Nora Strejilevich, assistant professor of Spanish and Portuguese at San Diego State University, gave a talk last week at DU called, “The Writing of Collective Trauma: A Testimony of the Dirty War in Argentina.”

Sponsored by the English and Languages and Literatures Committee, Strejlievich’s lecture was based on her award-winning book, “One Single, Numberless Death,” the English translation of her fictional memoir, “Una sola muerte numerosa.” The memoir combines autobiography, documentary journalism, fiction and poetry recalling the 30,000 people imprisoned, abused and assassinated at the hands of military junta that held power in Argentina from 1976-1983.

The core of the book is autobiography. Strejlievich was a student living in Argentina during what she calls, “the invisible third world war. Citizens were seized, taken to concentration camps and killed.” She was kidnapped along with her brother, her brother’s girlfriend and two cousins. She was the only survivor.

“It is very hard for survivors to tell the story to the rest of society,” Strejlievich said.

Because she was kidnapped and released, she said that she believes it is her job to share her experiences so that not only the pain, but the voices of the horror could come out. Although she acknowledges that it was hard to overcome the experience, she felt her ordeal was light in comparison to others.

“Most people in the concentration camps did not survive,” Strejlievich explained.

When asked why she thought she was released from the kidnappers, she replied, “I don’t know. I wasn’t going to go ask them.” She revealed that there are some theories regarding the release of some of the prisoners in the camps.

One is that the guardians felt sympathetic to the prisoners and let them go. Another theory is that the government allowed some to live so they could share their experiences with the citizens of Argentina, breeding a fear that would paralyze their fellow Argentineans.

Strejlievich went on to say that, “the [Argentina] history of genocide breaks all the frame of reference one knows of good, evil, etc. Everybody is touched by this, touched by panic.”

She explained that approximately 40 to 50 percent of citizens of Argentina at the time assumed that there was a reason for the killings and concentration camps.

“Most just turned their heads the other way,” Strejlievich said.

In writing “Dirty War,” she tried to get the truth across. She concluded that the best way to give a testimony or tell the truth is through fiction.

“Fiction is the most honest way of discourse,” she said.