The Sunflower

The online edition “The Sunflower. History and Reception of a Literary Holocaust Testimony” presents archival sources on the birth and afterlife of Simon Wiesenthal’s book “The Sunflower” (1969/70) – a crucial text of Holocaust education for more than half a century. The selected documents – published here for the first time – are divided into four chapters: “Historical Sources on the Literary Narrative”, “Wiesenthal’s Correspondence”, “The Sunflower’s Reception”, and “School and Public Projects”. They contextualise Wiesenthal’s personal narrative about his experiences in the Janowska concentration camp, trace the making of the book within an international network of intellectuals and editors, draw connections to other memoirs and literary testimonies, and offer new insights into the afterlife of the book in Holocaust education, Holocaust literature as well as cultural memory since the 1960s.