Female Time Witnesses

An eye for the individual. One feature that appears in almost all these stories, and which makes one of the greatest impressions on the reader, are the accounts of how they were transported to the camps in overcrowded cattle wagons. This is also very efficiently described by Hungarian Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész, whose novels to some extent read as time witness reports. One important aspect of the book has obviously been to demonstrate that these time witnesses were highly different as individuals, and that their post-war lives also differ widely. A witness is someone who has observed an event, and the same is true of a time witness, but the latter has also been subject to experiences of three different categories: dehumanization, loss of identity and evil. Treating individuals as identical just because they have experienced the Holocaust, isn’t exactly tantamount to dehumanization, but it does reduce all the survivors to victims. No person is merely a victim – and that is the subtext of practically every page in this book. Therefore it has been a matter of importance to emphasise the differences between these ten women and also to show what else they have done in their lives. The stories of these women, and the sober way they are penned by Jakob Lothe, constitute an important, attitude-forming piece of work.

The dust cover alone is enough to make a strong impression. It consists of pictures of the ten women when they were young and how they look today. Seeing their eyes is sufficient to make you speculate on what they have experienced. These eyes have witnessed so many things that most of us struggle to grasp the reality of — some of the most atrocious things people can subject their fellow human beings to. These eyes have seen things no one should have to see. These are eyes that belong to ten women who demonstrate great courage in telling their stories, and who live on — despite all the evil and suffering they have been witness to.