Vom Zeitzeugen zum Textzeugen

Abstract

Anika Binsch and Markus Roth develop a perspective for educational work after the repeatedly emphasised end of the era of the accounts of Holocaust eyewitnesses. The article is based on the assumption that this discussion is not a new one: Already during the Holocaust many victims feared that they would not survive and therefor left as many written testimonies as possible. They wanted to leave a ‘textual witness’ instead of themselves. The second part of the article illustrates that these textual testimonies can serve for achieving educational objectives that up to now have relied on personal interviews with Holocaust survivors. The authors advocate an approach to texts that goes beyond the focus on the history of events. They argue that this can be accomplished by understanding and respecting the written testimonies as individual interpretations of the respective reality as well as by analysing them by making use of literary approaches.