Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe by Laura Jockusch (review)

In this meticulously researched monograph, Laura Jockusch provides a much-needed reminder that efforts to document the Holocaust, including “history from below” initiated by Jews, began during the war itself and has consistently occurred since. Jockusch notes that discussions dealing with historiography were occurring simultaneously as well. Ghetto chronicles, diaries, letters, and documents, foremost among them the Ringleblum archives of the Warsaw ghetto, are the most obvious. Before the war was fully over, in liberated territories, Jewish lawyers, doctors, academics, including some professional historians, and others, were forming historical commissions to document the events they had just experienced. Jockusch notes among their rationales were prosecuting the perpetrators; “bearing witness for the sake of the dead” (8); providing information for future historians from multiple Jewish perspectives and political agendas; and even revenge.

Jockusch’s introduction outlines the questions she addresses in the chapters that follow. She succeeds not only in providing answers but in analyzing them from several perspectives. She also contextualizes her findings within the historiographical debates, both past and present, in Holocaust studies. Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer noted in Rethinking the Holocaust that not only did the Nazis intend to murder every Jew, but that they “tried to murder the murder—prevent Jewish documentation.” (24) Jockusch provides the evidence that this effort did not succeed. She also effectively argues, and documents throughout the book, that the supposed postwar silence of survivors is clearly a myth.

Chapter one documents the foundation upon which Jewish World War II efforts to record events was based. Writers in the Yiddish press during World War I, and the accompanying and subsequent pogroms, exhorted the public to record their own history or risk falsification. (25) This formed the basis of Khurbn-Forshung: “History Writing as a Jewish Response to Catastrophe,” the chapter’s title. Chapters three, four, and five deal with recording efforts in France, Poland, and Displaced Persons’ camps. It is particularly striking that many of the arguments Jockusch documents that occurred in the late 1940s, among these early history writers and history gatherers, are the same ones in which contemporary scholars are engaged: the inadequacy of German documents; the limits of language; the importance of the voices of child survivors; and concerns with accuracy. Chapter four and the accompanying footnotes also include an excellent analysis of postwar population statistics, particularly those of Jewish survivors.

As noted in the subtitle of Chapter five, it documents efforts to “Establish a European Community of Holocaust Researchers,” beginning with efforts in May 1945. (160) Jockusch thoroughly analyzes the variety of approaches, methods, and goals of leading individuals as well as those of the institutions with which they are affiliated. This chapter includes the history of the transition of many of these efforts into the formation of the early archives of contemporary institutions: Yad Vashem (Israel), Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (Paris), YIVO (New York), Institute for Jewish Research (Warsaw), Wiener Library (London), and the Simon Wiesenthal Center (Vienna). The concerns of those involved echo those that continue today: the comparative value of perpetrator and victim documentation; the dearth of documentation of “the most dreadful acts” (190); the use of euphemisms; and the reliability of memory.

The conclusion presents Jockusch’s examination of the national and political contexts in which these early documentation efforts occurred. This provides us with a nuanced and more accurate lens through which to view these materials, leading seamlessly to her discussion of the “myth of silence,” which largely resulted from these national and political contexts. Her analysis of the occurrence of a hiatus of “more than fifty years” (193), during which many early efforts were ignored, provides valuable insights into the history of the history: the attitudes of scholars and historians during that period.

By focusing on France, Poland, and the Displaced Persons’ camps, Jockusch did not include information concerning efforts to gather documents and information elsewhere. Four thousand eight hundred and seventy-two testimonies...