Screams of Fear in Holocaust Soundscapes

Abstract Analyzing Holocaust victims’ diaries, memoirs, and interviews, this essay investigates the ways that Jews felt and exhibited fear. It specifically explores nonlinguistic screams as expressions of fear, employing methods from a variety of academic fields. Holocaust soundscapes resounded with the screams of terrified victims. For the scream-emitters, the oral outbursts were sonic signs of the fear that emanated from within their bodies. Fear was, indeed, fully embodied, flowing kinesthetically within bodies, from releasing adrenaline to falling into a state of semiconsciousness to unleashing nonlinguistic screams. Through screams, fear moved from one person to another, underscoring the social transmissibility of fear. For the auditors, the victim-earwitnesses, hearing the screams of others often activated their own sense of fear, and many joined together in episodes of collective screaming. In their narration of screaming experiences, Jews often invoked screams to signal their psychological breakdown. At the same time, screams functioned as metaphors that they employed in an effort to recount their psychic rupture at the moment of trauma. This analysis demonstrates that emotions played a determinant role in Jews’ experiences and memories of the Holocaust.