Fabricating fantasies: women’s diaries from a forced labor camp

Huhák, Heléna (2026) Fabricating fantasies: women’s diaries from a forced labor camp. HOLOCAUST STUDIES : A JOURNAL OF CULTURE AND HISTORY. ISSN 1750-4902 (In Press)

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Abstract

In the forced labor camp of Sömmerda, a group of Hungarian Jewish women formed a diary-writing community whose writing offers a unique perspective on the Holocaust. Escaping the monotony of their day-to-day existence, the women constructed a world of fantasy centered on their lost loved ones. In the Sömmerda diaries, pre-camp life appears as a world without Nazis, where the families that had been separated by the time of writing were still together. However, in the diaries’ post-war narratives, the women positioned their persecution as Auschwitz survivors rather than forced laborers or diarists.

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