Author Description

Discusses the experience of the Holocaust in the Białystok ghetto in the light of Holocaust memoirs, focusing on an anthropological view of the major significance of the experience of destruction and annihilation in the lives of the survivors. Compares the memoirs of Felicja Nowak, Gustaw Kerszman, Samuel Pisar, and Sara Nomberg-Przytyk, each of whom represents a different attitude towards the traumatic event - psychological, political, ideological, or rational. Analyzes, also, the experiences of the perpetrators as revealed in postwar trials, from moral and legal aspects, and whether their accounts tally with the accounts of the victims.