Approaching an Auschwitz Survivor

Holocaust Testimony and Its Transformations
Erscheinungsjahr 2009
ISBN: 978-0-19-538915-9
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 224 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 164 mm x 241 mm, Gewicht: 482 g

Among sources on the Holocaust, survivor testimonies are the least replaceable and most complex, reflecting both the personality of the narrator and the conditions and perceptions prevailing at the time of narration. Scholarship aims to challenge memory and fill its gaps. At the same time, scholars often use testimonies uncritically or selectively--mining them to support generalizations. This book is a departure, bringing several scholars together to analyze the testimony of one Holocaust survivor. Helen "Zippi" Spitzer Tichauer was sent to Auschwitz in 1942. One of the few early arrivals to survive the camp and the death marches, she met her future husband in a DP camp. They moved to New York in the 1960s. Since the end of the war, Zippi devoted many hours to talking with a small group of scholars about her life. Zippi's testimony covers a wide range of human experiences in extremis and spans fifty-odd years. It is thus uniquely suited to raise questions on the meaning and use of survivor testimony. What do we know, sixty years after the Nazi era, about the workings of a death camp? How willing are we to learn from the experiences of a survivor, and how much is our perception preconditioned by standardized images? What are the mechanisms, aims and pitfalls of story-telling? Can survivor testimonies be understood properly without guidance from those who experienced the events?

This book, written by established Holocaust scholars who have known Helen Tichauer for years, attempts to approximate survivor testimony and probe the limits of its representation and understanding. Contributors include Atina Grossmann (author, Jews, Germans, and Allies: Close Encounters in Occupied Germany, Princeton, 2007), Konrad Kwiet (co-ed., Contemporary Responses to the Holocaust, 2005), Wendy Lower (author, Shoah in Ukraine: History, Testimony, Memory, Indiana UP, 2007), Nehama Tec (author, Resilience and Courage: Women, Men, and the Holocaust, Yale, 2003, and Defiance: The Bielski Partisans, OUP, 1993). The book will be of interest to both Holocaust scholars and oral historians.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Matthäus, Jürgen

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Geschichtswissenschaft: Theorie und Methoden
• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Geschichte des Judentums Antisemitismus, Pogrome, Shoah
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Deutsche Geschichte Deutsche Geschichte: Holocaust

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- List of illustrations and maps

- Forword

- Introduction: What Does it Mean? Holocaust Testimony and the Story of Helen "Zippi" Tichauer

- Designing Survival: A Graphic Artist in Birkenau

- Recapturing the Past: Individuality and Cooperation in Auschwitz

- Displacing Memory: The Transformations of an Early Interview

- Living On: Remembering Feldafing

- Distant Encounter: An Auschwitz Survivor in the College Classroom

- Conclusion: What Have We Learned?

- Appendix: English translation of Helen Tichauer's interview with David Boder in the DP-Camp Feldafing, September 23, 1946

- Bibliography

- Notes on Contributors

- Index

Über Autor(innen)

Matthäus is the Director of Applied Research at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum