“I will not let you go unless you bless me”: Wrestling with the Angel of History in the Aftermath of Analytic Work between a German-Jewish-Descended Analyst and a German-Nazi-Descended Patient

This is how one pictures the Angel of History. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

Analytic work with Oscar was distinguished by resonances1 that I assumed were rooted in our common family experiences. We were about the same age, and we had both grown up with depressed unsuccessful fathers and frustrated mothers who lived through their children and then disappointed us/themselves/ everyone by dying young. So I was surprised when I learned that English was not his first language, that Oscar's parents had come