Paper Short Abstract:

This presentation focuses on the language of loss, viewed as a series of omitted spaces in language filled with something else. The research is based on accounts of surviving family members of B.M. (1940-1942), as well as on transgenerational transfer of knowledge of her destiny. Through transgenerational transfer of memory and knowledge, the story of B.M.’s life was gradually transformed from a story about loss to a “detective” story, a story complemented by historical sources.

Paper Abstract:

B.M. was born in 1940. She is listed as a victim of Jasenovac (1942), the largest concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia during the Second World War. However, her destiny is not entirely known. She was a brunette, and her “voice” is reduced to two sentences remembered by the family. This presentation focuses on the language of loss, viewed as a series of omitted spaces in language filled with something else. The research is based on accounts of surviving family members, as well as on transgenerational transfer of knowledge of her destiny. Through transgenerational transfer of memory and knowledge, the story of B.M.’s life was gradually transformed from a story about loss to a “detective” story, a story complemented by historical sources. Special attention will be given to recorded “detective” stories about her life and possible circumstances of her death, viewed as a process involving extended family members who communicate about a current problem triggered by a story of a past experience, event or narration about a past narration. “Detective” stories are viewed as a communication phenomenon growing out of the everyday struggle with the inability to fully and unambiguously comprehend the world and events, the phenomenon trying to fill in the unknown and silenced spaces of a difficult wartime experience and master the language of loss and the loss itself. They are not only the source of socialization of family values, but also the object of socialization of new family members.