Beyond testimony: early recounting and active listening at a boarding school for young Holocaust survivors in Sweden 1946–1948

Many documentation initiatives and collections of testimonies were initiated in the immediate postwar period. This article delves into one such initiative. It focuses on the practice of early recounting and active listening at a boarding school for young Holocaust survivors in Sweden. The article explores, by a close reading of an article authored by one of the teachers and eight full-length essays from the students, both the teacher's perspectives on the young survivors’ need for certain education and emotional assistance and the survivors’ early reflections on the experiences of recounting, education, survival and life the first years after the Holocaust. The project was conducted in 1952 by Eli Getreu in Smedsbo.