Between Documentary Prose, Travelogue, and Testimony: Documenting Holocaust and War in Postwar Belarus

Belarus was the site of massive violence against local populations during the German occupation, Jews and non-Jews. Recent estimates say that more than 20% of the population were killed, including more than 90% of the Jewish population. More than 9,000 villages were wholly or partially destroyed, hundreds of them never to be rebuilt. Mass graves of Jews dot the landscape in or near almost every town—wartime violence and Holocaust continue to shape the land and human lives. 

Following earlier work on the individual experiences of the Holocaust in Belarus, Anika Walke studies the longterm legacies of destruction that was left behind at the end of World War II. What does it mean to live on or near mass graves in Belarus, or more broadly: in and with a landscape that is infused with sites testifying to wartime violence and but also constituted by violent border changes in 1939, 1941, and 1945? How do people relate to the visible and invisible traces of violence that targeted Jews and non-Jews in specific ways but which was often deeply entangled? 

Local and communal practices of remembering and the writings of several writers and activists have addressed the impact of the German occupation terror on the population, on the land, and on society. Alongside memoirs and personal testimonies, distinct literary forms evidence a search for ways to comprehend unprecedented mass murder and genocidal violence. During the colloquium, Walke will introduce works of documentary prose and literary documentation to discuss the tension between literary and historical portrayals and the significance of multilingual and polyphonic accounts of war and genocide.