About the Project

The project "H-DIARIES - The first testimonies of the Holocaust written by Jewish victims: analysis, inventory, mapping" brings together French and German researchers around a shared topic: diaries written by Jewish victims during the Holocaust. Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Agence nationale de la recherche (ANR), H-DIARIES is based at the Center for Holocaust Studies, Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) and is conducted in cooperation with the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Centre de recherches historiques (EHESS-CNR).

Indeed, diaries written by Jewish victims of the Holocaust are among the most powerful personal testimonies of that period and have served as central sources for scholars from various disciplines for decades. Yet, with few exceptions, they have rarely been studied as independent objects in their own right. Composed in secret under life-threatening circumstances, hidden away, and smuggled out of camps and ghettos, these diaries often outlived their authors.

They reflect an existential need to bear witness, even when language offered limited means to adequately express the events being recorded. Their scholarly value does not lie - or at least, does not solely lie - in their function as sources for reconstructing historical events, but rather in their capacity to reveal subjective perceptions, narrative strategies, and individual coping mechanisms amid persecution and extermination.

The H-DIARIES research project studies these texts from a variety of perspectives (history of knowledge, spatial analysis, materiality, life trajectories) and through numerous methods (inventory, cartography, history of writing, anthropology of writing, microanalysis), in a transdisciplinary approach (History, Jewish Studies, Literary Studies, Philology, Geography, Material Culture Studies). Together, the personal diaries will form a corpus through which the history of the Holocaust can be explored in a global and comparative way, while also contributing to broader reflections on writing practices in the face of mass violence.

The project has three main interrelated objectives:

1. Inventory:

To establish a comprehensive, critical inventory of a wide range of texts that can be considered personal diaries written by Jewish victims of the Holocaust. This work of identification, that is conducted in close collaboration with archivists from various institutions, will result in a digital database created with Nodegoat that will be accessible for both research and teaching purposes.

2. Mapping:

To map the information related to these personal diaries. Temporal and spatial localization of the diaries using digital mapping methods will help visualize and compare the trajectories of the diarists. The geocoded visualizations will make individual spheres of experience visible, allow for the tracing of diachronic developments, and facilitate comparative analyses — moving from microanalysis to a macro scale — for the international scholarly community and educators (e.g., to locate the diaries and access reliable, curated data).

3. Analysis:

To develop a research approach to the Holocaust through personal diaries, producing a reflective historical analysis of these writings by considering them through an interdisciplinary examination from textual, biographical, material, spatial, and historiographical perspectives. The aim is to highlight their unique contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust.

Project duration
June 2, 2025 – May 31, 2028 (3 years)