Early and Later Holocaust Survivor Testimony: The case of Yehuda Bacon

Research on oral accounts has repeatedly argued that the central to understanding the construction of the individuals’ story is the context in which the telling takes place. The story as told by the individual is his or her memory and interpretation of the event which is in constant negotiation and dialogue. In order to track if and how survivors’ narratives have changed and evolved over time, it is necessary to compare the individual accounts given at different phases in their lives. There have been some important studies, both historical and psychological, which have begun to look at this issue. Whilst these studies do point to an initial understanding of the dynamics of survivor testimony over time, which for the most part attest to the resilience and consistency of memory, no work thus far has provided a comprehensive examination of the longitudinal development of individual survivor testimony, in order to identify if the changing context influences and shapes survivors’ accounts of the individuals’ past. This paper is based on comparison of Holocaust survivor testimony over the past 5 decades.