1

Jess McMurray

Fiction, embellishment and ‘error’ in sources relating to the Holocaust and Nazi
Occupation: how Portelli’s historiographical concept of ‘Uchronic Dreams’ can give
alternate insight into the value of ‘counterfactual’ sources.

Essay Submitted in Completion of YBAJ190: The History of the Protectorate of Bohemia

and Moravia 1939-1945

Dr. Jan Vondráček, M.A.

31st January, 2023

2

Fiction, embellishment and ‘error’ in sources relating to the Holocaust and Nazi
Occupation: how Portelli’s concept of ‘Uchronic Dreams’ can give alternate insight into
the value of ‘counterfactual’ sources.

Introduction

Over the past 50 years, more than six major personal accounts of Holocaust survivorship
have been published, met with critical acclaim, and then – within a relatively short space of
time - been withdrawn from publication. The reason: each of these accounts was found to be
either partially or entirely fictitious. Whilst Martin Gray's 1971 memoir For Those I Loved1,
Deli Strummer's A Personal Reflection of the Holocaust from 19882, and Herman Rosenblat's
2009 Angel at the Fence3 constitute examples of extreme embellishment, Binjamin
Wilkomirski's 1995 Fragments: Memories of a Childhood 4, Misha Defonseca's 1997
Surviving with Wolves5 and Bernard Holstein's 2004 Stolen Soul6 have emerged as entirely
fictional fabrications, wherein the authors were not the people they claimed to be, and had
never been to the places they said they had. The result in each case has been moral outrage,
sensationalist media coverage, and contempt and condemnation for the authors in question.

Whilst critical and media focus (particularly in the form of documentaries and news articles) 7
tends to be on why these authors engaged in such duplicitous activity, and how this deception
was uncovered by professionals, it is submitted here that the more interesting area for
analysis is the change in reception by the audience that occurred upon identification of the
texts as ‘hoaxes’. In the majority of cases, these texts had been positively received by critics
and audiences on the basis of both their literary merit and their contribution to an
understanding of the period on a historical level. Fragments, for instance, was awarded the
Jewish Quartely Literary Prize in the UK, and the Prix de Mémoire de la Shoah in France 8 –
indicating that large parts of it were at least prima facie believable to those with some

1
Gray, M. (!971). For those I loved, Hampton Roads Publishing
2
Strummer, D. (1988). A Personal Reflection of the Holocaust from 1988, Aurich Press
3
Rosenblat, H. (2009) Angel at the Fence, Berkely Books
4
Wilkomirski, B. (1996) Fragments: Memories of a Childhood, Schocken
5
Defonseca, M. (1997) Surviving with Wolves, Piatkus
6
Holstein, B. (2004). Stolen Soul, Judy Shorrock
7
Daniloff, C. (2009) A genealogist reveals the painful truth about three Holocaust memoirs: they’re fiction,
Bostonia (Summer)
8
Gibbons, F. and Moss, S. (1999). Fragments of a Fraud, The Guardian, 15 th October
3

significant experience in the area. In the case of embellished texts such as Gray’s, much of
the content was indeed a ‘true’ account of what had happened to him, and was simply
furnished with extra sections to embellish the protagonist with greater heroism. Yet, outrage
means that the texts were entirely withdrawn and completely condemned as reference works
in the field of Holocaust studies. At the same time though, one can see texts such as
Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago9 maintain status as one of the most important literary-
historical works of the 21st century, despite accounts from some historians which indicate it to
be ‘methodically unacceptable in other fields of history [with] limited value [and] no
important new information or original analytical framework’10, full of ‘hearsay… selective
bias… and inaccuracy’.11

This controversy highlights one of the most fundamental issues within the field of
historiography: the issue of ‘factuality’, ‘truth’, ‘validity’ and even ‘reality’ – and the role of
positionality, intentionality, subject domain classification and methodological school in how
decisively critical concepts of ‘truth’ are seen to be. Even as schools of historiographical
thought have sought to move beyond top-down objectivity as a ‘gold standard’ for historical
understanding and embrace the relevance of bottom-up subjective experience, there is still a
preoccupation with proving the ‘validity’ of texts through cross-reference, authentication,
confirmation, corroboration, substantiation and verification.12 That which fails these
processes is frequently discarded.

This paper aims to engage in a dissection of emerging historiographical theories which view
‘counterfactual’, error-ridden or even fictitious accounts as valid sources for examination,
and which do so by reconstructing the field of historical investigation as one which is not just
focused on the events of the past, but the subjective experience of individuals and groups
both in the past and present. In this way, examination of subjective sources – and particularly
those which depart from an ‘accepted narrative’, become the subject of a cross-disciplinary
anthropological-historical and psychological-historical investigation. The essay will outline
particularly Portelli’s theory of ‘uchronic dreams’ 13, before applying these ideas loosely – as
illustration – to example texts from a variety of subjective, personal accounts of life under
9
Solzhenitsyn, A. (1974). The Gulag Archipelago 1918-56. An Experiment in Literary Imagination (London:
Collins Harville, 1988) pp, 324(5).
10
Getty, J. Arch (1981). Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 211.
11
Rittersporn, Gabor (1991). Stalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications, 1933–1953. New York:
Harwood Academic Publishers. pp. 231–235 Note though Solzhenitsyn’s potential sidestepping of the debate
through the self-aware subtitling of the book as ‘An experiment in literary imagination’.
12
Jaeger, S. (2019). Factuality in historiography/historical study. Narrative Factuality, 335-350.
13
Portelli, A. (1988). Uchronic dreams: Working class memory and possible worlds. Oral History, 16(2), 46-56.
4

Nazi occupation, both within and outside of camps. Crucially, it is necessary to stress that this
essay constitutes a critical theoretical examination of novel historiographical approaches
which uses illustrative examples from sources, rather than focused dissection of original
sources themselves.

Oral History as different rather than subordinate: Portelli’s Uchronic Dreams

Despite widespread assumptions to the contrary, the heavy focus of historians on physical
and ‘objective’ sources is a relatively modern phenomenon; Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire14 was one of the first works to ostensibly make use of ‘objective’ primary
sources as the basis for its examination, and profoundly influenced methodologies thereafter
– particularly in light of the Enlightenment, which began to reclassify many of the liberal arts
as capable of achieving something akin to scientific ‘objectivity’ 15, where previously at least
one goal of history had been as much about creating national and societal cohesion through
the sharing of common myth as it was about accounting for cause and effect. Thus, until
relatively far into the 20th century, both subjective accounts from the time (such as in diaries)
and recalled accounts (written or oral) ex post facto were viewed as subordinate in value.

Whilst subjectivity became an increasing area of interest in developing schools of

historiography – notably the Annales school, which sought to understand historical
experience more holistically as social, psychological and material structures of change over
time, the issue of ‘memory’ as a fallible method of recall was still characterised as a barrier to
understanding subjective experience effectively, rather than a component of it worthy of
study itself.16

It is this which is the focus of Portelli. Portelli tells us that ‘rather than replacing previous
truths with alternative ones… oral history has made us uncomfortably aware of the elusive
quality of historical truth itself’.17 He identifies the over-confidence of academics in reliance
on ‘traditional’ sources such as newspaper articles and court documents, indicating that they

14
Gibbon, E., Adler, M. J., & Hutchins, R. M. (1887). The decline and fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1. Bohn..
15
Deborah Parsons (2007). Theorists of the Modernist Novel: James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson and Virginia
Woolf. Routledge. p. 94
16
Portelli, A. (2010). The death of Luigi Trastulli and other stories: Form and meaning in oral history. State
University of New York Press.
17
Ibid
5

are simply entrenched subjective perspectives. They thus may have fidelity over time – since
they remain unchanged (though even this is disputable), but they certainly never manage to
approach the supposed levels of ‘objectivity’ or ‘fact’ which is too-often ascribed to them,
and indeed the very process of transcribing the subjective account of the moment into a
supposedly objective artefact arguably distorts the ‘nature’ of the account even further.

But Portelli goes even further. He suggests that the ‘distortion’ of memory over time – both
in acts of conscious, unconscious, intentional and unintentional reconstruction – tell us just as
much about a ‘reality’, past and present, as any verifiable, mutually-agreed-upon ‘factual’
account. Quoting Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Portelli states that ‘History is an invention
which realities supplies with raw materials. It is not, however, an arbitrary invention, and the
interest it arouses is rooted in the interests of the teller. This is why ‘wrong tales… are so
very valuable. They allow us to recognise the interests of the tellers and the dreams and
desires beneath them… Rather than being a weakness, this is however their strength: errors,
inventions and myths lead us through and beyond facts to their meanings’ 18. The encounter
which prompted exploration into this idea of counterfactuality occurred when Portelli was
collecting oral accounts of a worker’s strike in fascist Italy. A worker – Trastulli - was shot
by police in a 1949 in a protest regarding accession to NATO. However, a great many oral
sources recollected Trastulli dying later – in 1953, in significantly bigger protests relating to
worker’s layoffs. Not only was this mistaken ascription of the event in itself interesting in
illuminating the relative importance of events to the subjects at the time, but also the
profound emotional effect of the event over time that imbues Portelli’s subjects’
understanding of both their past and present and the past and present as a result. The
subjectivity of their mistake provided far richer ground for examination than the nature of the
reported ‘fact’ of Trastulli’s death itself.

From this, Portelli identified the existence of the uchronic – which, more than merely
counterfactual – is described by the author as the ‘presentation of an alternative present, a
sort of parallel universe in which the different unfolding of an historical event had radically
altered’19. It was given full embodiment for Portellu when interviewing an old and mentally
infirm leader of a Fascist resistance movement. The subject described a series of events and
meetings – in which he was the supposed protagonist - which had never actually occurred.
These were not wilful fabrication on the subject’s part, but instead a genuinely held ‘alternate

18
Ibid
19
Portelli, Uchronic Dreams
6

memory’ that had taken on the shape of reality to the subject himself as a result of mental
infirmity. Along with other experiences; Portelli developed two key inferences from this. The
first is that all subjects hold not only an account of what did happen – as far as they can
subjectively ascertain, but also what might have happened had things occurred differently,
and that these ‘divergence’ points – and the similarities and differences of perceived
divergence between various individuals and groups - can be illuminating and important. And
secondly, that often these divergence points are only crystallised and identifiable when the
subject is called upon directly to consider them in the process of recounting their history.
Thus, Portelli stresses the development of oral histories as an intersubjective occurrence
between researcher and subject, one which is entirely context dependent and which a) will
never produce the same results twice, and b) will never achieve full ‘conclusion’.

But whilst Portelli applies concepts of ultra-subjectivity and uchronia specifically in relation
to oral histories, it is submitted here that these concepts of ‘factuality’, memory, subjectivity
and uchronic divergence have applicability in all fields of history; whether being applied to
sources that are being accessed directly through deliberate research or those already
established, whether primary or secondary, whether academic, literary, media-based, social or
political. Every subject’s subjectivity is – or should be - its central focus, not the content
contained within. By engaging in an expansion of Portelli’s theories regarding ultra-critical,
holistically-understood subjectivity, historians have the potential to understand far more
nuanced things about both the moment of history in question, and the way that history has
been treated and the impact it has had over time.

Applying lessons from Portelli in the context of Holocaust and Nazi Occupation studies

Despite a swiftly growing academic acceptance of Portelli’s methodological insights, and

despite constituting an academic realm rife with the type of ‘counterfactual’ accounts
outlined in the introduction, the extant literature displays a remarkable dearth of studies
which use Portelli’s lens of subjectivity as a way of analysing texts from WW2 – particularly
those which display ‘alternative’ and ‘erroneous’ accounts of life under Nazi occupation and
within concentration/work camps.20 Whilst it is outside of the scope to examine these in any
detail, it is possible to outline the kinds of questions that could be fruitfully prompted from

20
Franklin, R. (2011). A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction. Oxford/New York: Oxford
University Press
7

adoption of Portelli’s model when analysing various sources relating instances of Nazi
occupation.

Grand narratives and myth-making touchpoints in world history

Let us start by returning to the issue of false personal testimony relating to the Holocaust.
What can these texts tell us about both the Holocaust as a moment in history, and the
historiography of the Holocaust and its ongoing cultural legacy? In the case of Binjamin
Wilkomirski, as in the case of Portelli’s interview with the aging resistance movement leader,
both constituted a case of mental illness; Wilomirski has remained adamant that his account
of history is true, despite the presence of significant documentation indicating otherwise. In
this way then, the account provides a compelling psychological investigation as to why one
would construct an identity rooted in Holocaust experience.

In the case of Grey though, who did indeed have direct experience relating to the Warsaw
Ghetto, but not Treblinka, Vice21 submits that commercial concerns were a consideration in
Gray’s embellishments. Gray was convinced by his ghost-writer that a Treblinka-based
section would ‘pull the readers in’, and Gray acquiesced on the basis that he would do what
needed to be done to have his story heard, with a further justification that the stories of
Treblinka should be heard and the Jewish people given the opportunity to view heroes in that
context, even if fictional. This pressure upon Grey speaks to an ongoing paradox that is
experienced not only in the mainstream consumption of history, but in academia also: a
tension between the desire for objectivity and verifiability as the basis of the ‘facts’ that we
use to construct pictures of the past, but also the desire for those facts to fit nicely within a
coherent and comprehensible narrative structure, and to be imbued with an emotionality that
renders them relatable.22 The pursuit of unifying grand narrative theories remains persistent,
despite an apparent ‘postmodern’ turn away from the teleological.23

21
Vice, S. (2014). Translating the self: False Holocaust testimony. Translation and Literature, 23(2), 197-209.
22
Baggerman, A. (2018) Egodocuments and the personal turn in historiography, in: European Journal of Life
Writing VII (2018). Groningen: University of Groningen Press, pp. 90–110
23
Weinstein, B. (2005). History Without a Cause? Grand Narratives, World History, and the Postcolonial
Dilemma. International Review of Social History, 50(1), 71–93.
8

This idea is supported by Foley 24, who argues that some historical events are so major in their
significance to the grand narrative that ‘they alter not only the nature of historical reality but
also the possibility of embodying that reality in artistic representation’, with Langer saying
similarly that ‘the existence of Dachau and Auschwitx as historical phenomena has altered
not only our conception of reality, but its very nature’. 25 In this way, events – such as the
Holocaust – and touchpoints – such as Auschwitz – become so imbued with significance and
the ‘weight’ of accumulated knowledge that they take on the status of ‘myth’, defined by
Slotkin as ‘a complex of narratives that dramatizes the world vision and historical sense of a
people or culture, reducing centuries of experience into a constellation of compelling
metaphors’.26 What is crucial to recognise is that this myth carries such cultural weight that it
become fact in itself. Thus, ‘false accounts’ of the Holocaust which embody all the
components of this myth or ‘collectively accepted memory’, are – in a complex manner – as
much valid artifacts of the phenomenon as those which spring from ‘real’ and present
experience at the time.27

Seeking to explain heterogeneity in accounts of life under Nazi occupation

Another area where Portelli’s approach can be illuminating is in examination of heterogeneity

of reported experience across groups where one might expect homogeneity. A common
undertaking in the study of Nazi occupation is an attempt to understand the discrepancies of
experience for various groups under their rule. Why was X group granted more leniency than
Y? Why did A group experience harsher conditions and greater persecution than B? Whilst
undoubtedly there is validity in this exercise, too-often it can speak again to an instinct to
coherently conceptualise, categorise and create comprehensible ‘rules’ of understanding to
which facts can neatly conform: a desire to create an established ‘hierarchy’ of Nazi
persecution.28

Applying Portelli’s focus on subjectivity can help to identify that much of the heterogeneity
apparent in different accounts of Nazi treatment comes not from how the Nazis acted in an
‘objective’ sense, but how those actions were experienced by the subjects, both at the time
24
Foley, B. (1982). Fact, Fiction, Fascism: Testimony and Mimesis in Holocaust Narratives. Comparative
Literature, 34(4), 330–360.
25
Langer, L. (1975) The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination. New Haven, CT: Yale UP
26
Slotkin, R. (1998). Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth Century American, Norman
27
Portelli. Uchronic Dreams
28
Kallis, A. (2005). Race, “value” and the hierarchy of human life: ideological and structural determinants of
national socialist policy-making, Journal of Genocide Research 7
9

but also – crucially – over time. The relevance of this is particularly high in contexts such as
that of the Protectorate, where issues of positionality – frequently framed as the binary of
‘collaborator’ versus ‘resistor’29 – have important implications for how people construct their
own sense of identity, and their social identity also30. Accounts which ostensibly seem to
come from similar categories of people and yet which express differing experiences (or
differing feelings about those experiences) should not be compared on the basis of
ascertaining which is more ‘valid’ or ‘true’, but instead in understanding the social,
psychological and cultural factors which led to different accounts of those experiences, and
different feelings towards those experiences31 – with reference not just to the subject’s
positionality at the time, but also their contemporary position and the relationship held
between subject and researcher.32

Re-contextualising political cause and effect

A final area for consideration is the way that ‘cause and effect’ are considered in relation to
World War Two. Portelli’s concept of uchronic ‘alternate’ timelines in which a different
cause could bring about an alternate result are inherently present in all accounts of history;
academic, political or popular. They rest on the assumptions that underpin assertions of fact.
But whilst the determination of objective causal relations in history is largely impossible (see
below), there is still value in assessing these positions, precisely because of what they
illuminate about the subjectivity and context of the source making the claim, rather than the
validity of the claim itself.33 Take for example positions taken regarding the causal chain of
events in pre-, during and post-War Czechia that led to eventual Soviet alignment. In his
book ‘A Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe’ 34, Kundera posits the alignment as
a cultural inevitability – a chain of events set in motion long before the war. Conversely,
Taggart ascribes it very specifically to the liberation of the Protectorate by Soviet forces right
at the end, and thus posits that any chance in events before that juncture might have
influenced the Czech Republic’s eventual Soviet alignment,35 whilst Smetena attributes
29
Frommer, B. (2005) National cleansing: retribution against Nazi collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia,
Cambridge 2005, 33-63
30
Feinberg, M (2006) Dumplings and domesticity: Women, collaboration, and resistance in the protectorate of
Bohemia and Moravia. In: Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe Indiana, 95-110,
31
Bryant, C. (2007): Prague in black. Nazi Rule and Czech Nationalism, London, 179-208.
32
Portelli, Uchronic Dreams
33
Ibid
34
Kundera, M. (!984). A Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe, The New York Review of Books 31(7)
35
Taggart, S and J.L. Hromadka (October 12, 1946), 13 February 1976, folder 960, box 117, BC 45,
10

alignment ultimately to the Kosice document as a final part of a longer process initiated at the
Munich agreement.36 Even the position of Benes – who was actor of direct influence in the
decision, and who identified his motives for Eastwards alignment as geopolitical and
traceable directly to the Munich agreement of 1938 37 – cannot be said to hold any ‘truer’
account or explanation for the Czech’s Soviet fate. Why? Because as Reinhardt points out,
the flow of cause and effect in history can never be truly ‘tested’ for validity in any scientific
manner; it lacks the potential for test-retest reliability and falsifiability. 38 But Portelli’s
approach to history stresses that these assertions of cause and effect are still valuable for
study, not in an attempt to ascertain which one maintains greater apparent validity as an
‘explanation’ of what happened, but because they give insight into the historical context and
subjectivity of the subjects making these claims. Changing perspective on what we are
studying and where our focus lies when examining sources – i.e on the source itself and not
on what the source claims – is a vital step in recharacterizing the way we understand
historiography, and thus history itself.

Conclusion

Engaging in a dissection of historiographical method – with a particular focus on the

‘subjective turn’ and the concept of uchronia forwarded by Portelli - this essay has attempted
to identify the way in which a reconceptualization of what we are studying and why when we
examine sources can profoundly impact the understanding we gain from them. The essay has
identified that it is the subjectivity of the source that gives us insight, rather than the
statements being asserted within the source. As such, ‘fictitious’ and conventionally
‘erroneous’ accounts are in fact just as illuminating for study as any other, and it is a mistake
to attempt to compare and validate sources against each other in order to determine a singular
‘truth’. The essay illustrated this by drawing on three general examples from accounts of the
Second World War; firstly, identifying how fictitious Holocaust accounts demonstrate the
way in which grand narrative formations take on the weight of cultural ‘myth’ that itself
solidifies into social fact39; secondly, identifying that heterogeneity in accounts where one
would expect homogeneity is more often ascribable to both historical and contemporary
Masaryk collection
36
In McEnroe, T. (2019). The Košice manifesto – the 1945 document that sealed Czechoslovakia’s eastern
orientation, Czech Radio, 4th May
37
Hauner, M. (2009). “We Must Push Eastwards!” The Challenges and Dilemmas of President Beneš after
Munich. Journal of Contemporary History, 44(4), 619–656.
38
Reinhardt, A. (2022). The Impossibility Of History, Three Quarks Daily, March 28th
11

subjectivity than any ‘objective’ difference in account; and thirdly, that assertions of ‘cause
and effect’ and the possibility of pivotal ‘divergence’ moments that determine ‘reality’ from
uchronic possibilities can never be tested, but are none-the-less illuminating in what they tell
us about the subjectivity of the source making such claims.

References

Baggerman, A. (2018) Egodocuments and the personal turn in historiography, in: European Journal
of Life Writing VII (2018). Groningen: University of Groningen Press, pp. 90–110

Bryant, C. (2007): Prague in black. Nazi Rule and Czech Nationalism, London, 179-208.

Daniloff, C. (2009) A genealogist reveals the painful truth about three Holocaust memoirs: they’re
fiction, Bostonia (Summer)

Deborah Parsons (2007). Theorists of the Modernist Novel: James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson and
Virginia Woolf. Routledge. p. 94

Defonseca, M. (1997) Surviving with Wolves, Piatkus

Feinberg, M (2006) Dumplings and domesticity: Women, collaboration, and resistance in the
protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. In: Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern
Europe Indiana, 95-110,

Foley, B. (1982). Fact, Fiction, Fascism: Testimony and Mimesis in Holocaust Narratives.
Comparative Literature, 34(4), 330–360.

Franklin, R. (2011). A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction. Oxford/New York:
Oxford University Press

Frommer, B. (2005) National cleansing: retribution against Nazi collaborators in Postwar

Czechoslovakia, Cambridge 2005, 33-63

Getty, J. Arch (1981). Origins of the Great Purges. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 211.

39
Siertsema, B. (2022). The Tension between Fact and Fiction in Holocaust Literature, Interdisciplinary Journal
for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society, 8(1), 83-99
12

Gibbon, E., Adler, M. J., & Hutchins, R. M. (1887). The decline and fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1.
Bohn..

Gibbons, F. and Moss, S. (1999). Fragments of a Fraud, The Guardian, 15th October

Gray, M. (1971). For those I loved, Hampton Roads Publishing

Hauner, M. (2009). “We Must Push Eastwards!” The Challenges and Dilemmas of President Beneš
after Munich. Journal of Contemporary History, 44(4), 619–656.

Holstein, B. (2004). Stolen Soul, Judy Shorrock

In McEnroe, T. (2019). The Košice manifesto – the 1945 document that sealed Czechoslovakia’s
eastern orientation, Czech Radio, 4th May

Jaeger, S. (2019). Factuality in historiography/historical study. Narrative Factuality, 335-350.

Kallis, A. (2005). Race, “value” and the hierarchy of human life: ideological and structural
determinants of national socialist policy-making, Journal of Genocide Research 7

Kundera, M. (!984). A Kidnapped West: The Tragedy of Central Europe, The New York Review of
Books 31(7)

Langer, L. (1975) The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination. New Haven, CT: Yale UP

Portelli, A. (1988). Uchronic dreams: Working class memory and possible worlds. Oral History,
16(2), 46-56.

Portelli, A. (2010). The death of Luigi Trastulli and other stories: Form and meaning in oral history.
State University of New York Press.

Reinhardt, A. (2022). The Impossibility Of History, Three Quarks Daily, March 28th

Rittersporn, Gabor (1991). Stalinist Simplifications and Soviet Complications, 1933–1953. New York:
Harwood Academic Publishers. pp. 231–235

Rosenblat, H. (2009) Angel at the Fence, Berkely Books

Siertsema, B. (2022). The Tension between Fact and Fiction in Holocaust Literature, Interdisciplinary
Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society, 8(1), 83-99

Slotkin, R. (1998). Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth Century American,
Norman

Strummer, D. (1988). A Personal Reflection of the Holocaust from 1988, Aurich Press
13

Taggart, S and J.L. Hromadka (October 12, 1946), 13 February 1976, folder 960, box 117, BC 45,
Masaryk collection

Vice, S. (2014). Translating the self: False Holocaust testimony. Translation and Literature, 23(2),
197-209.

Weinstein, B. (2005). History Without a Cause? Grand Narratives, World History, and the
Postcolonial Dilemma. International Review of Social History, 50(1), 71–93.

Wilkomirski, B. (1996) Fragments: Memories of a Childhood, Schocken