On the Limits of Trauma: Postmemories in the Third-Generation Holocaust Graphic Novels Flying Couch and The Property

Abstract:This article considers how Marianne Hirsch’s concept of postmemory is applicable to the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors by analyzing two graphic novels: Rutu Modan’s The Property and Amy Kurzweil’s Flying Couch. Postmemory emerged as a theory for understanding how traumatic memories become inherited by survivors’ children. Both texts show that while the children of the survivors are burdened by their parents’ memories, this is not the case for the grandchildren. Instead, it is only in the third generation that postmemories are liberated from being exclusively memories of trauma, and as a result, new approaches to the Holocaust emerge.