About the Book
This volume tells the largely unknown story of Holocaust survivors who founded Jewish historical commissions and documentation centers in Europe immediately after World War II. Amidst political turmoil and extreme privation, physically exhausted and traumatized women and men who had survived ghettos, camps, hiding, or life under false identities sought to chronicle the catastrophe. They collected thousands of Nazi documents along with more than 18,000 testimonies, some 8,000 questionnaires, and large numbers of memoirs, diaries, songs, poems, and artifacts of Jewish victims.
The activists found documenting the Holocaust to be a moral imperative after the war, the obligation of the dead to the living, and a means to understand and process their recent trauma and loss. They deemed historical documentation vital in the pursuit of postwar justice and essential in counteracting the Nazis' wartime efforts to erase the evidence of their crimes. These Jewish documentation initiatives pioneered the development of a Holocaust historiography that used both victim and perpetrator sources to describe the social, economic, and cultural aspects of the everyday life and death of European Jews under the Nazi regime, while placing the experiences of Jews at the center of the story. These groundbreaking efforts of survivors to study the Nazi regime's genocide of European Jews was ignored by subsequent generations of Holocaust scholars.
With a comparative analysis, Jockusch focuses on France, Poland, Germany, Austria, and Italy to illuminate the transnational nature of Jewish efforts to write the history of the Holocaust in its immediate aftermath. The book explores the motivations and rationales that guided survivors in chronicling the destruction they had witnessed, their research techniques, archival collections, and historical publications. As the first comprehensive study on the subject, this book serves as an important complement to the literature on survivor testimony, Holocaust memory, and the rebuilding of Jewish life in postwar Europe.
Table of Contents:
Note on Translations and Transliterations
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Early Chroniclers of the Holocaust: Jewish Historical Commissions and Documentation Centers in the Aftermath of the Second World War
1. Khurbn-Forshung: History Writing as a Jewish Response to Catastrophe
2. Writing French Judaism's "Book of Martyrdom": Holocaust Documentation in Liberated France
3. Writing Polish Jewry's "Greatest National Catastrophe": Holocaust Documentation in Communist Poland
4. Writing History on Packed Suitcases: Holocaust Documentation in the Jewish Displaced Persons Camps of Germany, Austria, and Italy
Chapter 5: Joining Forces to Comprehend the Jewish Catastrophe: The Attempt to Establish a European Community of Holocaust Researchers
Conclusion: History Writing as Reconstruction: The Beginnings of Holocaust Research from the Perspective of Its Victims
Appendix: Major Participants in the Jewish Historical Commissions and Documentation Centers
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author :
Laura Jockusch is a Martin Buber Society Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and teaches Holocaust studies at the University of Haifa.
Review :
"In this important new book, Laura Jockusch effectively puts to rest the 'myth of
silence'--the idea that Jews did not discuss the Holocaust in the war's immediate
aftermath--and sheds light on the fascinating origins of Holocaust scholarship...Jockusch's history provides a worthy memorial of its own to the survivors who made sure the memory of the Holocaust would not be lost."--German Studies Review
"[M]eticulously researched...[Jockusch] has performed a valuable service in bringing together in comparative perspective a great deal of material in a variety of languages."--Journal of Modern History
"An invaluable scholarly work for those interested in the memory reconstruction of the Holocaust. Not only has she documented and analyzed some wonderful primary sources for future researchers, she has also included phenomenal discussions on Lawrence Langer's concept of deep memory, the value of insider and outsider perspectives, the concepts of individual and collective memory, and much more. There is a great deal of information on memory reconstruction and
historical agency, as well as a superb analysis of underutilized primary sources."--Oral History Review
"This well-researched book by Laura Jockusch shows that, far from being 'silent' in the aftermath of the Holocaust, Jewish survivors organized research institutes, collected documents, gathered testimonies, and left a legacy of archival treasures of unrivaled importance. This excellent book should be read by anyone with a serious interest in Holocaust memory and historiography."--American Historical Review
"The evidential strength of sources created by victims and survivors has had an impact on scholarship to this day, and Jockusch's work significantly enhances our understanding of them. Also, the great value of Collect and Record! lies in a clear demonstration of how the early documentation projects had preceded later quests to break the public silence about the nature of Nazi persecution of European Jewry, and the role of local governments and
populations in that crime."--H-Antisemitism
"This impressive, comparative study, written in a style which is easily readable but retains a high academic level, does not spare emotions, and is a must-read for every Holocaust historian or educator. It is important for reconnecting to these long-forgotten academic roots and for bringing awareness of these archival sources to a broader public."--H-Net Reviews
"This is a historiographical study documenting the birth of a new field of study, and as such will be of interest mostly to those who pursue Holocaust topics. Well documented and written; competent index and bibliography. Recommended."--CHOICE
"Collect and Record! is one of the most original and important studies of Jewish life in the aftermath of the Nazi catastrophe to appear in recent years. This vital chapter of historiography will change the way historians understand the development and uneven reception of the early scholarship on the Holocaust. It challenges the myth that Jewish survivors of the wartime apocalypse were traumatized, paralyzed, and silent."--David Cesarani, Research
Professor in History, Royal Holloway, University of London
"This is the first rigorous study of the efforts by Holocaust survivors to document their fate in the immediate aftermath of the war. Based on extensive research, this book demonstrates that contrary to the conventional view, there was no silence after the Holocaust, but rather a refusal by the rest of the world to listen. Laura Jockusch saves these voices from oblivion and immeasurably enriches our knowledge of the Holocaust and its aftermath."--Omer Bartov,
author of Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine
"The most important success of Jockusch's study is that it paves the way for a transnational history of Holocaust memory...Jockusch shows, through her small case study of early historians, how much more there is to do."--The Times Literary Supplement
"While we have known about institutions like the Centre de documentation juive contemporaine in France and the Central Jewish Historical Commission in Poland, the responses of the many who struggled to tell their story have not been brought together before and Jockusch deserves enormous credit for recording their narratives in such rich and compelling detail. Perhaps most pioneeringly, she shows that Jews took up forms of historical writing even in the
difficult circumstances of the continent's displaced persons camps, a phenomenon never studied before."--Samuel Moyn, Columbia University, Canada Institute for the Study of Antisemitism (CISA)
