Document Volumes and the Status of Victim Testimony in the Era of the First World War and Its Aftermath

Abstract

This article focuses on a prominent type of atrocity literature, the document volume, and the status accorded victim testimony within such volumes. Whereas scholars have tended to treat Holocaust testimony, Armenian genocide testimony, and the atrocity literature of the First World War and interwar years as distinct from one another and have traced their genealogies separately, this article brings them together to explore by what means knowledge about mass violence was established in the era preceding the Holocaust.

Keywords

• testimony
• atrocity propaganda
• Armenian Genocide
• pogroms
• Holocaust
• James Bryce