Testimonies have become a much-studied genre without their literary status being clarified, an endeavour which authors referenced here – Primo Levi, Robert Antelme, Jean Améry, Varlam Chalamov – problematised early on. The issue is best tackled through that of aesthetic and ethical intentionality. As witnesses and survivors, writers of testimonies have dual missions, towards the living, where education tends to supersede the giving of evidence, and towards the dead, where commemoration tends to supersede the conjuration of the dead; these genres are difficult to intertwine, and the projects to come to terms with; they are also involved with telling the truth, which has its stylistic obligations, as opposed to the stereotypes that form the fabric of the fictions of extermination. As such they are difficult and perhaps even impossible to hear.