The Historiography of the Holocaust

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Testimony and Representation
Zoë Waxman
Holocaust representation, rather than being a recent phenomenon, has a history,
one that goes back to the events of the Holocaust. This history shows Holocaust
representation to have been both contested and to contain contradictions.
Furthermore, it can be seen that Holocaust representation is mediated by this
history – the bearing of witness is inextricably linked with its social and historical
conditions. Importantly, the post-war conception and comprehension of the
Holocaust as a historical event and the notion of collective memory play significant
roles in the construction and reconstruction of representation.
Against the prevalent idea that survivors have only recently come forward to
tell their stories out of a new, flourishing culture of witnessing (a view
espoused by Norman Finkelstein in his polemical attack on the so-called
‘Holocaust industry’), 1 witnesses were aware of the historical importance of
their experiences as they unfolded. As early as 1939, an interpretive trajectory
of events and large-scale documentary projects were being developed in the
ghettos of eastern Europe. Within a month of the German invasion of Poland,
Emanuel Ringelblum, a trained social historian and teacher, began to form the
secret, Warsaw-based Oneg Shabbat 2 archives. These archives, which represent
the most systematic attempt to record Jewish suffering during the Holocaust,
were dedicated to finding the best way to record the uprooting of communities,
and the suffering and destruction of Polish Jewry. 3 Ringelblum explains:
The war produced rapid changes in Jewish life in the towns of Poland. Each
day was different from the next. The scene changed as quickly as in
a movie.... Every month brought profound changes which fundamentally
altered Jewish life. It was therefore important to capture every event in
Jewish life in the heat of the moment, while it was still fresh and pulsating. 4
Ringelblum and the staff of Oneg Shabbat decided to collect diaries and eyewitness
accounts. 5 While the surviving documentation is treated almost reverentially – as
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