Sunday, 29 December 2013

Authority and Authenticity by Elizabeth Wein

Photo: David Ho



The gate








Bunker and crematorium

Claudia Lenz, Head of Research & Development at the European Wergeland Centre and author of The Holocaust as Active Memory (, told the seminar attendees: “Take your own personal expertise very seriously.”






Sue Bursztynski said...

You can never have the experience, but you can still - for a limited time - speak to survivors. Have you done that or were these narratives just something you researched? Soon enough, that will be the only way. Thank goodness for Spielberg's Shoah project. But for now, you can still speak to people for whom this was not history but their lives. And it's vital - even now, there are people claiming it never happened!

Petrea Burchard said...

I understand your dilemma, that perhaps you shouldn't tell it because it's not your story to tell. I wonder if you feel that way because it's within living memory and there are witnesses to speak to. Don't let that stop you, please.

I don't hear this dilemma voiced by authors who specialize in, say, the Restoration, or Aethelred, or Mary Queen of Scots. Time has tamed them, in a way.

But I suspect you're not the first to be concerned about writing about WWII and the Nazis. This is a wound I hope time won't heal.

Susan Price said...

The Story comes and you have to tell it. You may be judged to have succeeded or to have failed - either way, you have to tell it.
Good luck. It's a story that should be told.

Alex said...

David McCullough, who is one of my favorite historian/writers, once said that to write history well one needs to put themselves into the area of history they are writing about as much as possible and always write from that perspective. Going to Ravensbrück and listening to the authentic voices was exactly what he was talking about. And why Rose Under Fire is such a compelling work.
Thank you for sharing this important part of your writing process with us.

E Wein said...

Sue, no, I haven't spoken face to face with survivors for this project. I am uneasy about that, even though I honestly don't believe my fictional telling would be much different if I had conducted personal interviews. I can't imagine I would have done a more thorough job than the interviewers for Spielberg's Shoah project, or Loretta Walz in her "Women of Ravensbrück" project, both of which I’ve used. But still, this is something that I feel can be held up against me as a failure in my authenticity. As Petrea suggests, I think my unease is because World War II *is* something still within living memory.

Here’s my dilemma. While it is amazing to meet these people face to face, it also introduces another level of responsibility to the project. When you talk to someone in private about his or her personal memories, you take a difficult risk in translating those memories to fiction. A friend who was a member of the French Resistance told me things in confidence that she asked me not to make public. Another acquaintance told me personal war stories so horrific that for that person’s own protection I would not dare to share them publicly. One of the teachers I met on a recent school visit based her master’s thesis on the recorded testimony of a concentration camp survivor; when she showed her informant a draft of the thesis in which she’d used more lyrical language than she’d used in the interview, the survivor asked that she revert to the drier version. These are events as they happened—no more, no less. That works in a documentary, but it’s hard to maintain that kind of distance when you’re writing a fictional narrative from a highly personal perspective. Also, when you fictionalize real events, there's always the risk that someone will accuse you of changing her perspective or using her ideas or putting words into her mouth - even when you don't mean to, and almost more so when it's a coincidence.

Maintaining that distance is cowardice on my part—a risk I hesitate to take- and a privilege of being a novelist and not a professional historian. But I don't mean to make excuses for myself.

Ann Turnbull said...

I think you were right to maintain that distance. I feel sure that such interviews could overwhelm a novelist with responsibility and suppress their imagination. Of course we have to try hard to do our research and recreate accurately the time we are writing about, but when it comes to the crunch the only way to write fiction is to create imaginary characters, to imagine how they felt, to invent things, to create a semblance of truth. Your novel achieves these things and is a powerful testament to the courage and suffering of those women. As fiction, it brings their story to a much wider audience.

Emma Barnes said...

I'm really looking forward to reading Rose Under Fire, having just read and hugely enjoyed (if that is quite the right word, given the emotional pummeling) Code Name Verity. I can see why you need bravery to write about these areas. There is so much written about World War II and the Holocaust, that it sometimes feels to me that both the readers and the writers are increasingly attracted to the subject just because they can wallow in the horrors (the readers) and because it inevitably gives their work huge emotional power (the writers). There becomes a sort of voyeuristic feel about it. But it still needs to be written about, and it seems to me the test is if you write a good story, with integrity, and backed by research, and that is what you've clearly done. As for ownership - does anybody really "own" historical experience? And if only those who were there can write about it, what about those who don't have the craft and skills to make their story heard - their part gets forgotten.

It also seems like you have deliberately chosen aspects that are less well known - the experience of women pilots/spies, in Code Name Verity, and of woman concentration camp prisoners now - and are introducing them to a Young Adult audience: that seems a fantastic thing to do, to make a new generation aware of something they might otherwise never have known.

Petrea Burchard said...

If I were as eloquent as Emma Barnes is, I'd have said what she said.

Stroppy Author said...

Tell it because you can, and because those you might like to think can and should (because they were there) can't or don't want to. I am close to someone who suffered (not in the Holocaust but a comparable 20th century atrocity) and he won't speak of it. if the survivors won't make the record, someone else must. If we can't have the accurate historical accounts we must at least create accounts that are true in spirit if not in detail because there must be records.

E Wein said...

Stroppy Author - yes, that's true of MANY survivors. In addition, I've found that for the most part, the published Ravensbrueck survivors' stories are now out of print, or are written in a dated prose style that's difficult for today's readers, or simply not available in English. None that I know of were specifically aimed at a young audience. "True in spirit if not in detail" is exactly what I strive for.

adele said...

An outstanding and brave post!

Teresa Fannin said...

Hello, Elizabeth. After listening to your comments during the Plot and Structure Intensive in NYC and listening to your amazing, heartfelt keynote on Saturday I was heartened by the comments you have made here. While I'm not writing historical fiction, more narrative non-fiction, the ability to describe someone else's story bring a load of doubt to the forefront. Thank you for this column. It helps.