Book Notes: Collect and Record! by Laura Jockush

Laura Jockusch’s “Collect and Record!” is an essential piece of European historiography. For half a century, the events of the Second World War have provided the context for the development of our culture and political institutions. Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’, has a critical role in our understanding of those events, and therefore of our understanding of the present. It is hardly surprising therefore, that contemporary anti-Semitism feeds off the Holocaust-denial movement.

“Collect and Record” is a detailed examination of the sources from which Holocaust history is gathered. While Holocaust deniers wish to post late-dates for primary sources, Jockush has produced a groundbreaking study of early data-collection across France, Germany, Austria, Poland and Italy. She documents the way in which survivors:

‘founded historical commissions, documentation centres, and projects for the purpose of documenting and researching the recent annihilation. These initiatives arose as a grassroots movement impelled by the survivors own will and with no government backing’[1]

Drawing on a tradition of pogrom-documentation, stretching back to the 1890s, the survivors have left us with an array of testimonies, questionnaires, diaries, photos, documents (both Jewish and Nazi), films and artefacts. Much of this recording began as a ‘sacred duty’ during the conflict, and most of the collection was achieved between 1945-7. This book is the remarkable story of the collection of that history.

Jockusch describes how the various historical societies differed in their methods and aims; for example, The Poles needed to preserve the threads of a decimated culture and memorialise the dead, while the emphasis in Austria was on gathering evidence for trials. She also traces the attempts to forge a European-wide documentation movement in the late 1940s, along with its main figures. The progress of the documents themselves from post-war refugee camps to their current homes in International archives is also fascinating. Some of these sources have been examined for the first time in this book.

Oxford University Press have just published this significant work as an accessibly priced paperback. When the historical record matters this much, Jockusch has provided us with a genuinely “usable past”.

---

[1] p4

First published in Solas Magazine, used with permission (www.solas-cpc.org)