Annal:1991 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism

Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory

Lawrence L. Langer

• 1991 NBCC–Criticism winner
• Score: 10.41

This important and original book is the first sustained analysis of the unique ways in which oral testimony of survivors contributes to our understanding of the Holocaust. Langer argues that it is necessary to deromanticize the survival experience and that to burden it with accolades about the “indomitable human spirit” is to slight its painful complexity and ambivalence.