The Historiography of the Holocaust

496 Zoë Waxman
With the Kristallnacht pogrom conducted in Germany and Austria on 9 and 10
November 1938? With the Einsatzgruppen shootings in the summer of 1941? Or
with the mass murder of the Jews in the gas vans of Chelmno in December
1941? Or, if the Holocaust is to include both the mass murders of Jews and
non-Jews, does it begin with the euthanasia programme in 1939? 39 The Holocaust
is not a unified event, but many different events. It is impossible to conflate
different survivor stories into a universal Holocaust experience because no such
experience exists. Many survivors never experienced concentration or labour
camps but survived by hiding (some with false Aryan papers, some without),
some alone, some with family members. Also, the time spent in the ghettos
and concentration camps varies widely. Not taking into account religious,
cultural, economic and gender differences, those who survived the concentration
camps had quite different experiences, depending on the camps they were sent
to, the conditions within the camps while they were there (conditions were
subject to frequent change), the work they were assigned and the support
systems to which they had access. The dilemma is that while the survivor can
ultimately offer only a singular account, the post-war role of the survivor as
witness and concept of the Holocaust demands that they also represent the six
million 40 who did not survive. However, as Primo Levi wrote: ‘we, the survivors,
are not the true witnesses.’ 41 The survivor Henry Wermuth adds:
How could I even attempt to describe all the wretched misery, the deathcries
of millions of innocent people, the open and secret tortures, the agony
of parents seeing their babies dragged away and thrown like discarded
rubbish on to lorries, sometimes alive, sometimes killed, their limbs torn
apart or their heads smashed in? How could I, or anyone put into words the
last moments of even one family inside a gas chamber, stripped, degraded,
humiliated, embracing and looking into each other’s terrified eyes, the
strongest of them forced to see their loved ones dying slowly and in
agony.... Being in these camps does not, contrary to the assumptions of
many, imply that I knew all and everything there was to know about
them.... My overriding concern was to stay alive. 42
Although Wermuth, like Primo Levi, is aware that he is unable to bear
witness to the suffering of the six million, he nevertheless believes that the
main aim of a Holocaust witness is ‘to counter those people, who, incredible
as it sounds, are hard at work in diminishing the dimension of the
unspeakable crimes, to whittle down the figures of those killed – or to deny
the Shoah, or Hurban, altogether’. 43 His very literal translation of the role of
the witness – to counteract false belief and prove something to be true –
makes very particular demands of the survivor-writer: it demands comprehensiveness
and objectivity.