Amongst Holocaust accounts, literature and writing, there have emerged four distinctly identifiable forms: the academic historical text, exemplified by historians such as Martin Gilbert and Philip Friedman; literature, by writers such as Eli Wiesel and Primo Levi; the allegorical tale, such as Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief (2005), Karen Hesse’s The Cats in Krasinski Square (2004), and Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (1986); and the anecdotal account, such as this book by Sabina Wolanski, Destined to Live: One Woman’s War, Life, Loves Remembered.

The last of these, untrammelled as they are by strict considerations of literary form or the academic rigour and restriction of citation and referencing, is perhaps the most fundamental. Each distinct voice adds to the canon. Every individual story, every different account, every unique experience contributes to a whole that secures the horror of these events in the cultural consciousness. That such accounts are recorded anchors each in an inescapable reality, an immediate and undeniable veracity, as if to say, ‘No, you will not deny my voice. Even if I am no writer, no natural teller of stories, even if I am no academic, I will be heard, my way.’ This last category is often better suited to a documentary, archival, or recorded oral history form.