1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910797913003321

Autore

Chare Nicholas

Titolo

Matters of testimony : interpreting the scrolls of Auschwitz / / Nicholas Chare and Dominic Williams

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York ; ; Oxford, England : , : Berghahn Books, , 2016

©2016

ISBN

1-78238-999-7

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (264 p.)

Classificazione

NQ 2360

Disciplina

940.53/1853858

Soggetti

Sonderkommandos - Poland - Oświęcim

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) - Poland - Oświęcim

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Matters of Testimony; Imprint; Contents; Figures; 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; Bibliography; Appendices; Index

Sommario/riassunto

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.