The Historiography of the Holocaust

Testimony and Representation 491
In contrast to the Nazi-enforced ghettos, which harboured many Jewish
diaries and other documents, very few testimonies were written in the concentration
camps, or survived them. This is due to the general lack of resources,
such as paper and writing equipment; the fear of punishment; lack of privacy
in the barracks and the German commitment to destroy evidence of their
crimes. Aside from these practical considerations, few prisoners had the mental
or physical energy to consider recording their experiences as they happened:
each prisoner’s capacities were stretched to the limit in an effort to survive. The
writings of the mostly Jewish (some were Russian prisoners-of-war) Sonderkommando
(special detachment) prisoners, forced to work in the crematoria of
Auschwitz-Birkenau, feature prominently among the rare exceptions. These
men, not holding on to even the barest hope of survival, knew that anything
they wanted to document had to be done immediately. 16 Three men – Zelman
Gradowski, Salmen Lewental and Dayan Langfus – united to record their
experiences of the ghetto, deportation, arrival at Auschwitz and their work in
the Sonderkommando. Between 1945 and 1962, fragments of notes and the six
diaries they wrote were found buried near the crematoria at Birkenau. 17 The
writings, which have become known as the ‘Auschwitz scrolls’, 18 were not only
an attempt to let the world know of their experiences, but they also serve as
a reminder of the men’s existence. However, the men wanted to leave more
than just eyewitness documents of the destruction they were forced to witness;
they too wanted to emphasize resistance, albeit a martyred one. For example,
the second manuscript of Zelman Gradowski, found among the ruins of the
ovens in the summer of 1945, recounts the murder of 5,000 Czech Jews in the
gas chambers of Birkenau in terms of a martyred resistance. Rather than focusing
on his own helplessness in the face of such destruction, he chose to focus on
the defiance of the Czech Jews – in a sense, to bear witness for them. He states:
All glanced scornfully at the line of officers, not wishing to grace them with
direct gazes. No one pleaded, no one sought mercy.... They didn’t want to
give them the pleasure of watching them beg for their lives in despair. 19
Wanting ‘to immortalize the dear, beloved names of those, for whom, at this
moment, I cannot even expend a tear’, 20 Gradowski and other members of the
Sonderkommando buried with their writings a large number of teeth – as a means
to trace the dead. 21
Salmen Lewental’s testimony was discovered in 1962, in a jar buried in the
ground near Crematorium III. 22 It was written on a few sheets of paper and
contains plans to blow up Crematorium IV, which took place on 7 October
1944; Lewental’s documentation remains the primary source of information
regarding the Sonderkommando uprising at Birkenau. 23 However, the notes do
more than plan the uprising; like Gradowski, Lewental wanted to leave behind