Oral History and its Significance
Without the witness reports it would have been impossible to reconstruct the history of the women’s concentration camp at St. Lambrecht. In this context the method of oral history has a special significance.
In contrast with historical documents from archives, which are available for scientific adaptation, revealing oral history is bound to a process of interaction between people. The process takes place in the present and demands a different form of recording. To my mind, calling on the knowledge of the Holocaust survivors is societally more significant than the mentioned written sources from the time of events. For that reason, I wish to add some opinions of the psychoanalyst Dori Laub with reference to oral history and involve the origin of oral source material into my research.
History that has been orally passed down from survivors of concentration camps exists, apart from memories that have been deformed by the current living circumstances of the interviewee, mainly in the form of testimonies. The listener, in this case the interviewer, becomes a witness to the testimony.
So, the testimony is no historical text ready to use, but a process that can only begin in a safe environment. The listener’s presence, in the person of the interviewer, should encourage the interviewee to get deep into his own core and his memories.1See Laub 1999, p. 262. A narrative situation must be a safe situation as mentioned before, so that traumatic experiences which a survivor often relates for the first time, can surface. I experienced this in the interviews I conducted with the Dutch female Jehovah’s Witnesses. My interpreter confirmed that the interviewees were disclosing new content and displaying new reactions.2Although Tydeman had interviewed all women already many years before, many new items were brought up and were emotionally responded to in a specific manner.
Telling his concentration camp experiences to a sensitive listener gives the survivor the opportunity to restore the dialogue with the Self during the testimony.3See Laub 1999, p. 262. The empathetic attitude of the listener brings out the Self as a psychological structure that in concentration camp prisoners is linked to the destruction of the inner You.4See Laub 1999, p. 263.
During the narration the survivor is bearing witness to the trauma caused by history, which — according to Laub — has not yet become reality for those concerned, despite the distressing events. For that reason, survivors relate their experience in captivity as if they have only witnessed the events and not as if they were personally afflicted. In the process of listening and being heard is the moment when the traumatic experience is acknowledged. This means that the listener is directly involved in bringing home this knowledge.5See Laub 2000b, p. 68.
The interviewer, who is being used as a blank page to put an event into words, is thus a forming element during the testimony of concentration camp experiences.
The listener keeps his own position and perspective during the interview. If he begins to (pseudo-)identify with the victim, then this should be recognised and considered as a coping mechanism. First and foremost, the interviewer provides the means to externalise and historicise the events.
The interviewer witnessing the stated traumatic testimonies, finds himself confronted with his own vulnerability, mortality and the question what the meaning of life is, during the narration and the reactions of transferral that result therefrom. Psychoanalyst Dori Laub puts these observations into the following words: ‘Insofar as they remind us of a horrible traumatic past, insofar as they bear witness to our own historical disfiguration, survivors frighten us.’6Laub 2000b, p. 82.
Survivors who have a positive attitude toward a life that resulted from the decay and a disappearance of the old culture (which was the case with the female Jehovah’s Witnesses that I got to know), unconsciously embody a cultural shock experience, which has not been integrated into society yet.7See Laub 2000b, p. 83. Scientists who make use of the precious few opportunities left to talk to the survivors can contribute to the externalisation and historicizing of concentration camp experiences and in that way free the victims of their trauma.
The testimony that comes into being by using the oral history method, carries with it the obligation of making the knowledge about the event that was passed down, available to society in such a way that lasting learning processes are possible. Perhaps then it will also be possible to integrate into society, the ‘cultural shock experience’ which Laub discerned in the Holocaust victims.
Thus, oral history is not just a method for safeguarding oral source material. It is also an instrument for gaining access to the survivors and bringing history through authentic narration to life and for contributing to bringing about and guaranteeing a historic consciousness and as result, giving part of the collective memory back to society.
Chapter 1 – History of Jehovah’s Witnesses →