This article deals with the comparisons between testimonies and theoretical works on Nazi and Soviet camps carried on within literary studies. Going beyond the debates about potentially antagonistic memories of those two regimes, the comparison contributes to decompartmentalizing research, infusing it with new dynamics and methods as well as the adoption of a renewed approach to the construction of knowledge. Indeed, by conducting textual comparisons rather than basing their research on the study of facts, the researchers in the field of literary studies were able to question narrative strategies and the positions of certain works within their host cultures. Debates on the generic aspects of literary testimonies have thus helped shift the focus from the specificity of the experiences they described to their status and form. The article then compares the two bodies of texts from the point of view of their possible use as historical sources, and analyzes a few examples of narrative strategies.

A recurrent theme of narratives by concentration-camp survivors is reciting poetry. For intellectuals in the camps, reciting verses was an aid to survival, a loophole of mental freedom, available only when the prisoners were not being driven to depletion at “general works.” Poetry also facilitated genuine human contact, helped the prisoners inscribe themselves into specific historical and cultural traditions, and re-mediated the verses that belonged to those traditions. The latter function of poetry recital was operative not only during the imprisonment but also during the composition of the narratives after the liberation: the memoirists not only found meanings in the cultural traditions on which their sense of identity depended but also helped to maintain these traditions for their own sake.

This article analyses the question of mediability of violence by the novels of two writers who survived the concentration camp of Buchenwald but had very different experiences of the camp: Imre Kertesz, deported from Hungary as a Jewish adolescent, and Jorge Semprun, deported after being made prisoner by the Gestapo as a member of the Maquis. Both authors have an opposite conception of the traditional value in relation to the aesthetic mediability of violence. This contribution analyses the different approaches to tradition in the works of two authors, specifically in relation to the relationship between Weimar and Buchenwald. Weimar acts as a chronotoph and a paradigmatic example of the stranded tradition. For Kertesz, the atonality he claims for his aesthetics is analysed in Der Spurensucher. Erzahlung (“The Searcher for Traces”), for Semprun, the debate on tradition is analysed in Aquel domingo (“What a Beautiful Sunday”) and Vivire con su nombre, morira con el mio (“I Will Live with his Name, He Will Die with Mine”).

The article critically analyzes various types of narratives of the former KL Auschwitz prisoner – August Kowalczyk – related to the issue of (homo)sexual relations in Nazi concentration camps. The juxtaposition of excerpts from his archival account, a published memoir and two oral accounts reveals a consolidating pattern, which is being used by Kowalczyk to cut himself off from the condition of being a potential victim of sexual abuse, condition of pipel and taboo – especially in the male-centered concentration camp discourse – themes: sexual barter and sexual violence. The theoretical framework, constructed with the use of Holocaust studies and gender studies’ findings, shows the possibility of finding expressions of gendered experiences in the Polish concentration camp and combatant discourse.

The present article is a commentary on Arkadiusz Morawiec’s book Polska literatura obozowa. Rekonesans [Polish Prison and Camp Literature: Preliminary Remarks], in which a convincing hypothesis was presented that a concentration camp should be seen as a symbol of the 20th century. Morawiec illustrates his reflections with the monograph’s chapters on Nazi concentration camps, gulags, as well as Polish, Spanish and Japanese prison camps. In his book, the author postulates broadening the scope of literary and historiographic research on Nazi and Soviet camps to include the internment camps created by the other European regimes as well as the literary works created decades after the Second World War, with inclusion of questionable pop culture works. The author of this article sees this not only as Morawiec’s attempt at redefining the concept of Polish camp literature but also an attempt at re-creating it from scratch in order to showcase new research perspectives. The author emphasises the fact that each of the book’s chapters can be seen as a small monograph describing the camps and their literary representations that serves as a model example of academic humanistic writing. The author’s only point of critique is underrepresentation of the genre’s most well known works. Such literary works have been subjects of numerous studies, nevertheless Polish Prison and Camp Literature would have greatly benefited as monograph from exploring the oeuvre of Tadeusz Borowski, Seweryna Szmaglewska, Stanisław Grzesiuk, Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, Anatol Krakowiecki, Aleksander Wat in greater detail.