Finalist for the 2019 National Jewish Book Award in the Anthologies and Collections Category presented by the Jewish Book Council
Silver Winner for Anthologies, 2018 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards
Writing in Witness is a broad survey of the most important writing about the Holocaust produced by eyewitnesses at the time and soon after. Whether they intended to spark resistance and undermine Nazi authority, to comfort family and community, to beseech God, or to leave a memorial record for posterity, the writers reflect on the power and limitations of the written word in the face of events often thought to be beyond representation. The diaries, journals, letters, poems, and other works were created across a geography reaching from the Baltics to the Balkans, from the Atlantic coast to the heart of the Soviet Union, and in a wide array of original languages. Along with the readings, Eric J. Sundquist’s introductions provide a comprehensive account of the Holocaust as a historical event. Including works by prominent authors such as Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel, as well those little known or anonymous,
Writing in Witness provides, in vital and memorable examples, a wide-ranging account of the Holocaust by those who felt the imperative to give written testimony.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction
A Note on Sources and the Text
Prisoners: A Prologue
Victor Klemperer, The Yellow Star
Jean Amery, Torture
Anonymous Warsaw Man, A Warsaw Jew Writes to His Gentile Friend
Yehoshua Moshe Aaronson, The Scroll of the House of Bondage
Hilda Daj
č, Letters from a Concentration Camp in Serbia
Odd Nansen, A Decent Man
Yitzhak Katzenelson, Vittel Prison Diary
Ella Lingens
‑
Reiner, Prisoners of Fear
Abraham Levite, For an Auschwitz Anthology
In the Ghetto
Yankev Glatshteyn (Jacob Glatstein), Good Night, World
Samuel Golfard, “One must write with blood”
Avraham Tory, Kovno Diary—Roundup and Murders at the Ninth Fort
Herman Kruk, Vilna Diary—Eyewitness to Murder at Ponary
Abraham Sutzkever, Three Poems from the Vilna Ghetto
Oskar Rosenfeld, Starvation in the Ghetto
Simkhe Bunem Shayevitsh, Lekh‑Lekho
Anonymous Łodź Boy, “To ease my bitter heart”
Emanuel Ringelblum, “Why is the world silent?”
Chaim A. Kaplan, Scroll of Agony
Gusta Davidson Draenger, Resistance in Krakow
The Final Solution
Lidia Maximovna Slipchenko, Mass Murder in Odessa
Piotr Rawicz, Blood from the Sky
Hermann Friedrich Graebe, Massacre, Resistance, and Rescue
Philip Mechanicus, “Inside the belly of the venomous snake”: Transports from Westerbork
Alexander Donat, “Hell has no bottom”: Majdanek
Kurt Gerstein, Witness at Belżec
Seweryna Szmaglewska, Slave Labor and Death in Birkenau
Primo Levi, “The saved and the drowned”: The Prominents and the Muselmanner
Abraham Krzepicki, Transport to Treblinka
Rachel Auerbach, The Road to Heaven
Oskar Strawczynski, The Treblinka Orchestra
Paul Celan, Death Fugue
The Gray Zone
Chaim Rumkowski, “Give me your children”
Josef Zelkowicz, “The heart of a slaughterer”: The Jewish Police at Work
Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer?
Sara Nomberg
‑
Przytyk, The Block of Death
Gisella Perl, Childbirth in Auschwitz‑Birkenau
Szlama Winer, Inside the Chełmno Death Camp
Zalmen Gradowski, “In the deep sea of corpses”: The Czech Transport
Holy Days
Shimon Huberband, Kiddush Hashem
David Kahane, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song?”
Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira, “Love God with all your heart”: The Lesson of Rabbi Akiva
Zelig Kalmanovitch, “What is a Jew and who is a Jew?”
Etty Hillesum, “The thinking heart of a whole concentration camp”
Anonymous Warsaw Poet, And I Will Impart My Revenge upon Edom
Abel J. Herzberg, Jewish Faith, Jewish Unity
Survivors
Hanna Levy
‑
Hass, Last Days of Bergen‑Belsen
Robert Antelme, Death March through Germany
Jorge Semprun, “But can the story be told?”
Charlotte Delbo, The Stream
Yekhiel Kirshnbaum, The City without Jews
Elie Wiesel, Why I Write
Ruth Kluger, Still Alive
Aharon Appelfeld, The Awakening
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the author
Eric J. Sundquist is Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University, and the editor of many books, including (with David Cesarani)
After the Holocaust: Challenging the Myth of Silence.
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