SOURCE: “Impossible Mourning: Two Attempts to Remember Annihilation,” in Centennial Review, Vol. 35, No. 3, Fall, 1991, pp. 445–59.

In the following essay, Hatley addresses the role of memory and mourning in the novella, Badenheim 1939.

I. Badenheim 1939: Annihilated Bodies

Where are these dead? In a memorable scene from Badenheim 1939, a novel by Aharon Appelfeld, several fictive Jews gather at the home of two fictive ladies of the evening, long-time and beloved residents of a fictional European resort. The characters improvise a small party on the last night in Badenheim before their forced departure to Nazi-occupied Poland. Poised on the brink of their extermination in one of the death-camps and yet surreptitiously conspiring to remain ignorant of their fate, these fictional characters spend an evening celebrating this small bit of life they must leave behind:

Every word that was said aroused her laughter. “Why are you laughing?” asked Sally.

“For no reason. Just...