The paper’s aim is to present the newly created digital collection: "Atlas of Holocaust Literature (Warsaw)“ – its main goals, its structure, issues and questions that had to be solved, as well as new insights and research possibilities that it may open up.
The aim of the Atlas (a joint work of New Panorama of Polish Literature and The Holocaust Literature Research Group of Institute of Literary Research) is to convey the knowledge about the history of Jewish ghetto in Warsaw and the experience of the Holocaust. It is based on 18 extensive autobiographical records (diaries, memoirs etc.) – and it is composed of 3 main modules: PEOPLE (module containing biographic entries), EVENTS (here short descriptions of subsequent historical periods of Warsaw Ghetto are presented) and PLACES (the central module, containing all the fragments of diaries that are related to the determinable areas, streets or precise addresses, as well as dynamic maps).
The project’s principle was to use digital possibilities to narrate the story of Jewish ghetto through the prism of topography, hence the use of maps as main narrative tool. This mode of presenting the historical records not only seems to be vivid and possibly attractive for non-professional users, but – most of all – captures (more accurately than the traditional means) the fundamental spatial dimension of the Holocaust history (both on individual and social level).
Atlas of Holocaust Literature brings a new form of presenting the history (both Holocaust and urban history), but most of all it will be a useful tool for historians and other researchers since it opens up possible new research paths, such as, for example: social stratification of ghetto in its spacial dimension, spacial dynamics of everyday life under Nazi regime, the role of institutions (including their specific physical localization) and their impact on daily life in ghetto.
Link to the discussed project: http://nplp.pl/kolekcja/atlas-zaglady/