Writing the Holocaust : identity, testimony, representation

Contrary to the view that Holocaust survivors have only recently begun to tell their stories due to a new flourishing culture of witnessing, writing on the Holocaust actually began at the time of the events and continued thereafter. Between 1945-49, 75 memoirs were published. Holocaust testimonies are as varied as the experiences of their authors. Most of the writers were eager to preserve the facts of the genocide to leave a historical document, and only rarely sought meaning in the events or, after the war, to heal themselves of the psychological trauma. However, the aims of writing may be more complex. Those who wrote diaries, notes, etc. in the Warsaw ghetto (e.g. Ringelblum, Chaim Kaplan, Mary Berg) regarded their work as a form of resistance, and one of their aims was to stress the heroism of Jewish behavior in the ghetto. For those in the camps, writing was part of their strategy of survival. After the liberation, survivors wanted to put their experiences on paper but also to explain why they survived while others died and, at the same time, to honor the dead. Focuses, also, on women's experiences in the ghettos and camps, and the special status of women's memoirs. The early published memoirs did not attract much interest. The second wave of testimonies came in the late 1960s-70s, when there was a growing interest in the topic; however, the character of their writing was different. Includes bibliographical references and index. viii, 227 pages ; 23 cm