English
Polish
Emotions as testimony: Documenting the psychological aspects of witnessing in an early survivor historical commission
Victoria Van Orden Martínez
victoria.martinez@kultur.lu.se BioVictoria Van Orden Martínez – dr, pracuje jako badaczka na Uniwersytecie Lund w Szwecji. Pracę doktorską pt. „Afterlives: Jewish and Non-Jewish Polish Survivors of Nazi Persecution in Sweden Documenting Nazi Atrocities, 1945–56” obroniła w 2024 r. Jej badania koncentrują się głównie na życiu, działaniu i sprawczości ocalałych z nazistowskich prześladowań żyjących jako przesiedleńcy w pierwszych latach powojennych, ze specjalnym uwzględnieniem roli płci i innych różnic. Autorka artykułów w czasopismach szwedzkich i zagranicznych oraz rozdziałów w pracach zbiorowych, w tym tekstu Monuments cast shadows. Remembering and Forgetting the ‘Dead Survivors’ of Nazi Persecution in Swedish Cemeteries [w:] Fallen Monuments and Contested Memorials (z Malin Thor Tureby, 2023).
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4491-5520
Lund University, Sweden
Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały, No. 20 (2024), pages: 276-292
Publication date: 2024-12-17
Abstract
In 1945–1946, nine Polish former prisoners of Nazi concentration camps (one Jewish and eight non-Jewish) living in Sweden as refugees were employed to record other Jewish and non-Jewish Poles’ experiences of persecution for history and justice. Although none of these individuals were psychologists, they believed recording the psychological aspects of witnessing was essential to their documentation work. The written testimonies they recorded, which are preserved in the archive of the Polish Research Institute in Lund, Sweden (PIZ), thus include revealing and often caring comments about the witnesses’ emotions and emotional responses during the interviews. I argue that this method made emotions integral to the testimonies and validated emotions as testimony. The significance of this argument is magnified when non-Jewish Poles interviewed Jewish Poles and vice versa since the comments reveal how they were relating to one another on a personal and sensitive level. This article builds on the author’s previous and ongoing analyses of these witness testimonies through close readings of the comments that consider the psychological aspects of witnessing. By contextualizing these comments and the testimonies they refer to alongside theories on the value of emotions for knowledge, the author explores what knowledge the method of recording witness testimonies contributed to creating in the early postwar period and what knowledge it creates now.
Keywords
The Polish Research Institute in Lund, Sweden, Polish survivors of Nazi persection, Holocaust survivors, early survivor testimonies, emotions, knowledge, survivor historical commissions, Post Traumatic Stress Dissorder (PTSD)
References
Żródła archiwalne / Archival sources
Lund University Library (LUB), Sweden, The Polish Research Institute in Lund (PIZ) Archive
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Netografia / Websites
American Psychiatric Association, “What is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),” https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/ptsd/what-is-ptsd, last accessed 8 January 2024.
Lund University Library (LUB) “Witnessing Genocide” digital archive: https://www.ub.lu.se/hitta/digitala-samlingar/witnessing-genocide, last accessed 6 January 2024.
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