Memoir Paper

Memoir Paper/Analysis and Reaction Paper:

Students will read a memoir written by a Holocaust survivor and will write a 3-4 page paper analyzing

how the memoir helps them understand the nature and reality of the Holocaust. Double space, 12 point

font, 1 inch margins. Cite the book's page numbers for all details, facts and quotes.

Students will choose one book to read

Memoirs:

Holocaust denial is fond of asserting that eyewitness accounts of specific

events are often flawed. This tack, of course, is immediately followed by an

abrupt dismissal of any such account raised in rebuttal to their arguments.

While witnesses to historic events are certainly subject to common human

failings, including memory lapses, incorrect memories and/or understandings

of witnessed events, their testimony often contains statements of such

general scope that it is impossible for observers to deny their accuracy.

(The Nizkor Project, 1991-2009).

Yehuda Bauer, a renowned Holocaust historian notes that survivors who have written memoirs are for

the most part, not historians or psychologists, they do not analyze nor do they dissect. Therefore to

judge or critique their accounts as historical fact is erroneous.

Why then do people write these accounts? Obviously reliving their experiences is painful, at times

excruciating. Is writing a form of catharsis for these individuals?

For this paper students will analyze one of the memoirs. Do not simply retell the individual's story from

beginning to end instead first explain why the person is retelling their story.

Keeping in mind memoirs are based upon the person's subjective memory what do you think are some

of