Matters of testimony
Subtitle: interpreting the scrolls of Auschwitz
Contributors: Williams, Dominic, author
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2015
Place of publication: New York; Oxford
Language: eng
Number of pages: 254
ISBN-13: 9781782389989; 9781782389996
Copyright date: 2015
Subjects: Auschwitz (Concentration camp); Sonderkommandos; Birkenau (Concentration camp); Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945); Personal narratives; Biography
Description: In 1944, members of the Sonderkommando-the "special squads," composed almost exclusively of Jewish prisoners, who ensured the smooth operation of the gas chambers and had firsthand knowledge of the extermination process- buried on the grounds of Auschwitz-Birkenau a series of remarkable eyewitness accounts of Nazi genocide. This careful and penetrating study examines anew these "Scrolls of Auschwitz," which were gradually recovered, in damaged and fragmentary form, in the years following the camp's liberation. It painstakingly reconstructs their historical context and textual content, revealing complex literary works that resist narrow moral judgment and engage difficult questions about the limits of testimony.
Notes: Includes index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: matters of testimony; title: Matters of history; title: Zalman Gradowski: literature in the death factory; title: Scattered selves: the stories of Leyb Langfus; title: Final arrangements: Zalman Lewental's histories of resistance; title: Characters and letters: Chaim Herman and Marcel Nadjary; title: The camera eye: four photographs from Birkenau; title: Conclusion: crossing the circle of flame.