What Unpublished Archives Can Tell Us: Literature, History and the Work of the Library

Drawing on a collaborative project on Halina Neujahr, a Holocaust survivor whose early, unpublished short story was long considered too literary to be credible, the talk shows how literary analysis can reveal historical knowledge embedded in form, metaphor, and narrative voice. By working closely with librarians and historians, literary scholars help situate such texts within their material, historical, and ethical contexts. Unpublished stories preserved in library archives do not merely supplement historical facts; they open alternative ways of understanding lived experience, trauma, and survival. 

The talk argues that libraries are not only repositories of the past but active spaces of interpretation, where interdisciplinary collaboration transforms fragile manuscripts into sources of knowledge that deepen historical awareness and carry meanings of resilience and hope into the present.

Lecturer: Urszula Chowaniec

Urszula Chowaniec is Associate Professor of Literature at Lund University, working on Polish, Jewish, and Yiddish women’s writing, memory studies, and archival research. Her research focuses on unpublished literary materials: short stories, letters, and testimonies from the Holocaust and postwar period, and on how literary form shapes historical understanding. She collaborates closely with librarians, historians, and archivists to bring overlooked archival texts into contemporary cultural and scholarly circulation.
 

Part of a lecture series 

The lecture is part of the University Library’s lecture series on the Ravensbrück Memory of the World, which takes place on selected Thursdays in February and March (5 February, 19 February, 26 February, 5 March, 26 March).

Everyone is welcome and no advance registration is required.