THE REPRESENTATION OF TORTURE AND RESISTANCE IN ANA NOVAC’S DIARY: BETWEEN MEMORY AND TESTIMONY
THE REPRESENTATION OF TORTURE AND RESISTANCE IN ANA NOVAC’S DIARY: BETWEEN MEMORY AND TESTIMONY

Summary/Abstract: This proposal examines how Ana Novac’s journal works both as a way for the author to cope with her own traumatic experience and as a form of testimony that contributes to collective memory. The journal records the many forms of terror present in the Nazi camps—violent language, physical aggression, the shaving of hair, tattooing, beatings, torture, and constant exposure to death. At the same time, it shows how prisoners resisted by trying to preserve their identity through daily labor, solidarity with their companions, improvised fashion, surrogate family bonds, and small subversive actions, including spreading rumors of liberation. By combining these two dimensions, Novac’s writing demonstrates how individual memory becomes part of a larger effort to remember and communicate camp experience. In this way, the journal not only documents survival and suffering but also takes part in shaping how these events enter cultural and historical memory.

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