Women's memories of the Shoah in Belgium: "Ciel avec trou noir" [Sky with a black hole], Caroline Alexander’s testimony

Abstract

In her essay La Shoah de Monsieur Durand (2015) [Monsieur Durand’s Shoah], the Belgian writer Nathalie Skowronek reflects, from her personal experience, on the way the memories of the Shoah changed with time and on the question of transmission of this painful legacy. Her analysis is confirmed when one reads Caroline Alexander’s Ciel avec trou noir (2014), an autobiographical narrative which is as moving as captivating. Alexander, who is now a cultural journalist, was one of the ‘hidden children' during WWII in Belgium. In her narrative, she shows, on the one hand, the positive collaboration between the second and third generations, and on the other hand, the baneful indifference, and even the crass ignorance of the following, 4th, generation.

Keywords

• caroline alexander
• shoah
• auschwitz
• belgique
• mémoire
• resilience