An Interpretation of Sychological, Historical and Literary Versions of the Nazi Concentration Camp Experience

FAIN: FA-12038-78

Lawrence L. Langer
Simmons College (Boston, MA 02115-5820)

To evaluate the theories about survival set forth by Bruno Bettelheim, Viktor Frankl, Hannah Arendt and Terrence Des Pres and to measure them against accounts which focus or the fates of individual men and women in a situation of atrocity in order to illuminate the essential dilemma of the concentration camp experience: how to reclaim from the atmosphere of death in the camps a human face for the survivor, without ignoring the agony from which that portrait must emerge.