A folk monument to our destruction and heroism: Jewish historical commissions in the displaced persons camps of Germany, Austria, and Italy

Holocaust documentation and research began immediately after the catastrophe. The survivors active in the commissions took upon themselves the difficult task of reencountering their traumatic pasts through meticulously documenting the events, not only because they deemed bearing witness a moral imperative, but also because they believed that historical documentation would best serve their present and future political, psychological and material needs