lost in translation: ida fink's eugenia

Lost in Translation: Ida Fink’s Eugenia

Yona Gilead and Leon Perlman

IntroductionLiterary memoirs are an important source in understanding the enormity of the Holocaust, of which noted memoirs include the writings of, for example, Primo Levi (1987); Aharon Appelfeld (1996); and Elie Wiesel (1986). This article presents one example of this type of literature, perceived from a female view of the period. It provides an in-depth analysis of Ida Fink’s short story Eugenia, which appeared in the collection of short stories titled Odpływający Ogród: Opowiadania zebrane [The Garden That Flew Away: Collected Stories] in 2002.1

In the first part of the article we provide a brief overview of Fink’s writing, and a succinct contextualisation of some of the problematics of translation. In the second part of the article, we provide a detailed analysis of Fink’s (2002) Polish source text of the short story Eugenia, through the integrated prisms of content and literary devices. We examine Fink’s ability to assume, simultaneously, a three-fold position of, narrator-participant, narrator-witness and, with the passage of years, narrator/writer-observer. We consider the degree to which this three-fold literary perspective, which we have labelled the tri-optic lens, is reflective of the “worlds” Fink narrates: the pre-war, the Holocaust, and the post-war, worlds. This tri-optic lens confronts the reader with the layering of reality, coupled with a fragmentary, non-chronological presentation of events that actually happened in place and time. Better than any historian, we assert that Fink captured the rupture of time, which her readership now recognises as the Holocaust.

Whilst Fink’s work was originally written in Polish, it received a wider readership through translation, which poses its own challenges. Thus, in the third part of this article, we consider two translations of Eugenia: the English translation by Francine Prose (1988), and the Hebrew translation by David Weinfeld (2003). We examine whether the original depth of Fink’s writing is reflected in these translations;

Australian Journal of Jewish Studies (2014) 28: 59-86

and attempt to discern what has – or conversely, has not - been lost in translation.

Our analysis of this short story has been undertaken with the expectation that it will provide useful information for future research on Ida Fink’s literary output, as well as the more general questions of comparative linguistics, translation and literary analysis.

Background to Fink’s WritingFink’s writing was long in the making. In an interview with Justyna Sobolewska in 2003, she described her immediate post-war efforts as follows:

...I grabbed a paper and pen and shut myself in a room. I sat there several hours. When I left, it was already dark, but my piece of paper remained empty. I had not written a word. It was then that I understood that the time was still too close, and everything I had seen was still a bit chaotic... [But] those saved from the [Holocaust] carried on an unceasing conversation about the occupation, that time was always with us. And then one day I realised that everything we had been speaking about, was in fact, writing. I was writing, only not on paper. Unexpectedly again the thought appeared: “Write! Write!” I began late, but in actual fact through those years of silence I was writing that history in a certain manner (Fink in Sobolewska 2003).2

That period of gestation and contemplation ultimately resolved itself into a series of semi-fictional portraits, with the short story Eugenia being one of Fink’s most autobiographical narrations.

Fink’s stories first began to appear in print in the 1970s. Her decision to write exclusively in Polish had meant that initially only a small audience had access to her work. Yet, with the translation of her writing into multiple languages, her audience and international recognition increased, resulting in several prestigious awards. These include the Anne Frank Prize (Amsterdam, 1985), the Yaakov Buchman Prize (Jerusalem, 1995), the Alberto Moravia Prize (Italy, 1996), the PEN Club Prize (Poland, 2003) and the Israel Prize for her service to literature (Israel, 2008).3

Culture and Identity: Problematics of TranslationTranslation enables relatively small cultural and/or linguistic groups, such as for example, the Hebrew or Polish collectives, the opportunity


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to engage in cultural self-transcendence, as well as to maintain a healthy interaction with the wider world. Translation is a sustaining agent: it allows a culture to remain healthy by reaching outside its own time and place whilst transmitting both its own oddly alien, and at the same time comfortably familiar, environs into another culture through language. Anastassiya Andrianova sums this up as follows:

Translation may provide an opportunity for a text to circulate outside its source culture and for its author to acquire global recognition, but its potential for distorting the text has perhaps always been recognised (Andrianova 2013:216).

However, translations present their own challenges. In 1813, the German scholar Freidrich Schleiermacher wrote:

…there are only two possibilities. Either the translator leaves the author in peace as much as possible and moves the reader towards him [the writer]; or he leaves the reader in peace as much as possible and moves the writer towards him [the reader] (Schleiermacher 1813/2004:49).

The first possibility is to accept the quixotic or untranslatable text in the original language and leave it intact, stretching and in some cases deforming the receiving language and culture to achieve an accommodation. The alternative is to leave the reader, in the receiving culture, undisturbed by a refashioning of the original, in order to facilitate easy textual immersion and assimilation. This applies to all texts in the “original” language: while most of the text is relatively easily transferable, there always remain qualities of language applicable to the original culture, which have no equivalent in the receiving culture. This “tug of war”, between “direct” and “oblique” procedures (Vinay and Darbelnet 1958/2004), is carried out across the continuum of translation approaches. It stretches between the two poles of all translations: on the one end is the literal rendition of the source text, and on the other end is a freer and more figurative presentation of it.

Models of translation are either an implicit identification of the requirements of one methodology and the rejection of the other, or an uneasy convergence on the ground in between. Some academics argue that the whole history of translation can be described as a culturally mediated oscillation between these two principles (for example, Damrosch 2003; France 2012; Hermans 2009; Munday


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2009; Venuti 2004). The best translations appear to satisfy both of Schleiermacher’s (1813/2004) principles. They preserve the authenticity of the original in all its quixotic difficulty, and also find ways to render that difficulty more accessible to the new language and culture. In totality, of course, the task itself is impossible; a full reconciliation can never be achieved. Only small victories, and their accumulation, allow the previously unknown to become known and assist the linguistically small culture in the unending process of reconstitution and growth.4

In recent years, translation theory has become progressively informed by scholarship from parallel disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, anthropology, feminism and post-colonialism. This expansion of the discipline into the interpretive social sciences has shown how translations are influenced by both literary and extra-literary factors, including socio-political and religious factors. As a result, the decisions made by translators are based not just upon syntactic and semantic material located in original texts, but are inclusive of all sorts of extra-literary – both conscious and unconscious – precipitators. They are further mediated by culture and self-reflective identity.

This has particular resonance to the translation of Eugenia, as well as to the translation of Ida Fink’s entire body of literary works. All Fink’s stories revolve around the Holocaust and mirror the linguistic complexity of the Galician languages of the region: Polish, Ukrainian, Yiddish, and German.5 This leaves the translator facing an array of challenges in an attempt to propel Fink’s work across the complex cultural divide from its Galician roots into the wider world. Thus, inevitably, Fink’s writing can be easily eroded in translation.

Our study of Eugenia is a textual analysis that might best be described as a hybrid of literary analysis combined with a discussion of the challenges of translation. Our three sources of data are: Firstly, Fink’s Polish source text of the short story Eugenia in the collection titled Odpływający Ogród:Opowiadania zebrane [The Garden That Flew Away: Collected Stories] 2002, which we have translated into English that is, in the words of Vinay and Darbelnet (2004:130), more “grammatically and idiomatically appropriate”. Our translation, we believe, best captures and transfers the original Galician-Polish source text.

Our second and third sources are Prose’s (1988) English translation and Weinfeld’s (2003) Hebrew translation. In our translation, we opted to provide the most direct and literal translation of the Galician-Polish source text for two reasons. Firstly, we wanted to provide an English academic readership, who do not know Polish,


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with a more linguistically and stylistically accurate representation of Fink’s Galician-Polish source text, which as discussed below, we felt had been eroded in Prose’s (1988) translation. Secondly, we felt that our translation could open the way for further scholarly studies of Fink’s writing, and its intricate multilayered style of writing. Even so, we acknowledge that our efforts have resulted in the erosion of layers of meaning, at both the metaphorical and alluded levels.

EugeniaAs Fink notates in the epigraph “sketches of a biography” (2002:193), the short story Eugenia circumscribes fragments from the life of Eugenia, Fink’s maternal aunt, from the deceptively idyllic pre-war years up until her death in the final liquidation of the unnamed ghetto.

Before the war, Eugenia lived in central Europe’s rich coal basin (Silesia), located between Poland, Germany and Czechoslovakia. She worked in a German-owned business as a secretary and translator. At the same time she was involved in what appeared to be a lengthy love affair with a German doctor. Once a year, in the summer, Eugenia would come to visit her family who lived close to the Russian border. In the winter of 1938, as her relationship collapsed, Eugenia returned briefly to her hometown and in 1939 she returned permanently. During the Soviet occupation of 1939 to 1941, classed as a refugee, Eugenia narrowly avoided deportation to the Russian interior. After the onset of the Nazi occupation in June 1941, she was interned in the, unnamed, ghetto. Then, in the ghetto, Eugenia again found love with another refugee by the name of Emanuel. They were last ”witnessed” walking along the side of the road on the day the ghetto was liquidated.

It is our contention that Eugenia reflects Fink’s aspiration to capture the anguish felt by members of her own family in the face of total annihilation. Eugenia accords with Fink’s oft-quoted intention to fictionalise versions of personal experience, distanced by only minimal rearrangements and stylisation. In her interview with Justyna Sobolewska, Fink described her technique thus:

[it is] autobiographical fiction. Everything [in it] took place, but I describe [it] in a style other than the style of autobiography. I used [in turn] the first and the third person in order to maintain a certain distance, to [ensure] the view was from the outside. I write, in the main, only about what I experienced, [and about what] I survived (Fink in Sobolewska 2003).


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As articulated above, the short story Eugenia reconstructs fragments in the life of Eugenia, Fink’s maternal aunt, from multiple points of view and time, spanning Eugenia’s years of hunger during World War I; the dissolution of her long love affair with a German doctor; her return to her home town; and her incarceration in the unnamed ghetto. It culminates in her death, which parallels the death of the ghetto. The levels of reportage in the story include Fink’s own; aunt Julia’s (Fink’s other maternal aunt); that of the Ukrainian seamstress Olga; as well as anonymous rumours.

Fink as narrator, aged between 13 in 1937 to 20 in the immediate aftermath of the war, metamorphoses into a protagonist with regard to events that transpired during the years Eugenia was effectively trapped in the unnamed town. Moreover, as the variously-aged narrator, Fink witnesses a multitude of events in Eugenia’s last years, a number of which are conveyed to her by others. Finally, Fink assumes the omniscience of an observer, a woman older and more removed from the events that occurred during the war. Thus, she makes her final transformation into the role of the narrator/writer-observer.

The first level, of the tri-optic reportage, comes from Fink herself, whom we first meet in 1937. She is the narrator-participant walking alongside Eugenia on the promenade, known as “Castle Hill”, favoured by the inhabitants of the small town:

… and only the two of us in that avenue, the most beloved promenade of the inhabitants of our small town – Eugenia and I,… only the two of us …

15 July 37 … Eugenia uttered, from out of nowhere, that strange sentence; she said, namely, that she wanted to die in a catastrophic car accident, on a beautiful, sunny day, on a winding mountain road, in a full rapture over the beauties of life and nature. A fraction of a second – a car into a precipice – and that’s that. I looked at her in astonishment …

I looked at her, surprised by her unexpected expression, that violent wish for death in a beautiful landscape - surprised and [somehow] excited. I wanted to say something, to ask [something], why and [from where] had such thoughts [derived]… (Fink: 193-194).

Fink, the narrator-participant, further refers to Eugenia’s sudden departure two days later “Two days after that afternoon-tea, Eugenia


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left unexpectedly” (Fink 196); followed by a visit some months later: “She left with the summer, and returned with the winter” (Fink 197). Moreover, the narrator’s life is further paired with Eugenia’s during the Russian occupation of 1939-1941:

Another year – and she came to us permanently. She escaped from the coal basin. The Germans were a step from us, along the river Bug, the distance between it and our narrow little Gniezno6 was not vast …

The Germans [were] a step from us, the Russians were with us …

The house shrank; two rooms were requisitioned for the Soviet officers. There were three of them: The eldest in age and rank, a lover of Bach, warned that in front of the one of middle rank one should take care, because he was a politruk7 (Fink: 199-200).

Finally, Fink’s direct participation in Eugenia’s life ends in the unnamed ghetto, in the years 1941-1942:

… but that was in the ghetto, in the last months of its existence, just before its very end.

She entered the room and stood against the door, looking at all of us, at Father (Mother was no longer alive), at Julia and Shimon, at Elizabeta and at me, and we looked at her, impishly smiling, as if she’d just pulled some prank. We stared in amazement at her transformation, because it wasn’t Eugenia standing in the doorway, it was someone else, younger by years, with her face lit-up, and – it’s hard to say otherwise – happy.

That was the day Elizabeta and I escaped from the ghetto. That day I saw Eugenia for the last time (Fink: 200).

Thereafter, Fink, the narrator-participant in Eugenia’s life in the above events, also assumes the role of both narrator and witness. Thus, through the second level of the tri-optic lens, Fink bears further witness to Eugenia’s life. This comes through rumour; through the piecing together of conversations held by Fink’s mother and her inquisitive neighbour; through direct remarks made by her aunt Julia in a post-war reverie, and by the seamstress Olga, a witness of the ghetto’s last march:


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… she was petite and fragile, it was said, as a result, of the hunger years of the First World War. From that time came also – the crooked little finger on her right hand, the fifth, the smallest, and smaller still after the operation. It hung hopelessly, playfully, always carefully manicured …

She lived far from us in the coal basin, just a step from the Germans, and we lived in the east, just a step from the Russians …

She was the secretary of a coal concern in a smoky Germanised town (Fink: 194-195).

Fink’s mantle of narrator-witness continues during the immediate aftermath of the war. First via her conversation with Aunt Julia about Eugenia’s German lover:

… about whose existence I didn’t find out until after the war, Eugenia’s German friend was surrounded by silence and secrecy ... his existence became known to me after the war. Julia told me about him. She said that he was older than Eugenia, balding, with kind face and thoughtful eyes, she recognised him from a photograph, she’d never seen him in her own eyes, not she nor any of the family (Fink: 197).

Secondly, through the testimony of the seamstress Olga:

Just after the war, the seamstress Olga came over and said that from the window of her house, which stood along the road leading to the railway station, she saw the last procession from the ghetto. Eugenia walked by the side of the road, a tall, slightly bent over man had his arm around her. They passed right beneath her window (Fink: 200).

The third level of the tri-optic lens emerges many years later, when Fink retracts into the role of the narrator/writer-observer. It is only after a considerable period of time that she records her retrospective understanding of Eugenia’s wish, back in 1937, to die on a beautiful day in a sudden car accident:

In a fraction of a second - a car into a precipice ...and today I tell myself: how clever was her wish (Fink: 194-195).


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Only now does the pathos of those words tear at me; only now do I understand (Fink: 199).

Moreover, it is only after the passing of time that Fink reflects on Eugenia’s death:

Eugenia and Emanuel perished in the time of the liquidation of the ghetto. One more week and they would be together with Julia and Shimon in the attic at the mill. Julia and Shimon were saved in a makeshift hideout. There, where Eugenia and Emanuel lived there was no makeshift hideout (Fink: 200).

Thus, Fink’s tri-optic lens and her three levels of reportage, as narrator-participant; narrator-witness; and narrator/writer-observer, bear testimony to Eugenia’s life and death.

We suggest that the motivation for this multilayered style of writing lies in an attempt to extrapolate and make sense of individual experience. As a member of the surviving remnant, Fink is afforded the capability of speaking for those who did not survive, for those whose voices were taken from them. That is her way of expressing the burden of isolation of those whom she knew best and saw gathered into collective death. As the text of Eugenia moves away from Fink’s direct participation and enters the boundaries of oral history, Fink is both inside and outside the Holocaust. As a victim herself, she has the facility of identifying with all the victims.

This chain of witnessing, scattered through the entirety of the text, illustrates the dynamic construction of Fink’s emotional expression. She is actively transfigured through multiple stages of connectivity with the reader: as participant, as witness, and as observer. The building blocks of Fink’s text show these characteristics emerge as she attempts to inject relevance into the past. Thus, in the course of establishing her own set of emotional expressions for each category of reader-connectivity, she also establishes an emotional vocabulary across this tri-optic spectrum.

As discussed above, Fink’s writing circulates and shifts in time, as her perspective alternates between participant, witness and observer. Pre-war interactions on “Castle Hill” are interwoven with wartime recollections, and post-war events. Moreover, the narrative briefly traverses past events to occurrences from Eugenia’s life during World War I. Thus, past, present, and future, co-exist. Out of her perspective


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as observer, Fink has transcribed her autobiographical fiction after the passage of a considerable number of years.

The narrative is deliberately fragmentary and non-chronological. Fink’s shifting, tri-optic positions, allow the use of retrospective reflection and foreshadowing with respect to the events in Eugenia’s life. As discussed above, Fink positions the actuality of Eugenia’s death, which closes the narrative, by foreshadowing it in the opening paragraphs, in Eugenia’s wish to die suddenly in a car accident. This, supposedly “ideal”, circumstance would have been preferable to the reality: the desertion by her long-time German lover, her internment in a ghetto, and, finally, her murder in a grey Ukrainian potato field (Fink: 195). Yet, as the events of Eugenia’s life function on several levels simultaneously, it is only at the deeper level that Fink engages in further foreshadowing by attributing to Eugenia a speculative premonition. This premonition prompts the articulated wish for a sudden death – in Eugenia’s eyes, an idyllic death. Just before Eugenia’s life began to unravel as a result of historical forces – both personally and meta-historically – she has a flash of insight into a terrifying future and recoils by uttering an almost nonsensical sentence. It is only Fink, the narrator/writer-observer, who can read it a-historically, from a distance of years. Moreover, the retrospective reflection and foreshadowing of events-to-come are also relevant to Fink’s own experience as the protagonist-narrator. Thus, she positions Eugenia’s death-wish as a premonition of her own bleak future.

Language functions on several levels in Eugenia, as within the rest of Fink’s writing. The seemingly simple surface narrative is undercut by layers of deeper significance. On the surface, Eugenia conveys fragments of the barely fictionalised history of one Polish-Jewish family during the years of the war. This “story” is easily understood by a varied readership. At the deeper level, Eugenia’s narrative is loaded with further layers of meaning, containing both intra-textual and outer-textual elements. In our discussion below, we refer to these levels, respectively, as the metaphorical second-level and the alluded third-level. Acknowledging the kinship of metaphor and allusion, we distinguish between them by ascribing the former to the second-layer of analysis and the latter to the third-layer.

According to The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, metaphor is:

The most important and widespread figure of speech, in which one thing, idea, or action is referred to by a word or expression


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normally denoting another thing, idea, or action, so as to suggest some common quality shared by the two. In metaphor, this resemblance is assumed as an imaginary identity rather than directly stated as a comparison (Baldick 2012:49)

In distinction, allusion is defined there as:

An indirect or passing reference to some event, person, place, or artistic work, the nature and relevance of which is not explained by the writer but relies on the reader’s familiarity with what is thus mentioned. The technique of allusion is an economical means of calling upon the history or the literary tradition that [both] author and reader are assumed to share (Baldick 2012:7).

Therefore, metaphors refer to knowledge that is shared outwardly by the writer and the reader; allusions, by contrast, refer to the assumption that the reader and the writer may ostensibly possess shared knowledge. Allusions are, therefore, left unexplained; they introduce elements of ambiguity, through which a reader may question intentionality and/or agree, or disagree, with the significance of a particular reference.

The intra-textual and metaphoric second-layer of Eugenia‘s narrative is most likely to be understood by discerning readers, particularly those familiar with literary imagery, and connections and disconnections in a source text. We identify three major contrasting metaphors in the text: normality versus catastrophe; summer versus winter (or warmth/heat versus cold); and sound versus silence. These are enumerated below.

The first of the major contrasting metaphorics identified is normality versus catastrophe. As discussed above, Fink opens the short story Eugenia with a long pen portrait of the promenade considered the jewel of her town. Here Eugenia and the thirteen-year old narrator trail behind the latter’s parents on a “beautiful sunny day”.

Over the alley the clouds of branches of the green trees of the castle park, under the trees’ empty benches at this moment of the hottest sun… the most beloved promenade of the inhabitants of our little town… at our feet houses and gardens, the sleepy river and grey, unmoving lake (Fink:193).

As discussed above, this idyllic moment is quickly punctured by


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Eugenia’s unexpected wish to die “on a beautiful, sunny day … in a full rapture over the beauties of life and nature” (Fink: 193). Eugenia’s wish for death in this way draws out the juxtaposition of nature’s beauty at the height of summer with the desire to die in a sudden, drastic way. This dichotomous moment is contrasted simultaneously with and against nature: Eugenia’s death wish contains Fink’s acknowledgement that they are all perched at the edge of a precipice, poised ahead of disaster. It is as yet completely unseen, but, in time, it will engulf Eugenia and the rest of the family.

While avoiding direct reference, Fink allows her textual contrast to speak of the forthcoming aridity in Eugenia’s life, and in the life of the family. She achieves this several times throughout the story by juxtaposing the lush environs of the opening paragraph with the bareness of future events. Thus, the “beautiful sunny day” (Fink: 193), is contrasted with a fleeting image of the future “potato field” in the labour camp in which the narrator will find herself:

The promenade above Castle Hill disappeared before (my) eyes for several seconds, and in its place appeared a potato field in a grey, autumn fog and the shouts of the Ukrainian guards resounded … for several seconds only … (Fink: 194-195).

Moreover, two days later, accompanying Eugenia to the train that will return her home, back to the “coal basin” region, the following is narrated:

The summer was dry and the trees lining the road were dusty.

No mountains and no twisting curves, only the flat steppe … (Fink: 196).

Whilst the earlier descriptions include “beauties of life and nature” and “winding mountain road”, the descriptions that follow are of a “dry summer”, “dusty trees”, and “flat steppe”.

Fink further enhances the textual contrast of nature by placing the post-war conversation with Aunt Julia, about Eugenia’s German lover, in a park untouched by the war:

She told me about him in a vast, beautiful park, which had been untouched by the war in the (otherwise) burnt-out (city), still until recently a German town … (Fink: 197).


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The park untouched by the war in the (otherwise) burnt out (city) was rich in lush fields, shadowy alleys; here trickled little streams gently … (Fink: 198-199).

In sum, the extracts cited in this section dealt with the juxtapositions embedded in nature, and they are used to illuminate the sense that on the periphery of the protagonists’ well ordered, peaceful lives in the summer of 1937, the forthcoming cataclysm is already approaching.

The second of the major contrasting metaphorics identified is the juxtaposition between summer and warmth on the one hand, and winter and cold on the other. In the story’s opening paragraph Fink tells us that:

At the moment of the hottest sun … everything frozen in the heat of a July afternoon (Fink :193).

This narration juxtaposes the sun’s heat with the motionless environment. Significantly, Fink opts for the word “frozen” (zastygle) to convey this layered meaning of both cold and motionlessness. More importantly, “the hottest sun” and “the heat of a July afternoon” stand in direct contrast with Eugenia’s general dislike of “winter” and her articulated dread of “frost” and “snow”:

She left with the summer, and returned with the winter. She returned with the winter although she had an almost panicky fear of the frost, and with us, a step from the Russians, the temperature in the thermometer fell low like a tear down a (one’s) neck. She did not like the snow either, which gathered together in tall mounds in front of the house. And still she returned (Fink: 197).

Moreover, such contrasts, of winter and summer, cold and warmth, also serve to emphasise the situations in which Eugenia finds herself. Thus, in the winter of 1938, during “Hitler’s fifth year in Berlin” (Fink: 197), Eugenia returns to her home town in the aftermath of her abandonment by her long-time German lover. It is “a harsh, frosty winter” (Fink: 197) both climatically, and personally, for Eugenia. In addition, and metaphorically, it can be seen to foreshadow the suffering, of both the family and the entire Jewish people, under the approaching Nazi storm.

The third of the major contrasting metaphorics identified is the dichotomous use of sound and silence. Fink contrasts these


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metaphorical extremities on multiple occasions. We have earlier discussed the opening paragraph of Eugenia, in which the title character utters her death wish in a sudden car accident. Soon after, Fink the protagonist, conveys Eugenia’s “voice” three times in quick succession, followed later by a fourth instance:

Eugenia uttered, from out of nowhere, that strange sentence … all of our conversations usually revolved around ordinary, everyday matters …

In any case there were few occasions for conversation, because she lived far from us … (Fink: 193).

Her departure was preceded by a long distance phone call… she spoke briefly, then announced that on the following day she would return home (Fink :196).

These narrations stand in stark contrast to the multiple instances in which Eugenia’s silence, the silence surrounding her, and her hypersensitivity to noise, is emphasised. Following Eugenia’s final return to her hometown in 1939, Fink as narrator-witness, emphasises that Eugenia has grown markedly quieter:

She became [extremely] quiet, she conducted long conversations with mother …

… she announced in woeful hushed tones, that Dostoyevsky was dusty, and Heine ruffled …

And when a German shout broke out of the speaker, she clasped her hands to her temples … (Fink: 199).

Moreover, Fink, as narrator-witness, is explicit in describing the silence that engulfs herself and Aunt Julia in their post-war discussion; a silence that is further embedded within the noise of the surrounding natural environment:

… the trickle of little streams. I was silent and Julia was silent. We walked amongst the trees, acorns broke with a little crackle under our feet. We were silent, each of us wrapped in our own thoughts (Fink: 198).


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Thus, the astute readers and/or those familiar with literary imagery, will immediately assimilate the contrasting metaphors of normality versus catastrophe, summer versus winter and sound versus silence. These literary devices add to the power of the story.

We believe that discerning readers will easily assimilate the literary imagery described above and absorb the metaphoric second-layer of Fink’s text. Moreover, the narrative embeds a third-layer of the substructure: the implied external allusions. This set of conveyed meanings requires specific knowledge of the Holocaust. As is apparent elsewhere in Fink’s writing, the visibility of the compacted set of Holocaust allusions may be only visible to a smaller, Holocaust-initiated audience.

As Baldick (2012) points-out, allusions and metaphors both imbed additional sub-structured meanings. The introduction of an allusive substructure does not mean that Eugenia misrepresents any of the facts of Eugenia’s or the narrator’s life, nor that it distorts the truth of the narrated descriptions. It does, however, give rise to interiority, a deeper level of meaning, which we will illustrate below.

The region of Silesia, referred to in the text as the “coal basin”, was also the site of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Nazi Germany’s largest and most notorious concentration and death camp. The very term “Auschwitz” represents, in the popular imagination, the enormity of the Holocaust. An analysis of the Polish source text identifies four passages that specifically locate Eugenia in that region. We have so far cited three references to the “coal basin” (Fink: 199, 194 and 196 respectively); the fourth reference refers to Eugenia’s long-time lover as “a certain German from the coal basin” (Fink: 197). Whilst the text only narrates that Eugenia lived in the ”coal basin”, an attuned reader, familiar with the events of the Holocaust, would recognise the association between Fink’s repetitive co-location of Eugenia in the “coal basin” and the location of Auschwitz.

Moreover, it is our contention that the association with Auschwitz-Birkenau’s notorious selection process is further strengthened by the passages that narrate Eugenia’s sudden departure in 1937 (Fink: 198); and her death in the ghetto’s final liquidation (Fink: 200):

The dorożka8 proceeds directly to the crossroads beyond the town and there where the road divided, it turns to the right, to the station.

We had another five years, Eugenia and I, five years later she was - the only one of us - to take that same road, along which


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the dorożka now trundled, only she would turn to the left, into the open fields … (Fink: 196).

The simple perusal of this passage reveals little beyond a foretelling of events that will occur in five years’ time; only the reader with a deeper level of knowledge of the Holocaust may choose to read into the substructure an allusion to Auschwitz’s selection process, in which following the arrival of a “transport”, those “selected” as strong enough for work were sent to the right into the camp itself; while all others were sent to the left, directly to the gas chambers. Within the limits of the closed narration that comprises the source text, it is our contention that this detail carries a malignance that has been written deliberately by Fink into the third-level alluded substructure, yet left open to interpretation.

A further alluded meaning is offered in the narration of the dissolution of Eugenia’s long-term relationship with the German doctor in the winter of 1938:

It was nineteen thirty-eight, Hitler’s fifth year in Berlin, and it was already known (with ugly clarity), what lay in prospect. One should acknowledge, that a German from the coal basin, a doctor by profession, about whose existence I found out only after the war – silence and secrecy surrounded Eugenia’s German friend – for several years had paid no attention to the brown time and only that sharp winter had rediscovered himself suddenly and unexpectedly. Unexpectedly for Eugenia, because he himself had certainly pondered that step earlier (Fink: 197).

In this passage further allusions are offered to the reader. The dissolution of Eugenia’s relationship occurs in “nineteen thirty-eight, Hitler’s fifth year in Berlin”. 1938 is the year of the Kristallnacht, the Nazi pogrom of 9-10 November, an important turning point in the history of the Holocaust. As well, the seemingly innocent phrase “the brown time” provides an iconographic association with the brown coloured uniforms worn by the SA (Sturmabteilung); also known in populist parlance as the “Brownshirts”.

Moreover, readers unfamiliar with post-Holocaust terminology and the potency of the terms such as “camp”, “transfer”, “train(s)”, “ghetto”, Aktion, may experience Fink’s positioning of such appellations as inherently benign.9 Yet, Fink’s use of such language suggests a knowing exchange with the reader who is attuned to locating the


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deeper level of meaning in the alluded third-level. Thus, in this literary framework these benign terms always imbed extra-textual meaning: ghetto and Aktion carry the meaning of incarceration and death; train and transport carry the meaning of displacement; and camp always imbeds the meaning of labour camp, concentration camp, and/or death camp. Hence, in this context, the significance of Aunt Julia’s comment raises many questions:

They didn’t draft him into the Wehrmacht as he was too old. But who knows? Perhaps later he was a doctor in some camp? (Fink: 198).

We are unable to provide a definite answer to the quandary pertaining to the type of “camp” to which Eugenia’s German doctor might have been assigned. Yet, it is our contention that within the context of the destruction of European Jewry during World War II, Fink deliberately embeds the above choice of words into the text: language that is loaded with sinister meanings. The utilisation of these terms is suggestive of a deeper layer of narrative: this is not just one individual story, but a narration, a testimony, which reflects countless other Holocaust “stories.”

In addition to the complex thematics analysed above, Fink employs an array of relatively more common literary devices, including irony and repetition. It would be no exaggeration to describe Fink’s use of both literary forms as masterly. For example, Fink avoids a linear description of the geographic location of the family over the period 1939 to 1941/2, when their hometown fell under Russian occupation, or the degradations that followed the subsequent German invasion. Instead she employs a series of repetitions that reflect Eugenia’s, and the rest of the family’s, impermanent and fragile existence in relation to both the Russians and the Germans:

She lived far from us in the coal basin, just a step from the Germans, and we lived in the east, just a step from the Russians (Fink: 193-194).

followed by

She returned with the winter … and with us, a step from the Russians (Fink: 197).

followed by


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The Germans are a step from us, along the river Bug (Fink: 199).

followed by

The Germans are but a step from us, the Russians are with us (Fink: 199).

Thus, the repeated emphasis of the location of the protagonists, both Eugenia and Fink herself, highlights their vulnerability, close to both the advancing Russian and German armies.

An example of Fink’s mastery in her use of irony is exemplified by the narrative’s references to both Eugenia’s German lover, and the Russian officer. The former is referred to as being good hearted: “and he, being of good heart, what became of him?” (Fink: 198). As well, he is described as having “kind face and thoughtful eyes”; a detail that is repeated twice in the narrative: First it is mentioned by Aunt Julia in a post-war reverie (Fink: 197); and second, it manifests in Fink’s own thoughts:

It was only then that it occurred to me that the one with the kind face and thoughtful eyes, he who came round only during Hitler’s fifth year, must have abandoned Eugenia that very winter when she returned to us for good (Fink: 199).

Yet, we know that this ”good hearted” doctor, in the winter of 1938, had broken off his long-term relationship with Eugenia, and returned to Germany.

Of the Russian officer we are told, that by initially saving Eugenia, he eventually condemned her to death:

The oldest and highest ranking shortly protected Eugenia against deportation to Siberia, and therefore caused, unwittingly - a sentence of death. And she thanked him, happy, for pulling her off the transport, which travelled for months, until it unloaded in the north, somewhere in the taiga (Fink: 200).10

These passages leave us, the readers, with the sharp and poignant irony of Eugenia’s fate.

Lost in TranslationTranslations from Polish into either English or Hebrew are challenging due to the differences in grammar and morphology between the three


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languages. Polish is an inflected language, meaning that the function of a noun in a sentence is carried by its case-ending and not its position in the sentence. This inflection affords significant latitude in creating long, impacted, successive clauses in a manner that English finds difficult to replicate. Hebrew, while not inflected to the degree of Polish, still supports the creation of long and complex sentences. This affords the Hebrew translator an easier transference between Polish and Hebrew, compared to that between Polish and English. There is also significant syntactical disparity between Polish, English and Hebrew. Polish makes frequent use of the passive voice through impersonal verb forms, sentences without a subject, and reflexive constructions. In Eugenia this linguistic distinction can be read as broadly existential, meaning the self becomes not the subject of the sentence, but the indirect object, or perhaps the recipient of fate. Such complexities pose significant translational challenges for even the most able translator. In addition to these linguistic issues, translators also face the difficulties posed by the cultural context relating to the events of the Holocaust within the East Galician framework.

Responding to these challenges in the Polish source text, Prose (1988) and Weinfeld (2003) opted for different translation approaches. These related, firstly, to the choice of a more literal or a more descriptive technique; and, secondly, to the issue of whether to add or, alternatively, to omit, information for the sake of producing a clearer and more readable narrative.

The first type of variation relates to the choice of literal versus descriptive translation. This includes the choice of a word, and/or a clause, from a number of possible options, depending on whether a more explanatory or a more literal translation is taken. Below we provide a number of examples:

Fink’s Polish (2002) Our translation Prose’s English (1988)

Weinfeld’s Hebrew (2003)

i tylko my dwie w tej alei, ulubionej promenadzie mieszkanców miasteczka – Eugenia i ja,..(193)

and only the two of us in that avenue, the most beloved promenade of the inhabitants of our small town- Eugenia and I…

.. The promenade itself, where the entire town liked to stroll, was also empty – except for the two of us, Eugenia and I… ….leaving only the two of us… (71)

and only the two of us in this avenue, the beloved promenade of the inhabitants of the small town - Eugenia and I….only the two of us.. (169)


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o porze goracego slonca i ... Wszystko zastygłe w upale lipcowego popołudnia. (193)

This season of the hottest sun….Everything frozen in the heat of the July sun.

… in the noonday sun…. … everything dead calm in the heat of that July afternoon. (71)

… at a time of the hottest sun … All frozen in its place in the heat of that July afternoon. (169)

obroni wkrótce Eugenię przed wywózką na Sybir i broniąc - niechący śmierci wyda. (200)

shortly protected Eugenia against deportation to Siberia, and therefore caused, unwillingly - a sentence of death.

would soon save Eugenia from being deported to Siberia, although by saving her then he was unwittingly condemning her to death later (78)

Will protect Eugenia in a short while from deportation to Siberia, protect for now, but thereafter will surrender her - unwittingly - to death (174-175)

…krok od… (195, 195, 197, respectively)

.. a step from the…

…a stone’s throw away from the… (72, 75, 77, respectively)

… a step from the… (169, 172, 174, respectively)

biada półglosem, ze Dostojewski caly zakurzony, a Heine potargany...

a kiedy z głosnika wybucha niemiecki wrzask, rece do skroni przyklada,… (199)

[she announced] in woeful hushed tones, that Dostoyevsky was dusty, and Heine ruffled…And when a German shout broke out of the speaker, she clasped her hands to her temples…

She bemoaned (very quietly) the fact that Dostoyevsky was dusty, or that Heine was dog-eared.Whenever the speaker burst into a torrent of barking German, she would put her hands to her temples… (78)

Complaining in half a voice that Dostoyevsky is dusty all over and Heine became ruffled,

And when a German shout breaks from the speaker she lays her hands on her temples…(174)

i już wiadomo bylo (z grubsza oczywiście), co się szykuje. (197)

... and it was already known (with ugly clarity), what lay in prospect.

...and we could already hear rumblings of what was to come, but only rumblings. (75)

.. and it was already known (apparent knowledge of course) what will come. (172)

As seen from these examples, in the English translation, Prose chose “to insure easy readability” (Venuti 2008:1), rather than provide a literal translation (“The promenade itself, where the entire town liked to stroll”; “the speaker burst into a torrent of barking German” ); and she opted to use English idioms (“noonday sun”; “dead calm”; “a stone’s


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throw away”; “dog eared”). As well, Prose changed the source text’s passive voice into an active voice (“we could already hear”). Whilst these translation choices have, presumably, rendered the original acceptable for publication (Venuti 2008), they have taken away some of the figurative meaning and the impact of the literary devices used in the Polish text. On the other hand, Weinfeld’s Hebrew text presents a more literal translation to Fink’s narrative, which captures much of the original stylistic particularities (“the beloved promenade of the inhabitants of the small town”; “hottest sun”; “it was already known”); thus retaining most of the imagery and style of the Polish original.

The second type of variations covers a broader category: As with the above category, this one also includes semantic and/or syntactic changes. Yet, these variations are significant due to their clarification functionality. Below are a number of examples:

Fink’s Polish (2002)

Our translation Prose’s English (1988)


…ów otoczony milczeniem i tajemincą niemiecki przyjaciel Eugenii, przez szereg lat nie zważał na nakazy brunatnego czasu… (197)

– silence and secrecy surrounded Eugenia’s German friend – for several years had paid no attention to the brown time.

The Brownshirts issued various interdictions and injunctions …..this certain German, whose friendship with Eugenia was shrouded in secrecy and silence, refused to comply. (75)

this German friend of Eugenia shrouded in silence and secrecy for years did not comply with the decrees and prohibitions of the brown time. (172)

bo mieszkała daleko, w zagłębiu węglowyn, (194)Z Zagłębia ucieckła…(197)…że ów Niemiec z węglowego zagłębia (199)

She lived far from us, in the coal basin…

She escaped from the coal basina certain German from the coal basin

Since Eugenia lived far from us in Silesia… (72)

Eugenia fled Silesia (77) …but it should be noted that a certain German, a doctor from Silesia, ... (75)

For she lived far, in a coal mine region. (169)

She escaped from the coal mine region (174)The German from the coal mine region (172)

patrząc…na Julię, Szymona, na Elżbieta i na mnie… (200)

..looking...at Julia and Shimon, at Elizabeta and at me,..

..looking...at Julia and her husband, at my sister and me,.. (79)

... looked...at Julia at Shimon, at Elizabeta and at me,.. (175)


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As can be seen, the variations in these examples also impact on the English translation. Whilst these occur only at the word level, in actual fact each change provides an explanation for the new readership. By replacing “brown time” with “Brownshirts”; “coal basin” with “Silesia”; “Shimon” with “her husband” and “Elizabeta” with “my sister”, Prose’s translation opens itself to the English speaking audience who might miss the meaning imbedded in the original Polish. Once again we note that the Hebrew translation remains much closer to the Polish text. Whilst it does vary from the Polish word ordering, it retains Fink’s terminology in full. Thus the Hebrew translation retains much of the Polish text’s literary and emotive power.

As well, this clarification category also includes additions to, or omissions from, the source text. These relate to the translator’s perception(s) that for the new readership to understand the text fully there is a need to alter it: through additions; omissions; and/or, changes to the order of clauses. Additions result from the translator’s assumptions that in order to facilitate readability and understanding of the narrative, details, which are only vaguely presented in the source text, need to be augmented. Omissions reflect the view that certain details are not linguistically transferable, or are beyond the target audiences’ understanding. Both these types of amendments might include words, sentences, and even whole paragraphs. Such variations, as well as changes to the order of clauses, highlight the fine line between translation and interference. Moreover, potentially, they erode the literary power of the source text, resulting in a more mundane factual style. Below are the most notable amendments in the translations to Eugenia:




po czym, oznajmiła, że nazajutrz wraca do domu. (196)

..then announced that on the following day she would return home.

…then announced she had to leave the following day. (74)

and then announced that on the following day she returns home. She must (171)

dla sowieckich oficerów[ ....] ostrzega, zeby przed srednim miec sie na bacznosci, bo politruk. (200)

… for the Soviet officers… warned that in front of the one of middle rank one should take care, because he was a politruk.

.. the officers …warned us to watch out from the middle one, since he was a politruk – a Party official assigned to the military. (78)

.. Soviet officers … and he warns us to be wary of the middle one, since he is a politruk. (175)


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As can be seen, the first example pertains to the Hebrew text’s addition “She must”, which adds more emotion and urgency to Eugenia’s statement that she must return home. The second example pertains to the English text’s omission of the word “sowieckich” (Soviet), and the additional explanation of the term “politruk”. We cannot provide a reason for the omission, but to point out the considerable liberty taken here by Prose. The addition, which explains that “politruk” is “a Party official”, is, we assume, for an English audience who might be unfamiliar with this term. It is worthwhile noticing that such as explanation is included in the actual English translation, rather than added as a footnote. It highlights Prose’s wish to “open” Fink’s writing to an English-reading audience.




i dopiero tej ostrej zimy opamiętał się nagle i niespowie-dziewanie. (197)

and only that sharp winterhad rediscovered himself suddenly and unexpectedly.

But that frosty winter during Hitler’s fifth year in Berlin he suddenly came around, completely, unexpectedly. (75-76)

and only in that harsh winter, the fifth of the Fuhrer’s rule in Berlin, sobered suddenly and unexpectedly. (172)

że ów Niemiec, o którego istnieniu dowiedziałam się dopiero po wojnie…Julia mówiła, że twarz dobroduszną is myślące oczy.. Mówiła mi to…(197)

…the German, about whose existence I did not find out about until after the war…Julia said, [he] had a friendly face and shining eyes. She told me about [him]…

I didn’t find out about this doctor until after the war, when Julia, my mother’s other sister, mentioned him to me. ( 75)

His existence became known to me only after the war. Julia told me about him. (172)

The third and fourth examples pertain to the most significant modifications in both translations, which are carried out for the benefit of the new readership. The clause ‘i dopiero tej ostrej zimy opamiętał się nagle i niespowiedziewanie’ (Fink: 197), which we translated as “and only that sharp winter had rediscovered himself suddenly and unexpectedly” (third example), is augmented in both translations by the following additional information: That is, “that sharp winter” (Fink: 197) was “Hitler’s fifth year in Berlin” (Prose: 75-76); and “the fifth of the Fuhrer’s rule in Berlin” (Weinfeld: 172). Thus, both


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Prose and Weinfeld further emphasise the juxtaposition between that particular winter’s severe weather and the historical fact that it was “Hitler’s”/“the Fuhrer’s” fifth year in power. Finally, in regards to the fourth example (Fink: 197, cited partially in the above table; and in full earlier in the article) both translations change the source text’s order of clauses. As well, the translation adds the detail that it was Julia “my mother’s other sister” (Prose: 75), who provided the information about Eugenia’s German lover.

These changes - and/or additions and/or omissions of more specific information and background - serve to clarify the original narrative to the new readership. Yet, at the same time, they erode some of its literary and emotive power.

ConclusionsThis article has presented an in-depth analysis of Ida Fink’s short story Eugenia, highlighting Fink’s ability to assume, simultaneously, the position of narrator-participant, narrator-witness, and narrator/writer-observer. This style of writing afforded Fink a multilayered perspective of victim and observer, providing the impression of being simultaneously inside and outside the experience of the Holocaust. In this way, she was able to capture the pre-war, Holocaust, and post-war realities of those who survived, as well as providing a voice for those who perished.

Following our discussion of the key literary devices employed in Eugenia, particularly in the use of metaphors and allusion, this article critiques Prose’s English translation and Weinfeld’s Hebrew translation. These translations demonstrate the limits imposed by the challenges of cultural transmission, enforced by the destruction during the Holocaust, of the interwar years of the Polish-Jewish East Galician world. Only a few survivors, such as Fink herself, retain remnants of this culture and it is clear that it cannot be conveyed easily in translation. Many readers of English (and, to a degree, of Hebrew as well) are unlikely to locate what has become, in effect, a cultural anachronism.

The study of Fink’s Eugenia immerses the reader, and the scholar, in a re-consideration of Schleiermacher’s definition of the polarity of translation. This schism – between authenticity and free association – is demonstrated by the degree to which the buried allusions, metaphorical subtexts and interiority of Fink’s narrative lose their meaning the further one moves from a literal translation. Prose’s English translation is evocative of this paradigm. The grammatical imperatives of English,


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together with Prose’s decision to provide additional “clarification”, tend to diminish the meaning of Eugenia’s loaded Polish text. This erosion of meaning has been amplified the further one deconstructs the circuitous and convoluted Polish sentences that constitute Fink’s literary style. Whilst capturing the essence of the narrative, including the tri-optic lens, time, and elements of language, the English translation loses much of the alluded third-layer in the Polish original. Thus, for an English speaking audience, for whom the particularity of “language” specifically associated with the Holocaust has less resonance, aspects of the embedded meaning are lost.

The Hebrew translation, undertaken by David Weinfeld, conveys a more literal rendition of the original. Weinfeld appears to have benefitted from his long personal friendship with Fink and he manages to preserve more successfully the texture, musicality and specificity of Fink’s original Galician-Polish writing-style. This results from a number of factors: Firstly, Polish and Hebrew are syntactically closer to each other than are Polish and English. Linguistic commonality between Polish and Hebrew pertains especially to long, complex, and unbroken Polish sentences, inflected language, and the use of the passive voice. Thus, Fink’s particular writing-style, sits more comfortably with the Hebrew reader. Secondly, a Hebrew-reading audience is culturally positioned, with respect to the Holocaust, to be more receptive to the nuances in Fink’s writing. As we have explored in our analysis, this sensitivity extends to “reading” on multiple levels. It is our view, therefore, that it is within the Hebrew translation that we see an “easy” convergence between the two poles of translation, as opposed to the traditional historical view that this relationship is always “uneasy.”

The current absence of academic scholarship on Fink is a serious deficiency in literary studies, comparative literary studies, and translation. Through our analysis of the short story Eugenia, we have attempted to provide a model, which can serve as a basis for further academic study of the totality of Fink’s writing, in its Polish original and English and Hebrew translations. The complexity of the interiority of Fink’s narratives has yet to be fully explored in a manner more expansive than this journal article.

Acknowledgements Our thanks go to Professor Suzanne Rutland for all her helpful

comments. We also appreciate the insights and suggestions made by the two anonymous reviewers, which have helped in shaping the final version of this article.


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Endnotes1. The first publication of Eugenia appeared in Hebrew (translated by

David Weinfeld) in 1974 in the collection Pesek Zman: Sippurim. Ramat Gan: Hotsa’at Masada. The first Polish publication of Eugenia came out in 1980, in the collection Skrawek Czasu. London: Aneks.

2. All translations from the Polish into English in this article are ours, except, where Prose 1988 is noted.

3. In awarding the prize the jury noted: “Fink is above all a great artist of the short story, from a narrow elite of writers to work in this field in the second half of the twentieth century. Her stories, which excel in great restraint, frugal means of expression and precision of language, return again and again to the same period and describe impossible situations that were created by historical atrocity.”

4. Any number of examples could be relevant here. The popularity of the work of Amos Oz assures his Hebrew texts are almost automatically translated into English (today’s language of the “wider world.”) One particularly noteworthy and recent example is the translation by Jessica Cohen of David Grossman’s extremely difficult Hebrew text, To the End of the Land.

5. See the statistics on language use in Joseph Marcus (1983: 224-234). The use of Polish as the vernacular for Polish Jews in Galicia (and particularly Eastern Galicia) was the highest in the country between the wars. Polish was also the conduit to Zionism and Galicia was the bastion of Polish Zionism between the wars. Yiddish remained the mainstay of the strictly Orthodox and Hasidic communities. German had the qualities of Proust’s Madeleine: it recalled (and was maintained) as a remembrance of all the good things that passed with the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It should be noted that the Progressive (Reform) movement existed in Lwów (and elsewhere in the province) as early as 1840 and became the dominant affiliation amongst the culturally or linguistically acculturated class by 1939. These issues are complex and not explored here.

6. Name of the local river.7. Russian word, literally translated as political leader, which refers

to a political Officer in the Red Army.8. Polish word, a type of buggy.9. See Peter Arnds’ discussion of the near impossibility of

translating some of the specific language of the Holocaust, thus,


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“in the context of the Holocaust some material completely defies translation into another language” (2012:169).

10. The taiga is the subarctic areas of the Northern Hemisphere; a synonym for Siberia in this context.

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lost in translation: ida fink's eugenia

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