Testimony as Historical Record: Voices from the Holocaust

The Holocaust's historical record exists because victims documented their own persecution even as it happened. This book examines how Jewish diarists, ghetto archivists, resistance fighters, and survivors created firsthand testimony that became essential evidence of Nazi genocide between 1933 and 1945. It traces how these sources reveal not only systematic murder but also Jewish agency, community resilience, and the moral choices ordinary people faced under impossible conditions. Drawing on the Oyneg Shabes archive, Sonderkommando testimonies, hidden diaries like those of Emanuel Ringelblum and Etty Hillesum, postwar survivor accounts, and documentation efforts across occupied Europe, the narrative follows those who consciously preserved evidence for future generations. It explores how Warsaw Ghetto historians buried metal containers of documents before deportations, how Auschwitz prisoners smuggled notes describing gas chambers, and how survivors gave testimony despite trauma to ensure the world would know what happened. The book examines these sources as both historical evidence and acts of resistance—writing became a way to maintain humanity, assert identity, and counter Nazi erasure. It traces how survivor testimony evolved from immediate postwar accounts through Eichmann trial testimonies to video archives, and how memory institutions use these sources to document not just death but the lives, cultures, and communities the Nazis destroyed. Relevant for readers interested in how historical evidence is created under persecution, how testimony functions as both documentation and memorial, and how societies construct collective memory of atrocity through survivor voices.