STUDIA: Głos ofiary i estetyka melodramatu w historii
STUDIES: The Victim’s Voice and Melodramatic Esthetics in History

Summary/Abstract: Saul Friedländer’s recent Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Extermination offers a brilliant new literary mode for historical representation of extreme events such as the Holocaust. The article offers a comparative assessment of Friedländer’s achievement with regard to the integration of Jewish sources into the historical account. It begins with a contextualization of Friedländer’s book within a framework that compares the ways in which Jewish sources are addressed by different historio-graphical approaches. In the second part it seeks to contextualize analytically and critically Friedländer’s concept of „disbelief” – a concept by which he defines the role of the „victims’ voices” in his narrative. The article concludes by briefly suggesting some guidelines for an alternative approach to the study of contemporary Jewish Holocaust sources.

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