C. R. Browning: Holocaust History and Survivor Testimony

Simon Wiesenthal Lecture Christopher R. Browning: Holocaust History and Survivor Testimony: The Case of the Starachowice Factory Slave Labour Camps Datum: Donnerstag 18. Oktober 2012 Ort: Haus, Hof und Staatsarchiv, 1010 Wien The factory slave labour camps of Nazi Germany have been an understudied phenomenon of the Holocaust. The large collections of survivor testimonies have been an underutilised source for writing Holocaust history. Through examining the postwar testimonies of 292 survivors of the factory slave labour camps in Starachowice, Poland, given between 1945 and 2008, Browning attempts to examine both the considerable benefits and potential pitfalls that such sources hold for the Holocaust historian. At the same time, through a case study of a single complex of factory slave labour camps, he attempts to illuminate wider issues concerning the Nazi exploitation of Jewish slave labour, the complicity of German industrialists, the conflict between ideo