English
Polish
Literature of the Personal Document as a Source in Holocaust Research (a Methodological Reconnaissance)
Jacek Leociak
jleociak@gmail.com Biolecturer in the Institute of Literary Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, head of the Holocaust Literature Studies Department of the Institute, member of the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research of the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Co-author with Barbara Engelking The Warsaw Getto. A Guide to the Perished City (2009, Polish edition 2001)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1471-6926
Institite of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences
Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, No. 1 (2005), pages: 11-31
Publication date: 2005-12-01
Abstract
In this article I focus on two areas: first – the genre typology of texts that belong to the sphere of the so-called personal document, their specific character as a historical source for Holocaust studies; second –the methodological challenge this type of sources posits for the historiography (not only) of the Holocaust. I raise the following questions: what is the value of personal documents for Holocaust historians, being a formally diverse record of experiences; how are they used in their research; how do they read those personal narratives? A more general context for these considerations is the debate on the conditions for Holocaust historiography going on among contemporary theoreticians of history. One one form of this debate could be described as a conflict between “historical discourse” and ”memory discourse”.
Keywords
Holocaust, methodology of History, memooirs, diaries, accounts
License
Copyright (c) 2005 Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0
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