Testimonies of Resistance

Representations of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommando
1. Auflage 2019
ISBN: 978-1-78920-341-7
Verlag: Berghahn Books

Buch, Englisch, 398 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 725 g

The Sonderkommando—the “special squad” of enslaved Jewish laborers who were forced to work in the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkenau—comprise one of the most fascinating and troubling topics within Holocaust history. As eyewitnesses to and unwilling abettors of the murder of their fellow Jews, they are the object of fierce condemnation even today. Yet it was a group of these seemingly compromised men who carried out the revolt of October 7, 1944, one of the most celebrated acts of Holocaust resistance. This interdisciplinary collection assembles careful investigations into how the Sonderkommando have been represented—by themselves and by others—both during and after the Holocaust.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Chare, Nicholas

Williams, Dominic

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Deutsche Geschichte Deutsche Geschichte: Holocaust
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Antisemitismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Geschichte des Judentums Antisemitismus, Pogrome, Shoah
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein Geschichtspolitik, Erinnerungskultur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Figures and Tables

Foreword

Anne Karpf

Acknowledgements

Note on Transliteration

Introduction: Testimonies of Resistance

Nicholas Chare and Dominic Williams

Part I: Historical and Ethical Questions of Representation

Chapter 1. Knowing Cruelty: The Negation of Death and Burial in SS Violence

Griselda Pollock

Chapter 2. What Makes the Grey Zone Grey? Blurring Factual and Ethical Judgements of the Sonderkommando

Dominic Williams

Part II: Witnessing from the Heart of Hell

Chapter 3. Farewell Letter from the Crematorium: On the Authorship of the First Recorded ‘Sonderkommando-Manuscript’ and the Discovery of the Original Letter

Andreas Kilian

Chapter 4. To Read the Illegible: Techniques of Multispectral Imaging and the Manuscripts of the Jewish Sonderkommando of Auschwitz-Birkenau

Pavel Polian and Aleksandr Nikityaev

Chapter 5. ‘Like a True Greek’: The Last Will and Testimony of Marcel Natzari

K.E. Fleming

Chapter 6. Disinterred Words: The Letters of Herman Strasfogel and Marcel Nadjary

Nicholas Chare, Ersy Contogouris and Dominic Williams

Chapter 7. The Letter of Herman Strasfogel

Translated by Ersy Contogouris

Chapter 8. The Letter of Marcel Nadjary

Translated by Ersy Contogouris

Chapter 9. The Religious Life of Sonderkommando Members inside the Killing Installations in Auschwitz-Birkenau

Gideon Greif

Part III: Retrospective Representations

Chapter 10. Doubly Cursed: The Sonderkommando in the Documents of the International Tracing Service

Dan Stone

Chapter 11. Enduring Witness: David Olère’s Visual Testimony

Carol Zemel

Chapter 12. The Sonderkommando and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum

Dominic Williams and Isabel Wollaston

Chapter 13. Early and Late Testimonies of the Sonderkommando Survivors

Gideon Greif

Chapter 14. From Special Operations Executive to Sonderkommando: Sebastian Faulks and the Anxiety of Invention

Sue Vice

Chapter 15. Out of the Plan, Out of the Plane 2: Stripping, Fourth Letter to Gerhard Richter

Georges Didi-Huberman

Chapter 16. Greeks in the Birkenau Sonderkommando: Representation and Reality

Steven Bowman

Part IV: Cinema and the Sonderkommando

Chapter 17. ‘We Did Something’: Framing Resistance in Cinematic Depictions of the Sonderkommando

Barry Langford

Chapter 18. ‘We Can’t Know What We’re Capable Of ’: Approaching the ‘Grey Zone’ in Holocaust Film

Adam Brown

Chapter 19. The Sonderkommando on Screen

Philippe Mesnard

Afterword: Tracing Topographies of Memory and Mourning

Victor Jeleniewski Seidler

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Williams, Dominic
Dominic Williams is Senior Lecturer in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Northumbria University.

Chare, Nicholas
Nicholas Chare is Associate Professor in the Department of History of Art and Film Studies at the Université de Montréal.

Nicholas Chare is Associate Professor in the Department of History of Art and Film Studies at the Université de Montréal.