Testimonies of trauma: Surviving Auschwitz-Birkenau

Abstract

The emerging field of trauma studies from the 1990s onwards has engendered a variety of important new research in this area of scholarship. The Second World War and the Holocaust provide the context for a crucial moment in the social and cultural history of trauma. This chapter considers the historical implications of the traumatized body, mind and emotions at a particular time and place within this context, analysing the psychological trauma of the impact of the Holocaust upon its victims at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The research for this chapter is based on the testimonies of male and female survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau. This type of witness testimony to trauma forms a significant part of our understanding of the Holocaust as a whole. This chapter analyses how male and female survivors have remembered their experiences and how they have written their narratives about Auschwitz-Birkenau. These testimonies of trauma detail events in the death camp most associated with the horrors of the Holocaust and the atrocities carried out by the Nazi regime during the Second World War.