Transcending the divide between history and memory: Szymon Datner's practical Holocaust historiography in the early post-war period

Deals with Datner's narratives of the Holocaust in Bialystok and its surroundings, which was produced in the aftermath of the liberation from German occupation. Datner survived the Bialystok ghetto from where he escaped in June 1943 to become a partisan fighter. In his capacity as chairman of the Bialystock Jewish Committee, he played a vital role in recording, documenting, and commemorating the murder of the Jews in Bialystock and its surroundings. This articles analyses the characteristic features of his early historical as well as his artistic writings in Polish and Yiddish. of the community at large and thus the need to record its history.