Bridget McGing, Wiener Library

The Wiener Library hosted the latest international workshop in the framework of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure in London from 30 April to 2 May 2012.

Written and oral testimonies of Holocaust survivors, along with personal documentation such as letters and diaries, can provide information and details otherwise unavailable in the numerous official sources concerning the persecution and murder of the Jews. Consequently, the use of these sources has both practical and ethical imperatives – testimony can add telling details, and it can also allow the individual characters of the victims to emerge. However, the vast quantity of survivor testimonies now available has been collected at different times, and often in very different contexts. This can make the use of testimony as historical evidence challenging and, at times, problematic.

The workshop aimed to explore some of the core issues that exist around collecting, accessing and using Holocaust testimonies by reviewing some of the many testimony collections and works undertaken in the past 65 years and reflecting on the content, structure and form of survivor testimonies. In addition, through a combination of lead papers and roundtable discussions, we explored the future priorities facing this area of Holocaust research and archiving.

The workshop opened with a session of audio-visual testimonies and the challenges facing the collection and accessibility of this form of testimony. Discussion in this session highlighted the large number of audio-visual testimony projects on many different scales that are still actively collecting, as well as the problems being faced in making this growing resource accessible to the public. Problems surrounding editing and translation were raised, as well as an examination of the crucial but often overlooked role of the interviewer.

The second day of the workshop opened with a session on the Timing of Testimony, examining notable collections of early and late testimonies currently available and comparing contemporary and retrospective accounts. This session served to highlight some of the inherent problems with using testimony – research that had compared contemporary and retrospective accounts emphasising the inconsistencies and disparities of individual testimony. However, discussion in the session also highlighted the importance of combining testimony with other historical sources and the possibility of building these inconsistencies and variations into the over-arching psychological narrative of the witness. The afternoon’s session on ‘Testimony as Evidence; Evidence as Testimony’ looked at the creation of bodies of evidence though war crimes trials as well as the issue of testimony being undermined in the court room. Again the range of papers, covering research into different trials at different times, looked at the different legal and historical perspectives.

The third day of the workshop covered two topics which can lead to particular problems with the use of testimony – the issues of translation and of false testimony. Discussions around translation tackled the apparently insurmountable problem of making Holocaust testimony available in different languages and the subtle linguistic differences that make this process such a challenge. Discussion ranged from the minutiae of individual words having different meanings, through to the capturing of tone and bias, as well as branching out to the ‘translation’ of deaf Holocaust testimonies – a very new and interesting area of research. As one of the core issues facing the EHRI project, the different approaches to translation were particularly interesting. The papers on ‘False Testimony’ naturally drew on similar themes to the translation session in examining and evaluating meanings. The session highlighted a troubling aspect of Holocaust historiography but also underlined the quality of much of the current research taking place which has exposed falsifications and so serves to protect authentic memory.

We were delighted to welcome over 20 speakers to participate in the workshop from across Europe, USA and Israel and from a wide range of different backgrounds including researchers, scholars and experts from academic and collection-holding institutions. The workshop also proved immensely popular, with each session fully booked and in most cases oversubscribed. The sessions attracted a diverse audience including representatives from academic institutions, heritage organisations and Holocaust education organisations, scholars and students, private experts and those with a personal connection or interest in the subject matter.

Drawing together researchers from different disciplines and backgrounds along with a varied audience allowed for stimulating and wide-ranging discussions in all sessions, and served to promote networking and participation, enabling those from outside the traditional Holocaust research field to interact with existing experts. Presentations and associated discussions were able fully to interrogate the core issues inherent in Holocaust testimony, exploring specific research challenges faced by scholars in the context of the challenges faced by those responsible for collecting and securing testimony collections.

Overall, the workshop served to highlight the importance of the EHRI project. Working with testimonies can provide hugely valuable insights into the Holocaust era. However, it also requires the close cooperation and collaboration only possible through initiatives such as EHRI. By sharing good practice, skills and resources, testimony can be set into its appropriate context, thereby creating a significantly more valuable resource not only able to provide individual character and insight, but to serve to inform and challenge our assumptions.