Holocaust Testimonies and Their Afterlives: A Report on the CEU Summer Course, 2024
Updated: 3 days ago
From 10 to 19 July 2024, I attended the summer course Holocaust Testimonies and Their Afterlives at Central European University (CEU), Budapest, Hungary. The ten-day programme combined thematic lectures and seminars with presentations by participants, collaborative discussions, and visits to memorial and archival sites. It offered an opportunity to explore the concept and scope of Holocaust testimonies, the methodologies of reading testimony, and the complex relationship between testimony and artistic representation.
The Structure of the Programme
The sessions of the summer course addressed a wide range of subjects, including pogroms, testimony in the immediate postwar period, the Ringelblum Archive, testimonies of ghetto fighters, the role of memory, art and testimony, the Fortunoff Archive, Romani testimonies, and new technologies. Other sessions explored diaries, theatre, and the relationship between family, children, and the Holocaust.
The programme began with an introduction by Éva Kovács, Michael L. Miller, and Stephen Naron. Miller's lecture and seminar, “Pogroms, Poetry, and Posterity,” examined eyewitness testimony and its relationship to historiographical, liturgical, poetic, and publicistic responses to anti-Jewish catastrophes before the Shoah. Laura Jockusch delivered the keynote lecture, “Testimony in the Immediate Postwar.” Avinoam Patt's lecture, “Ringelblum, Huberband, and the Oneg Shabbes Archive,” and his seminar on “Testimonies of Ghetto Fighters” explored wartime documentation and the testimonies of figures including Marek Edelman and Zivia Lubetkin. Éva Kovács's sessions, “Art as Testimony” and “The Role of Memory Studies in Understanding Testimony,” addressed the relationship between artistic expression, memory, and testimony.
Stephen Naron's sessions, “The Fortunoff Video Archive and its Impact” and “Working with the FVAHT,” combined discussions of the archive's history and methodology with a useful introduction to its digital collection. Noah Shenker's lecture, “Beyond the Era of the Witness: The Digital Afterlives of Holocaust Testimony,” and seminar, “The Mediations of Holocaust Testimonies,” examined the changing conditions under which testimony is preserved and transmitted, particularly in the context of digital technologies. Other sessions included Heléna Huhák's lecture on diaries; a presentation on Golem Theatre by András Borgula and Szilvia Czingel; and “Romani Testimonies in Research, Art and Activism,” led by Maria Bogdan and artist Zsuzsi Flohr. Daniella Doron's public lecture addressed the subject of “Family, Children and the Holocaust.”
The programme also included a seminar at the Open Society Archives (OSA) on “Rape in Wartimes: Women's Testimonies,” led by Judit Hegedüs. The visit to the Hungarian Holocaust Memorial Center, accompanied by András Lénárt, and the tour of Szabadság tér with Éva Kovács and Michael Miller complemented the academic sessions. Together, these activities provided opportunities to engage with Holocaust memory through scholarly discussion, archival research, and memorial spaces.
Testimonies: Concept, Scope, and Methodologies
One of the important insights I gained from the course concerned the heterogeneity of testimony. Some testimonies are eloquent and literary, while others are not. Testimony cannot, therefore, be understood through a single model of narration or evaluated solely in terms of its eloquence. This heterogeneity raises important questions about the linguistic aporias of testimony, including the decision to testify, the potential for liberation through testimony, the prospect of healing over time, the tension between speaking and silence, and the very possibility of bearing witness.
An important conceptual shift involved understanding testimony as a "process" and not just as a "product." Rather than treating testimony simply as a finished narrative, this perspective draws attention to the circumstances in which it is produced, the conditions under which it is communicated, and the ways in which it is subsequently received and interpreted. Testimony is not exhausted by the words that constitute its narrative; the process of its production and reception also matters.
Video testimonies offered particularly significant possibilities for developing new methodologies of reading. The cuts, physical gestures, and closeups become meaningful when we attend to the ways in which survivors communicate their experiences. Reading the silences, discomforts, and pauses is as important as attending to what is explicitly articulated. Such non-verbal dimensions complicate any understanding of testimony as a straightforward transmission of experience.
The course also foregrounded the moral, religious, and political obligations associated with testimony. It was emphasised that perpetrators must not control historical memory and that remembrance is an essential form of resistance. The imperative to speak—speak you must—thus acquires an ethical and political significance. Testimony becomes a means of contesting the erasure of historical suffering and resisting the imposition of particular ways to remember the past.
Another important aspect was the afterlife of testimonies, particularly through Virtual Pinchas and the idea of videographic similitude. In this context, the discussion of digital afterlives acquired particular significance in Noah Shenker's session on the USC Shoah Foundation's Dimensions in Testimony project. I came to know how the project uses motion-capture technology, intensive interviewing, and database-structured artificial intelligence to create on-demand, interactive virtual witnesses. This raises important questions about the future of Holocaust testimony when survivors are no longer present to anchor representations through their living, moral authority. It also invites reflection on the relationship between testimony, technological mediation, and the experience of encountering a virtual witness. The afterlife of testimony, in this context, involves not only the preservation of existing accounts but also the development of new forms through which future audiences may engage with survivor testimony.
Holocaust Representations: Forms and Ethical Questions
The sheer variety and volume of artistic representations of the Holocaust constituted another important area of exploration. Drawings, films, theatre, literature, and music offer different ways of approaching the Holocaust and its representation. These forms do not simply reproduce historical events; they also raise questions about how suffering becomes representable and how audiences encounter the past.
The discussions of films were particularly valuable in drawing attention to soundscapes and absent visuals. Documentaries and docufictions also raised questions about the methodologies through which the Holocaust is represented and interpreted. What is shown, what remains absent, and what is communicated through sound all become significant in interpreting artistic representations of the Holocaust.
Furthermore, such artistic representations bring with them important ethical questions, especially the question of where to “draw the line.” How should artistic freedom be negotiated against the ethical responsibilities involved in representing historical suffering? What are the possibilities and limitations of different representational forms? How should one approach the relationship between historical evidence and artistic in(ter)vention? Such questions make it difficult to establish a straightforward opposition between historical truth and artistic representation. Rather, they invite a more nuanced consideration of the different ways in which testimony, art, and memory engage with the Holocaust.
Testimony, Art and the Problem of Representation
The relationship between testimonies and artistic representations emerged as one of the central concerns of the course. One important distinction was between poetic truth and evidentiary truth. This distinction raises important questions about the relationship between literary expression and the evidentiary claims of testimony. Poetic truth and evidentiary truth operate through different modes of articulation, but their relationship need not be understood as a simple opposition between art and fact. Literary expression may communicate dimensions of historical suffering that cannot be reduced to documentary evidence, while testimony functions as a record of lived experience. The tension between these forms of truth is therefore central to understanding the relationship between historical experience and its representation.
The literary aspects of testimonies, described through the phrase “literature of destruction,” offered another important point of reflection. Testimonies cannot be approached solely as historical documents without considering their literary dimensions and the particular ways in which experiences of destruction are articulated. At the same time, recognising their literary aspects need not diminish their evidentiary significance.
Another significant formulation considered video testimonies as "both cinematic and counter-cinematic." This helped me think about video testimony not merely as a cinematic form but also as a form that may challenge conventional cinematic practices. The cuts, closeups, physical gestures, silences, and pauses of survivors become crucial to understanding how testimony works. Attending to these elements requires a methodology that moves beyond the spoken narrative to consider the visual and embodied dimensions of communication.
The course also emphasised that diaries are not merely representations of life but an essential part of everyday camp life. This perspective complicates the distinction between recording an experience and participating in the life being recorded.
An especially thought-provoking observation was that “Sometimes bad Popular Culture representation can start something important and have a deeper impact.” This problematises the dismissal of popular cultural representations on the grounds that they may be inadequate or may end up trivialising the Holocaust. Representational authenticity and cultural impact do not necessarily coincide: a flawed representation may nevertheless initiate important conversations or encourage audiences to engage with a difficult history. This does not eliminate the need for ethical representation; rather, it invites us to consider the sometimes unpredictable consequences of representation.
One of the most valuable methodological outcomes of the course was learning to read the non-verbal communications in video testimony and, by extension, in films. This offered me a new methodology for approaching audiovisual materials and understanding the relationship between what is said, what remains unspoken, and what is communicated through gesture, silence, and visual form.
Memorials, Archives, and the Afterlives of Testimony
The visits to memorial and archival sites complemented the classroom discussions. The visit to the Hungarian Holocaust Memorial Center, accompanied by András Lénárt, and the tour of Szabadság tér with Éva Kovács and Michael Miller offered opportunities to engage with the spatial and public dimensions of Holocaust memory.
The programme's focus on the Fortunoff Archive and the Open Society Archives was equally significant for my developing interest in testimonial materials. Archives are not simply repositories of historical documents; they also provide methodological possibilities for studying how testimony is recorded, preserved, accessed, and interpreted. The question of how to explore archives is therefore inseparable from the question of how testimony becomes available to subsequent generations.
The programme particularly extended its engagement with testimony through the session on “Romani Testimonies in Research, Art and Activism,” led by Maria Bogdan and artist Zsuzsi Flohr, which brought together questions of testimony, artistic practice, and activism. The discussion on Roma and Sinti testimonies and the resources available through RomArchive expanded the range of testimonial materials that can be explored. Together, these discussions and visits helped me appreciate the importance of archival research in studying the afterlives of testimony.
Testimonies That Left a Lasting Impression
My engagement with the summer course was informed by my earlier work on Holocaust representation, particularly the co-edited volume Holocaust vs Popular Culture: Interrogating Incompatibility and Universalization (Routledge, 2023). Working on this volume had already led me to consider the tensions between historical suffering and its representation in popular culture. The summer course allowed me to revisit these questions from the perspective of testimony, bringing into sharper focus the relationship between historical evidence, artistic representation, and the ethical responsibilities involved in representing the Holocaust. It also encouraged me to think more closely about the distinctive challenges posed by survivors’ testimonies and the ways in which their meanings are mediated and transmitted.
Many of the testimonies I encountered during the summer course left a lasting impression on me. I frequently returned to several video testimonies in the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, revisiting them beyond the duration of the course. These repeated encounters reinforced my interest in testimony not simply as a historical record but as a form of communication that demands sustained attention to the circumstances of its production, its modes of articulation, and its afterlives.
The history of the Kishinev pogrom and H. N. Bialik's poem The City of Slaughter were particularly important to me. The relationship between historical violence and poetic representation raised questions about how atrocity is remembered, articulated, and transmitted through different forms of expression. The tension between poetic truth and evidentiary truth, which I discussed earlier, acquired a particular significance in this context.
The discussion of the testimony of Zalmen Gradowski, a Sonderkommando prisoner at Auschwitz who left written accounts of the extermination process, was especially impactful. The encounter stayed with me beyond the summer school, and I subsequently incorporated Gradowski's texts into my Holocaust course. This was one of the most meaningful afterlives of the programme for me: material encountered during an intensive academic experience became part of my own teaching, allowing students to engage with testimony and the historical realities it seeks to communicate.
A Roadmap for Further Research
The summer course also prompted me to reflect on my ongoing research interests in Dalit Studies and psychoanalysis. My engagement with Holocaust testimonies encouraged me to think more closely about the relationships between suffering, memory, silence, and the articulation of lived experience from the perspective of my work on Lacanian psychoanalysis. These questions also have implications for my broader interest in Dalit life narratives and the representation of historical suffering. The course thus opened up new perspectives on my existing research interests, extending its significance beyond the immediate study of Holocaust testimony.
Concluding Note
The CEU summer course left me with a renewed sense of the complexity of Holocaust testimony and the responsibilities involved in engaging with it. Testimony does not simply make suffering available to an audience; it also confronts us with the limits of representation, the significance of silence, and the difficulties of transmitting experiences of historical violence across generations. Its afterlife depends not only on how it is preserved but also on how it is heard, interpreted, and carried into new contexts without losing sight of the historical specificity of the experience it records.
For me, the course’s significance lies in the questions it continues to generate—in my teaching, in my engagement with testimonial materials, and in my thinking about suffering, memory, and the articulation of lived experience. The testimonies I encountered in Budapest have not remained confined to that experience. They continue to shape how I approach the relationship between historical suffering and its representation, reminding me that to engage with testimony is not simply to interpret an account of the past, but to consider what it asks of those who encounter it.
Selected Readings and Resources
Bialik, H. N. “The City of Slaughter.” The Complete Poetic Works of Hayyim Nahman Bialik, edited by Israel Efros, 1948, pp. 129–43.
Czingel, Szilvia et al. “Recipes for Survival: Survival Strategies in the Lichtenwörth Concentration Camp.” S:I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation., vol. 6, no. 1, 2019, pp. 123–32. https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0119/EVE_SCZI01.
Gadó, János. “The Splendour and the Misery of the House of Fates.” Cultures of History Forum, 16 Aug. 2019, https://doi.org/10.25626/0102.
Greenspan, Henry, et al. “Engaging Survivors: Assessing ‘Testimony’ and ‘Trauma’ as Foundational Concepts.” Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust, vol. 28, no. 3, 2014, pp. 190–226. https://doi.org/10.1080/23256249.2014.951909.
Hanover, Nathan. Abyss of Despair (Yeven Metzulah). Translated by Abraham J. Mesch, Transaction Books, 1983.
Hartman, Geoffrey H. “The Humanities of Testimony: An Introduction.” Poetics Today, vol. 27, no. 2, Summer 2006, pp. 249–76. https://doi.org/10.1215/03335372-2005-002.
Huhák, Heléna. “The Taste of Freedom, the Smell of Captivity: Sensory Narratives of the Hungarian Camp of Bergen–Belsen.” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 58, no. 3, 2023, pp. 449–67. https://doi.org/10.1177/00220094231178706.
Jockusch, Laura. Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe. Oxford UP, 2012.
Kassow, Samuel D. Who Will Write Our History? Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive. Indiana UP, 2007.
Kovács, Éva. “The Hungarian Holocaust Memorial Year 2014: Some Remarks.” S:I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation., vol. 4, no. 1, 2017, pp. 109–21. https://simon.vwi.ac.at/index.php/simon/article/view/93
Kovács, Éva. “The Sensual Memory of Shoah: The Meaning of Sound, Touch and Taste in the Culture of Testimonies.” The Palgrave Handbook of Testimony and Culture, edited by Sara Jones and Roger Woods, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, pp. 259–78. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13794-5_12.
Michlic, Joanna B. “A Young Person’s War: The Disrupted Lives of Children and Youth.” A Companion to the Holocaust, edited by Simone Gigliotti and Hilary Earl, Wiley-Blackwell, 2020, pp. 295–310.
Naron, Stephen. “Archives, Ethics and Influence: How the Fortunoff Video Archive’s Methodology Shapes Its Collection’s Content.” Interactions: Explorations of Good Practice in Educational Work with Video Testimonies of Victims of National Socialism, edited by Werner Dreier, Angelika Laumer, and Moritz Wein, Books on Demand, 2018, pp. 41–51.
Radonić, Ljiljana. “The Holocaust Template: Memorial Museums in Hungary, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.” Anali Hrvatskog politološkog društva, vol. 15, no. 1, 2018, pp. 131–54. https://doi.org/10.20901/an.15.06.
Roskies, David G. The Literature of Destruction: Jewish Responses to Catastrophe. Jewish Publication Society, 1988.
Shenker, Noah. Reframing Holocaust Testimony. Indiana UP, 2015.
Dr. Mahitosh Mandal is a researcher in Literary and Cultural Studies. His work explores the intersections of psychoanalysis, trauma, caste, and cultural memory.
