Writing to Survive: The Testimony of the Concentration Camps

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1 University Press Scholarship Online You are looking at 1-10 of 75 items for: keywords : concentration camp Writing to Survive: The Testimony of the Concentration Camps Zoe Vania Waxman in Writing the Holocaust: Identity, Testimony, Representation Published in print: 2008 Published Online: January 2010 ISBN: eisbn: acprof:oso/ This chapter highlights how the conditions of the concentration camps largely militated against the writing of testimony. It looks at the few important exceptions, including the writings of the Sonderkommando (special detachment) prisoners forced to work in the crematoria of Auschwitz Birkenau. They consciously resisted the Nazis not only by leaving documentation of their existence, but also by bearing witness to the destruction of the European Jews. The testimonies of survivors reveal how the concentration camps disconnected prisoners from their previous identities. They also show that it was essential to regain a part of the past in order to find some meaning which would allow prisoners to carry on the struggle to survive. For many, it was the desire to bear witness that gave this meaning to their lives, and hence the post-war memoir became a vehicle for the resurrection of identity. Concentration Camps in Public Spaces in Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany acprof:oso/ This chapter discusses how concentration camps became firmly established in the public mind. As the war dragged on, the camp world invaded everyday life as never before, and confronted citizens with the cruellest sides of the dictatorship. Camp prisoners and slave workers appeared in public spaces all over Germany, from factories to city streets, and became impossible to overlook. By and large, Germans Page 1 of 5

2 regarded the prisoners in their telltale camp garb and often in wooden shoes in terms they had come to accept from pre-war propaganda. Although there are stories from survivors of the help and comfort they received, the overwhelming impression is that Germans were at best indifferent and fearful, and at worst they shared the guards' scorn, hostility, and hatred. Concentration Camps and Media Reports in Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany acprof:oso/ This chapter discusses how Nazi officials informed the public about the concentration camps, and provided rationalizations for them. Public knowledge of the concentration camps was coloured by the media. Newspapers frankly blamed the victims, even those who were killed. One sign that the German people accepted or were willing to tolerate the camps and the new police can be seen in the plebiscite and election of 1933, and the plebiscite of August The vast majority of Germans had dropped their reservations about Hitler, and it would be surprising if many at that point were outraged by the camps or the Gestapo. Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany Item type: book acprof:oso/ The Nazis never won a majority in free elections, but soon after Hitler took power most Germans turned away from democracy and backed the Nazi regime. Hitler was able to win growing support even as he established the Gestapo and the concentration camps. Yet for over fifty years historians have disputed what the German people knew about these camps and in what ways they were involved in the persecution of race enemies, slave workers, and social outsiders. This book looks at these issues. The book aims to expose once and for all the subsequent consent and active participation of large numbers of ordinary Germans in the terror. It shows that rather than hide their racist and repressive campaigns from the German people the Nazis trumpeted them in the national papers and on the streets. It reveals how they drew on popular Page 2 of 5

3 images, cherished German ideals, and long-held phobias to win converts to their cause. Writing the Holocaust: Identity, Testimony, Representation Zoë Vania Waxman Published in print: 2008 Published Online: January 2010 ISBN: eisbn: Item type: book acprof:oso/ Arguing against the prevailing view that Holocaust survivors have come forward only recently to tell their stories, Writing the Holocaust examines the full history of Holocaust testimony, from the first chroniclers confined to Nazi-enforced ghettos and concentration camps, to today's survivors writing as part of collective memory. It shows how the conditions and motivations for bearing witness changed immeasurably through time. By relating testimony to the contexts in which witnesses testified, it reveals the multiplicity of Holocaust experiences, the historically contingent nature of victims' responses, and the extent to which their identities secular or religious, male or female, East- or West-European affected not only what they observed, but also how they have written about their experiences. In particular, what survivors remember is substantially determined by the context in which they are remembering. The Prostitute and the State Victoria Harris in Selling Sex in the Reich: Prostitutes in German Society, Published in print: 2010 Published Online: May 2010 ISBN: eisbn: acprof:oso/ This chapter focuses on the interaction between prostitutes and the state agencies charged with controlling them, in particular, the development of, and rivalry between, the two major institutions dedicated to prostitution management: the police and the social workers. It asks not only how each of these agencies interacted with prostitutes, but also how they dealt with each other. How did competition for resources between these two types of bureaucrats affect prostitutes? Did prostitutes prefer one agency to the other? If so, why? How did changing theories of deviance and worth affect bureaucrats' approaches to prostitution management? Page 3 of 5

4 Coercion and Consent in Nazi Germany: Raleigh Lecture on History Richard J. Evans in Proceedings of the British Academy, Volume 151, 2006 Lectures Published in print: 2007 Published Online: January 2012 ISBN: eisbn: Publisher: British Academy DOI: /bacad/ This lecture discusses three central propositions to a new consensus that the Third Reich was a dictatorship by consent. The first proposition states that the Nazis did not seize power; rather, they won it legally and by consent. The second is that the Nazi repression, which was exercised through the Gestapo and the concentration camps, was on a small scale and did not actually affect most of the population. The third proposition discussed in this lecture is that the overwhelming popularity of the regime was demonstrated by the staggeringly successful results it achieved in national elections and plebiscites. Inverting the Innocent and the Criminal in Concentration Camps Michael Berkowitz in The Crime of My Very Existence: Nazism and the Myth of Jewish Criminality Published in print: 2007 Published Online: March 2012 ISBN: eisbn: Publisher: University of California Press DOI: / california/ This chapter examines the practices and rituals surrounding the Jews' supposed criminal behavior in the concentration camps, discussing the process of criminal photography in Auschwitz, which helped perpetrate the fraud that Auschwitz was a prison. Among themselves, the Nazis fostered the delusion that Auschwitz and other concentration camps were penal institutions for those who had committed crimes and therefore deserved punishment. The discussion suggests that this made it easier for some Germans to believe that what they were doing to the Jews was more palatable than it otherwise may have felt. The Jewish American POWs captured at the Battle of the Bulge who found themselves at the obscure Berga camp were profoundly shocked by the routine hangings, whereas most of the inmates seemed numb to the spectacle. Page 4 of 5

5 Forced Labor and Deportations Marion A. Kaplan in Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany Published in print: 1999 Published Online: ISBN: eisbn: acprof:oso/ The chapter opens with a description of life in Jewish labor camps and the experiences of Jews who were forced to work for at least ten hours daily, regardless of age or gender. These people worked under constant fear of deportation to the infamous concentration camps which were initiated in the fourth quarter of December The author cites friendship among fellow Jewish laborers and stories of people possessed of strong wills as mitigating factors for the growing despair among the Jewish population in Germany. However, many still opted for the route of suicide as a final means of defiance. The final section describes the deportations implemented by the Nazis and the propaganda they waged to disguise the activities at concentration camps like Auschwitz and Theresienstadt. These deceptions, documented in personal correspondences and memoirs, failed to prevent the truth from leaking out, even to the German populace. Buchenwald: 1937 to 1945 Michael H. Kater in Weimar: From Enlightenment to the Present Published in print: 2014 Published Online: January 2015 ISBN: eisbn: Publisher: Yale University Press DOI: /yale/ This chapter focuses on Buchenwald, one of Nazi Germany's six concentration camps during the Third Reich, and the inhumane treatment to which its prisoners were subjected between 1937 and Buchenwald was built after June 1937 on the Ettersberg, five miles north of Weimar, and became an incorporated constituency of the town on April 1, The chapter first describes the prevailing anti-semitism during the period, which affected the fates of Jews such as Rosa Schmidt, Emil Fischer, Ludwig Leopold, Jenny Fleischer-Alt, and Otto Eisenbruch; all of them were destined to die unnatural deaths. It then considers the Allied bombings of Buchenwald and air raids on Weimar during World War II, signalling the end of horrors the camp had been known for. Page 5 of 5