von Dienstag, 1. Juli 2025 -  12:00
bis Freitag, 15. August 2025 - 23:59

Université de Caen Normandie, Caen, France

From Day to Day? Collecting and Inventorying Diaries in Holocaust Research

October 19–22, 2025 | Location: Université de Caen Normandie | Caen, France | Deadline: 15 August 2025

Diaries written during the Holocaust and the immediate aftermath record experiences of daily life, persecution, flight and exile, detention, and camp life, as well as experiences of liberation, displacement, return, and new environments. The writers recorded their reflections on these experiences in various languages, at different times, in different places, in different lengths, and in diverse media formats/forms.

The stylistic genre of the diaries also ranges from impersonal chronicles to first-person confessions. Perhaps the only definition that can encompass this diversity is that a diary is a regularly updated record recounting observed and/or experienced events. Even within one diary, we can find multiple languages.

In this sense, then, these already complex sources are transnational and require collaboration across linguistic borders. Indeed, the linguistic diversity of Holocaust diaries and the fact that they are still poorly catalogued in archives represent significant obstacles.

Franco-German H-DIARIES project

The identification of Holocaust diaries in archival collections is a real challenge. Many are interspersed in personal collections and files, buried under generic labels like “personal narratives”. Moreover, postwar memoirs are sometimes designated as diaries because they adopt a diary-like form in their narrative style. These challenges likely explain why, to date, no comprehensive inventory project of Holocaust diaries has been undertaken – which is the aim of the new Franco-German H-DIARIES project.

Workshop

This workshop seeks to bring together not only scattered source material – a core task of EHRI-ERIC – but also the expertise that is scattered among different disciplines, institutions, and national contexts. The event is therefore related to EHRI’s mission to overcome the fragmentation of Holocaust-related sources by connecting experts and researchers and bringing together their projects and primary sources.

This workshop has a methodological focus centered on core questions:

How can Holocaust diaries be identified and collected?
What roles do historians and archivists play in this process?
What epistemological meaning can be given to a corpus of diaries as documentation of the Holocaust?
What do the methods of collection, preservation, and cataloguing reveal about the historiography of the Holocaust?
Hybrid workshop/seminar format
The event will be a hybrid workshop/seminar format. There will be a workshop with papers and presentations, a seminar part during which participants will work in small groups to perform a hands-on analysis of diaries, and a wrap-up session.

What to expect from the seminar:

Discussion of participants’ projects on diaries
Short keynote lectures by experts
Close readings of excerpts of diaries
Discussions on interdisciplinary approaches and challenges
Interrogating the historicity and factuality in/of diaries
Input on best practices and the challenges of inventorying diaries
The seminar will be held in English.

EHRI will cover accommodations for participants as well as travel costs up to 350 Euros.

Please include the following in your application:

A completed application form
A letter of motivation (maximum 500 words)
A curriculum vitae (maximum 2 pages)
Please submit the completed application materials as a single PDF or DOC file, and any accompanying questions, by 15 August 2025 to the email address Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein!. Applicants will be notified about the results of their application by 31 August 2025.

Organising Institutions

The institutions involved in the organization of this workshop are experienced in conducting research projects on ego-documents. The École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) just commenced the French–German project “H-DIARIES – The first testimonies of Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Analysis, Inventory, Mapping”.

The Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) has expertise in carrying out transdisciplinary projects and summer schools that highlight the importance of ego-documents (testimonies, letters, diaries, autobiographies, and others) and is experienced in developing and hosting methodological seminars and summer university courses that focus on new readings of sources.

Within EHRI-ERIC, the VWI will coordinate the emerging Working Group (WG) “Ego-documents in Holocaust studies and collections”.

Additionally, this workshop aims to lay the foundation for further cooperation with French partners and to build connections with the French scientific landscape, in particular, the University of Caen Normandie, which established the first French academic chair dedicated to the Holocaust and is hosting this workshop.

Image on top of page:

Béla Varga, „Nehéz napok“, The Strochlitz Institute for Holocaust Research, Haifa; Diary of Peter Feigl, 1992.59, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives, Washington, DC; Herzl Mazia diary, 2011.419.3, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives, Washington, DC; Diary of József Bihari, Holocaust Memorial Center, Budapest; Thieben Arthurné, Végakarat, Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies; Salomon Berenholc papers, 2011.372.1, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives, Washington, DC.