Mother and friends in a Holocaust life story

Although oral histories about the Holocaust are increasingly important sources of public commemoration. as well as data for historians, they also provide opportunities for survivors to recount life stories that describe intensely personal and painful memories. One type of memory concerns relationships with significant and familiar "others." By analyzing the linguistic construction (through variation in the use of referring terms and reported speech) of two relationships (with mother and friends) in one Holocaust survivor's life story. this article shows how survivors' life stories position "others" within both their own lives and more broadly construed matrices of cultural archetypes and historically contingent identities (victim, survivor, bystander). (Narrative, life story, oral history, identity, mother/daughter, friendship. referring terms, reported speech, Holocaust discourse, language and history).