Memory and Testimony: the Fragility of the Narrative in O que os cegos estão sonhando?, by Noemi Jaffe

Abstract

Since World War II, much has been written about the Shoah, crime against humanity perpetrated by the nazis. Even if the word “much” suggests quantity, the experience lived collectively during the war is a handful of individual experiences that, inciting several stories, will never tire. The book O que os cegos estão sonhando?, with the Diary of Lili Jaffe (1944-1945) and the final text of Leda Cartum, written and organized by Noemi Jaffe, extrapolates the limits of classification. The traumatizing reminiscences of the Auschwitz survivor, of life after war, the rebuilding and the hope, surpasses the book. A testimony that retreats to the past to afirm life in the present of three generations of women. This article intends to analyze the book, in particular, the report of Noemi Jaffe, tracing observations about the models of narrative composition, of the multiplicity e and the fragmentation, reflecting on the Shoah, a complex subject that is indispensable to the literary studies of contemporaneity.