Kaleidoscope 5.2, Joshua Lander, “Review of Landscapes”
Otto
Dov
Kulka.
Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death:
Reflections on Memory and Imagination. translated by Ralph
Mandel.
London: Allen Lane, 2013.
JOSHUA LANDER
To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’. It means
to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.
-
Walter Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’
According to Otto Dov Kulka, Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death: Reflections on
Memory and Imagination ‘reveals in itself immanent tensions: a confrontation between images of
memory and the representations of historical research.’ 1 Kulka, an 80-year-old survivor of the
Holocaust and emeritus professor of history, has never before spoken or written about his story as
a survivor of the Holocaust, despite devoting almost all of his academic life researching the
concentration camps at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
Reconstructing time, place and memory is at the heart of Kulka’s mesmeric text, which
documents his childhood memories of life in the camp and his return to Auschwitz and
Theresienstadt as an adult. He describes his narrative as a ‘private mythology […] called the
‘Metropolis of Death’, or in deceptive simplicity: ‘Childhood Landscapes of Auschwitz.’ 2 Kulka and
his family were randomly sent to a ‘family camp’ in Auschwitz, a unique site where families were
1
Otto Dov Kulka, Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death: Reflections on Memory and
Imagination, trans. Ralph Mandel (London: Allen Lane, 2013), p.xi.
2
Landscapes, p.xi.
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Kaleidoscope 5.2, Joshua Lander, “Review of Landscapes”
allowed to live together, wear their own clothes and children were taught in ‘classrooms’. Kulka’s
childhood in the ‘family camp’ gives us a unique and refreshing insight into one of the darkest
moments in history.
Upon entering Kulka’s ‘private mythology’, the reader is faced with a dizzy array of images
and text, a non-linear assemblage that jumps through time, journeying hither and thither as Kulka
attempts to encapsulate a truly ‘authentic’ articulation of his childhood. The fragmentation
heightens the sense of disjunction between the past and present; Kulka’s endeavour to reconnect
with his childhood is haunted by the immutable force of time which has ruthlessly altered the
places of his past. Kulka describes his journey with a delicate poignancy that exquisitely captures
the sombre, monumentality of his return to Auschwitz and the torrid detachment he feels from his
childhood landscape. The disjunction between the past and present is encapsulated through
Kulka’s use of images. There is a Sebald-like quality in terms of how Kulka uses photographs,
particularly when he is describing his return to the gates of Auschwitz. The images help to
underline Kulka’s betwixt state; he is physically there but psychologically absent, standing at the
gates of the present-day Auschwitz tormented by a searing sense of unfamiliarity; the Auschwitz
he knows has disintegrated, melted away into the vacuous space of time, with only scraps left to
salvage from. These crumbs of childhood memories are strangely innocent in spite of the sinister
setting, a disjunctive notion that Kulka seems deeply aware of:
But it was no longer the Metropolis of Death it had been. It was a very melancholy
landscape. A landscape fraught with desolation. But everything was there, though at a kind of
distance. At a distance of desolation, but very searing. As searing as on that day – no, it wasn’t so
innocent. It was no longer a childhood landscape, it was a landscape of – I don’t want to say this
word – but it was a graveyard landscape, the burial of Auschwitz. Auschwitz had been buried. […]
But everything was there, and I at least, was able to recognize it. 3
Strikingly, Kulka claims that the Metropolis of Death has changed from ‘innocent’ to
melancholic, a ‘graveyard landscape’ that has subdued and disfigured the Metropolis that he once
knew, a landscape that, for Kulka, existed as a site of innocence and, paradoxically, mortality. This
Holocaust belongs to the child survivor; Kulka’s strange and descriptive language creates an
unsettling image of the concentration camps as eerily innocent. Nevertheless, this innocence is
slipping away, dissolving into the abyss of time.
History is elusive; it announces itself through its absence; the past remains past, meaning
that Kulka is never able to reconnect with the family that he has lost. Thus, the text is haunted
with a tremendous sense of loss, Kulka exists as an eternal mourner, a man unable to move past
the horrors that he witnessed as a child. Nevertheless, he finds a philosophical formula that eases
his sense of displacement through Franz Kafka’s parable: ‘[b]efore the Law’ which features in his
novel The Trial, where a man attempts to pass through the Gate of the Law. He is denied access
by the guard, and just as he is about to die the gate is closed and the guard informs him that the
3
Landscapes, p.7.
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Kaleidoscope 5.2, Joshua Lander, “Review of Landscapes”
gate was only meant for him. Kulka uses the parable as a means of understanding the nature of
history and time. He writes that ‘this Auschwitz that was recorded here […] it is the only entrance
and exit – an exit, perhaps, or a closing – the only one that exists for me alone.’ 4 His referral to
Kafka clarifies his peculiarly cryptic ‘private mythology’. For Kulka, each individual has his/her own
private gateway into their past, a gateway that exists as a paradox that can and cannot be
accessed.
Landscapes of the Metropolis of Death is not just a collection of memories that have been
fused together; it is an explorative depiction of the individual’s struggle against the unstoppable
powers of time, a probe into the dialectics of history and memory, a stunning piece of literature
that offers a rich and rewarding experience.
Joshua Lander
University of Glasgow
[email protected]
Joshua Lander is researching an MLitt degree in Modernities at the University of
Glasgow.
His core research interests are centred on Jewish identity in relation to
Michel Foucault’s idea of bio-power and Judith Butler’s gender performativity. He is
interested in Marianne Hirsch’s postmemory theory in relation to Jewish identity and
how the process of passing down religious titles constructs the individual as ‘Jew’.
4
Landscapes, p.81.
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