Hybrid Testimony and Moral Indictment: A Survivor's Poetic Response to the Mauthausen Nazi Concentration Camp Experience

Abstract

Poetry is rarely accorded the same testimonial and documentary status as diaries and memoirs, which have been largely accepted as subjective forms of historical accounts. The author of this article argues that more traditional forms of Holocaust survivor testimony and poetic forms do not have to be viewed as belonging to mutually exclusive categories. A close reading of Mauthausen concentration camp survivor Otto Hoffmann’s 1945 collection of poems reveals the testimonial character of poetry, and attests to the survivor’s effort to establish authority as a “moral witness.”