The Great Leap Backward: Forgetting and Representing the Mao Year ...

Lillian M. Li has noted that the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution, “were the formative experiences of the older generation of Chinese—just as the Depression was for a generation of Americans, and the Holocaust for Jews.”¹⁰ Li’s comparison illustrates the importance of a broader context and transnational work for study of Maoist atrocities. For more than four decades, scholars of Holocaust studies have developed sophisticated methodologies and nuanced theorizations that can provide insightful analytical schemes and theoretical vocabulary for scholars in the China field, not simply because of the broad similarities between the atrocities committed against the Jewish and Chinese populations, but more importantly because of the circumstantial differences between them. By delineating the similarities and differences between the Jewish and Chinese cases, we can arrive at a better comprehension of how we may develop the field of Chinese testimonial studies and beyond. My aim is to establish an interpretive framework inspired by theories and methodologies of the Holocaust studies to read the Chinese people’s collective traumatic memories as testimonies for the millions who perished during the Mao years, as well as for those who continue to be haunted by this terrible time in China’s history. The novelist Ba Jin 巴金 asks: “Must we force ourselves to forget the anguish and the wounds of the past so that we can look to the future and move forward? And by forgetting these wounds let them fester in our souls?”¹¹ This study strives to bring us some answers.

It has taken several decades for the Holocaust to be recognized as one of the greatest human tragedies. The atrocities of the Holocaust were not fully recognized until a field of research was established to examine the systematic extermination of six million Jews prior to and during World War II. Holocaust scholars agree that the Holocaust was not perceived initially to be significant.¹² In the 1940s and 1950s, there was hardly any public discussion about the Final Solution. The “eventing” of the Holocaust was clearly based on retrospection and is itself a social construct.¹³ As David B. MacDonald describes: