Q&A: Gila Safran Naveh Explains Her Latest Work

Gila Safran Naveh, professor of Judaic studies and comparative literature, recently published chapters in Cultural Shaping of Violence and Jewish and American Holocaust Literature. Here she reflects on the theme of violence and its origins in her work.

Q: “Violence as Cultural: Re-educating Political Prisoners in Romania” says what about human beings?

A: Violence is pervasive in human society; it can thrive in any setting and continues to reverberate as the drumbeat of our era. Aggression is a recurring theme in my courses and in my book on women in the Holocaust. In this chapter, I offer insights into the complex dynamics of torture and show how under duress, violence can be reinterpreted and accepted by victims as a form of “education.” I use accounts from former political prisoners who were subjected to systematic physical and psychological torture aimed at transforming them into torturers utterly devoted to causes they previously hated.

Q: How did you gain access to all this?

A: I cannot disclose how because even though Ceauscu, the Romanian Communist dictator, was captured and executed, most of the Communist political apparatus is still intact, and I do not wish to hurt anyone. Let me just say that the connection is not only scholarly. It is personal as well. I am a member of the American Romanian Academy, but I also have members of my family who were sent to forced labor by the “Iron Guard” in Nazified Romania or to the death camps from Transylvania. Later during the Communist regime, my uncle was arrested repeatedly and beaten.

Q: Your other book chapter, “‘A Speck of Dust Blown by the Wind across Land and Desert’: Images of the Holocaust in Film and Fiction,” also deals with violence.

A: Yes. Here I ask how we can make the Holocaust real to us despite its “lack of presence.” In dealing with unprecedented state-sponsored murder, we feel we must speak up. On the other hand, we lack language to describe such defacement of humanity. The examples I chose from are pivotal Holocaust films and fiction, which successfully create what Cynthia Ozick, a major American Jewish writer, has termed “a mind engraved with the Holocaust.”

Q: Is there a reason you concentrate so much on the theme of violence?

A: I am the daughter of Holocaust survivors and the niece and granddaughter of those who perished. Since childhood I was told about unspeakable violence against innocent people, and I have made it my responsibility to bear witness so that such atrocities won’t happen again anywhere.

Q: You’ve had success in both writing and teaching. Your book Parables from the Bible to Kafka was nominated for the National Book Award in the scholarly division, and you received the university’s A.B. (Dolly) Cohen Excellence in University Teaching Award. Are their differences between teaching and scholarly writing/research?

A: In my mind, teaching and research are points on a continuum. Teaching informs my scholarship, and I share my writing with my students. These are two huge passions in my life. I must say though that from my students I have increased in wisdom.