Survivor Testimonies and Historical Objectivity: Polish Historiography since Neighbors

Abstract

In the introduction to his Neighbors, Jan Gross argued for centrality of Jewish accounts from the Holocaust as reliable sources for reconstructing the tragic past:Jewish testimonies about the Shoah have been deliberately written down in order to provide an exact and comprehensive account of the catastrophe … We should read in these efforts an intuition that one could effectively oppose, indeed frustrate, the Nazis’ plan of annihilation of the Jews if only a record of the Nazis’ evil deeds was preserved.Gross raised the bar quite high insisting on the inclusion of Jewish testimonies as a rule rather than an exception. His inclusive methodological position has been criticised in the course of the fierce discourse over his book and his own use of survivors’ testimonies presented as a methodological shortcoming. However, despite such voices, a growing consensus among Polish historians did emerge that the experience of the Jewish victims must be explored and that in this effort testimonies often proved the only sources available.While much has been written about the discussion around Neighbors, my essay will focus on the methodological discussion among Polish historians over the last decade both in academic publications and in more popular articles published in Polish journals. I will investigate the ways in which Polish scholars writing about the Holocaust compared the pitfalls and advantages of using eyewitness testimonies when they could hardly be corroborated. I will argue that Polish historiography of the Holocaust has gradually recognised the importance of Jewish accounts as indispensable historical source. Moreover, the use of survivors’ accounts helped Polish historians to embrace the advantage of incorporating individual, unique perspective on the Holocaust inherent in such primary sources. In fact, a generation of researchers emerged willing to settle for a phenomenological representativeness instead of the statistical one and calling for sensitive and empathetic reading of the Jewish sources.