Matters of Testimony : Interpreting the Scrolls of Auschwitz （Library Binding）

Chare, Nicholas/ Williams, Dominic

Berghahn Books（2015/12発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 264 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9781782389989
• DDC分類 940.531844

Full 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.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction: Matters of Testimony

Chapter 1. Matters of History

Chapter 2. Zalman Gradowski: Literature in the Death Factory

Chapter 3. Scattered Selves: The Stories of Leyb Langfus

Chapter 4. Final Arrangements: Zalman Lewental's Histories of Resistance

Chapter 5. Characters and Letters: Chaim Herman and Marcel Nadjary

Chapter 6. The Camera Eye: Four Photographs from Birkenau

Conclusion: Crossing the Circle of Flame

Appendix

Index