Remembering Jasenovac: survivor testimonies and the cultural dimension of bearing witness.

Byford, Jovan (2014). Remembering Jasenovac: survivor testimonies and the cultural dimension of bearing witness. Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 28(1) pp. 58–84.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/hgs/dcu011

Abstract

This article examines testimonies of Jasenovac survivors recorded in Serbia between 1989 and 1997 for the oral history collections of the Fortunoff Archive and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The author highlights the differences between, on the one hand, the assumptions about survivors and testimony underpinning the US-based interview projects, and on the other hand, the understanding of bearing witness that is apparent in testimonies recorded for projects in Serbia. Contrasting the emotion-centered American approach to survivor testimony with the atrocity-centered Serbian approach, the author argues for a more explicit acknowledgment among scholars, as well as among those involved in recording testimonies, of witnessing as a socially, historically, and institutionally embedded practice.

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