After analyzing the processes of killing and destroying (anonymous burial) of bodies in Nazi and Soviet camps, this paper examines the rites created in the concentration camp communities around the dying, the cadavers, and the particular physical and psychological states between life and death that become the object of complex narrative constructions in the stories of survivors. We will investigate the strategies used to represent these limit-states and those used to reconstitute spaces designed to produce a void. We will attempt to show that the witness story, beyond its explicit objective – recounting an experience – is a living text invested with a sepulture function.