Homemade Testimony: Researching and Processing My Greek Parents’ Holocaust Testimonies

In 1998 I edited Routes of Hell: Greek Jewry in the Holocaust-Testimonies, which was considered the largest body of testimony of Greek Jews during the cataclysm, a story that until then was relatively unknown in Israel. Among those 62 testimonies were those of my parents, Esther Vivante Refael from Corfu and Haim Refael from Salonica. In this chapter I discuss how, retrospectively, interviewing my parents and reviewing their testimony raised interesting research questions regarding objectivity in interviewing family members, how involved were the parents in the general procedure of interviewing members of their friends and community, etc. and the effect of the interview process and contents on my identity as a member of the Second Generation.