Voices from the Darkness: Early Witness Testimonies of WWII and the Gulag

• In Event: Trauma of War, Trauma of Exile: Early Testimonies and Witness Accounts of Wartime Émigrés and Refugees from Poland

Abstract

The paper explores the remarkable collection of early testimonies of Polish citizens deported to the Soviet Union during WWII. It examines the reasons and circumstances that led the representatives of the Polish government-in-exile to collect and document the harrowing and traumatic experiences of the deportees and prisoners. What methods and techniques did they employ and develop to record and investigate the survival in the “inhuman land”? How have these early documentation efforts influenced the historiography of the Soviet regime?

Author

• Katharina Friedla, Hoover Institution