Through the Lens of the Shoah: The Holocaust as a Paradigm for Documenting Genocide Testimonies

Abstract

No longer able to devote itself exclusively to testimonies of the Holocaust, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute has branched out to house interviews from other genocides including those perpetrated in Armenia, Rwanda and Cambodia. After examining the distinctive features of the Foundation’s testimony methodology, this article considers its implications for the collaboration with the Documentation Center of Cambodia regarding the testimonies of Khmer Rouge victims. In exploring the transfer of methodologies developed for recording survivors of the Nazi genocide to the Cambodian context, this article argues that while the Shoah Foundation’s mediations of testimonies can obscure the historical and cultural specificities of the Cambodian genocide, they nonetheless have the potential to contribute to the documentation of that event.