Holocaust Letters: Methodologies, Cases and Reflections - Hardcover

by Christine Schmidt (Editor), Clara Dijkstra (Editor), Charlie Knight (Editor)

Throughout the Holocaust, letters were sent in their millions, in a variety of different contexts and for a range of differing purposes. Holocaust Letters marks the first volume of its kind to examine collectively letter writing during this period. The book presents different methodological approaches to letters as texts, material objects and markers of memory, and outlines a range of different case studies using letters as sources in practice. Emerging from the exhibition of the same name held at The Wiener Holocaust Library (UK), the authors in this volume use letters to gain a deeper understanding of the Holocaust and the post-war period in Western and Central Europe, and transnational humanitarian efforts in the UK and North Africa.

Holocaust Letters also presents a series of short source critiques of individual letters and small collections of letters, with insightful analysis of a variety of different types of letters to be found throughout. In whatever form they occur, Holocaust-era letters are witness not only to what happened and to whom but contain valuable evidence of how and, crucially, why the events that came to be known as the Holocaust occurred.

Author Biography

Clara Dijkstra has a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge, UK.
Charlie Knight is a Visiting Fellow at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK.
Sandra Lipner is a Research Fellow at the UCL Centre for Collective Violence, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies, UK.
Christine Schmidt is Deputy Director and Head of Research at The Wiener Holocaust Library, UK.