"Many of those who were only wounded suffocated, buried alive": Analyzing the Experiences of Jews Who Survived Mass Executions

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The Holocaust is associated primarily with death camps, but mass executions alongside crematoria were an equal way to exterminate Jews during World War II. This article presents the perspective of Jews who survived the shootings. On the basis of ninety-one personal accounts of people who survived under the corpses, I describe their experience: the circumstances of the massacre, falling into the grave, getting out of it, and returning to the living. In the text, I pose the following questions: what can we learn by analyzing this experience? Does it bring anything new to our knowledge of the Holocaust? Did those once "buried alive" know something that other witnesses do not say? The article complicates received understandings of how, precisely, people died during the Holocaust; and challenges the common assumption in the scholarship that those who survived were all "irreversibly changed."