By Karina Evans

When I was told I would need to undertake a placement on my Creative Writing MA, I was flummoxed. I knew I wanted every module to push me to my creative limits, but how to find a placement that supported this was beyond me. Motivated by my Dutch-Jewish heritage and the tragic fate of my cousin Sara Bleekveld and her family in Auschwitz, I felt compelled to learn more of the Holocaust and, with this in mind, emailed The Keep to see if they could facilitate a placement at their archive centre in Falmer. I was thrilled when they offered me a placement archiving the Dora Cymer Collection, formed mainly of correspondence between Renée and Paul Herzog, a German-Jewish couple, and Dora Cymer, Renée’s mother. The letters spanned 1939 to 1942, during which Renée and Paul attempted to flee persecution and set up home as a young married couple. Sadly and tragically, this did not happen. Both Renée and Paul died in Auschwitz on 29th August 1942, thirteen days after my cousin and her children.

The letters not only exposed the horrors of the Holocaust, but also revealed the resilience and love exhibited by the family. Having watched and read a lot of true and fictional stories around the Holocaust, I began to question why, as writers, we feel the need to fictionalise such atrocities, when lived experiences exist in archives such as The Keep. Whilst reading the letters and curating the Dora Cymer Collection, I also considered what form my creative piece would take, and how I could write it through an ethical lens.

Archiving itself is a creative process; the archivist’s responsibility is to tell a story, and how documents are archived is often subject to the perception of the documentation at hand. With the Dora Cymer Collection, I had chronology on my side, so it wasn’t completely down to imagination. However, I spent time working on how to curate bundles of letters, photographs, and documents intuitively and with lived experiences in mind.

Whilst working on the collection, I was also grappling with the challenge of what form my accompanying creative piece would take. As a starting point, I began researching the problematic aspects of Holocaust fiction and the responsibilities of writers when dealing with trauma. It became obvious that works such as The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and Schindler’s List have problematic aspects and I needed to find a way of preserving the truth and authentic stories in my work.

The Keep provided me with access to a wealth of archival material, offering both written accounts and statistics that could underpin my creative work. I used the Dora Cymer Collection, web sources, Nazi documentation and my family tree to create a collection of blackout poetry, whereby the original document lies under a black page, with certain words picked out in white. These words became the telling of the true story, with the vast spaces creating weight and a space for contemplation.

I now have a deep interest in archives and how they can underpin creative processes, as well as performing a valuable function in the preservation of history. My collection, Then They Came, would be very different had I not undertaken my placement at The Keep, an experience that gave me the resources I needed to push myself creatively and become a more sensitive and ethical writer.

Karina Evans
Creative Writing MA Student
University of Brighton