Recounting Central Biographical Experiences: An Analysis of Retellings in Interviews with Second Generation German Speakers in Israel

Bearing in mind that narratives are not isolated speech events, rather practices situated in their context of production (De Fina 2000) by means of which past events are reconstructed (Gülich 2007), this chapter focuses on specific reconstructive and reconstructed narratives, that is, retellings. Drawing on selected passages from two subsequent interviews with second- generation German-speaking migrants in Israel collected within the frame of the so-called Israel Corpus project (see, e.g., Betten 2018), I analyse two retold stories of significant biographical experiences that took place during journeys to Germany. I intend to show how both retold episodes, though displaying different re-narration forms (Ferrara 1994), give voice to the negative feelings triggered by being confronted with a traumatic past not experienced first-hand. Moreover, I argue that the investigation of retellings represents a valuable opportunity to explore the recontextualization and rethematization of past memories and experiences.