Witnessing the Holocaust

Witnessing the Holocaust presents the autobiographical writings, including diaries and autobiographical fiction, of six Holocaust survivors who lived through and chronicled the Nazi genocide. Drawing extensively on the works of Victor Klemperer, Ruth Kluger, Michal Glowinski, Primo Levi, Imre Kertész and Béla Zsolt, this books conveys, with vivid detail, the persecution of the Jews from the beginning of the Third Reich until its very end. It gives us a sense both of what the Holocaust meant to the wider community swept up in the horrors and what it was like for the individual to weather one of the most shocking events in history. Survivors and witnesses disappear, and history, not memory, becomes the instrument for recalling the past. Judith M. Hughes secures a place for narratives by those who experienced the Holocaust in person. This compelling text is a vital read for all students of the Holocaust and Holocaust memory.