Although now mostly forgotten, David Rousset was an important literary and political figure of the period immediately following WWII. His first essay, L'Univers Concentrationnaire, published in 1946, was awarded the Renaudot Prize in 1947 and is considered to be the foundational French text about the emergence of repression and its evolution in Nazi Germany. His conceptualization of Nazi concentration camps largely permitted the reconstruction of a unified French national memory. This dissertation analyzes David Rousset's Les Jours de Notre Mort and his use of the novel genre to testify about his experience in Nazi concentration camps. The problem of being both a witness, yet also testifying on behalf of others, is central to the comprehension of his work. In fact, Rousset only recounts fragments of his life and his suffering during his deportation to and internment in Buchenwald, Neuengamme and Porta Wesphalica. The interplay between fiction and testimony of his experience allows him to hide the mental and physical changes that affected him during his 16 months of incarceration. Recounting life in the camps through fictional characters as well as the stories of real comrades allows him to transcend not only his limited experience but also to focus on the extreme violence that prevailed in the camps and is crucial in explaining how Rousset relates and reconstructs the process of extermination in his novel.
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