A symphony of unique voices: the literary testimony of Jewish women writers in post-World War II Yugoslavia

Abstract

The first part of this article endeavours to give an idea about the scope and impact of dealing with Jews and Jewish issues in the literature of the former Yugoslavia, so as to provide a frame of reference for presenting in the second part the literary testimonies of several less-known Yugoslav Jewish women writers. In the second part, the writings of thirteen Jewish women writers will be presented. Their writings represent personal testimonies of literary heroines while revealing some of the writers’ literary strategies to preserve past-time memories, which in many ways characterize the specific feminine experience of a Yugoslav Jewish woman in the postwar period.

Prvi deo ovog članka nastoji da predstavi obim i uticaj bavljenja Jevrejima i jevrejskim pitanjima u književnosti bivše Jugoslavije, kako bi u drugom delu pružio referentni okvir za predstavljanje književnih svedočanstava nekoliko manje poznatih jugoslovenskih jevrejskih književnica. U drugom delu biće predstavljena dela trinaest jevrejskih književnica. Njihovi tekstovi predstavljaju lična svedočanstva književnih heroina i otkrivaju neke od književnih strategija spisateljica za očuvanje sećanja na prošlost, koja na mnogo načina karakterišu specifično žensko iskustvo jugoslovenske Jevrejke u posleratnom periodu.