Lived experience and the Holocaust: spaces, senses and emotions in Auschwitz

Abstract: This article examines lived experience during the Holocaust, focusing on Auschwitz, the most lethal Nazi concentration camp. It draws on spatial history, as well as the history of senses and emotions, to explore subjective being in Auschwitz. The article suggests that a more explicit engagement with individual spaces—prisoner bunks, barracks, latrines, crematoria, construction sites, SS offices—and their emotional and sensory dimension, can reveal elements of lived experience that have remained peripheral on the edges of historical visibility. Such an approach can deepen understanding of Auschwitz, by making the camp more recognisable and by contributing to wider historiographical debates about the nature of Nazi terror.

Keywords: Auschwitz, Holocaust, concentration camps, lived experience, spatial history, history of the senses, history of emotions.

Elie Kedourie Memorial Lecture, read 17 October 2018