Eric J. Sundquist 
Writing in Witness [EPUB ebook] 
A Holocaust Reader

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.

Tabella dei contenuti

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

Circa l’autore

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.