Bearing Witness. The importance of first-hand survival narrative as opposed to cinematic representation of the Holocaust

Essay from the year 2016 in the subject Cultural Studies - Holocaust Studies, grade: Undergrad, , course: Writing After the Holocaust, language: English, abstract: This essay argues that the best, most authentic way of educating future generations about the Holocaust is through personal narrative. Testimonies such as those made by Frances Flumenbaum, and the others on the Shoah Foundation site, and Vladek's testimony through "Maus", are successful at informing and educating without any exploitation. It is through these narratives that we learn the most. We see the faces of the survivors, we hear them choke back tears with shaky voices as they speak of heir parents and siblings and friends who were lost. Their survival forces society to always remember, and to learn from the past. It is the most important that the survivor testimonies are preserved forever. We could lose all of the films, the history books, and the fictional novels, but to lose the survivor testimony, that would genuinely be the greatest loss of all.