where are your papers?

The recent article about Zosa Szajkowski has been rolling around in my brain for weeks, and my friend (P.) did the work of articulating why in her email, quoted below:

Thank you very much for passing along the Zosa Szajkowski article. I have long been interested in the intersection of archives, recordkeeping, and identity within cultures that are dissident to parent states – you need the record to function in society so it’s who you are, yet it’s not who you are. Where are your papers?

As for whether Szajkowski was a hero or a criminal I think it’s pretty clear that he was both. But no matter what his work was meaningful and yours is, also...

(Thank you, my fine archivist friend.)

Proper citation:

Leff, Lisa Moses.  (2012).  Rescue or theft? Zosa Szajkowski and the salvaging of French Jewish history after World War II.  Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society, Vol. 18 (No. 2), 1-39.

Update: an online version of this article then appeared in Tablet Magazine.  My favorite quote from Leff:

"The ambiguity that sits at the heart of the story of Zosa Szajkowski also points us to an aspect of the very nature of archives. On the one hand, the creators of archives rescue the past for us. They gather together and preserve records from the past, making it possible for historians to study them. On the other hand, there is also violence in the project of archiving. The very process of making an archive re-contextualizes documents and—in subtle or not-so-subtle ways—changes their meaning. Rather than the work of the powerful, some archives, at least, are actually the work of the powerless. If our understanding of archives in general is broadened to include all those who shaped their histories, these institutions look less and less like a coherent monument and more and more like a salvage heap."