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Volume 17, Spring 2003
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Using Testimonies for Researching and Teaching about the Holocaust
Writings of Nechama Tec - Intro
Nechama Tec: Holocaust Survivor and Author Incorporates Testimony in her Research
Nechama Tec, a sociologist and Holocaust scholar, exemplifies how both written and oral testimonies can be integrated into research about the Holocaust. She has written her memoir Dry Tears dealing with her childhood and several monographs on resisters and rescuers during the Holocaust. With each of her publications she relies on a variety of sources:
1. Published memoirs and diaries, written during and after World War II;
2. Archival materials, published documents from German and Polish collections and unpublished testimonies of Jews and non-Jews, gathered at different times;
3. Her own in-depth interviews of Holocaust survivors and rescuers.
Drawing from these diverse materials, Tec is careful to verify by consulting "external checks." As she explains in a recent article article on her methodology:
Findings can also be validated through external checks. This calls for independent outside confirmation of facts from several independent sources about similar events. The greater the number of sources that offer similar information, the more we believe in the trustworthiness of the particular data. If, for example, we have ten different sources and five of them consistently give the same information, but the other five offer varied answers, we tend to assume that the consistently stated responses come closest to what had actually happened.
(Nechama Tec, "Diaries and Oral History: Some Methodological
Considerations." Religion and the Arts, 4.1 (2000): 90.)
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Dimensions Online
Volume 18, No. 1, Fall 2004
Yehuda Bauer
Volume 17, No. 2, Fall 2003
Using Testimonies for Researching and Teaching about the Holocaust--Part II
Volume 17, No.1, Spring 2003
Using Testimonies for Researching and Teaching about the Holocaust-- Part I
Volume 16, No. 1, Fall 2002
Remembrance and Commemoration of Two Catastrophes:
September 11th and the Holocaust
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