H-DIARIES BLOG
The H-Diaries Blog shows our research activities. How we do research at archival centers, our contributions at conferences and many more activities.
The Beginning of the H-DIARIES Project
Since 2023, Sarah Gruszka and Marie Moutier-Bitan have been working in the collections of the Mémorial de la Shoah,
with the support of the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah. This work of identifying and inventorying the
institution’s Holocaust diaries has enabled us to test the methodology to be adopted and to explore research hypotheses
in preparation for the ANR-DFG project. Approximately 80 Holocaust diaries have thus been identified within the collections
of the Mémorial de la Shoah.
This work would not have been possible without the invaluable assistance of Karen Taïeb, Director of the Archives. Her knowledge of the collections, her interest in sources such as correspondence and diaries, and her enthusiasm for the project were decisive. She also assisted us in identifying several diarists and in obtaining additional information about them.
The identification and inventorying of these Holocaust diaries presented numerous challenges. We encountered hybrid forms of writing and formats, combining, for example, notes and drawings. Several notebooks prompted discussions regarding their classification and definition—such as recipe books or sketchbooks. This testing phase proved essential for the continuation of the project in other archival institutions. It was at the Mémorial that we developed the inventory fields, but also where we fully grasped the importance of documenting the trajectory of the diary itself, from its production to its preservation.
More blog entries