'Nie zdołam wejść w jej buty ani los' : o biografii jako auto/biografii w twórczości drugiego pokolenia ; 'I can’t fit in her shoes or fate' : auto/biography in second-generation Holocaust literature

This paper offers a new perspective on the life narratives produced by second-generation Holocaust survivors – specifically, it proposes to consider the genre of biography to be a distinctive mode of second-generation autobiography. In its detailed analysis of Ve ra Gran. The Accused (2010; English translation 2013), a story of the Jewish-Polish star chan-teuse and Holocaust survivor Vera Gran, the essay argues that the survivor’s biography becomes Tuszyńska’s laboratory of the self: an opportunity for the member of the post-memory generation to understand her very own experience. The paper also demonstrates how auto/biography – this essentially heterogenic life narrative – may successfully address some of the key issues for both Holocaust and life-writing studies: self-/other-identification, appropriateness, victimisation, authenticity, truthfulness, and gender-related constructs.