DOCUMENTING THE HOLOCAUST: TESTIMONIES AS HISTORICAL EVIDENCE
EHRI
On June 15–17, 2026, the Emanuel Ringleblum Jewish Historical Institute, in cooperation with (University of Florida, Yad Vashem World Holocaust Center, Jerusalem, Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów, Wiener Wiesenthal Institut fur Holocaust Studien, Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, The Viener Holocaust Library organized the international conference Documenting the Holocaust: Testimonies as Historical Evidence. Partners of conference were Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich Polin, Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów, Centrum Badań Żydowskich.
The conference revolved around testimonies of the Holocaust produced during World War II and after its end. The goal was to examine the value of these source materials as evidence in historical research – taking into consideration all their potential and limitations, the contexts of their production, and their subsequent use in science, education, and remembrance practices.
The Holocaust Survivor Testimonies Collection held at the JHI derives from one of the earliest projects of finding and documenting the experiences of people who survived the Holocaust. With time, however, it has become just one among many similar collections. Over the years, numerous institutions launched their own projects to gather Survivors’ testimonies and memoirs, thanks to which we have access to a rich, complex body of materials.
The participants of the conference visited the Jewish Historical Institute. They saw the JHI’s core exhibition, What We’ve Been Unable to Shout out to the World, which primarily discusses the underground activity of the Oneg Shabbat group in the Warsaw ghetto and the history of the extraordinary collection they created from its inception to the present day. Marta Kapełuś then led
a curatorial tour of the newest temporary exhibition, Images of Identity. The Collection of Berlin’s Pre-War Jewish Museum. The participants also had
a chance to peek into the JHI’s Archive, which holds Poland’s largest collection of documents connected to the history of Polish Jews in the twentieth century.
The event was inaugurated by Dr. Michał Trębacz, Director of the Emanuel Ringleblum Jewish Historical Institute, who emphasized the importance of international cooperation and the need to continuously engage in research of the Holocaust.
Professor Judith Lyon-Caen (historian and professor at EHESS – School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris) gave a lecture focusing on the significance of literary studies in assessing the value of testimonies as historical evidence.
Basing her argument on the achievements of Saul Friedländer and selected proposals by Michel Borwicz, the speaker called for a greater degree of literary attention in order to better discern the value of testimonies as historical evidence. She also proposed approaches to reading testimonial poems as poems and, precisely as poems, as “sources for history”.
The first day of the conference opened with presentations from employees of the Emanuel Ringleblum Jewish Historical Institute: Zuzanna Schnepf-Kołacz – Deputy Director for Programme and Dr. Zofia Trębacz – historian and coordinator of the EHRI-PL project. Zuzanna Schnepf-Kołacz focused on the historical context of the JHI’s collections, while Dr. Zofia Trębacz discussed the JHI’s involvement in the EHRI project and the role of the consortium in bolstering cooperation between researchers from various international institutions.
The second day of the conference opened with presentations focusing on post-war court trials. Edyta Gawron (Jagiellonian University) spoke about Holocaust Survivors and their testimonies at post-war trials in Kraków. She also mentioned that some of them had been accused of collaborating with the Nazis. Oktawian Kuc (University of Warsaw) discussed witnesses taking part in the trials. He used the example of the trials of Arthur Greiser, Ludwig Fischer, Rudolf Höss, and others.
The conference was organized within the framework of EHRI-PL and co-funded with resources from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage for the task ‘Ongoing Activities of the Polish National Node of EHRI-PL – the EHRI-ERIC consortium, implemented by the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute [JHI] for the years 2025–2027 in cooperation with national partners.’
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