Sarah Kofman and the Time Bomb of Memory

Abstract

As a young Jewish girl in occupied France, Kofman remained hidden during much of the war and thereby escaped deportation. Her memoir Rue Ordener, rue Labat describes what happened to her, and its publication was followed shortly afterwards by her suicide. Her memoir raises questions which are key to this study about repressed memory, the interpretation of the unsaid, and the continuing devastating consequences of trauma, spoken or unspoken.