Collected Memories: Holocaust History and Post-War Testimony

by Christopher R. Browning

Christopher R. Browning addresses some of the most heated controversies that have arisen from the use of postwar testimony: Hannah Arendt’s uncritical acceptance of Adolf Eichmann’s self-portrayal in Jerusalem; the conviction of Ivan Demjanuk (accused of being Treblinka death camp guard "Ivan the Terrible") on the basis of survivor testimony and its subsequent reversal by the Israeli Supreme Court; the debate in Poland sparked by Jan Gross’s use of both survivor and communist courtroom testimony in his book Neighbors; and the conflict between Browning himself and Daniel Goldhagen, author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners, regarding methodology and interpretation in the use of pre-trial testimony.
    Despite these controversies and challenges, Browning delineates the ways in which the critical use of such problematic sources can provide telling evidence for writing Holocaust history. He examines and discusses two starkly different sets of "collected memories"—the voluminous testimonies of notorious Holocaust perpetrator Adolf Eichmann and the testimonies of 175 survivors of an obscure complex of factory slave labor camps in the Polish town of Starachowice.

Genres: Holocaust, World War II

105 pages, Paperback

First published October 30, 2003

About the author

Christopher Robert Browning recently retired as Frank Porter Graham Professor of History at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill. He is the author of numerous books on Nazism and the Holocaust, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reviews

[Kirsten Dyck · Rating 5 out of 5]

Browning discusses the fallibility of eyewitness testimony and collective memory in his introduction to "Ordinary Men," but expands the conversation here. In particular, he examines Eichmann's post-arrest testimony, as well as survivor accounts of one minor factory labor camp. He raises important points about using eyewitness accounts like other sources--critically, in conjunction with corroborating evidence--not as an affront to the validity of survivors' memories, but as a way to create relatively accurate histories. Fascinating book.