From Victim to Witness: The Publication of
Unpublished Holocaust Survivor Memoirs

Mervin Butovsky and Kurt Jonassohn, June 2001

(Paper presented at the Fifth Biennial Conference of the International Association
of Genocide Scholars, held June 7-10, 2003 in Galway, Ireland)

The existence of unpublished Holocaust survivor memoirs came to our attention several years ago. We had been approached by survivors asking whether we might assist them in bringing their manuscripts to the attention of some agency that would provide a safe haven for their personal account of their war-time experiences. Our response to these requests was to initiate a modest program of collecting and editing the memoirs and depositing them in the Archives of Concordia University where they would be available to students or research scholars. The main impetus for the project was our conviction that each personal narrative had the status of a unique historical document and should be preserved. We decided to collect only written memoirs rather than the more usual interview format because the writing of a memoir tends to be under the control of the writer while the interview depends on the mediation of the interviewer. For a description of that stage of our project and a preliminary analysis of our findings, see 'An Exploratory Study of Unpublished Holocaust Survivor Memoirs.' (Canadian Jewish Studies, Vol. 4-5, 1996-1997, pp.147-161.)

Somewhat later we decided that depositing the memoirs in the Archives would certainly preserve the manuscripts but do little to disseminate them to an audience beyond academia. Readership was limited to those specialists pursuing archival sources. And in fact, over a period of five or six years we have never received a single request from anyone to have access to the materials at Concordia University. In the light of these findings we decided to alter the scope of our project. Fortunately, we were able obtain some funding from community and university agencies which made the change feasible.

In effect, we introduced two changes: First, we would actually publish the memoirs -- in copy print format -- and distribute about fifty copies. The author received five copies and the rest were forwarded to the major Canadian university libraries and to the major Holocaust museums and research centres including Yad V'Shem in Jerusalem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Wiener Library in Tel Aviv University, the Canadian National Library and Archive, among others. These printed versions were distributed free of charge because our funding covered the cost of production and, incidentally, this allowed us to avoid the bookkeeping complications of a commercial operation. Secondly, we posted the memoirs on the internet, and this has brought about the sharpest qualitative changes in the project; this paper will take up some of the issues that followed from this change.

To date we have published forty-odd memoirs issued in twenty-seven individual volumes -- several shorter autobiographical pieces were published as anthologies. Of the contributors, seventeen were female and twenty-four male. The majority of the authors come from Eastern European countries with a preponderance from Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary. The majority of memoirs are set in concentration camps or labour brigades, although a number recall the authors' wartime experiences in the Soviet Siberian gulags; the far east regions beyond the Urals; and even the Middle East in Palestine.

All of the manuscripts received a 'light' editing which corrected obvious errors in syntax and grammar but we did not attempt to change the prose style of the author. We did not verify dates, places, or events although it must be taken for granted that some of the information may contain inaccuracies. There are several reasons for this: many of the memoirs were written half a century after the reported events when memory had begun to fade; in other cases the author's account relied on translations from languages imperfectly understood; finally, the reader should remember that camp inmates usually had no access to clocks, calendars, or the locations of their various transports. In our view the question of factuality does not challenge the veracity of these personal accounts. While some of the particulars may be vague or dubious, the memoirs, taken as a whole, give us an undeniable sense of truth.

Motives for Writing
The contents of these narratives are closely related to their authors' motives for writing. Some of the stories were written soon after the described events occurred and these are clearly attempts to write a kind of personal history that would insist on the truth of their written version. Too often the survivors were met with incredulity when they told their stories. And when disbelief was mixed with indifference survivors recoiled in anguish and pain. This helps explain why relatively few memoirs were written in the years immediately following the end of the war. It was during this chaotic period that most survivors came to learn of the terrible fate of their loved ones, and then had to reconstruct their shattered lives, usually in foreign lands. Many found their reception in Israel, Canada, the United States, and Latin American countries less than hospitable. This sense of alienation and resentment acted as a discouraging factor to the self-conscious act of writing and, as a result, for several decades only a small number of memoirs were published.

These adverse conditions persisted for several decades until gradually they underwent changes which fostered the acceptance -- even the popularity -- of Holocaust related materials: historical and philosophic publications, films, novels, museums, and the personal testimonies of survivors. Interestingly, when we asked some authors what had motivated them to write their memoirs thirty or forty years after the event, a number of them cited the effect of the film 'Schindler's List' whose popularity signified a broad public acceptance of Holocaust settings. The fact that a mass audience existed for depictions of the Jews' fate in wartime Europe encouraged survivors to set down their experiences regardless of the time that had elapsed.

But in contrast to the positive atmosphere that inspired writers to confront their cruel pasts there was the vicious negativity of Holocaust deniers whose public pronouncements sought to erase the reality that had swallowed six million Jewish victims. For the survivors such distortions denied their very existence and had to be combated with the only weapon they had: Writing the testimony of their descent into the hellish region where their loved ones had been destroyed and from where, miraculously, they had emerged alive.

One further factor that had a widespread influence on the writers of memoirs was the different responses evoked by their children and grandchildren. According to the many studies that examined this distinction, children of survivors found it difficult to extend sympathetic attention to the psychological and emotional needs of their parents, while at the same time the parents, seeking to shield their children, were reluctant to expose them to the horrors of their wartime lives. As a consequence, in many homes the parents' ordeal remained an unspoken void. However, the relationship of grandparents and grandchildren seemed to encourage a far less troubled exchange. For the grandchildren, the grandparents represented a rich source of information about their past that could link the enquiring child to customs and traditions that their parents could not explain. Also, present-day schools, in the interest of cultural diversity and multiculturalism, frequently direct the young student to 'research' her/his past and this inevitably involves revelations of the grandparent's story. It was not surprising, therefore, to learn from a number of authors that their memoirs were inspired by, and principally written for, their grandchildren.

Contents of the Narratives
Any attempt to draw conclusions about the content of these memoirs from the small sample that we collected must proceed with caution. But with that limitation in mind, it is possible to observe common elements that link the experiential content of the autobiographies and to draw some tentative generalizations concerning the representation, in verbal terms, of existence under extreme conditions.

The content of these memoirs is affected not only by what the authors choose to record, but also (often sub-consciously) by the culture and conventions of their time. Survivors today had to have been born in the early decades of the past century and were thus products of a more traditional society than the one that prevails today. It is often difficult to remember how radically society has changed in recent years. In our libertarian age it is quite hard to think of topics or expressions that are considered beyond the pale. That was not the case in the world in which our authors grew up. As a result, they only rarely mention topics like personal hygiene, sexual behavior, bodily functions, or sewage arrangements and disposal.

A self-imposed restriction applied by many of the authors concerned their life after arrival in Canada. We had asked them to include a brief account of their post-war lives in Canada because we were interested in tracing the evolution of their adjustment to normal life. Very few responded positively to our request; most concluded their stories with their liberation from the camps or their return to their homes in search of their families. This indicated that for the survivors the most critical episode of their lives, and the sole reason for transmitting their written account, was their testimony as witnesses to the darkest chapter in Jewish history. By contrast, the record of their adjustment to mundane existence -- getting an education or profession, marriage and raising a family -- were not considered significant enough for attention.

Survival Factors
In spite of the small sample, these memoirs give dramatic evidence of the many factors that affected survival. We present some of these here without implying that this list is exhaustive.

Perhaps the most important influence on a person's fate was chance -- the effect of unexpected and unforeseeable events or conditions that facilitated survival. Time and again the authors, almost without exception, report on a chance meeting or unforeseen incident that was the turning point of their lives and to which they attribute their salvation. In the concentration camp world where force and control seemed to function absolutely, leaving little or no room for random occurrences, chance continued to operate, often making the difference between life and death.

To illustrate: In the final days of the war one of our authors found himself in a barracks full of people, most of them in the grips of typhoid. They had been abandoned, receiving no food or any other attention. Clearly they were meant to starve to death and indeed most of the inmates were already dead. Eventually a working party appeared with a truck and proceeded to toss bodies on to the truck. Our author had the luck of ending up on top of the pile of cadavers, where someone noticed that he was not yet quite dead. He was transferred to a hospital where, over a period of months, he was restored to the living.

Another prime factor affecting the probability of survival was kinship or membership in a political or social group. Those prisoners who managed to stay together with a member of their immediate family or with close friends, had a greater chance to survive. Companions offered aid in the case of illness or other disabilities and could provide protection against attacks from predatory inmates or kapos. The same applied to membership in an organized group like the Communist Party or Hashomer Hatzair, the Zionist youth movement -- groups that continued to operate within the confines of the camps, functioning as conduits for information about the outside world, and giving the inmate a sense of human attachment amidst the anomie of the concentration camp universe.

Several other factors mentioned by survivors were age and physical condition, knowledge of languages, especially German, and having a trade or profession valued by the Germans.

Readership and the Internet
When we posted the memoirs on the Internet there was a significant increase in feedback from readers. The explanation for the increase is that the Internet has become widely accessible at home by the increasing number of computer owners. They may not start out by knowing that a specific item is available, but they will encounter it while surfing the net or through links to related web sites. While we received acknowledgements of receipt from many librarians we have not received a single item of feedback from such library readers as there may have been. Neither have we received a single response by mail despite the fact that our address was provided. The web site, on the other hand, has produced a large number of responses of various kinds which will be described in what follows.

Some feedback has been verbal, mainly from people in the Montreal area. A few colleagues have told us that they use certain memoirs in the classroom where such first-hand reports of wartime experiences have a greater immediacy than the abstract summaries of text books. Others have commented on the importance that they attach to our endeavours.

Most of the feedback reached us via a surprising number of emails. To date, while we have published over forty memoirs we have received forty-nine email messages. A few of them came from students who solicited our help with their assignments. For instance, one student taking a creative writing course, sought permission from a survivor/author to revise his memoir in the format of a screen play. Others contained reactions of readers who wanted us to know how deeply they were stirred by the personal stories. However, the greatest number of emails were requests to be put in contact with one of our authors. As a matter of policy, we do not give out addresses or phone numbers. Instead we pass on the messages to the authors, making it their choice whether or not to respond.

These emails originate from all parts of the world. The most exotic one came from 'Amazonia.' Others came from unidentified places that give only the service provider's address. None of them tell us how they found our web site. We can only assume that some of them found it while searching the net, while others may have had their attention drawn to it by informed friends.

The most surprising thing about these emails was the expressed urgency on the part of the enquirers seeking to establish connections with family and friends. Clearly, these respondents had not given up that search sixty years after the events. Of course, we have no way of knowing what previous efforts had failed to produce the desired results. But based on our evidence it would seem that a great many Holocaust survivors have never been able to make peace with their loss and even at this late date continue to probe any possibility that might give them information about the fate of loved ones.

These and other requests received through the net testify to its efficacy as an instrument for the preservation of Holocaust memory. Having endured the near-death experience as victims of the Nazi's 'War Against the Jews,' survivors now insist on their role as witnesses to the crimes against humanity perpetrated against them. They have had their very existence threatened, and, in most cases, have been first-hand observers of the brutal, inhuman, murder of countless compatriots. Their over-arching imperative was summed up in the phrase, 'Never Again,' which presupposes the retention of collective memory. The variety of requests forwarded to us indicates the means employed by different individuals whose common purpose was the retrieval of some fragment of their lost past.

A summary of requests
A brief summary of some requests will serve as an appropriate conclusion to our paper. While the Holocaust encompassed millions, it is the individual voice of the survivor that still resonates with meaning and purpose. Aided by the latest of technology's inventions those voices can still convey the most urgent and deep-felt needs of humankind: to answer the inhuman with humane compassion and understanding.

1. The most frequently received requests expressed a desire to contact a person or obtain information about a place that appeared in one of the Memoirs posted on the Internet. Usually the name sought was a family member or close friend who had disappeared many years ago, and had not been heard from since the outbreak of the war. In relation to place, the request was for information about a particular village or town mentioned in a memoir by a landsman; or a particular camp was cited and the enquirer, who had been a prisoner at that camp, wanted to be put in touch with the author.

2. An individual from Paris reached us seeking contact with the author of a memoir she had read who now lived in Montreal. She was involved in a legal case over property rights and had recognized the name of the author as a family friend and thought he might be a reliable witness. We put her in touch with the author and only some months later did he call to tell us the result of his encounter with her. It appears that her aunt, a doctor living in Paris, had died leaving her estate to her sister -- the enquirer's mother. When the will was probated, they went to the government office that regulates inheritance to obtain clearance for the transfer of property. However, when the official asked whether there were any other members of the family, he was informed that she once had a brother but he had perished in a concentration camp. At this point the official stated that they would have to submit proof of the brother's death before they could proceed with the case. The family faced the dilemma that had frustrated other survivors: in the absence of any records, how could they attest legally to the death of someone killed in a death camp? This is where the man from Montreal came into the picture. Some years ago, he had visited the town in Poland from which both families originated. On that visit he had gone to the Jewish cemetery to pay his respects at his family's graves and also to pay respects to his late friend's family sites. To his surprise he discovered that on the headstone naming the parents, he found that someone had added the engraved name and year of death of his friend, who had perished in the Holocaust but was not buried beneath the headstone. As a souvenir, he took a photo of the gravestone and it proved to be the incontrovertible evidence recognized by the French officials in resolving the case.

3. One of our authors received a message from a research historian in a German town asking for her cooperation. He had read her memoir and learned that she had been a Displaced Person (DP) in that town immediately after the war in 1946-47. He asked whether she had any documents or other relevant materials that could be borrowed for purposes of his research which entailed a study of German-Jewish relations in the region with special emphasis on the post-war years. In addition, he invited her to attend the Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony this year as a guest of the town. In this case, we observe the process whereby a subjective autobiographical account is transformed into an historical document and a valid source of research.

4. An email addressed to the Memoir project reached us from Hungary. It came from an historian attached to the Hungarian Holocaust Foundation who informed us that they were involved in developing a Holocaust museum in Budapest to be opened in 2004. He was looking for materials -- document or artifacts -- that would be of interest to historians and to museum visitors. We directed him to our web site where he could have access to all of the memoirs, including several by Hungarians.

Conclusion
Holocaust survivors can never detach themselves from the view that they were innocent victims of the Nazi's genocidal plan which destroyed their families and communities, leaving them bereft and in despair. In a remarkable act of courage most survivors faced the uncertainty of their future by renewing their broken lives. They married, raised children, entered trades or professions, living lives as close to normalcy as they were able. This was their answer to those who wished to annihilate them.

Another means for resisting the genocidal program was to break the silence about their ordeal, to let the world know of their suffering, to demand that their story be heard despite the deniers' attempts to erase it from historical memory. Their resolve to write their stories was, in fact, a concrete answer to an event which had taken place sixty years ago. In a secret meeting held in Posen, Heinrich Himmler addressed the state and district leaders on the Jewish Question. He praised them for not losing their moral qualities in the face of the necessary murderous act they performed daily, he justified before them the logic of killing women and children, warning against any softening of attitude that might deter them from this sensitive task. He foretells the fate of European Jewry -- only a few would survive -- and concludes his remarks on the Jewish Question with the following admonition: 'Now you know all about it, and you will keep quiet. In the distant future, perhaps, one might consider if the German people should be told anything more about it. I believe it is better that we -- all of us -- who have taken this upon ourselves for our people and have taken the responsibility (the responsibility for the deed, not merely for the idea), should take our secret to our graves....'

Due in large measure to the writings of survivors, the world came to know what Himmler wanted to keep secret. Their revelations brought us knowledge about the Holocaust that at first challenged credulity. But they insisted on telling the truth about their lives and these narratives are their imperishable legacy.

Endnotes

This study was funded by grants from the Jewish Community Foundation of Montreal; the Chair in Canadian Jewish Studies at Concordia University; and the Ministry for Multiculturalism, Department of Canadian Heritage, Ottawa. We are grateful for their assistance.

The quotation of Himmler's speech is from The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, edited by Paul R. Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz. N.Y., 1980.

The following is a letter received from one of the survivors:
'Dear Professors M. Butovsky and K. Jonassohn,
I am so grateful for the good work you have done with my memoir that words can't express it.
After three years of trying, I resigned myself and it made me very sad that nobody cares and nobody wants to hear my story.
You can't imagine how I admire and respect you two human beings, who keep the memory alive, not turning away from the history of the greatest tragedy of the Jewish people, the Holocaust.
I also admire you for keeping your promises, not making me wait too long, because as you know a survivor can't be young and waiting is lethal for us.
This is for me like a gift from God to see my story in print.
Bless you for that!
I wish you both, from the bottom of my heart a long and healthy life and lots of happiness!
Yours sincerely,'