The Languages of Time: Translating Calendar Dates in Holocaust Diaries

Holocaust diaries often use two calendars—Gregorian and Jewish—to date entries and events, choosing one or the other to convey a particular significance. Translators frequently have found it difficult to integrate this multicalendrical dating, however. On the basis of his examination of the seminal wartime diaries of Chaim Kaplan, Abraham Lewin, Moshe Flinker, and David Kahane, the author of this article argues that the translators' omission of the dual-calendar perspective compromises translations' integrity and distorts crucial aspects of the diarist's evolving confrontation with his or her wartime ordeal.