The Wiener Holocaust Library is delighted to host this book launch event as part of its New Academic Books series. You can register to attend in person or online.

Olga Lengyel, Auschwitz Survivor engages with one of the most intriguing, but still under-researched, aspects of testimony: how the remembering and telling of an individual Holocaust survivor changes through time, through shifting contexts and with increasing age. The book focuses on Olga Lengyel (1908-2001).

Lengyel wrote a memoir about her imprisonment in Auschwitz, first published in French in 1946, which was translated into English with modifications in 1947, and, half a century later, in 1998, she gave video testimony for the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive. Her testimony is well known enough to have gained a public profile and to have attracted some scholarly attention, but is not ‘canonical’.

Her work is internationally known, having been translated and received in a number of languages, and having been an inspiration for William Styron’s bestseller Sophie’s Choice. This book provides a condensed critical resource on Lengyel’s testimonies, addressing matters of historical veracity, of trauma, of gender, of memory, and of genre in the transmission and reception of Holocaust testimonies over time and across cultures.

The book is available to purchase here.

Event Programme:

6:30: Opening

6:35 – 6:55: Introduction to the Book by the Authors.

6:55 – 7:10: Response, Prof Sue Vice, Professor of English, University of Sheffield.

7:10 – 7:25: Accessing Testimonies Today, Dr Rachel Pistol, Director, EHRI-UK, University of Southampton; Dr Stefanie Rauch, Head of Collections, The Wiener Holocaust Library; and, Dr Bea Lewkowicz, Director, AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive.

7:25 – 7:40: Q&A.

7:40 – 8:15: Online programme ends. Light reception in person.

Virtual Event guidelines:

The Library will send you a Zoom link and joining instructions via email prior to the event. Please check your junk email folders.

Please try and join 5 minutes before the event start time and we will let you into the room (do try and bear with us if this takes a few minutes).

If you would like to ask a question during the event, please type your question into the chat function, and we will endeavour to answer as many questions as possible during the Q&A. Your webcam will not be seen during this event.

This event is free, although registration via the link below is required. Please note that our free events are run by staff volunteers. Thank you for your patience should we have any technical or audio difficulties. We will do our best to correct them but this is not always possible.