Perspective

The perspective of the book varies by contribution. Photographs are obviously a visual record, but many of the photographs are arranged in photograph albums in methods that construct additional meaning around the images—for example, six rather innocuous photographs of animals are given contextual significance by the fact that they were in Kurt Franz's photograph album and represent the "camp zoo" at Treblinka extermination camp (see p. 227). Official reports are usually presented from the detached, impersonal, third-person point of view. Diaries and letters are obviously personal and of a typically more-limited perspective. Much of the material in the book consists of first-person perspective eyewitness accounts of atrocities. These are often transcriptions of spoken testimony or actual written statements utilized during criminal proceedings. As such, they are constructed in an effort to exculpate the speaker or writer of guilt or association with horrific events. Taken individually, perhaps many...