Individuelles und kollektives Verhalten in Nazi-Konzentrationslagern

Résumé du livre

Pp. 21-121 contain an analysis made by an American interdisciplinary team in 1947-50 of 507 interviews with Hungarian Jewish survivors of Auschwitz and various labor camps, carried out by the Jewish Agency after the war in Budapest, and deposited in the YIVO archives (New York). Quoting from the interviews, describes details of camp life, the prisoners' attitudes to each other, to the kapos and the SS, and their subjective experience and its psychological impact. Strauss, in his introduction (pp. 7-20), points out that this experience differed for different individuals; also notes that the interviewees generally were not passive and regressive, but were reality-oriented and active in the struggle to survive. However, they reported a splitting of consciousness and emotional numbing. Pp. 122-190 contain three case studies of (anonymous) survivors interviewed in New York, and memoirs written by one of them immediately after liberation. A postscript by Michael Pollak (pp. 193-198) discusses historiography of the Holocaust and the importance of the reminiscences of survivors, despite problems caused by distorted or selective memory.