SUMMARY:

In his introductory article to the notes of Zalman Leventhal, a member of Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942–1944, who documented the story of preparation of the revolt in the camp and hid his notes in the ground near Crematorium no. III, Pavel Polian begins with a detailed story of Sonderkommando as a phenomenon. He not only explains who they were and what they were ordered to do in Auschwitz-Birkenau but also discusses the reception of this phenomenon in postwar Israeli society, in the historiography of the Holocaust, and in the historical memory of survivors. Then Polian turns to the evidence left by those members of Sonderkommando who survived the war (110 men out of, roughly, 2,200): some of them wrote memoirs, while others gave detailed interviews. However, there was evidence bequeathed by those Sonderkommandos who perished. Such written testimonies were, in particular, recovered from ground and ashes in Auschwitz-Birkenau, after this site of mass murder had been liberated. The ten Auschwitz “scrolls” by five authors, all members of Sonderkommando, represent central documents of the Holocaust. Polian tells the story of their discovery, identification, translation, and publication. Zalman Leventhal’s notes are the last to be published. Polian sees their distinction in their author’s self-assumed role as a chronicler who was, nevertheless, far from neutral. Unlike other Sonderkommando underground “chronicles,” Leventhal explicitly rejected a historiosophic, literary, or psychological style of narration. Polian includes in his introduction Leventhal’s biography and offers an analysis of his specific writing style, which revealed his troubled psychological state and his sense of mission.
Alina Polonskaya, who did the first Russian translation of texts by Leventhal for this publication in AI, added her own introduction in which she discusses Leventhal’s Yiddish and his writing style, and explains her translation choices.