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'In recent years, historians have pioneered comparative research on the Holocaust and colonisation in Australia. This article seeks to demonstrate that a comparative reading of Stolen Generations and Holocaust memoirs can generate unique and challenging insights into the affective, material and psychological legacies of the assimilation of children across racial and ethnic divides. By placing Sarah Kofman's memoir, Rue Ordener, Rue Labat, into dialogue with versions of the Rabbit Proof Fence narrative, the article considers how the gendered trope of suffering mothers and vulnerable children has been used to mediate the trauma of childhood assimilation, and reveals aspects of this legacy that remain unspeakable in Australia.' (Author's abstract, 161)
In the recent past, collection of letters exchanged between asylum seekers held as part of the Pacific Solution and their advocates on the Australian mainland have begun to enter the archives and become available to scholarly work. This article considers the Burnside/Durham collection of letters from Nauru recently acquired as part of the Fryer collection at the University of Queensland. It uses Stanley's concept of the epistolarium to examine how the letter operates as a particularly appropriate medium for these narratives of grief and loss; how they mediate processes of testimony and witnessing; and how Durham's art work, included in the collection, speaks to the situation of the second person.
