In Auschwitz and After, Lawrence Langer asserts that Charlotte Delbo penned her memoir not as a heroine, but instead as a victim. Langer supports this by stating that while Delbo’s language is exquisite, her memories are painful and not glorified (Delbo, ix). As an individual who survived the unthinkable, Delbo uses her writing as an outlet to understand her status as a victim and what it means. Consequently in her work, Delbo does not glorify her circumstances, writes about other victims, who are coming to terms with their trauma, and explores the possibility of living life after death in order to illustrate her victimhood. Delbo chooses not to glorify herself or thoughts but describes the reality of her circumstances at Auschwitz. Her style is described as exposing “the naked self divested of its heroic, garments, a self cold, filthy, gaunt, the victim of unbearable pain” (Delbo, xiii). In her writing, Delbo rejects the tendency to cast Holocaust survivors as heroes and chooses to show the ugliness of herself at Auschwitz. After viewing a pile of female corpses, Delbo is struck by a memory of spring. However, this memory does not district but brings her great pain. She questions, “Why did I keep …show more content…
In one section, Delbo discusses how when the French government held a commemorative ceremony for those who died in Nazi camps, her name was called. In response, she thought “one could die in Auschwitz and still be alive” (Delbo, xviii). She also wrote “I’ve come back from another world to this world . . . tell me did I really come back from the other world?” (Delbo, 224). This suggests that the person, who arrived at Auschwitz died and consequently, became a victim of the Holocaust. However, that person still lives, like Delbo, and has to come to terms with the event that killed them, or their pre-war character, while also living with the experiences of someone else, who lived in an