Summary 2

For this study I have divided the Dutch autobiographical writings about the nazi concentration camps into diaries and letters (11, of which 8 are Jewish, 2 Christian and 1 communist), Jewish memoirs (37), Christian memoirs (35, subdivided into Protestant and Roman-Catholic), and non-religious memoirs (31). On the whole Dutch concentration camp writings show the same formal characteristics as international Holocaust literature: the majority is told chronologically from a single perspective, in either the first or the third person. A third-person narration occurs more often in the earlier than in the later writings. In the non-religious memoirs there are noticeably more texts with (traces of) fictional techniques blurring the autobiographical background than in Christian and Jewish memoirs. Most memoirs take their starting point in the arrival in the camp. But Jewish memoirs may also begin with the happy family life before the war, whereas Christian memoirs often begin with the arrest and the questioning, or sometimes with the acts of resistance which led to the arrest. Many writings end with the liberation, but Jewish and non-religious memoirs often describe the troublesome journey home. Some memoirs are structured more thematically with chapters about roll call, labour, hunger, health and diseases, punishments, and so on. Lapses in time may indicate a hidden trauma; some writers for instance are silent about the death marches. Two authors (Koopman and Nicholls) show in their composition, alternating past and present, camp and post war professional life, how memories affect their daily lives, a theme also typical of some of Hellema's short stories. Sometimes the narrator uses, consciously or not, a special style to show his personality, such as pious or biblical language by clergymen (Knoop), heated indignation by a young woman (Blits), classical associations by a well-educated intellectual (Hemelrijk). In this respect Abel Herzberg presents a special case. In his diary in Bergen-Belsen, he writes about his work for the Jewish Court of Law and gives extensive reflections on Judaism and anti-Semitism, using a fluent, elaborate