Text as Resistance in Holocaust Literature: Struggles for Personhood in Wiesel, Levi, and Delbo

Three core Holocaust surivors-turned-writers, Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, and Charlotte Delbo, each discuss very different Holocaust experiences. Writing from contrasting linguistic, economic, cultural, and religious perspectives, these authors each contribute a jarring reflection on the ways in which enduring the Holocaust rewrote their scripts of self-awareness and identity. This work explores the ways in which each of these three authors documents the dehumanizing influence of the concentration camp experience, while turning the very act of writing into a bold defiance of that past dehumanization.