degree to which the group feels trapped. The impact of the lights

upon the group becomes less metonymic: whereas lights are lit into our eyes

(1982/1984), they are specifically aiming (1995a) or turning (1995b) more

inclusively at us (1995a) and on us (1995b). The endurance added by shifts

toward stativity in the lights shine thus combines with the encompassing lights

directed at an inclusive target to create a sense of cumulative chaos and confu-

sion as the group is trapped in what appears to be an ever-widening trap.

The addition of semantically/pragmatically compatible events also alters the

temporal parameters of what happened and adds to the sense of chaos. Below, a

recurrent verb (kick) co-occurs with verbs from the same semantic/pragmatic

field:

1982 (6) E5 And they kicked us into the truck,

1984 (d) E3 and we were kicked into the truck,

1995a (7.) E3 and they kicked us

(8.) E4 and beat us

1995b (H) E3 and they hit us,

(I) E4 kicked us into the truck

(J) E5 beat us up




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The addition of verbs of physical force beat us (up) (1995a, 1995b) and hit(1995b) enlarges the field of activity in which the group is physically caught.

4.1.3 Summary of the capture The structural changes in the capture story show

different ways of conceptualizing, representing and evaluating occurrences. The

sense of ongoing chaos and confusion that these changes create is in sharp con-

trast to the rapidity portrayed through the string of parallel action clauses in the

1982 text. Thus, rather than interpret the capture as happening so quickly that

the group can process no more than the numbing realization that thats it

(1982), the group is immersed in a swirl of cumulative and confusing sensations

that lead them to a more gradual realization that what they face is not freedom,

but capture.

4 . 2 K N O W L E D G E : F RO M C ODA T O I NF ER EN CE

Variation in we knew [x] is consistent with the linguistic shifts through which

the capture is first portrayed as rapid change (1982) and then as cumulative

chaos (1984, 1995a, 1995b). To understand how we knew [x] is part of this

overall shift, however, we also need to consider Beers evaluative strategy at a

somewhat higher level of analysis. In the 1982 text, evaluation appeared

through a textual contrast between early phases of the overall story (stanza) and

the capture itself (linear) that mirrored the radical change in the life world. Once

a linear structure was adopted in all phases of the post-1982 texts, however,

evaluation of the capture could no longer rely upon iconicity between story

world and life world. The locus of evaluation shifts: rather than depend upon a

textual contrast between stanza and linear structure, it relies upon syntacticcomplexity, relationships between adjacent clauses, and abstract reflective voices

that make explicit the information critical to grasping the significance of the

experience.

The shifting locus of contrast is concentrated in we knew [x]. Central to this

shift is the internal and private foundation of mental activity what I earlier

called referential opacity and the difficulty of projecting its content onto a

collective plane. As we see below, Beer compensates for gaps in group epistemol-

ogy by using intratextual ties to invoke both intersubjectivity and veracity.

4.2.1 Indexicality to intratextuality What the group knew in the 1982 text (thats

it) established the completion of a prior experience and a transition to some-

thing quite different. Despite its indexicality (because of the demonstrative andthe pronoun), thats it serves as a coda without telling us anything specific

about what it was in that experience that provided closure. The post-1982

versions of what we knew replace the indexicality of the 1982 thats it with

more complex relations of intratextuality that create representations of what the

group knew/felt. By relying upon prior text, and inferences based upon and

drawn from it, these representations clarify for the listener the disruption of the

plans and the duplicitous intentions of the groups supposed rescuers.




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In the 1984 text, a straightforward manifestation of intratextuality repetition pervades the capture story. Notice, first, that the predicates in each

clause repeat were:

(a) we were coming

(c) flashlights were lit

(d) we were kicked

(e) we knew right away that we were...

The repetition of were, especially the passive were ((c), (d)), initially provides a

syntactic frame for what the group knew in we knew [x] (e). Rather than con-

tinue the syntactic pattern (e.g. we were caught), however, Beer switches to a

more global strategy that both draws upon, and provides, more information

about the rupture of the plan:

1984

(e) E4 we knew right away that we were...

yknow it was uh- a scheme,

to get us, [Right] to get the money,

After the self-repair from we were, yknow to mark shared knowledge and a

brief word search (uh-), Beer redefines the plan as a scheme with two goals: to

get us, to get the money. The term scheme is important: it lexicalizes the

inferred disjunction between the anticipated plan and the actual plan, juxtapos-

ing prior expectation against duplicity. This contrast reifies a crucial shift in

perspective on the arrangements reported in earlier phases of the story: it incor-

porates the alternative teleological structure underlying the arrangements

and anticipated actions. Thus a perspective that had not been arranged andpreviewed in earlier parts of the longer story is incorporated into the groups

realization and simultaneously labeled for the audience.

Also intratextually based are the goals of the scheme. What the group now

knew contrasts with two prior aspects of the plan: the fathers goal and the fee.

The 1984 text opened with the fathers goal: And uh my father went next day, in

search of a way to get us back to Czechoslovakia. Whereas the fathers goal is to

get us home, the goal of the scheme is to get us (v). Earlier phases of the story

also mentioned that a fee was a requirement for the Wehrmachts help: and

they want to help us escape on their truck and this would cost money. Rather

than use the money to help the group escape (h), the Wehrmacht want to get the

money (v). Thus the scheme and the captors goals both draw upon intratextually

based contrasts: repetition and lexicalization reconfigure the prior arrangementsas a scheme with very different goals than those presented in earlier parts of the

story.

4.2.2 Grounding an inference in text Evaluation in the 1995 texts becomes more

complex both formally and functionally. Both 1995 versions of we knew draw

upon (1) performance features of constructed dialogue; (2) repetition between

constructed dialogue and prior text; (3) syntactic, semantic and pragmatic




16/28

features within the constructed dialogue; and (4) repetition between constructeddialogue and posterior text:

1995a

2. E1 we see spotlights aiming on us,

3. E2 and we felt well if its supposed to be a secret mission,

how could there be spotlights,

4. well of course we were taken,

5. you know it was no mission,

6. it was a mission to take us,

1995b

(B) E1 there were big flood lights turning on us.

(C) E2 And we knew right away when theres a secret mission,

you dont turn flood lights on.

(D) But we couldnt run away anymore,

(E) we were caught

(F) And it was no mission of rescue.

(G) It was a mission that we were caught in

Reported speech, or in Tannens (1989) terms, constructed dialogue, is a textual

site whose raison dtre is the construction of multivocality. According to Bakhtin

(1981), any act of reporting speech is both an appropriation of anothers words

and a transformation of the original act. Although all reported speech is

constructed (Tannen) or transformed (Bakhtin), direct quotation requires deictic

and grammatical transformations that represent authors words through their

own deictic center (they are the I, their time is now, their place is here). What

is said can also be performed (Hymes, 1981; Wolfson, 1978) or demonstrated

(Clark and Gerrig, 1990) through a wider range of expressive devices (intona-

tion, prosody). Although direct quotations are not necessarily accurate represen-

tations, then, their deictic and prosodic shifts create an aliveness that adds a

tone of authenticity and veracity.

When we turn to the content of the constructed dialogue in we knew [x] of

the 1995 texts, we find that the syntax, semantics and pragmatics of what is

reported provide critical textual routes to the important evaluative contrast

between expectation and actuality. Both texts use preposed clauses (conditional

(1995a), temporal (1995b)) that provide given information (Ward and Birner,

2001) or topic (Schiffrin, 1991); they report information that is already

common ground or intended to be treated as such. This information becomes a

background against which new information or a comment is foregrounded.Consistent with their informational role, both the ifclause (1995a) and the

when clause (1995b) present the groupspriorunderstanding of the plan. Rather

than reify what the plans are now known to have been (i.e. a scheme (1984)), the

plan is firmly situated in the groups initial perspective through present tense

stative predicates ((its supposed to be (1995a) and theres (1995b)) and the

noun phrase a secret mission. Yet evidence has been accruing (the shining

lights) that this perspective cannot be sustained. Indeed, this conception of the




17/28

plan is counter-factual: the proposition this is a secret mission is one that Beer(along with the others in we) does not then believe to be true.

The counter-factuality of this is a secret mission is established through sen-

tence form and meaning, intratextual relations, and an assumption of shared

knowledge. Consider, first, the typical connection inferable between the preposed

and postposed clauses: a cause/result in the conditional if X, Y (1995a) and

temporal when X, Y (1995b).3 Thus, in a statement such as if/when theres a

secret mission, people travel clandestinely, we would infer that a secret mission

leads to, or results in, clandestine travel. Notice, however, that the relationship

between X and Y in the 1995 texts is quite the opposite: a secret mission does

not entail bright lights.

One contribution to the cancellation of the cause/result inference between

secret mission and lights is linguistic form and meaning. Because existence ofa secret mission has been posed as background information, whatever appears in

the following clause is assessed in relation to that context. The following clause

reveals doubt about the compatibility of the foregrounded shining lights with

the backgrounded secret mission. The rhetorical question how could there be

spotlights? (1995a) questions the possibility of lights. The declarative you dont

turn floodlights on (1995b) negates the use of lights and gains generality

through indefinite you and the present tense. Lexical repetition in the fore-

grounded clauses also contributes to the dismantling of the inference. Repetition

of spotlights (1995a) and floodlights (1995b) recalls their appearance in the

groups initial perception of their capture (we see spotlights (1995a (2.)), there

were big floodlights (1995b, (B)). Repetition thus ties the cognitive grounding of

the capture to the already presented perceptual evidence.As important as language is for conveying counter-factuality, so too, is our

knowledge of the world. Here I draw on the early 20th-century sociologist Georg

Simmel (1950: 34576) who argued that two internal relations are critical if a

group of people is to rely upon secrecy as its form of existence: The first internal

relation . . . is the reciprocal confidence among its members. It is required to a par-

ticularly great extent, because the purpose of secrecy is above all, protection

(Simmel, 1950: 345, italics in original). Both confidence and protection are cru-

cial to the relationship between Beers family and their supposed rescuers. Earlier

parts of Beers story established that the family has confidence in the other mem-

bers of the secret society, i.e. the renegade German soldiers (Schiffrin, forthcom-

ing). Establishing confidence is not surprising: it is a prerequisite for protection

(Simmel) and the need for protection pervades the mission. Most relevant in theshort term is the protection of information: accomplishing the mission requires

that knowledge of its who, what, where, when and how is kept secret. In the long

term, carrying out the mission requires protection: Beers family assumes that the

German soldiers will protect them from the Gestapo during their escape. The

completion of the mission then creates protection: delivering the family to a sec-

tion of Slovakia liberated by partisans will help shelter them from the Nazis.

Establishing confidence, then, enables the protection central to the mission.




18/28

It is precisely the need for protection, however, that is so sharply violated bythe lights that were lit (1982), aiming at us (1995a) and turning on us

(1995b). As Simmel (1950: 345) points out, of all protective measures, the most

radical is to make oneself invisible. By publicly illuminating those the hopeful

escapees who had so crucial a stake in invisibility, the lights shatter the pre-

sumption of solidarity between the escapees and their purported rescuers: far

from sharing a secret, the potential escapees have been deceived and betrayed by

their supposed rescuers. Thus, the groups prior perspective is dismantled in the

1995 texts. The increasing scope of the lights that targeted the group has

re-appeared in what they now know: perceptual experience has provided the

warrant through which to infer the counter-factuality of this is a secret

mission.

Beer further validates the inference that the plan is null and void by usingrepetition, negatives, and contrast in an affirm/deny/affirm sequence to assert

the duplicity underlying the rescue plan:

1995a 1995b

(D) But we couldnt run away anymore,

AFFIRM 4. well of course we were taken, (E) we were caught

DENY 5. you know it was no mission, (F) And it was no mission of rescue.

AFFIRM 6. it was a mission to take us, (G) It was a mission that we were caught in

First, the capture is affirmed through concrete actions taken upon the group (we

were taken (1995a (4.), we were caught (1995b (E)). Next, the validity of the

prior schema is explicitly denied through negation (it was no mission (1995a

(5.), 1995b (D)). Third, the true goals of the captors are re-affirmed (1995a (6.),

(1995b (G)). Repetition links the three parts of the sequence. In both 1995 texts,the affirmations are locally cohesive through repetition (underlined above).

The switch in polarity from denial to affirmation is also strengthened through

repetition (italics above). The violation of expectation is thus conveyed not

only inferentially as an internal evaluation: it is also concretized through an

affirmationdenialaffirmation sequence that explicitly asserts the rupture of

expectation.

The changes in we knew [x] mark not only a shift in the role of collective

knowledge in the capture story, locus of contrast and source of voicing, but also

a shift in presumption of mutual knowledge. Those who hear Beers story

including not only the interviewer, but also the potentially broad and

anonymous audience for the publicly accessible oral history do not know at its

outset how the plan will actually turn out. The capture in the post-1982 texts

thus makes explicit the contradiction between the plans of the group (what was

expected) and the plans of the captors (what actually occurred). This clarity

positions the audience not only to grasp what happened, but also to understand

the significance of the experience for Beer and her family.




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4 . 3 A C TI ON A ND K NO W LE DG E I N R ET EL LI NG S O F T HE C AP TU RE S TO RY

Structural and evaluative changes work together to alter the story of the Beer

familys capture. Although all four versions of the capture story follow a linear

structure, their adoption of this structure incorporates variation in the internal

configuration of occurrences. In the post-1982 texts, the distinction between

actions that have a clear forward motion (E-clauses), and those that do not

(non-E-clauses), becomes open to manipulation. This blurring of an otherwise

clear distinction provides a resource through which to convey an altered sense of

time and action, and thus, chaotic and disruptive circumstances. Rather than

interpret the capture as happening so quickly that the group can process no

more than the numbing realization thats it (1982), the group is immersed

in a swirl of cumulative and overlapping sensations that lead them toward a real-

ization that they have been captured.The we knew [x] turning point relied upon the manipulation of another

familiar distinction between action and knowledge. Alongside the use of con-

structed dialogue in we knew [x] to create a sense of veracity, adjacent text

added external validity to reported knowledge. In the 1995 texts, the inference

this is not a secret mission relied not only upon linguistic form, meaning, and

world knowledge about secret missions, but also a prior action in the story world:

we see spotlights aiming at us (1995a (2.)), there were big floodlights turning

on us (1995b (B). Because the lights shattered the invisibility required for

protection, the reappearance (and syntactic foregrounding) of the shining

lights provided the warrant for dismantling the groups belief. Actions following

we knew [x] also heightened veracity: well of course we were taken (1995a

(4.), we were caught (1995b (E)), and the cluster of actions around beingkicked, all show that capture appears not only in an epistemic world, but also in

a physical world.

Changes in the cognitive grounding of experience are consistent with those in

its physical and perceptual grounding. Whereas the 1982 thats it quickly

ended the prior story world of cautious optimism, the post-1982 descriptions of

captors goals, and of the processes whereby duplicity was realized, showed the

group reaching an understanding of how they had been deceived. By substitut-

ing cognitive reflection for sudden recognition of the loss in freedom, the changes

in we knew [x] add an altered means of knowing to the already altered sense of

time and action.

Representations of action and knowledge thus work together to portray and

evaluate experience. Knowledge was but one facet of a series of spatiallygrounded transitions that began with physical space, incorporated perceptual

space, and concluded with physical space. The sum of these differently grounded

transitions created a multi-faceted experience whose scope forecasts the breadth

of the changes the group is about to experience as they become unwilling victims

of the Nazis. Just as we knew [x] is a turning point in the groups reconfigura-

tion of past knowledge and expectation, then, so too, the capture story is a turn-

ing point at higher levels of textual and personal significance. Beers knowledge




20/28

of what happens later the total subversion of individual life and experience tothe goals of the Final Solution thus provides a larger context in which to under-

stand what happened and through which to reconstruct the meaning of this

one experience.

5. Knowledge and action in Holocaust discourse

If we were to assume that the goal of narrative is an objective representation of

what happened, then the inability of a narrator to know about group know-

ledge would be problematic. But once we assume that an equally important goal

of narrative is evaluation, then referential opacity no longer hinders narration:

rather, it becomes a creative resource for conveying the significance of an experi-

ence. Referential/verifiable and evaluative/unverifiable modes of representationare important not only to our own personal narratives, but also to the narratives

of historians (Schiffrin, 2003a). Verification clearly matters simply because

historians seek facts: something that happened in history that is there inde-

pendently of the historian, and can be verified . . . through the traces history

has left behind (Evans, 1999: 66). Yet one of the clear values of oral histories is

that they complement the search for facts with an interest in more individuated

and subjective sides of the past. In this section, I turn from the interstitial role of

evaluative knowledge and concrete action in one oral history narrative to its role

on broader planes of social and historical interpretation.

All four versions of Beers capture story serve autobiographical, commemora-

tive and historical functions. Despite these functional similarities, changes in the

mode of evaluation, from concrete/internal to abstract/external, suggest that thestory of the capture has also become a performative narrative. In Schiffrin (2002), I

suggested that some oral history narratives show signs of frequent telling, not

just through their introductions, performance features, and mode of delivery, but

because they present characters, and construct plots, that seem designed for a

broad audience with little background knowledge about the Holocaust.

A comparison between the contexts of the 1980 and 1990 interviews sug-

gests that the latter were conducive to performative narratives. In 1982, Beer

spoke on audio tape to an archivist associated with what was then a small, in

progress, collection for what was to later become the Museum of Jewish Heritage;

in 1984, she spoke to a community member interviewing local survivors for the

National Alliance of Jewish Women (Cleveland Branch). The 1995 interviews

were supported by major institutions: in 1995a, Beers interview was sponsoredby the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; in 1995b, by the Shoah

Foundation, commonly known as the American film-maker Stephen Spielbergs

group. The broadened base of support for the collection of oral histories reflects

the familiarity of the Holocaust in American discourse by the 1990s. Yet this

larger stage upon which memory culture was situated not only created a larger

audience, but one with different degrees of familiarity with Holocaust narratives

exactly the conditions that could motivate performative narratives.




21/28

Many of the linguistic changes in the 1995 texts do suggest a shift towardperformativity. The lexical shift from flashlights to spotlights and floodlights

widens the scope of perceptual evidence for capture, thus making it more obvi-

ous to an audience that the group was unable to escape. The forms and meanings

of constructed dialogue not only tell the audience that the group was deceived,

but also explain how the group itself reached that knowledge. Re-voicing action

as knowledge (the spotlights/floodlights reappear as what the group knew),

and knowledge as action (the concrete actualization of knowledge as physical

actions of capture), helps reveal to the audience that the group has been deceived

and captured. Hence, the shift toward performative narrative is suggested by the

use of language to create a story world for those whose knowledge may be an

insufficient background for understanding what happened.

Analysis of the retelling of Beers capture story also intersects with broadersocial and historical planes of discourse through what Berel Lang (2002), a

philosopher who has written extensively on history, ethics, art, and memory,

calls certain mischievous questions about the Holocaust. What makes a

question mischievous is that:

the answers invited by them misrepresent important facets of the Holocaust. It is not

only that the questions cited are leading questions, but that the directions in which

they lead are specious, both from the standpoint of the person asking the question

and in the representation conveyed. (2002: 15)

Lang cautions that his goal is not to answer a mischievous question, but to

understand why the question is specious.

The mischief in two of Langs questions arises by bisecting the

knowledge/action interface and shifting it from linear to bidirectional time. The

two questions themselves both of which address agency return us to the topic

mentioned at the outset of this article: the portrayal of survivors in Holocaust

narratives and Discourse in general.

The first question is Why didnt they just leave? (Lang, 2002: 12). What

makes this question specious is one of its underlying assumptions: it should have

been obvious to . . . Jews that the future would be much worse than the past,

putting their lives at risk (2002: 13). The dictum that something should have been

obvious evokes Mishlers double arrow of time: the meaning of an event has been

reconstructed by what became known only after the actual event itself. Thus

reconstruction through retrospective knowledge pervades not just personal

narratives of an individuals ongoing life story. It can also invade the collective

narratives of groups of people whose death prevented them from reinterpreting

their own stories of what could (or could not) have been done to avoid their

destruction.

Also assumed in why didnt they just leave? is personal agency but only

minimally: to avoid danger, one can do little more than remove oneself from

the place of danger. A second question posed by Lang, why didnt they

resist? (2002: 37), evokes an assumption of stronger agency. Resist not only




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presupposes an offense: it also allows the possibility of defending oneself fight-ing back against danger. Lang points out that the question of resistance over-

looks the Nazi achievement of complete control, and thus, the absence of the

very conditions allowing agency (i.e. the ability to make choices). The question of

resistance also presupposes its absence among Jews only (the implicit referent of

they), not among other groups targeted and captured by the Nazis (including

some 3 million members of the Soviet armed forces (2002: 5)). Langs question

thus implies a lack of heroes: a lack of those whose stories about the danger of

death might end in triumph over an enemy. His incipient answer explains why:

In the context of the systematic brutality of the Nazi regime, resistance on all fronts,

in all circumstances including circumstances much more favorable to resistance

than those in which the Jews found themselves was far from common; it was and

would be out of the ordinary, notable just because it was exceptional. (2002: 5)

Langs comments on specious questions about leaving and resisting suggest that

survival is rarely a matter of choice or even an option (see also Hilberg, 1992:

18890; Langer, 1996). The depth of persecution and dehumanization beyond

ones expectations of normality in the Holocaust drastically limited the degree to

which individuals and groups had options and could make choices, let alone act

upon them. Ironically, the very pervasiveness of those measures reaching far

into both the minutiae of everyday life (eating, working, listening to the radio,

going to school) and into the very basis of life (the right to exist) had the effect

of providing small choices that could themselves constitute acts of agency.

Everyday acts keeping a diary, getting food, engaging in a religious practice,

staying with ones family have thus been redefined as acts of resistance

(Rohrlich, 1998) that help constitute survival.

The capture story analyzed here fits into this wider discourse of survival.

Various scholars have noted the value placed upon, and possible benefit arising

from, staying together. Striving to remain with ones family (Langer, 1991),

banding together in mutually protective units (Bartrop, 2000; Neiberger, 1988),

or keeping alive the hope that ones family will be re-united (Greenspan, 2001)

have been noted to provide, if not always physical protection, at least psychologi-

cal protection. The story that Susan Beer tells and retells about her familys

capture is just one of the many stories in her oral history in which her family

builds upon reciprocity, makes sacrifices, and remains persistent in their efforts to

stay together. Beer and her parents (together with 41 other people carefully

detailed in all four versions of earlier phases of the capture story (Schiffrin,

forthcoming)) stay together not just through their perceptual and physical

experiences, but through what they come to know and how they know it. The

group is together as lights shine into their eyes, as they are kicked into the truck,

and as they realize that they are captured. Thus, telling and retelling what we

knew not only portray a dangerous turning point in a life story: they also reveal

danger and survival as a process in which we stay together.




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A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

The Center for Advanced Holocaust Study (at the United States Holocaust Memorial

Museum, Washington, DC) and a Senior Faculty Research Fellowship (Georgetown

University) provided material and symbolic support for research leading to this work: I am

grateful to both. I also thank the Cleveland Alliance for Jewish Women, the USHMM and

the Shoah Foundation for permission to cite excerpts from the 1984 and 1995 interviews

with Susan Beer. I thank Bonnie Gurewitsch (Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York) for

permission to use material from her 1982 interview with Susan Beer.

N O T E S

1. For other perspectives on narrative, see Britton and Pellegrini (1990), Ochs and Capps

(2001), and Mishler (1995).

2. Line (5), you know like the army trucks, on two sides there were benches, is a detail

absent in subsequent versions of Beers story in which the truck appears in earlier sec-

tions of the story.

3. In the conditional, the cause/result is semantically inferable; in the temporal, it is

pragmatically inferable through a principle of informativeness.

R E F E R E N C E S

Bakhtin, M. (1981) The Dialogic Imagination, trans. M. Holquist and C. Emerson. Austin:

University of Texas Press.

Bartrop, P. (2000) Surviving the Camps: Unity in Adversity during the Holocaust . Lanham,

MD: University Press of America.

Britton, B. and Pellegrini, A. (eds) (1990) Narrative Thought and Narrative Language.

Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Bruner, J. (1986) Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress.

Cesarani, D. (1999) Introduction, in S. Spielberg and Survivors of the Shoah Visual

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A P P E N D I X 1 F OU R V ER SI ON S O F T HE C AP TU RE S TO RY

1982

(1) E1 And we came into this little park

(2) E2 and the flashlight lit into our eyes

(3) E3 and we knew thats it.

(4) E4 And they kicked us into the truck, you know like the army trucks,

(5) on two sides there were benches

(6) E5 and they took us straight to the Gestapo headquarters in Buda,

the other side of Budapest.




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1984

(a) E1 and uh we were coming to that park,

(b) and as soon as we approached that truck

(c) E2 flashlights were lit into our eyes,

(d) E3 we were kicked into the truck,

(e) E4 and we knew right away that we were. . . .

yknow it was uh- a scheme, to get us, to get the money,=

IVER: Right

(f) E5 =and they took us straight to the Gestapo Headquarters.

1995a

(1.) And uh so uh as we were getting closer to the park at night,

(2.) E1 we see spotlights, aiming at us.

(3.) E2 A

schiffrin(2003)_retelling a narrative

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