How can we know the Holocaust without recourse to metaphor, asks James E. Young , how
to write about it , talk about it, or even narrate its history without figurative language.

'Rather than looking at the Holocaust outside of metaphor, I would suggest that we find it in a
metaphor, in the countless ways it has been figured, coloured, distorted, and ultimately cast
as figure for other events- all for the ways that each figure brings further understanding to
both the events and to ourselves in light of events'.

James E. Young, Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust Narrative and Consequences of Interpretation
Indiana 1990 p89