ABSTRACT

The diary of Calek (Calel) Perechodnik is unbearable to the liberal mind. Some critics have even characterized it as the “birth of a monster.” It tells the story of a Jewish policeman in occupied Poland during the Second World War who took part in the execution of his own wife and young daughter. In its sobriety, bitterness and irony, the diary depicts the Holocaust as an event in which the horrendous and monstrous become routine, and hence relations among people and even among family members are solely defined according to power relations and interests. In comparing diary excerpts with speech act theory and with the prose of Franz Kafka, this article examines how language divorces itself from any norms and thereby creates terror. It shows how the failure of speech has been imbued with our reception and understanding of the Holocaust, where destruction is incommensurate with revenge and redemption, and commensurate only with the gray and the banal.

摘要

卡莱克 (Calel) Perechodnik 的日记对自由主义思想来说是难以忍受的。一些评论家甚至将其描述为“怪物的诞生”。它讲述了二战期间一名犹太警察在被占领的波兰参与处决自己的妻子和年幼女儿的故事。日记以清醒、辛酸和讽刺的方式，将大屠杀描述为一场使骇人听闻的骇人听闻成为常态的事件，因此人与人之间甚至家庭成员之间的关系完全按照权力关系和利益来定义。在将日记摘录与言语行为理论和弗兰茨卡夫卡的散文进行比较时，本文考察了语言如何脱离任何规范，从而产生恐怖。它显示了我们对大屠杀的接受和理解是如何使言论失败的，