tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/auschwitz-11635/articles
Auschwitz – The Conversation
2024-02-09T14:52:26Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/223252
2024-02-09T14:52:26Z
2024-02-09T14:52:26Z
Zone of Interest’s striking depiction of Nazi banality – and other things you should see this week
<p>Rudolf and Hedwig Höss are a couple who “strive to build a dream life for their family”, as Zone of Interest’s official synopsis goes. In the film, we watch the mundane patterns of their lives: the children being sent off to school, the family sitting down to meals, Hedwig tending her garden and Rudolf fishing. However, Rudolf Höss is not any man, he is the commandant of Auschwitz and these scenes of domesticity take place in a house bordering the camp.</p>
<p>You never see any physical violence in Zone of Interest but it is always there pushing in on the periphery of frames, its sounds humming deeply under everything.</p>
<p>Hannah Arendt’s notion of the “banality of evil” is wrought powerfully in this film that envisages the lives of these real people. The Hösses are no evil geniuses – they are quite boring actually. They commit evil because they have been ordered to and they do so without introspection, awareness or care. They are, in their opinion, simply living and living well.</p>
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<p>Zone of Interest is a deeply unnerving film. It’s not the Nazi uniforms that are the most affecting but the small details that represent the horror. The bag of silk undergarments carelessly thrown upon the table and offered to the family’s servants. The ashes used to make the Edenic walled-in garden bloom. The water turning red as Rudolf’s boots are cleaned. The sound of shots and the near-constant mechanical drone of what I assume is the crematoriums coming from the near distance. </p>
<p>I stayed up late the night I saw the film, talking with a friend about the different things we heard in the intricately woven soundscape and the details we saw hidden among the horrible domesticity. <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-zone-of-interest-new-holocaust-film-powerfully-lays-bare-the-mechanisms-of-genocide-222017">This review by Archie Wolfman</a> increased my appreciation of just how thoughtful every artistic decision was, and why the film is nominated for both best international feature and best picture at this year’s Oscars.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-zone-of-interest-new-holocaust-film-powerfully-lays-bare-the-mechanisms-of-genocide-222017">The Zone of Interest: new Holocaust film powerfully lays bare the mechanisms of genocide</a>
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<h2>Stateside stories</h2>
<p>Another film nominated for best picture that has just hit cinemas is <a href="https://theconversation.com/american-fiction-scathing-and-accurate-portrayal-of-the-obstacles-black-writers-face-in-publishing-222557">American Fiction</a>. The film is an adaptation of the book Erasure by Percival Everett, and follows disillusioned novelist Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) as he tries to get what, frankly, sounds like quite a boring and pretentious book sold, but is having no luck. The book, his agent tells him, is just not “black enough”.</p>
<p>Enraged by what he sees selling, Monk writes under a pen name what he perceives as an obvious farce that employs all the worst stereotypes of black people to shame publishers for loving such sorts of books. Called My Pafology (later renamed Fuck), it ends up selling big time and all sorts of hilarity ensues as he chooses to profit from the kind of book he purports to deplore.</p>
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<p>It’s a really funny film that makes some really serious points about structural racism and explores different ideas of authenticity and blackness. It also succeeds in doing what Monk wants for stories about black people by black people, in that it is also a touching and nuanced look at the life of a middle-aged black man who faces all sorts of joys and hardships in his personal and professional life.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/american-fiction-scathing-and-accurate-portrayal-of-the-obstacles-black-writers-face-in-publishing-222557">American Fiction: scathing and accurate portrayal of the obstacles black writers face in publishing</a>
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<p>Apple TV+‘s new series, Masters of the Air, is a big-budget star-studded series about the 100th Bomb Group of the US 8th Air Force. <a href="https://theconversation.com/masters-of-the-air-apples-air-force-drama-is-imperfect-but-powerful-222220%22%22">Our reviewer was pleasantly surprised</a> at how accurate and rich the storytelling is. The nine episodes are not action-packed representations of different missions but sensitively woven stories that show a more rounded picture of their experience, including the impact of Allied bombs on civilians.</p>
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<p>Another inclusion, that has caused a bit of debate, is the famed “Tuskegee Airmen”. <a href="https://theconversation.com/masters-of-the-air-the-real-history-behind-the-shows-black-fighter-pilots-222429">In this piece</a>, Graham Cross explains why the story of these black airmen was right to be included but why he wished the writers had dared to push their story further.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/masters-of-the-air-apples-air-force-drama-is-imperfect-but-powerful-222220">Masters of the Air: Apple's Air Force drama is imperfect, but powerful</a>
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<h2>In your feelings</h2>
<p>If you’re looking for a film that will make you cry, which sometimes I am, <a href="https://theconversation.com/all-of-us-strangers-heartbreaking-film-speaks-to-real-experiences-of-gay-men-in-uk-and-ireland-222628">All of Us Strangers</a> might be for you. It’s a romantic fantasy drama about 40-something screenwriter Adam (Andrew Scott) and 20-something Harry (Paul Mescal). Their burgeoning relationship opens something up for Adam who is driven to finally confront the loss of his parents.</p>
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<p>Both our reviewers felt it depicted <a href="https://theconversation.com/all-of-us-strangers-coming-to-terms-with-the-grief-and-trauma-of-being-gay-in-the-1980s-222530">dating as a 40-year-old gay man today quite well</a>. While both Adam and Harry have experienced prejudice, Adam’s romantic life began during the AIDs crisis in the 80s, a scary and hostile time that has left him more suspicious and closed off. All of Us Strangers is a beautiful film that shows that the love we nurture, for the living and dead, is powerful and transformative.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/all-of-us-strangers-heartbreaking-film-speaks-to-real-experiences-of-gay-men-in-uk-and-ireland-222628">All of Us Strangers: heartbreaking film speaks to real experiences of gay men in UK and Ireland</a>
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<p>And at London’s Somerset House, a new exhibition has opened examining the notion of cuteness and how it came to be such an influential part of global culture. This show explores cuteness in all its forms, from the Victorian obsession with cats to our obsession with small things, adorable memes and plush toys.</p>
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<p>However, what does cute mean? <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-makes-something-cute-inside-the-exhibition-defining-the-phenomenon-222229">As our reviewer found</a>, it’s a slippery term that is quite hard to pin down. But this exhibition, the first of its kind to examine the idea, does its best to consider it from all angles, including why it might not be a good thing.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-makes-something-cute-inside-the-exhibition-defining-the-phenomenon-222229">What makes something 'cute'? Inside the exhibition defining the phenomenon</a>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
<hr><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223252/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
A harrowing portrayal of banal evil, a nuanced look at black fiction, a historically accurate TV series, a story about the power of love and a seriously cute exhibition.
Naomi Joseph, Arts + Culture Editor
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/221778
2024-01-25T11:08:13Z
2024-01-25T11:08:13Z
Why some descendants of Holocaust survivors choose to replicate a loved one’s Auschwitz tattoo – podcast
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571154/original/file-20240124-27-ecnsmm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Orly Weintraub Gilad bears her grandfather's Auschwitz number on her right arm.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Jeffay for The Conversation UK</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly eight decades on from the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27 1945, the number of concentration camp prisoners forcibly tattooed, remains, for many, the symbol of the Holocaust. The Nazis murdered six million Jews, one million of whom died at Auschwitz. </p>
<p>Today, there are ever fewer survivors still alive to bear witness to this genocide. Now, some descendants of Holocaust survivors are replicating the Auschwitz tattoo of their parent or grandparent on their own bodies. </p>
<p>In this episode of <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/the-conversation-weekly-98901">The Conversation Weekly</a> podcast, we find out what motivates them to replicate their relative’s Auschwitz number and hear about the reactions they’ve had. </p>
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<p>Alice Bloch is a sociologist at the University of Manchester. Her research into forced migration and how intergenerational trauma shapes families led her watch the 2012 documentary, Numbered, in which Auschwitz survivors spoke about living with this tattoo. Among them were some descendants of survivors who had chosen to replicate their parent or grandparent’s number on their own bodies. Bloch was intrigued by this potent gesture.</p>
<p>In an ongoing research project, Bloch has been seeking out people who have chosen to have a family member’s Auschwitz number tattooed on themselves. </p>
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<p>As a sociologist I was really interested in the sort of intersections between the body and memory and how that bore out. How do you memorialise through the body, specifically, what you might term a sort of traumatic tattoo, something that was imposed and forced on an ancestor? </p>
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<p>The people she has interviewed have gone about copying the tattooed number in vastly different ways and for different reasons. But, as two of her interviewees, David Rubin and Orly Weintraub Gilad, tell The Conversation Weekly, all find meanings in this act that are as personal as they are universal – and urgent. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/descendants-of-holocaust-survivors-explain-why-they-are-replicating-auschwitz-tattoos-on-their-own-bodies-206821">Descendants of Holocaust survivors explain why they are replicating Auschwitz tattoos on their own bodies</a>
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<p>These numbers, as Bloch puts it, are a way of communicating family stories and expressing love “when it was impossible to do that through words”. They also speak to the imperative to find new ways to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive as it passes out of living memory.</p>
<p>To find out more about Bloch’s research and hear Rubin and Weintraub Gilad’s stories, listen to the full episode of <a href="https://podfollow.com/the-conversation-weekly/view">The Conversation Weekly</a> podcast. You can also read a <a href="https://theconversation.com/descendants-of-holocaust-survivors-explain-why-they-are-replicating-auschwitz-tattoos-on-their-own-bodies-206821">long read story from The Conversation’s Insights series</a> by Bloch about her research. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/3024/Holocaust_Tattoos_Transcript.docx.pdf?1706802812">transcript of this episode</a> is now available. </p>
<p><em>Disclosure: Alice Bloch has received funding from British Academy/Leverhulme Trust Small Research grant in partnership with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to support this research.</em></p>
<p><em>This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written by Dale Berning Sawa and produced by Mend Mariwany, with assistance from Gemma Ware and Katie Flood. Sound design was by Eloise Stevens, and our theme music is by Neeta Sarl.</em></p>
<p><em>You can find us on X, formerly known as Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/TC_Audio">@TC_Audio</a>, on Instagram at <a href="https://www.instagram.com/theconversationdotcom/">theconversationdotcom</a> or <a href="mailto:podcast@theconversation.com">via email</a>. You can also subscribe to The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/newsletter">free daily email here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our <a href="https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/60087127b9687759d637bade">RSS feed</a> or find out <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-listen-to-the-conversations-podcasts-154131">how else to listen here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221778/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Alice Bloch talks about her research with the descendants of Holocaust survivors who have replicated the Auschwitz tattoo. Listen to The Conversation Weekly podcast.
Gemma Ware, Head of Audio
Dale Berning Sawa, Commissioning Editor, Societies, The Conversation
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/210337
2023-08-29T12:26:16Z
2023-08-29T12:26:16Z
How individual, ordinary Jews fought Nazi persecution − a new view of history
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541736/original/file-20230808-20-mx7iby.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=28%2C17%2C3815%2C2489&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lizi Rosenfeld, a Jewish woman, sits on a park bench bearing a sign that reads, 'Only for Aryans,' in August 1938 in Vienna.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1102831">United States Holocaust Memorial Museum /Provenance: Leo Spitzer</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In Nazi Germany, Hertha Reis, a 36-year-old Jewish woman, performed forced labor for a private company in Berlin during World War II. In 1941, she was evicted by a judge from the two sublet rooms where she lived with her son and mother – <a href="https://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/1419-ps.asp">she was unprotected as a tenant because of an anti-Jewish law</a>.</p>
<p>In plain daylight, in front of the courthouse in the heart of the Nazi capital, she protested in front of passersby.</p>
<p>“We lost everything. Because of this cursed government, we finally lost our home, too. This thug Hitler, this damned government, these damned people,” she said. “Just because we are Jews, we are discriminated against.”</p>
<p>Historians knew of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Holocaust/Jewish-resistance-to-the-Nazis">clandestine acts of resistance</a>, of course, and of armed group resistance, such as the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/warsaw-ghetto-uprising">Warsaw ghetto uprising</a>. But in the dominant understanding of the Nazi period until now, the act of speaking out publicly as an individual against the persecution of Jews seemed unimaginable, especially for the Jews. </p>
<p>But in July 2008, I stumbled on the first trace of such public acts of resistance in the logbook of a Berlin police precinct, one of the few chronicles of its kind that had survived in the <a href="https://landesarchiv-berlin.de/en/the-landesarchiv-berlin">Berlin State Archive</a>.</p>
<p>The entry, bearing the label “political incident,” was written by a police officer who had arrested a Jewish man protesting against the Nazi anti-Jewish policies. At the time of the discovery, <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=aug_8D0AAAAJ&hl=en">I had studied the persecution of German Jews</a> intensively for almost 20 years, but I had never heard of anything like this.</p>
<p>Intrigued, I started investigating. Subsequently, finding more and more similar stories of resistance in court records and survivor testimonies began to shatter my established scholarly beliefs. </p>
<h2>Challenging traditional views of Jewish resistance</h2>
<p>Historians, including myself, had long painted a <a href="https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/156520">picture of passivity of the persecuted</a>. When discrimination in Nazi Germany gradually increased, the Jews slowly adapted, so went the argument. More generally, an assumption still exists today that defiance, especially individual protest, <a href="https://thechinaproject.com/2022/10/13/a-rare-protest-banner-hangs-off-a-bridge-in-beijing/">is rare in authoritarian regimes</a>.</p>
<p>The astonishing evidence from the Berlin police files resonated deeply with me on a personal level. I grew up behind the Iron Curtain in East Germany. The communist regime persecuted even mild expressions of individual opposition as threats. This personal experience of living in a dictatorship until the age of 28 provided me with a distinct sensitivity that enabled me to recognize day-to-day forms of resistance. </p>
<p>Knowing from history that the treatment of the political opposition in Nazi Germany was so much more brutal, how much more serious must the Hitler regime have perceived any signs of resistance coming from their No. 1 racial enemy, the Jews?</p>
<p>Still, today the public and many scholars understand Jewish resistance during the Holocaust mostly in terms of rare armed group activities in the Nazi occupied East, for example <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jewish-resistance">ghetto uprisings or partisan attacks</a>. </p>
<p>By including individual acts and, thus, broadening the traditional definition of Jewish resistance, over a dozen years of systematic research I was able to unearth many new sources – from police and court records of various German cities to video testimonies of survivors – that documented a much greater volume and variety of resistance acts than could ever have been imagined. </p>
<p>The astonishing results change the view of Jewish resistance during World War II dramatically. The story of Hertha Reis and many other potent tales of individual defiance and courage contradict the common misconception that Jews were led like sheep to slaughter during the Holocaust.</p>
<h2>A 17-year-old challenges the Nazi regime</h2>
<p>Searching the <a href="https://landesarchiv.hessen.de/ueber-uns/hessisches-hauptstaatsarchiv-wiesbaden">Hesse Main State archive in Wiesbaden</a>, I found the story of Hans Oppenheimer. He left his four-story apartment house every night for weeks in 1940, breaking the curfew for Jews. Not a single light illuminated the street in front of him. The city of Frankfurt had ordered a brownout to protect it from Allied air raids. </p>
<p>A few blocks away from his home, Hans hid in a doorway. With the entire city, Hans waited anxiously for the bombs to fall.</p>
<p>Persecuted because he was Jewish, as a 17-year-old, Hans had already toiled as a forced laborer for a year and a half, most recently unloading stones and cement bags from river barges for 10 hours every day. He earned only pennies and felt constantly harassed.</p>
<p>Hans had never been to a movie or a play, because those were prohibited for Jews in Frankfurt. As a Jewish adolescent, he saw no future in Nazi Germany. Because the war prevented him from leaving, he had decided to do something.</p>
<p>Every night, he waited in the dark, anxious and excited. When the sirens started to blare, announcing that the Allied bombers were closing in, Hans set off fire alarms to divert the German firefighters from the actual bombing sites. In December 1940, after he had set off dozens of false alarms, the police finally manage to catch Hans red-handed.</p>
<p>The Frankfurt prosecutor indicted Hans Oppenheimer and put him on trial. Since the court could not prove treason, the now 18-year-old received only three years in prison for sabotaging the war effort. </p>
<p>Incarcerated and isolated, Hans suffered from severe depression and physical debilitation. When the prison officials did not respond to his repeated complaints, the young man attempted to take his own life twice. At the end of 1942, the Gestapo deported all Jewish prison inmates from Germany to Auschwitz. Hans Oppenheimer did not survive there for long, because of his weakened state. He died on Jan. 30, 1943, just days after he had turned 20 years old.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Ingrid Frank tells how her uncle, Fritz Josefsthal, beat the editor of the Nazi newspaper ‘Der Stürmer’ with his whip after it published an antisemitic obituary of his father.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>A new history of Jewish resistance</h2>
<p>Forgotten until now, between 1933 and 1945 hundreds and hundreds of Jewish women and men performed individual acts of resistance in Nazi Germany proper. I present many of their stories in my new book, “<a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300267198/resisters/">Resisters. How Ordinary Jews Fought Persecution in Hitler’s Germany</a>.” </p>
<p>They destroyed Nazi symbols, protested in public against the persecution, disobeyed Nazi laws and local restrictions and defended themselves from verbal insults as well as physical attacks.</p>
<p>Amazingly, Jews of all ages, educational backgrounds and professions resisted in many ways. Some did it repeatedly, others just once. The fact that so many Germans and Austrians individually resisted the Nazis and their policies obliterates the common misconception of the passivity of the persecuted Jews. </p>
<p>Instead, such widespread individual acts of resistance during World War II provide a new view of history: that Jews showed agency in fighting their persecution by the Nazis. And this, in turn, demonstrates that individual resistance is possible under even the worst genocidal circumstances.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210337/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wolf Gruner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Finding the stories of individual Jews who fought the Nazis publicly and at great peril helped a scholar see history differently: that Jews were not passive. Instead, they actively fought the Nazis.
Wolf Gruner, Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor of History; Founding Director, USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/195927
2022-12-07T03:45:59Z
2022-12-07T03:45:59Z
Like Primo Levi at Auschwitz, Behrouz Boochani testifies for the people who lived and died in a prison camp
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499150/original/file-20221206-26-ua4qqz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=53%2C62%2C2815%2C1931&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Martin Hunter/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is an edited extract from <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/freedom-only-freedom-9780755642656/">Freedom, Only Freedom: The Prison Writings of Behrouz Boochani</a>.</em> </p>
<p>Two of my grandparents were Jewish Holocaust survivors who came to Australia
as displaced people, refugees or stateless – in the words they chose to use in their landing documents and naturalisation applications. </p>
<p>I thus find myself drawn to thinking about Behrouz Boochani’s project of writing the histories of <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-41813219">Manus Prison</a> as being part of the same project of history-writing as the writing about the ghettos, camps and bureaucracies of violence that made up the Holocaust. </p>
<p>This is not to say that the two “events” are the same, but that our understanding of one can inform our knowledge of the other. The historical insights and languages from those who were there in those places echo through time, across generations.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/70-years-on-primo-levis-if-this-is-a-man-is-still-a-powerful-reminder-of-what-it-means-to-be-human-76704">70 years on, Primo Levi's If This is A Man is still a powerful reminder of what it means to be human</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The language of testifying</h2>
<p>Primo Levi, an Italian Jewish Holocaust survivor, famously wrote in his
autobiography <a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Survival-In-Auschwitz/Primo-Levi/9780684826806">Survival in Auschwitz</a> of the need for another language to articulate the feelings that people in the camps felt, given that </p>
<blockquote>
<p>just as our hunger is not that feeling of missing a meal, so our way of being cold has need of a new word. We say “hunger”, we say “tiredness”, “fear”, “pain”, we say “winter” and they are different things. They are free words, created and used by free men.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Only a new language that could account for this radical difference could properly
articulate what happened in the camps.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499161/original/file-20221206-20-hilhk3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499161/original/file-20221206-20-hilhk3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499161/original/file-20221206-20-hilhk3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499161/original/file-20221206-20-hilhk3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499161/original/file-20221206-20-hilhk3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499161/original/file-20221206-20-hilhk3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499161/original/file-20221206-20-hilhk3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499161/original/file-20221206-20-hilhk3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Primo Levi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Picryl</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I find these words, this sentiment, playing in my mind as I read Boochani’s writings. Like Levi, Boochani is a profound writer who testifies from the camp
about what he has seen, experienced and known, and who in doing so creates new theorisations and new modes of expression. Through Levi we must understand that words fail in the face of the profound violence which these men endured. </p>
<p>Manus Prison (a detention centre that <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/operation-sovereign-borders-offshore-detention-statistics/2/">was forcibly closed</a> in October 2017) is not Auschwitz, but they need to be remembered within a continued historical trajectory.</p>
<p>And in both cases, those of us who were not there can read, and we must read. But the task of reading cannot be to know, for true knowing is an impossibility. Instead, as both Levi and Boochani make clear: they testify to history in order to do work, to make clear the workings of the world.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499152/original/file-20221206-15850-nbx2w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499152/original/file-20221206-15850-nbx2w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499152/original/file-20221206-15850-nbx2w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499152/original/file-20221206-15850-nbx2w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499152/original/file-20221206-15850-nbx2w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499152/original/file-20221206-15850-nbx2w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499152/original/file-20221206-15850-nbx2w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499152/original/file-20221206-15850-nbx2w9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Boochani gives language to the violence and trauma of Manus Prison. Here is a photo he captured of a peaceful protest in Manus Prison, 25 August 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>This is Manus Island</h2>
<p>In February 2016, Boochani began his piece, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/19/this-is-manus-island-my-prison-my-torture-my-humiliation">This is Manus Island. My prison. My torture. My humiliation</a>, with the words:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Twenty-eight months ago, with a shattered body which was ravenously hungry and deeply wounded, with bare feet and exhausted soul, I made the trip to the soil of free territory, to Australia. It was four days after the announcing the 19th of July law. Because of the law, I was exiled to Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, in the heart of the Pacific Ocean; and according to this law, it has been 28 months that I am being under pressure and tortured.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In this short paragraph, these three precise sentences, Boochani testifies to his
readers of the physicality, the embodied nature, of trauma. Of the ways that
Australian policy tries to dictate peoples’ lives. </p>
<p>He locates his readers in time and space, in bodies and emotions. In this piece he testifies to the horrors produced by the guards, the ways in which daily life, access to medication, and the ability to live without pain, were controlled, made impossible. Boochani gives language to the violence and trauma of Manus Prison and of the histories within which he and others lived.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499158/original/file-20221206-15-9rjoh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499158/original/file-20221206-15-9rjoh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499158/original/file-20221206-15-9rjoh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499158/original/file-20221206-15-9rjoh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499158/original/file-20221206-15-9rjoh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499158/original/file-20221206-15-9rjoh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499158/original/file-20221206-15-9rjoh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499158/original/file-20221206-15-9rjoh7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Manus Island, February 9 2017. Photo credit: Behrouz Boochani.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Histories of people</h2>
<p>In February 2018, Boochani wrote of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/feb/17/four-years-after-reza-baratis-death-we-still-have-no-justice">the murder of Reza Barati</a> four years previously, during a riot in the prison. </p>
<p>In this piece, he tells his readers both of the circumstances of the riot – locating us in that time and place – as well as of the commemorations that happened around Australia on the anniversary of the killing, and of the man who Reza Barati was. Boochani testifies that justice has never been served, for there is no justice to be found within the systems and institutions that Australia uses to persecute people, laden as they are with Australia’s colonial history.</p>
<p>Each person’s history, Boochani shows, exists within a broader frame of coloniality. Writing in 2002, <a href="https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20021021000639/http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol1no1_2002/perera_camp.html">Suvendrini Perera has shown</a> that “the Australian
camp is the site where the prisoner-of-war camp meets the long-term aims of colonial assimilation/annihilation in the forms of the outstation, the penal camp
and the mission”.</p>
<p>That is, while the immigration detention centre, or the camp for detaining First Nations people, has been deployed as a technique of rule across the world, in each site it has its own genealogy. Part of that genealogy in Australia, Perera shows, lies in the way governments ensure that “current policies towards asylum seekers have become normalised in Australia”.</p>
<p>Writing within <a href="https://www.deathscapes.org/">a growing movement</a> of refugee and First Nation scholars who link the various aspects of Australia’s colonial practices, Boochani provides the eyewitness account which fleshes out the history that Perera describes. In Patrick Wolfe’s <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623520601056240">words</a>, settler-colonial “invasion is a structure not an event”. </p>
<p>In Boochani’s words, the prisons at Manus Island and Nauru “are an extension of Australia; they are an integral part of the state and this connection cannot be denied”. Each time that he writes of the coloniality of the government’s border work, Boochani makes clear precisely what is at stake: human lives.</p>
<p>Boochani insists on the centrality of peoples’ histories to the stories he writes.
Each piece ensures he testifies to what this experience means for the people,
as individuals and as a group. He locates the brutality within bodies and souls,
showing how this brutality marks a person’s and a collective’s history. </p>
<p>When <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/30/faysal-ishak-ahmeds-life-was-full-of-pain-australia-had-a-duty-to-protect-him">he writes of the collective</a>, he never loses sight of the individual in all their complexity and humanity, never loses sight of their individual history, of what makes them them. Of the somethings which have happened to create them.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499141/original/file-20221206-5826-i81e1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499141/original/file-20221206-5826-i81e1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499141/original/file-20221206-5826-i81e1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499141/original/file-20221206-5826-i81e1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499141/original/file-20221206-5826-i81e1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499141/original/file-20221206-5826-i81e1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499141/original/file-20221206-5826-i81e1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499141/original/file-20221206-5826-i81e1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Boochani taking a selfie with local woman in Manus. Photo credit: Getty images.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The depth of horror each of these imprisoned men faced is made visible.
Horror is of course too simple a word (as Levi taught us), as is pain, trauma and
devastation, though they all apply. In depicting that horror, Boochani reminds
us that none of us are separate people. We are part of families and our existence
testifies to the flow of connections that travel around the world. </p>
<p>The stories <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/27/mohameds-life-story-is-a-tragedy-but-its-typical-for-fathers-held-on-manus">Boochani tells</a> offer “a window into the lives of men who are experiencing a profound loneliness, the unbearable feeling that they are nothing more than forgotten people”. </p>
<p>In response, Boochani writes them into the public historical record, remembers them, testifies to their experience and their humanity. His writings are a project which refuses the dehumanisation and dehistoricisation that Australia’s border regime tries to impose through gross violence.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/claims-that-behrouz-boochani-jumped-the-queue-are-a-reminder-of-the-dangers-of-anti-refugee-politics-143743">Claims that Behrouz Boochani jumped the queue are a reminder of the dangers of anti-refugee politics</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A memorial archive</h2>
<p>Writing in plain view, as the events occurred, Boochani offers a history of the
people firstly, and also of the politics, spaces and ethics of the Manus Prison
moment. “Writing is a duty to history,” he <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/06/i-write-from-manus-island-as-a-duty-to-history">says</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499422/original/file-20221207-27-uazq33.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499422/original/file-20221207-27-uazq33.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/499422/original/file-20221207-27-uazq33.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499422/original/file-20221207-27-uazq33.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499422/original/file-20221207-27-uazq33.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499422/original/file-20221207-27-uazq33.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499422/original/file-20221207-27-uazq33.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/499422/original/file-20221207-27-uazq33.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Writing in a tradition of histories written around the world by persecuted and marginalised groups, people who claim the mantle of writing back, Boochani writes that “this is history from down below”. This “down below” testifies to the historicity of the writing, and to the various traditions of history- and trauma-writing within which he is participating.</p>
<p>But it also conjures up the monumental violence of this “down below”. The
hellishness of it all, and the people at the centre.</p>
<p>We are reminded of our connections to others, of the ways our lives are inextricably linked to other peoples’ lives. This act of memory-making, of remembering across difference, is also a profound act of solidarity.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/freedom-only-freedom-9780755642656/">Freedom, Only Freedom: The Prison Writings of Behrouz Boochani</a> is translated and edited by Behrouz Boochani and Moones Mansoubi (anthology editor Omid Tofighian), published by Bloomsbury.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195927/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jordana Silverstein has previously received funding from the Australian Research Council as part of FL140100049, “Child
Refugees and Australian Internationalism: 1920 to the Present.”</span></em></p>
Detention at Manus Island was not the same as detention at Auschwitz, writes Jordana Silverstein. But the historical insights from those who were in those places echo through time, across generations.
Jordana Silverstein, Historian, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/189525
2022-08-31T12:29:18Z
2022-08-31T12:29:18Z
Unknown Holocaust photos – found in attics and archives – are helping researchers recover lost stories and providing a tool against denial
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481646/original/file-20220829-18-44snrs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C2%2C797%2C541&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jewish deportees march through the German town of Würzburg to the railroad station on April 25, 1942.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa6232">US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The summer of 2022 marked the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/deportations-to-killing-centers">80th anniversary of the first Nazi deportation</a> of Jewish families from Germany to Auschwitz. </p>
<p>Although the Nazis deported hundreds of thousands of Jewish men and women, for many places where those tragic events happened, no images are known to document the crime. Surprisingly, there’s not even photographic evidence from <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/berlin">Berlin, the Nazi capital and home to Germany’s largest Jewish community</a>.</p>
<p>The lack of known images is important. Unlike in the past, historians now agree that photographs and film must be taken seriously as primary sources for their research. These sources can complement the analysis of administrative documents and survivor testimonies and thus enrich our understanding of Nazi persecution.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/cf/faculty-and-staff/faculty.cfm?pid=1020030">a historian originally from Germany and now teaching in the U.S.</a>, I have researched the Nazi persecution of the Jews for 30 years and <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=aug_8D0AAAAJ&hl=en">published 10 books on the Holocaust</a>.</p>
<p>I searched for unpublished images in all the archives I visited during my research. But I have to admit that I – along with many of my colleagues – did not take the gathered visual evidence seriously as a primary source and rather used it to illustrate my publications. </p>
<p>During the past decade, scholars have realized how pictures can contribute to our understanding of mass violence as well as the resistance to it. Some can provide the only evidence we have about an act of persecution – for example, a photograph of anti-Jewish graffiti. Others will reveal additional details, as in the image of a court proceeding against anti-Nazi resistors. </p>
<p>Photographs are now in some cases the sole objects of scholarly inquiry. They are used to identify perpetrators and victims in specific cases, when other sources would not reveal them.</p>
<p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip">Here’s one example: An image shows</a> uniformed Nazis standing in front of a passenger train filled with German Jews in Munich on Nov. 20, 1942. Who were those men? More importantly, what are the stories of the barely recognizable victims behind the windows in this image?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Soldiers watching a train filled with people as a person is pushed onto it." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The deportation of Munich Jews to Kowno in Nazi-occupied Lithuania, Nov. 20, 1942.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">City Archive Munich, DE-1992-FS-NS-00015</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Investigating photos of Nazi deportations</h2>
<p>Between 1938 and 1945, more than 200,000 people were <a href="https://www.bundesarchiv.de/gedenkbuch/chronology/view.xhtml?lang=en">deported</a> from Germany, mainly to ghettos and camps in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. </p>
<p>To make pictures of Nazi deportations accessible for research and education, a group of university, educational and archival institutions in Germany and the Dornsife <a href="https://dornsife.usc.edu/cagr">Center for Advanced Genocide Research</a> at the University of Southern California launched the <a href="https://lastseen.arolsen-archives.org/en/">#LastSeen Project — Pictures of Nazi Deportations</a> in October 2021.</p>
<p>This effort aims to locate, collect and analyze images of Nazi mass deportations in Germany. The deportations started with the forced expulsion of around 17,000 Jews of Polish origin in October 1938, <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht">right before the widespread antisemitic violence of Kristallnacht</a>, and culminated in the mass deportations to Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe between 1941 and 1945. </p>
<p>The mass deportation targeted not only Jews, but also people with disabilities as well as tens of thousands of Romani.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Hundreds of people being marched down a village street, while onlookers watch." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=389&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481621/original/file-20220829-12824-jaofjl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=489&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Romani families, in total 490 people, from Germany’s southwest border region are deported to Nazi-occupied Poland, May 22, 1940.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Research Office for Racial Hygiene, Federal Archive Germany, Barch R 165, 244-42.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What can we learn from the pictures? Not only when, where and how these forced relocations took place, but who participated, who witnessed them and who was affected by the persecution acts.</p>
<p>I work with the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research to manage the outreach for the #LastSeen Project in the English-speaking world. The project has three main goals: first, gathering all existing pictures. These images will then be analyzed to identify the victims and perpetrators and recover the stories behind the pictures. Finally, a digital platform will provide access to all the images and unearthed information, both enabling a new level of study of this visual evidence and establishing a powerful tool against Holocaust denial.</p>
<p>When the project began, the partners were skeptical of whether we would find a significant number of never-before-seen images of mass deportations. </p>
<p>But after addressing the German public and querying 1,750 German archives, within the first six months of the project we received dozens of unknown images, more then doubling the number of German towns, from 27 to over 60, where we now have photographs documenting Nazi deportations. </p>
<p>Many of these photos had collected dust on shelves in local archives in Germany, and some were found in private homes. In the future, the project hopes for discoveries in archives, museums and family possession in the U.S. and the U.K., but also in Canada, South Africa and Australia. We know that liberators took photographs with them from Germany at the end of the war, and survivors received them later via various channels. </p>
<h2>Tracing unknown images beyond Germany</h2>
<p>The project has already located photos in the United States. In two cases, survivors had donated them to archives, which project staff learned during research visits. <a href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn671780">Simon Strauss gave an image</a> to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum depicting the deportation in his German hometown of Hanau. He wrote on it, “Uncle Ludwig transported.” The second photo was at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York, which had received the hitherto <a href="https://digipres.cjh.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE9435726">only known picture</a> from the Nazi deportation of the Jews in Bad Homburg. </p>
<p>To locate more photos, the project counts on the help of ordinary citizens, researchers, archivists, museum curators and survivors’ families. </p>
<p>After joining the project, I searched the <a href="https://vhaonline.usc.edu/login">USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive</a>, which holds over 53,000 video testimonies of Holocaust survivors. Many of the Jews who gave testimony talked about Nazi deportations. All interviewees shared photographs. While many of these more than 700,000 images are artifacts of personal value, such as family and wedding photos, some images depict Nazi persecution.</p>
<p>Within minutes of my search using the term “deportation stills” I was staring at photographs showing a Nazi deportation in a small town in central Germany. At the end of his 1996 interview, Lothar Lou Beverstein, born in 1921, shared two photographs from his hometown of Halberstadt that he had received from friends after the war. Beverstein identified his father, Hugo, and his mother, Paula, <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip">in an image showing Nazis lining up deportees</a> in front of the city’s famous 13th-century Gothic cathedral.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large group of people assembled on the street in front of a timbered building and a large church, with people watching them on the other side of the street." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481627/original/file-20220829-8838-nks8x2.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jewish families from Halberstadt, Germany, assembled for deportation from the city, April 12, 1942.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/vha17046">USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive, Lou Beverstein interview.</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Both of Lou Beverstein’s parents were deported to the Warsaw Ghetto on April 12, 1942. In his interview, Beverstein declared that to his knowledge nobody survived from that transport, which according to a list consisted of 24 men, 59 women and 23 children. Now the project needs to locate Lou Beverstein’s family in the United States or connect to other descendants from Halberstadt to find out more about the origins of the images and the identities of the deportees depicted in them. </p>
<h2>Naming and recognizing victims</h2>
<p>The identities of deportees and perpetrators in the existing images are often unknown. Most photographs show groups of victims whom project staff aim to identify so they and their stories can be acknowledged. This is very difficult, since there are seldom close-up shots.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two young girls in winter coats and hats, both wearing Jewish stars on their coats." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C1769%2C1254&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=536&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Two Jewish girls awaiting deportation in Munich on Nov. 11, 1942. Their identities are not known.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">City Archive Munich DE-1992-FS-NS-00013</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Even in a <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481631/original/file-20220829-24-gyyf07.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=crop&dpr=1">photograph clearly showing two Jewish girls</a>, we do not know anything other than that the Gestapo deported them to Kowno with the same transport <a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481618/original/file-20220829-6542-moakkm.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip">depicted in the image showing Munich Jews being deported</a> referenced at the beginning of this article. The nearly 1,000 deportees from Munich were shot soon after they arrived at their destination in Nazi-occupied Lithuania.</p>
<p>This is but one example of how scholars desperately need the public’s help to recover the stories of countless unidentified victims of the Nazis.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189525/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wolf Gruner directs the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, which is a partner institution in the LastSeen project. </span></em></p>
Holocaust scholars long relied on documents and survivor testimonies to help reconstruct the history of that tragic event. Now, they’re turning to wordless witnesses to learn more: pictures.
Wolf Gruner, Shapell-Guerin Chair in Jewish Studies and Professor of History; Founding Director, USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/176720
2022-02-18T16:05:08Z
2022-02-18T16:05:08Z
LGBT+ history: The Amazing Life of Margot Heuman – how theatre gave voice to a queer Holocaust survivor
<p>Many Holocaust plays feature Jewish teenagers coming of age in the shadow of the death camps. Yet these works often present sentimentalised, redemptive stories, such as the 1950s production of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Diary-of-a-Young-Girl">The Diary of Anne Frank</a>. They foreground certain narratives to the exclusion of others, such as <a href="https://queerbritain.org.uk/">queer</a> experiences. Speaking testimony, however, can bring such stories back into the present.</p>
<p>How might we use the stage to tell a different story about the Holocaust to young adults? This was the conversation with which we – Anna Hájková, a Holocaust historian, and Erika Hughes, a scholar and director of Holocaust theatre – began our project. We chose to focus on the marginalised topic of the queer coming-of-age experience because it offered a powerful counterpoint to the usual stories of the Holocaust.</p>
<p>Using the tools of documentary theatre, we presented one woman’s account of queer desire and survival in ghettos and concentration camps, centering a non-stereotypical perspective of life in the Holocaust. We invited audiences to abandon their preconceptions of young people’s stories from the camps.</p>
<p>The story we tell defies the standard assumptions that have shaped so many representations of the Holocaust. Our starting point was the life story of <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/id-card/margot-heumann">Margot Heuman</a>, the first lesbian Jewish Holocaust survivor who bore testimony. Still thriving at 94, Margot lives in the US.</p>
<p>Over several months we developed a one-act play, The Amazing Life of Margot Heuman, which premiered online at the UK’s Brighton Fringe Festival during lockdown in 2021, and will be shown in Canada, the US, and Germany later this year.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iHtGD9mxVjQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Margot Heuman’s life story presents a familiar Holocaust story in some ways, but confounds expectations in others. Born in 1928 in Germany, Margot grew up in a middle-class family in Bielefeld. In 1943, they were all deported to <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780190051778.001.0001/oso-9780190051778">Theresienstadt ghetto</a>. As a little girl, Margot knew she was attracted to women. In Theresienstadt, she experienced some happiness thanks to relative normality of life in a youth care centre in the ghetto.</p>
<p>It was in this children’s home that Margot met Emma, a Viennese girl – “the love of her life”. Both were deported to <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/auschwitz">Auschwitz</a>, <a href="https://www.kz-gedenkstaette-neuengamme.de/en/history/satellite-camps/satellite-camps/hamburg-neugraben/">Neuengamme</a> and eventually to <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/bergen-belsen">Bergen-Belsen</a>, where they were liberated by the British army. Throughout the hunger, cold, forced labour and separation from Margot’s family, the relationship sustained both teenagers.</p>
<p>For decades Margot bore testimony about her imprisonment, but never discussed the actual meaning of her relationship with Emma. One of us (Anna, whose work addresses queer experiences of the Holocaust), met Margot and interviewed her many times. It was only with an openly lesbian historian, specifically interested in queerness, that Margot shared her whole story.</p>
<h2>A whole life in an hour</h2>
<p>Working through hours of oral testimony given by Margot to Anna, we devised the script and staged the play as a work of documentary theatre. This process revealed much about the tensions between written history and dramatic composition. While the words came directly from the interview transcripts, the decision of what to include – and more importantly, what not – took weeks of editing and workshopping.</p>
<p>How could we condense the story of one amazing life into a one-act play, lasting less than one hour? There were so many details that did not make it to the stage – not because they weren’t vitally important, but because we needed to be concise.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A black and white picture of one the yards in Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447287/original/file-20220218-42020-i6fbwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/447287/original/file-20220218-42020-i6fbwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447287/original/file-20220218-42020-i6fbwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447287/original/file-20220218-42020-i6fbwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447287/original/file-20220218-42020-i6fbwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447287/original/file-20220218-42020-i6fbwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/447287/original/file-20220218-42020-i6fbwa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Auschwitz, where Margot Heuman was imprisoned.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/barracks-barbed-wire-concentration-camp-auschwitz-525042577">Yulia Moiseeva/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Amazing Life of Margot Heuman offers a meditation on bearing testimony, on first love and on making space for queer romance in otherwise homophobic surroundings – often when the stakes are life and death.</p>
<p>There are only two characters in the play: the survivor Margot and the historian Anna. In staging the performance as a conversation between survivor and historian, we illustrate how Margot’s act of witnessing is also yielding control over her story to the historian. Her insistence on agency is an insistence on dignity. </p>
<p>We also wanted to render the role of the historian transparent, revealing Anna’s reactions to Margot’s testimony to show how the historian shapes it into historical narrative. </p>
<p>We didn’t want the kind of theatrical realism that might give way to sentimentalisation, which can sometimes obscure historical fact. To that end, Erika, as director, had the performers carry their scripts throughout, often turning to them to read dialogue, as a reminder of the testimony from which their words came.</p>
<p>The part of Anna the historian is read by an actor of her age. Though Margot is now in her nineties, her words are spoken by an actor in her early twenties – not much older than Margot was herself was during the Holocaust. </p>
<p>At the beginning, the performers break the fourth wall, addressing the audience directly and introducing themselves by their actual names. With these techniques we forged a critical distance between the performance and Margot’s actual experience, encouraging audiences to reflect on Margot’s life as a lesbian woman during the Holocaust and after, in the US. Onstage, Margot and Anna bond over their shared experiences, but the play invites audiences to see how there remains a historical and generational chasm between the two. </p>
<p>The play illustrates Margot’s story with real images from her archive, including old photographs of her as a young girl and documents of her journey in concentration camps during the Holocaust and displaced person camps after the war.</p>
<p>In the end, as the historian Anna tries to piece together a narrative from the physical pieces of the archive, Margot ultimately asserts her agency over the space – rearranging the pieces to tell her own story. It is her voice that remains front and centre.</p>
<p>“I was amazing,” she rightly says, to history and the present.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176720/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erika Hughes works for the University of Portsmouth. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anna Hájková is on the steering committee of the Czech Society for Queer Memory.</span></em></p>
For the first time, the testimony of a 94-year-old Holocaust survivor tells the story of life and love in the camps as a young lesbian woman.
Erika Hughes, Reader in Performance, University of Portsmouth
Anna Hájková, Associate Professor of Modern Continental European History, University of Warwick
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/152702
2021-01-27T13:27:05Z
2021-01-27T13:27:05Z
5 websites to help educate about the horrors of the Holocaust
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380496/original/file-20210125-15-1qpbte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C0%2C4179%2C2786&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Anne Frank House Executive Director Ronald Leopold, left, presents pages of Anne Frank's diary.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ronald-leopold-executive-director-of-the-anne-frank-house-news-photo/959018820?adppopup=true">Bas Czerwinski/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Whenever there’s an analysis or discussion about how much people know about the Holocaust, the focus is often on what they don’t know.</p>
<p>For instance, a 2018 survey of 1,350 people age 18 and older found that 11% of U.S. adults and <a href="http://www.claimscon.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Holocaust-Knowledge-Awareness-Study_Executive-Summary-2018.pdf">22% of millennials had not heard of</a> – or were not sure if they had heard of – the Holocaust.</p>
<p>Almost half of U.S. adults – 45% – and millennials – 49% – could not name one concentration camp or ghetto that was established in Europe during the Holocaust, the survey found.</p>
<p>The survey also showed how there’s an overwhelming lack of personal connections to the Holocaust. Most Americans – 80% – had never visited a Holocaust museum and two-thirds – 66% – did not know, or know of, a Holocaust survivor. A significant majority of American adults believed that fewer people care about the Holocaust today than before. </p>
<p>As troublesome as these statistics may be in terms of what they show about how little people know about the Holocaust, there’s another aspect to Holocaust knowledge that often goes overlooked.</p>
<p>And that is, at a time when the Holocaust has “<a href="https://library.villanova.edu/Find/Record/546126/TOC">taken on a virtual dimension</a>” and images from the horrific era are prevalent online, there is now a risk of what <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/hi-hitler/04A662624D1A27393AC46D522A241C6C">author Gavriel Rosenberg</a> refers to as the “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139696449">normalization</a>” of the Nazi past in contemporary culture.</p>
<h2>Desensitization</h2>
<p>As the number of Holocaust survivors continues to dwindle, today’s students may be more apt to find a Hitler meme online before they discover <a href="https://sfi.usc.edu/video-topics">testimonies of Holocaust survivors</a>.</p>
<p>Rosenberg argues that this normalization of the Holocaust will downplay its horrific nature. In some cases, people have seemingly taken to celebrating the Holocaust. For instance, at the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, one participant wore a “<a href="https://nypost.com/2021/01/06/neo-nazis-among-protesters-who-stormed-us-capitol/">Camp Auschwitz” hoodie</a> – a macabre acknowledgment of the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/auschwitz">most infamous of the Nazi concentration and death camps</a>.</p>
<p>At at December 2020 protest in Washington, D.C., against the election of then-President-elect Joe Biden, a member of the Proud Boys – a pro-Trump organization <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/proud-boys">designated as a hate group</a> by the Southern Poverty Law Center – wore a shirt emblazoned with “<a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/proud-boy-6mwe/">6MWE</a>.” The slogan stands for “6 million wasn’t enough,” in reference to the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/documenting-numbers-of-victims-of-the-holocaust-and-nazi-persecution">6 million Jews who were killed</a> in the Holocaust.</p>
<h2>Making history accessible</h2>
<p>Since the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe in early 2020, teachers have <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-creative-use-of-technology-may-have-helped-save-schooling-during-the-pandemic-146488">adapted instruction to make use</a> of existing and emerging technologies. In line with the purpose of <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/remember/international-holocaust-remembrance-day">International Holocaust Remembrance Day</a> on Jan. 27, digital tools are offering educators new innovative ways to engage with Holocaust history </p>
<p>The internet has made <a href="https://sfi.usc.edu/video-topics">survivor testimonies</a> easily accessible. Social media platforms have made learning about the Holocaust easier for younger people.</p>
<p>A popular Instagram account appeared in 2019 that features <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/05/02/hi-my-names-eva-teenage-holocaust-victims-diary-comes-life-instagram/">excerpts from from the journal of Eva Heyman</a>, a 14-year old girl from Poland who was murdered in a death camp.</p>
<p>In recent years, virtual reality been used as a tool for Holocaust education and memorialization. For instance, the University of Southern California’s USC Shoah Foundation has launched a project to develop <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/18/holocaust-survivor-hologram-pinchas-gutter-new-dimensions-history">interactive holograms of Holocaust survivors</a>. The first time the exhibit was displayed publicly was at The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in 2015.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w83pe-0noUU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">“New Dimensions in Testimony” uses holograms of Holocaust survivors so future generations can interact with them.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Criticisms from scholars</h2>
<p>However, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17503280.2017.1340796">some scholars challenge the use of virtual reality</a> when it comes to the Holocaust. One concern is the risk that people who go through a virtual reality simulation will incorrectly feel that they now know what the historical event itself was like, thereby trivializing it. </p>
<p>I myself am leading an interdisciplinary team at Rowan University in New Jersey to develop a virtual reality teaching tool about the <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/daily-life-in-the-warsaw-ghetto">Warsaw Ghetto</a>, the largest ghetto established by the Nazis during the Holocaust – holding more than <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/warsaw">400,000 Jews</a> within an area of 1.3 square miles, with an average of 7.2 persons per room.</p>
<p>This project, still in its pilot stage, uses primary-source documents and photographs from the <a href="https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/ringelblum/index.asp">Oneg Shabbat Archive</a> to recreate spaces within the ghetto. Users will be able to explore re-created spaces, examine primary sources, ask questions about photographs and explore a variety of themes.</p>
<p>To better develop The Warsaw Ghetto Teaching and Learning Project, and as author of a chapter in a forthcoming book, “Teaching and Learning Through the Holocaust,” <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=tB-wZZ0AAAAJ&hl=en">I have examined</a> many digital tools that can be used to teach about the Holocaust, especially in middle and high schools.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379621/original/file-20210119-14-o87il.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="3D models of women make food in a soup kitchen." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379621/original/file-20210119-14-o87il.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/379621/original/file-20210119-14-o87il.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379621/original/file-20210119-14-o87il.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379621/original/file-20210119-14-o87il.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379621/original/file-20210119-14-o87il.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379621/original/file-20210119-14-o87il.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/379621/original/file-20210119-14-o87il.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=564&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A virtual re-creation of a soup kitchen in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1941.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jennifer Eve Rich</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Here are five websites that I consider to be the most interesting.</p>
<h2>1. The Life of Bebe Epstein</h2>
<p>This <a href="https://museum.yivo.org/">first foray into digital education</a> from <a href="https://yivo.org/">YIVO, The Institute for Jewish Research</a>, tells the life story of one young girl, who was born in Vilna, Poland, from before the Holocaust through her immigration to the United States. A staggering amount of information can be found in this digital tool, which consists of 10 self-guided “chapters” containing the story of Bebe Epstein, artifacts and maps.</p>
<h2>2. History Unfolded: US Newspapers and the Holocaust</h2>
<p>The United States <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-exhibitions">Holocaust Memorial Museum</a> has a number of excellent online exhibits that can be used for teaching and learning, but “<a href="https://newspapers.ushmm.org/">History Unfolded</a>” fills a gap: This website aims to show what Americans knew about the Holocaust, and when they knew it, by using articles from U.S. newspapers published during the 1930s and 1940s. Users can explore by event.</p>
<p>For example, they can search for <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht">Kristallnacht</a>, a series of violent massacres carried out against Jews in Germany, often referred to as the “Night of Broken Glass.” Or they can search for information about the <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/voyage-of-the-st-louis">USS St. Louis</a>, a ship that brought 900 Jews to Cuba and then the United States, where they were turned away. Upon being returned to Europe, almost all aboard were murdered in death camps. Visitors can also search their local newspapers from the period.</p>
<h2>3. In Mrs. Goldberg’s Kitchen</h2>
<p>This <a href="https://jewish-lodz.iu.edu/mrs-goldbergs-kitchen#pano">augmented reality experience</a> is a part of a larger project about Lodz, Poland, during the period between World War I and World War II, created by <a href="https://music.indiana.edu/faculty/current/goldberg-halina.html">Halina Goldberg</a>, a musicology professor at Indiana University Bloomington. This interactive exhibit allows users to explore space in the Jewish Quarter of prewar Lodz, understanding what daily life was like for so many Jews before they were displaced and murdered during the Holocaust.</p>
<h2>4. Anne Frank House: The Secret Annex</h2>
<p>Anne Frank’s diary is one of the best-known primary sources to have survived the Holocaust. The <a href="https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/secret-annex/">annex where Anne and her family hid</a> during the war still exists in the Netherlands and is a popular site for tourists. For those who are unable to visit the site – and for everyone during the COVID-19 pandemic – the augmented-reality site created by the Anne Frank Museum is an impressive alternative. Users are able to explore the space, examine documents and look at photos. </p>
<h2>5. Virtual Tour of the Auschwitz Memorial</h2>
<p><a href="http://panorama.auschwitz.org/">Auschwitz</a> is the best-known concentration camp built with the express purpose of murdering Jews and other victims of the Holocaust. While the memorial and museum remain closed because of COVID-19, the <a href="http://auschwitz.org/en/visiting/">virtual tour</a> presents what the memorial website describes as “authentic sites and buildings of the former German Nazi concentration and extermination camp, complete with historical descriptions, dozens of witness accounts, archival documents and photographs, artworks created by the prisoners, and objects related to the history of the camp.” Each location allows users to access additional information, view primary sources, and listen to survivor testimony.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152702/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Rich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Information about the Holocaust may be easy to find online, but the best sites offer artifacts and authentic accounts from people who survived the experience, a Holocaust scholar argues.
Jennifer Rich, Professor of Sociology, Rowan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/152951
2021-01-12T19:09:22Z
2021-01-12T19:09:22Z
How can America heal from the Trump era? Lessons from Germany’s transformation into a prosperous democracy after Nazi rule
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378297/original/file-20210112-21-1m1nob1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=14%2C7%2C4868%2C3216&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as people try to storm the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 61. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/trump-supporters-clash-with-police-and-security-forces-as-news-photo/1230454153?adppopup=true">Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Comparisons between the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/us/politics/arnold-schwarzenegger-video.html">United States under Trump and Germany during the Hitler era </a> are once again being made following the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/01/06/dc-protests-trump-rally-live-updates/">storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6</a>.</p>
<p>Even in the eyes of German history scholars like myself, <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-hitler-comparisons-too-easy-and-ignore-the-murderous-history-92394">who had earlier warned of the troubling nature of such analogies</a>, Trump’s strategy to remain in power has undeniably proved that he has fascist traits. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/09/06/910320018/fascism-scholar-says-u-s-is-losing-its-democratic-status">True to the fascist playbook</a>, which includes hypernationalism, the glorification of violence and a fealty to anti-democratic leaders that is cultlike, Trump launched a conspiracy theory that the recent election was rigged and incited violence against democratically elected representatives of the American people. </p>
<p>This is not to say that Trump has suddenly emerged as a new Hitler. The German dictator’s lust for power was inextricably linked to his <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/victims-of-the-nazi-era-nazi-racial-ideology">racist ideology</a>, which unleashed a global, genocidal war. For Trump, the need to <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/the-mind-of-donald-trump/480771/">satisfy his own ego</a> seems to be the major motivation of his politics. </p>
<p>But that doesn’t change the fact that Trump is just as much of a mortal danger to American democracy as Hitler was to the Weimar Republic. The first democracy on German soil <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/the-mind-of-donald-trump/480771/">did not survive the onslaught of the Nazis</a>. </p>
<p>If America is to survive the attacks of Trump and his supporters, its citizens would do well to look to the fate of Germany and the lessons it offers Americans looking to save, heal and unite their republic.</p>
<h2>From Nazi ideology to democracy</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Weimar-Republic">Weimar Republic, the first democracy on German soil</a>, was a short-lived one. Founded in 1918, it managed to survive the political turmoil of the early 1920s, but succumbed to the crisis brought about by the Great Depression. It is therefore not the history of the failed Weimar Republic but rather that of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Germany/Formation-of-the-Federal-Republic-of-Germany">Federal Republic, founded in 1949</a>, that provides important clues. </p>
<p>Just like Weimar, the West German Federal Republic was founded in the aftermath of a devastating war, World War II. And, just like Weimar, the new German state found itself confronted with large numbers of citizens who were deeply anti-democratic. Even worse, many of them had been involved in the Holocaust and other heinous crimes against humanity. </p>
<p>During the first postwar decade, a majority of Germans still believed that Nazism <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Postwar/10oPnprPjcgC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Nazism+was+a+good+idea,+badly+applied%22&pg=PA58&printsec=frontcover">had been a good idea, only badly put into practice</a>. This was a sobering starting point, but Germany’s second democracy managed not just to survive but even to flourish, and it ultimately developed into one of the most stable democracies worldwide. </p>
<p>How?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378311/original/file-20210112-15-w95x5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="German war crimes defendants sitting in a courtroom at the Nuremberg trials." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378311/original/file-20210112-15-w95x5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378311/original/file-20210112-15-w95x5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378311/original/file-20210112-15-w95x5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378311/original/file-20210112-15-w95x5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=468&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378311/original/file-20210112-15-w95x5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378311/original/file-20210112-15-w95x5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378311/original/file-20210112-15-w95x5j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">German war crimes defendants sitting in a courtroom at the Nuremberg trials in November 1945. Among them are Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess and Joachim Von Ribbentrop.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/german-war-crimes-defendants-sitting-in-a-courtroom-of-the-news-photo/158743770?adppopup=true">Mondadori Portfolio by Getty Images)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Denazification: ‘Painful and amoral process’</h2>
<p>For one, there was a legal reckoning with the past, beginning with the trial and prosecution of some Nazi elites and war criminals. That happened first at <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2020/dec/18/landmarks-in-law-the-first-trial-where-the-word-genocide-was-spoken">the Nuremberg Trials</a>, organized by the Allies in 1945 and 1946, in which leading Nazis were tried for genocide and crimes against humanity. A further significant reckoning happened during the <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/collections-highlights/auschwitz-ssalbum/frankfurt-trial">Frankfurt Auschwitz trials</a> of the mid-1960s, in which 22 officials of the SS, the elite paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party, were tried for the roles they played at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. </p>
<p>To protect the new German democracy from the political divisions that had plagued parliamentary government during the Weimar period, an electoral law was introduced that aimed to prevent the proliferation of small extremist parties. This was <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/how-does-the-german-general-election-work/a-37805756">the “5 percent” clause</a>, which stipulated that a party must win a minimum of 5% of the national vote to receive any representation in parliament.</p>
<p>In a similar vein, <a href="https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_stgb/englisch_stgb.html">Article 130 of the German Criminal Code</a> made “incitement of the masses” a criminal offense to stop the spread of extremist thought, hate speech and calls for political violence.</p>
<p>Yet as important and admirable as these efforts were in exorcising Germany’s Nazi demons, they alone are not what kept Germans on a democratic footing after 1945. So, too, did the successful integration of anti-democratic forces into the new state.</p>
<p>This was a painful and amoral process. In January 1945, the Nazi Party had <a href="https://www.crl.edu/collections/topics/germany">some 8.5 million members</a> – that is, significantly more than 10% of the entire population. After the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany, many of them claimed that they <a href="http://www.alliiertenmuseum.de/en/topics/denazification.html">had been only nominal members</a>.</p>
<p>Such attempts to get off scot-free did not work for the Nazi luminaries tried at Nuremberg, but it certainly did work for many lower-level Nazis involved in countless crimes. And with the advent of the Cold War, <a href="https://ips-dc.org/the_cias_worst-kept_secret_newly_declassified_files_confirm_united_states_collaboration_with_nazis/">even people outside of Germany were willing to look past these offenses</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/History/History-idx?type=article&did=History.Denazi.i0003&id=History.Denazi&isize=M">Denazification, the Allies’ attempt to purge German society, culture and politics</a>, as well as the press, economy and judiciary, of Nazism, petered out quickly and was officially abandoned in 1951. As a result, many Nazis were absorbed into an emerging new society that officially committed itself to democracy and human rights.</p>
<p>Konrad Adenauer, the first West German chancellor, said in 1952 that it was time <a href="https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/from-dictatorship-to-democracy-the-role-ex-nazis-played-in-early-west-germany-a-810207.html">“to finish with this sniffing out of Nazis.”</a> He did not say this lightheartedly; after all, he had been an opponent of the Nazis. To him, this <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=wNd9Zp1A1a4C&pg=PA240&lpg=PA240&dq=hermann+l%C3%BCbbe+communicative+silencing&source=bl&ots=g5dLTJ6zYy&sig=ACfU3U0aXiIxejpQVKvX4vVsiImuFRi9sQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjxxfzg_JTuAhUFYawKHdmiCM0Q6AEwB3oECAgQAg#v=onepage&q=hermann%20l%C3%BCbbe%20communicative%20silencing&f=false">“communicative silencing”</a> of the Nazi past – a term coined by the German philosopher Hermann Lübbe – was necessary during these early years to integrate former Nazis into the democratic state. </p>
<p>Where one was going, advocates of this approach argued, was more important than where one had been.</p>
<h2>A dignified life</h2>
<p>For many, this failure to achieve justice was too heavy of a price to pay for democratic stability. But the strategy ultimately bore fruit. Despite the recent <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/06/shockwaves-in-berlin-as-far-right-afd-lends-support-to-mainstream.html">growth of the far right and nationalist “Alternative for Germany” party</a>, Germany has remained democratic and has not yet become a threat to world peace. </p>
<p>At the same time, there were increasing efforts to confront the Nazi past, especially after the upheaval of 1968, when a new generation of young Germans challenged the older generation <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/68-movement-brought-lasting-changes-to-german-society/a-3257581">about their behavior during the Third Reich</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378314/original/file-20210112-19-mz23ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Young people at a demonstration in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1968." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378314/original/file-20210112-19-mz23ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/378314/original/file-20210112-19-mz23ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378314/original/file-20210112-19-mz23ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378314/original/file-20210112-19-mz23ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378314/original/file-20210112-19-mz23ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378314/original/file-20210112-19-mz23ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/378314/original/file-20210112-19-mz23ap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=554&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 1968, young Germans demonstrated against the older generation about many concerns, including their behavior during the Third Reich.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/demonstrators-with-banners-on-sunday-in-front-of-the-news-photo/1074504810?adppopup=true">Karl Schnörrer/picture alliance via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Another crucial factor helped make Germany’s democratic transition a success: <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Germany/Political-consolidation-and-economic-growth-1949-69#ref297761">an extraordinary period of economic growth in the postwar period</a>. Most ordinary Germans benefited from this prosperity, and the new state even created <a href="https://files.stlouisfed.org/files/htdocs/publications/review/75/10/Postwar_Oct1975.pdf">a generous welfare system</a> to cushion them against the harsh forces of the free market. </p>
<p>In short, more and more Germans embraced democracy because it offered them a dignified life. As a result, philosopher <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/2008-05-03/constitutional-patriotism">Jürgen Habermas’ concept of “constitutional patriotism” – as one interpreter put it</a>, that citizens’ political attachment to their country “ought to center on the norms, the values and, more indirectly, the procedures of a liberal democratic constitution” – eventually came to replace older, more rabid forms of nationalism.</p>
<p>[<em>Get our most insightful politics stories.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/politics-weekly-74/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=politics-most">Sign up for The Conversation’s Politics Weekly</a>.]</p>
<p>In the coming weeks and months, Americans will debate the most effective ways to punish those who instigated the recent political violence. They will also consider how to restore the trust in democracy of the many millions who have given their support to <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-field-guide-to-trumps-dangerous-rhetoric-139531">Donald Trump and still believe the lies of this demagogue</a>.</p>
<p>Defenders of American democracy would do well to study carefully the painful but ultimately successful approach of the Federal Republic of Germany to move beyond fascism. </p>
<p>The United States finds itself in a different place and time than postwar Germany, but the challenge is similar: how to reject, punish and delegitimize the powerful enemies of democracy, pursue an honest reckoning with the violent racism of the past, and enact political and socioeconomic policies that will allow all to lead a dignified life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152951/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sylvia Taschka is not a member of the Democratic party, but has volunteered for them during election periods.</span></em></p>
The US faces many of the same problems Germans faced after World War II: how to reject, punish and delegitimize the enemies of democracy. There are lessons in how Germany handled that challenge.
Sylvia Taschka, Senior Lecturer of History, Wayne State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/138840
2020-05-19T14:27:17Z
2020-05-19T14:27:17Z
Colonial amnesia and Germany’s efforts to achieve ‘internal liberation’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/336018/original/file-20200519-152292-nulqys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters in Berlin demand that the 1904-1908 mass killings in Namibia be recognised as the first genocide committed by Germany.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied/Courtesy of Joachim Zeller</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Speaking at the 75th commemoration of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/08/european-leaders-mark-heroics-of-war-generation-after-75-years">VE (Victory in Europe) Day</a>, German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier <a href="https://www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/Reden/2020/05/200508-75-Jahre-Ende-WKII-Englisch.pdf?__blob=publicationFile">said</a> it was a day of liberation “imposed from outside”, by Allied military forces, including the Soviets. But as he stated, “internal liberation”, the coming to terms with the heritage of dictatorship and above all the horrific mass crimes, remained “a long and painful process”.</p>
<p>In 1985 the West German head of state, Richard von Weizsäcker, for the first time used the term “liberation” for the <a href="https://www.bundespraesident.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/Reden/2015/02/150202-RvW-Rede-8-Mai-1985-englisch.pdf?__blob=publicationFile">unconditional surrender of German troops</a> that marked the end of the second world war in Europe. This sparked considerable protest and controversy, a sign that even as late as the mid-1980s, Germany was having difficulty coming to terms with its past.</p>
<p>Steinmeier’s more consistent plea to “accept our historic responsibility” met broad consensus. “Internal liberation” had come some way – leaving aside comparatively weak statements by the <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/afd-what-you-need-to-know-about-germanys-far-right-party/a-37208199">right-wing Alternative für Deutschland</a>.</p>
<p>The culture of remembrance, concerning also dire aspects of the past, that’s been engendered in Germany is viewed by many as exemplary. But it nevertheless has some grave shortcomings. Notably, the remembrance of <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/auschwitz">Auschwitz</a> as a substantial part of German state rationale has come about through a halting and conflicting process. For all its merits, still, by virtually singling out the Shoah (the genocide of the Jews in Europe), it marginalises and disregards other mass crimes of the Nazi period. </p>
<p>As recalled during the VE-Day anniversary, such elision from memory includes over 30 million victims of the war against the Soviet Union and the occupation of eastern territories in what are today Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia, Moldavia, Poland and the Baltic states. This blank spot relates to an ingrained culture in Germany of discrimination against Slavic people and refuses to acknowledge the crimes perpetrated by the millions of <a href="https://www.neues-deutschland.de/artikel/1136440.ns-zeit-die-wehrmacht-warrs-auch.html?sstr=Hannes%7CHeer">ordinary German soldiers</a>.</p>
<p>Another glaring lacuna concerns Germany’s past as a colonial power. This period lasted from <a href="https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/German_colonial_empire">1884 to 1919</a>. Despite the relatively short duration, this experience had a great impact on Germany’s violent trajectory during the first half of the 20th century. Since 1945, however, this history has been largely forgotten.</p>
<p>Today many Germans are not even aware that their country once ruled colonies in Africa, Oceania and China. Such public amnesia about <a href="https://www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/Standpunkte/Standpunkte_9-2018.pdf">Germany’s colonial past</a> does not imply only a lack of knowledge. Rather it manifests in the refusal to acknowledge the practice of German colonialism and countenance the consequences. </p>
<p>A prominent case is the <a href="https://theconversation.com/has-the-relationship-between-namibia-and-germany-sunk-to-a-new-low-121329">genocide of 1904-1908 in then South West Africa</a>. Germany admitted the fact in 2015. But bilateral negotiations with Namibia <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14623528.2020.1750823">have not yet reached any result</a>.</p>
<h2>Selective amnesia</h2>
<p>Complacency about German culture of remembrance tends to isolate the Shoah as the mainstay of canonised public memory. There was a period when the entire field of comparative genocide studies was scrutinised as undermining the singularity of the Shoah. American political scientist and historian <a href="https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/fr/document/genocide-theory-search-knowledge-and-quest-meaning.html">Henry Huttenbach</a> pointed to the imbalance</p>
<blockquote>
<p>that the Holocaust became the paradigm for all genocides by default.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This also eroded the vital call of “Never Again” by the survivors of the Buchenwald concentration camp <a href="https://www.blurb.com/b/828859-never-again-buchenwald">in 1945</a>. If comparison is tabooed, the Holocaust cannot stand as a warning that organised mass extinction might yet be repeated. </p>
<p>But, unfortunately, we have to stand guard against the very real possibility of current and future cases of genocide, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.</p>
<p>The persistent lack of awareness was shown once again in a mid-2019 foreign ministry <a href="https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/blob/2298392/633d49372b71cb6fafd36c1f064c102c/transitional-justice-data.pdf">position paper on transitional justice</a>. It “advocates a comprehensive understanding of confronting past injustices” and refers to “reparations and compensation for National Socialist injustices”. It suggests that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Germany can provide information about basic requirements, problems and mechanisms for the development of state and civil-society reparation efforts.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Strikingly, however, the term “colonialism” does not feature even once in the 32 pages.</p>
<p>Rather, German diplomacy is seen as aggressively keeping things apart. This attitude is self-congratulatory and discriminating at one and the same time. </p>
<h2>Namibian genocide</h2>
<p>The issue was epitomised when Ruprecht Polenz, the German special envoy in the negotiations with the Namibian government about the consequences of the genocide, met a delegation of Namibian descendants of genocide survivors in 2016. They challenged him for not being part of the negotiations. They pointed out that Germany had negotiated with other non-state agencies, such as <a href="https://www.bpb.de/apuz/162883/wiedergutmachung-in-deutschland-19451990-ein-ueberblick?p=all">the Jewish Claims Conference</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/336022/original/file-20200519-152284-f31qfv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/336022/original/file-20200519-152284-f31qfv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336022/original/file-20200519-152284-f31qfv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336022/original/file-20200519-152284-f31qfv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336022/original/file-20200519-152284-f31qfv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336022/original/file-20200519-152284-f31qfv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/336022/original/file-20200519-152284-f31qfv.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Graves of forced labourers from a concentration in Lüderitz, Namibia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reinhart Kössler</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Polenz stressed that it was inappropriate to draw comparisons in cases such as genocide. But at the same time he pointed out that the Holocaust was qualitatively different from the genocide in Namibia. The meeting exploded in protest by the Namibian delegates – and <a href="http://genocide-namibia.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/PRESS-RELEASE-NOV-2016.pdf">a walkout</a>. They saw disrespect in belittling what happened to their ancestors as well as discriminating against them as Africans.</p>
<p>Already in 2001, Namibia’s foreign minister, Theo-Ben Gurirab, commented at the <a href="https://nhri.ohchr.org/EN/Themes/Racial/Pages/2001-World-Conference-Against-Racism.aspx">World Conference Against Racism</a> on the lack of a German apology to Namibians in contradistinction to Europeans. He concluded that if there was a problem in apologising because Namibians were black, <a href="http://www.freiburg-postkolonial.de/Seiten/melber-reconciliation2006.htm">that would be racist</a>.</p>
<h2>The challenges of ‘internal liberation’</h2>
<p>German memory politics and practices are not quite as exemplary as the Foreign Office would like to make us believe. In fact, the engagement with the violent past particularly of the first half of the 20th century is an ongoing and painful as well as conflictual process. Inasmuch as this process has been seen to consecutively encompass crimes and victim groups that had been silenced before, such an observation can only underline the magnitude of the task.</p>
<p>The urgency of addressing such challenge emerges from revisionist efforts, spearheaded by the Alternative für Deutschland. The group’s honorary chairman, Alexander Gauland, infamously termed Nazi rule as “bird’s shit” in comparison to <a href="https://www.afdbundestag.de/wortlaut-der-umstrittenen-passage-der-rede-von-alexander-gauland/">Germany’s “successful” history</a>.</p>
<p>The party has drawn up a parliamentary draft resolution calling for a positive reassessment of <a href="https://dipbt.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/19/157/1915784.pdf">colonialism’s modernising achievements</a>. It makes explicit reference to a 2018 statement by the personal representative of the <a href="https://africasacountry.com/2019/01/a-technocratic-reformulation-of-colonialism">German Chancellor for Africa</a>. He maintained that German colonialism contributed to liberate the African continent from archaic structures.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/surviving-genocide-a-voice-from-colonial-namibia-at-the-turn-of-the-last-century-130546">Surviving genocide: a voice from colonial Namibia at the turn of the last century</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>These developments show that there are limits to Germany’s accomplishment of coming to terms with its violent past. This was also reflected in the vigorous objection by German officials to <a href="https://wiser.wits.ac.za/users/achille-mbembe">Achille Mbembe</a>, the Cameroonian philosopher and political theorist, being invited as keynote speaker at this year’s Ruhrtriennale, a renowned cultural festival. He had been asked to address the issue of <a href="https://presse.ruhrtriennale.de/pressreleases/ruhrtriennale-2020-beschliesst-die-zwischenzeit-mit-internationalem-programm-2983369">“Reparation”</a>.</p>
<p>A deputy of the Liberal Party in the <a href="https://fdp.fraktion.nrw/sites/default/files/uploads/2020/03/25/offenerbrieflorenzdeutschanstefaniecarpwegenachillembembe-ruhrtriennale2020.pdf">North Rhine Westphalia Diet</a> alleged that Mbembe had refuted Israel’s right to exist as a state, and had “relativised” the Holocaust by comparing the practices of separation under apartheid with the Palestinian situation. The federal government’s antisemitism commissioner <a href="https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/german-antisemitism-commissioner-rejects-bds-academic-at-festival-624577">joined this
protest</a>.</p>
<p>This intervention sparked a controversy that stands as a warning that the postcolonial situation of Germany is very much at stake. By reducing the conflict to issues of antisemitism, it has been trapped in the pitfalls of colonial amnesia. But inner liberation remains hard work. It means conflict and pain, and it must never end.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138840/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henning Melber has been a member of SWAPO since 1974.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Reinhart Kössler does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The culture of remembrance in Germany is viewed by many as exemplary. But it has some grave shortcomings.
Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of Pretoria
Reinhart Kössler, Professor in Political Science, University of Freiburg
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/132296
2020-03-27T12:15:38Z
2020-03-27T12:15:38Z
Auschwitz: Women used different survival and sabotage strategies than men at Nazi death camp
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323068/original/file-20200325-168894-1bbdz1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C13%2C2908%2C1866&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women prisoners at the Auschwitz train station around 1944.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/germany-third-reich-concentration-camps-1939-45-women-at-news-photo/545959785?adppopup=true">ullstein bild via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly all the 1.3 million people sent to <a href="http://auschwitz.org/en/">Auschwitz</a>, the Nazi death camp in occupied Poland, were murdered – either sent to the gas chambers or worked to death. Life expectancy in many of these camps was between <a href="https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/album_auschwitz/auschwitz-birkenau.asp">six weeks and three months</a>. </p>
<p>Over a <a href="https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/final-solution/auschwitz.html">million of the Auschwitz dead were Jews</a>, and scholars have concluded that more than <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300080803/women-holocaust">half of them were women</a>.</p>
<p>While male and female slave laborers in Auschwitz faced the same ultimate fate, my <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Ej6tkQ0AAAAJ&hl=en">research on gender and the Holocaust finds</a> that some of their behaviors and responses to captivity differed. </p>
<h2>Methods of sabotage</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/double-jeopardy-gender-and-the-holocaust/oclc/607116356">Gender</a> has been long overlooked in Holocaust research. Writing in the late 1970s and early 1980s, early scholars such as <a href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn560446">Joan Ringelheim</a> and <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14623520120097170?journalCode=cjgr20">Sybil Milton</a> had to fight for their legitimacy in a field that insisted that separating stories of Jewish men and women under the Nazi regime was a <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300080803/women-holocaust">blow to their joint fate</a> or to <a href="https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/schoenfeldggmailcom/auschwitz-and-the-professors/">Jewish solidarity</a>.</p>
<p>Today, however, the topic is being explored in depth, allowing us to better understand not only how Jews died during the Holocaust, but also how they lived.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/322747/original/file-20200324-155645-1ha5npx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=6%2C27%2C4616%2C3666&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/322747/original/file-20200324-155645-1ha5npx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322747/original/file-20200324-155645-1ha5npx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322747/original/file-20200324-155645-1ha5npx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=479&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322747/original/file-20200324-155645-1ha5npx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322747/original/file-20200324-155645-1ha5npx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/322747/original/file-20200324-155645-1ha5npx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Of 1.3 million men and women sent to the Nazi death camp Auschwitz, 1.1 million died.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">API/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>During the late 1980s, I conducted a study of Jewish men and women who had been part of Auschwitz’s “<a href="https://www.pbs.org/auschwitz/40-45/corruption/">Canada Commando</a>,” the forced labor detail responsible for sorting through the possessions inmates had brought with them to the camp and preparing those items for reshipment back to Germany for civilian use. </p>
<p>Since the barracks were the only place in the camp where one could find almost unlimited food and clothing, this forced labor troop was named after Canada – a country seen as a symbol of wealth.</p>
<p>Examining the behavior of the men and women of the Canada Commando, I noted an interesting difference. Among the items of clothing sorted there were fur coats. While both male and female prisoners in the Canada Commando tried to sabotage this work, <a href="http://auschwitz.org/en/history/punishments-and-executions/executions">acts punishable by death</a>, their methods differed. </p>
<p>Male prisoners would usually rip the lining and seams of the coat to shreds, keeping only the outer shell intact. At first use, the coat would come apart, leaving the German who wore it coatless in the winter.</p>
<p>The few surviving women in the commando whom I interviewed did not use this tactic. Rather, they told me, they decided together to insert handwritten notes into the coat’s pockets that read something along the lines of: “German women, know that you are wearing a coat that belonged to a woman who has been gassed to death in Auschwitz.” </p>
<p>The women, in other words, chose psychological sabotage. The men, physical.</p>
<h2>Coping with hunger</h2>
<p>One of the most central experiences of all camp prisoners during the Holocaust was hunger. While both men and women suffered from hunger during incarceration, male and female prisoners <a href="https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0277539599000321">used disparate coping methods</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323004/original/file-20200325-168922-1m7yagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323004/original/file-20200325-168922-1m7yagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323004/original/file-20200325-168922-1m7yagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323004/original/file-20200325-168922-1m7yagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323004/original/file-20200325-168922-1m7yagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323004/original/file-20200325-168922-1m7yagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323004/original/file-20200325-168922-1m7yagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323004/original/file-20200325-168922-1m7yagf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The former Auschwitz Nazi extermination camp, in occupied Poland, now a public museum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium">Peter Toth/Pixabay</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While men would regale each other with tales of the fantastic meals they would enjoy once liberated, women would often discuss how they had cooked the various dishes they loved before the war, from baking fluffy cakes to preparing traditional Jewish blintzes. Cara de Silva’s 1996 book, “<a href="http://www.caradesilva.com/in_memory_s_kitchen__a_legacy_from_the_women_of_terezin_115136.htm">In Memory’s Kitchen</a>,” movingly documents how this phenomenon played out among women prisoners in the Terezin camp. </p>
<p>The differences between men’s and women’s coping methods may have derived from the gendered behavior in their lives before the war, in which men ate and women cooked – at least in the middle and lower classes. </p>
<p>In the case of women, this may also have been a female socialization process meant to solve two dilemmas simultaneously: the psychological need to engage – at least verbally – with food, and the educational need to prepare the young girls in the camp for culinary and household tasks after the war. </p>
<p>Under normal circumstances, mothers would have taught their daughters by example – not story.</p>
<h2>Motherhood under Nazi rule</h2>
<p><a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300080803/women-holocaust">Various historical studies</a> make mention of motherly sacrifices during the Holocaust, such as women who chose to accompany their children to death so that they would not be alone during their last moments on Earth. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323011/original/file-20200325-168885-wdakt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323011/original/file-20200325-168885-wdakt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/323011/original/file-20200325-168885-wdakt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323011/original/file-20200325-168885-wdakt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323011/original/file-20200325-168885-wdakt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323011/original/file-20200325-168885-wdakt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323011/original/file-20200325-168885-wdakt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/323011/original/file-20200325-168885-wdakt9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Jewish women and children, some wearing the yellow Star of David patch on their chests, undergoing ‘selections’ at Auschwitz circa 1943.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/jewish-women-and-children-some-wearing-the-yellow-star-of-news-photo/3240826?adppopup=true">Hulton Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some mothers, however, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23256249.2016.1126983?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=rdap20">acted otherwise</a>, as documented by the Polish non-Jewish Auschwitz survivor Tadeusz Borowsky in his book “<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/es/book/show/228244.This_Way_for_the_Gas_Ladies_and_Gentlemen">This Way to the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen</a>.” </p>
<p>During the “selections” at Auschwitz – when prisoners were sent either to live or die – prisoners arriving were usually divided by sex, with the elderly, mothers and small children being separated from men and older boys. The mothers with small children, along with the elderly, were <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1468-0424.1995.tb00014.x">automatically sent to death</a>.</p>
<p>Borowsky writes about a number of young mothers who hid from their children during the selection, in an attempt to buy themselves a few additional days or possible hours of life.</p>
<p>If a German soldier found a small child alone at a “selection,” Borowsky writes, he would take the child up and down the rows of prisoners while screaming, “This is how a mother abandons her child?” until he tracked down the hapless woman and condemned them both to the gas chambers. </p>
<p>At first, the <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3675505?seq=1">female Auschwitz survivors I’ve interviewed</a> said they’d never heard of any such thing. Eventually, however, after I returned to the question several times via different topics, a few women admitted to hearing that a handful mothers who arrived in Auschwitz with small children did indeed try to hide to save their own lives.</p>
<p>Historians are not judges. I do not mention the actions made in mortal fear to condemn these women but rather to contribute, 75 years later, to our understanding of Jewish life and death under Nazi terror. Doing requires relinquishing preconceived notions about both men and women, mapping out a broader canvas of the grim reality at Auschwitz. </p>
<p>[<em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklysmart">You can get our highlights each weekend</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132296/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Judy Baumel-Schwartz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
While male and female prisoners at Auschwitz faced the same ultimate fate – torture, forced labor and near-certain death – women sometimes reacted differently to Nazi captivity.
Judy Baumel-Schwartz, Director, the Finkler Institute of Holocaust Research, Bar-Ilan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/132993
2020-03-18T13:00:19Z
2020-03-18T13:00:19Z
Hunters: even Al Pacino can’t hide the fact that this series gets it badly wrong on the Holocaust
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321060/original/file-20200317-60871-6lcqwh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C4%2C1495%2C992&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Al Pacino and Logan Lerman play Nazi hunters in the US in Amazon Prime's new series.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amazon Prime via IMDB</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><strong>Spoiler alert: this article contains plot details from series one of Hunters.</strong></p>
<p>In the very opening episode of the hit <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/feb/21/hunters-review-al-pacino-nazis-amazon-jordan-peele">Amazon Prime drama Hunters</a>, SS man Heinz Richter forces Auschwitz prisoner Markus Roth, a chess grandmaster, to play a game. But this is no ordinary chess game – prisoners are used as “pieces” – and when one piece is moved to a square occupied by another, prisoners are forced to kill. </p>
<p>Thanks to an interactive feature introduced by Amazon for the series, viewers watching on their computers can hover over various scenes with a mouse to get further information. For this scene that information is that the human chess game is an invention – but that “it is absolutely true that Nazis played deadly games with their prisoners”. </p>
<p>“The chess board”, we are told, “is a fiction that illuminates a larger truth”.</p>
<figure>
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<p>Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/21/books/amazon-nazi-propaganda.html">accused the series</a> of “welcoming future deniers”. In a <a href="https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/hunters-chess-scene-auschwitz-historical-innacuracy-1203512474/">long statement for the magazine Variety</a>, David Weil, the series creator, responded that the chess match scene was designed to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Counteract the revisionist narrative that whitewashes Nazi perpetration, by showcasing the most extreme – and representationally truthful – sadism and violence that the Nazis perpetrated against the Jews and other victims. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Weil believes that symbolic representations provide access to an emotional reality, allowing us to better understand the Holocaust. But what he describes as a symbolic representation is a myth. If the game of human chess is untrue, it cannot illuminate truth, larger or smaller: it can only undermine it.</p>
<p>The same charge can be levelled against John Boyne’s novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (2006), which depicts the son of a Nazi perpetrator (Bruno) and a Jewish victim of the Nazis (Shmuel) chatting away happily over a barbed-wire fence like neighbours, before Bruno slips into the camp to be with Shmuel. Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum has also warned against this text, pleading for it to be “avoided” by anyone who teaches or studies the Holocaust. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1213807345932931072"}"></div></p>
<p>Boyne’s self-defence was even more robust than Weil’s – and equally as problematic. He <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/07/john-boyne-defends-work-from-criticism-by-auschwitz-memorial">told The Guardian</a> that the book “was a work of fiction … and therefore by its nature cannot contain inaccuracies, only anachronisms, and I don’t think there are any of those in there”. But this is wordplay. As far as I am concerned, if a work of fiction changes history then its portrayal is inaccurate. The point is whether that matters. For Boyne, it doesn’t. But schoolchildren across the country are introduced to the Holocaust through this novel. It sells well because it purports to be about the Holocaust. This is a dangerous illusion. </p>
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<p>It is deeply revisionist, making victims of perpetrator family members: Bruno is gassed alongside Shmuel and – in Mark Herman’s 2008 film of the novel – Bruno’s mother’s grief is foregrounded at the end – not the fate of the murdered Jews.</p>
<h2>False parallels</h2>
<p>Hunters also creates alarming parallels. On one level, it’s a series about conspiracies. Disasters ranging from the Watergate scandal to the 1977 New York City blackout are ascribed to Nazi preparations for a “Fourth Reich”. Here too, then, Hunters takes liberties with history. But nobody denies that the New York City blackout happened or disputes how it happened, so reimagining its actual cause (lightning storms) is not going to feed denial. Inventing Holocaust atrocities is.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320763/original/file-20200316-128086-glagrj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/320763/original/file-20200316-128086-glagrj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=200&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320763/original/file-20200316-128086-glagrj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=200&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320763/original/file-20200316-128086-glagrj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=200&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320763/original/file-20200316-128086-glagrj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320763/original/file-20200316-128086-glagrj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/320763/original/file-20200316-128086-glagrj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Find out more about conspiracy theories in our new podcast series. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/the-anthill-podcast-27460">Listen here</a>, on <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-anthill/id1114423002?mt=2">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/265Bnp4BgwaEmFv2QciIOC?si=-WMr1ecDTsO_6avrkxZu8g">Spotify</a>, or search for The Anthill wherever you get your podcasts.</em></p>
<p>On another level, Hunters is a Holocaust revenge drama comparable to films such as Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Atom Egoyan’s Remember (2015). Former Jewish victims of Auschwitz, a former Kindertransportee, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor – among others – take it upon themselves to deliver what their leader Meyer Offermann calls “God’s justice”. That means brutally murdering Nazis living in the US, some of them scientists recruited after the war to help the Americans gain a military advantage in the Cold War. There are points in the film where the avenging Jews are as savage as the neo-Nazis whose killings we also see.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321129/original/file-20200317-60889-1hcekbs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/321129/original/file-20200317-60889-1hcekbs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321129/original/file-20200317-60889-1hcekbs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321129/original/file-20200317-60889-1hcekbs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321129/original/file-20200317-60889-1hcekbs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321129/original/file-20200317-60889-1hcekbs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/321129/original/file-20200317-60889-1hcekbs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Does it matter if events in the series never happened? Yes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amazon Prime via IMDB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a key exchange, the famous (real-life) Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal (played by Judd Hirsch) confronts Offermann and tells him he has devoted his life to seeking compensation for Holocaust victims. For Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter is the “profession of angels” – and “angels do not get blood on their wings”. For Offermann, that means allowing Nazis to “eradicate the Jew before we ever have a chance to fight them back”. </p>
<p>The two paths – here legal redress, there rough justice – intersect and conflict with one another throughout the series, sometimes within the consciences of the killers. One of them, Jonah Heidelbaum, grandson of Auschwitz victim Ruth, is torn between the feeling that he is honouring her memory and the concern that he is desecrating it by killing in her name. But he too comes to kill with relish. </p>
<p>To be fair, Hunters exposes the moral hypocrisy of the Allies, who put Nazis on trial in Nuremberg while secretly recruiting their best minds for <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol-58-no-3/operation-paperclip-the-secret-intelligence-program-to-bring-nazi-scientists-to-america.html">post-war weapons programmes</a>. But it also risks smoothing over the differences between Jewish Holocaust victims and the Nazi perpetrators.</p>
<p>A twist at the end of the series may go some way towards removing uncomfortable parallels – but it does so by an unconvincing sleight of hand (you will have to watch it to find out). Overall, Hunters leaves a bad taste in the mouth.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/132993/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>WIlliam Niven does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Amazon’s new TV series series divided the critics, but almost everyone agrees that it takes problematic liberties in its representation of Auschwitz.
WIlliam Niven, Professor in Contemporary German History, Nottingham Trent University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/129161
2020-01-21T13:49:02Z
2020-01-21T13:49:02Z
Vital Hasson, the Jew who worked for the Nazis, hunted down refugees and tore apart families in WWII Greece
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310094/original/file-20200114-151862-zp7bz5.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jewish youth on a sailboat in Salonika harbor, 1929,</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1119058">United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Gabriel Albocher</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I learned a lesson when conducting research for my book, “<a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374716158">Family Papers: a Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century</a>.” I had discovered the story of a young Jewish man forgotten to history until now, a story that taught me that neither cultural affiliation nor family history is a reliable predictor of future behavior. In short, identity is not destiny, and all of us can fall prey to the tides of history. </p>
<p>Vital Hasson was a native of Thessaloniki, Greece, a cultural capital of the Sephardic Jewish world and a city that once boasted <a href="https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/authors/?a=devin-e-naar">a majority Jewish population, who knew their home as Salonica</a>. He came from an educated, middle-class family of journalists, writers, educators and political leaders.</p>
<p>But Hasson diverged, fatally, from his family’s enlightened values. </p>
<p>Hasson became intoxicated by a populist regime and chose to be swept up by its violence, its false promises, its hatred. He used a position of power to degrade the vulnerable. He was publicly denounced by family for his excesses. After the Second World War, Hasson was the only Jew in all of Europe to be tried and executed by a state, Greece, for collaborating with the Nazi occupiers.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310525/original/file-20200116-181598-1kxfum6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310525/original/file-20200116-181598-1kxfum6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310525/original/file-20200116-181598-1kxfum6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310525/original/file-20200116-181598-1kxfum6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310525/original/file-20200116-181598-1kxfum6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310525/original/file-20200116-181598-1kxfum6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310525/original/file-20200116-181598-1kxfum6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310525/original/file-20200116-181598-1kxfum6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Greek Jewish couple wearing the yellow star poses in their apartment in Salonica, 1942 or 1943.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1050685">U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Less than nothing’</h2>
<p>Hasson’s family, like most of the Sephardic Jews of Salonica, were descended from Jews expelled from Iberia in the 15th century who spoke and wrote in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ladino-language">a Judeo-Spanish language known as Ladino</a>. For five centuries, they called the Ottoman Empire, southeastern Europe and Salonica home. </p>
<p>But before the war he was not important, “less than nothing,” according to one of the dozens of Jewish survivors who would subsequently testify against him. </p>
<p>When his city was still Ottoman, in the 1870s and 1890s, his great-grandfather introduced the first French- and Ladino-language newspapers to Salonica, chronicling and shaping modernity as it was experienced by southeastern European Jews. </p>
<p>In time, war redrew borders around the family, transforming them from Ottomans to Greeks. Emigration pulled them in many directions, with cousins relocating to England, France, Spain, Portugal, India and Brazil. Hasson himself moved to Palestine for a time, returning to his native town in 1933.</p>
<p>Then, war came, transforming Hasson from a nonentity to an important person.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310526/original/file-20200116-181593-113o2x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310526/original/file-20200116-181593-113o2x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310526/original/file-20200116-181593-113o2x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310526/original/file-20200116-181593-113o2x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=997&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310526/original/file-20200116-181593-113o2x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1253&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310526/original/file-20200116-181593-113o2x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1253&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310526/original/file-20200116-181593-113o2x3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1253&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One of Salonica’s prosperous Jewish families, the Salems, in 1909: Esther and Jacques, back; Karsa, Michael and Adolphe, front.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Hasson’s ‘depravity’</h2>
<p>Four generations of Hasson’s family were living in Salonica when <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/salonika">German forces occupied the city in April 1941</a>. Two years later, Hasson assumed the position of head of the Jewish police of Salonica under ambiguous circumstances. </p>
<p>The position gave him authority over about 200 unarmed men, all local Jews. Among Hasson’s first acts was to volunteer himself as a human bounty hunter, exceeding his charge. </p>
<p>In May 1943, he crossed from German-occupied Greece into Italian-occupied Greece in pursuit of Salonican Jews fleeing the Nazis, whom he was uniquely qualified to identify. His efforts were thwarted, but it hinted at the lengths he was willing to go to satisfy those in power.</p>
<p>When a ghetto was created within Salonica by the Nazis, the depth of Hasson’s depravity made itself known. The <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/salonika">Baron Hirsch ghetto</a>, one of two areas in which all Jews were concentrated, existed from March to August 1943, by which time Nazi officials completed the deportation of Greek Jewry. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310515/original/file-20200116-181598-16fg7ct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310515/original/file-20200116-181598-16fg7ct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310515/original/file-20200116-181598-16fg7ct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310515/original/file-20200116-181598-16fg7ct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310515/original/file-20200116-181598-16fg7ct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=394&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310515/original/file-20200116-181598-16fg7ct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310515/original/file-20200116-181598-16fg7ct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310515/original/file-20200116-181598-16fg7ct.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=495&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Lion let out of a cage’</h2>
<p>Within the ghetto’s wooden walls, which were surrounded by barbed wire and control towers, more than 2,000 Jewish women, men, and children were crammed into 593 rooms. Disease and crime were rampant.</p>
<p>A 23-year-old German SS officer was technically in charge of the Baron Hirsch ghetto. But Hasson appears to have been granted great latitude to execute Nazi orders on the ground. Recollections of Hasson’s actions, which swirl through Greek-, Hebrew-, Ladino- and English-language survivor testimony, are nightmarish. </p>
<p>Hasson, it was said, raced through the ghetto in a horse-drawn carriage, and made his fellow Jews sweep the streets. He strutted about, using the glistening boots of the occupiers to knock down both doors and people. He stole from the imprisoned, carrying around the ghetto an open bag into which women and men were expected to place what jewels or money they had managed to hang on to. And he identified young men to be inducted into forced labor. </p>
<p>In the words of one survivor, a woman by the name of Bouena Sarfatty, “He was like a lion let out of a cage.” </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310521/original/file-20200116-181653-1romb6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310521/original/file-20200116-181653-1romb6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310521/original/file-20200116-181653-1romb6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310521/original/file-20200116-181653-1romb6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310521/original/file-20200116-181653-1romb6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=928&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310521/original/file-20200116-181653-1romb6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310521/original/file-20200116-181653-1romb6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310521/original/file-20200116-181653-1romb6o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1166&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">
Vitaly Hasson’s wife, Regina Hasson, his father, Aron Hasson and sister, Julie (née Hasson) Sarfatti, 1946 in Salonica.
</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Farrar, Straus and Giroux, from Family Papers: a Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hasson reserved particular cruelty for girls and women. He forced them to strip naked, searched their genitals for hidden money, sheared their hair, raped them and pimped them to others. </p>
<p>To protest her forced marriage to Hasson’s brother Dino, who long harbored an obsession with the young woman, Sarika Gategno wore the same dress for three months and consumed nothing but alcohol and cigarettes.</p>
<h2>Salonica emptied of Jews</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%205991.pdf">From March to August 1943</a>, Nazi overseers directed 19 transports of Salonica’s Jews, totaling 48,533 souls, to depart from the train station adjacent to the Baron Hirsch ghetto. One of these trains would head for the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen; 18 for Auschwitz. </p>
<p>The journey to Auschwitz took between five and eight grueling days. Nearly all the Salonican Jews brought there were gassed upon arrival. </p>
<p>On Aug. 2, a special deportation carried away the families of Salonica’s wartime Jewish community leadership (including the Jewish police) to the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. Before his own deportation, on this very train to Bergen-Belsen, Hasson’s father publicly disowned his son, who yet remained in Salonica. </p>
<p>By August 1943, Salonica, like Greece as a whole, had been virtually emptied of Jews by the Nazis.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310084/original/file-20200114-151862-1ha4n2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310084/original/file-20200114-151862-1ha4n2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/310084/original/file-20200114-151862-1ha4n2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310084/original/file-20200114-151862-1ha4n2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310084/original/file-20200114-151862-1ha4n2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310084/original/file-20200114-151862-1ha4n2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310084/original/file-20200114-151862-1ha4n2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/310084/original/file-20200114-151862-1ha4n2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The approximately 7,000 Jewish men ordered to register for forced labor assemble in Liberty Square in German-occupied Salonika, Greece, July 1942.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/photo/registration-for-forced-labor-in-salonika">U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, from the German Federal Archives</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>On trial</h2>
<p>Hasson himself arranged to flee eastward with his wife, daughter and pregnant lover in August 1943. </p>
<p>Several times in the dramatic, confused weeks and months that followed, he was recognized by Jewish refugees from Salonica (in Albania, Italy and Egypt) and arrested by Allied representatives, but amidst the chaos of war Hasson repeatedly escaped or was released. </p>
<p>Finally, upon the liberation of Greece in October 1944, the British captured him and returned Hasson to Greece for trial. In the summer of 1946 that trial, a sensational event that gripped the city of Thessaloniki and the Salonican Jewish diaspora, resulted in a guilty verdict. Hasson was sentenced to death and executed.</p>
<p>Jews across the political spectrum, from <a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/how-to-fight-antisemitism/">Bernie Sanders</a> to Benjamin Netanyahu, claim to seek inspiration in Jewish tradition to explain and propel their political values. </p>
<p>But cultural inheritance does not necessarily determine a person’s behavior or destiny. And Jewish history ought not be sanitized. What Hasson’s story teaches is that under the right circumstances, the politics of hate are seductive, even to those who might otherwise be a target.</p>
<p>[ <em>You’re smart and curious about the world. So are The Conversation’s authors and editors.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklysmart">You can get our highlights each weekend</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129161/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Abrevaya Stein does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Vital Hasson was born into the Jewish community of Salonica, Greece, a cultural capital of the Sephardic world. After World War II, he was executed for helping the Nazis destroy that community.
Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Professor of History, Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies, Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director, Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/129020
2020-01-14T15:46:18Z
2020-01-14T15:46:18Z
This young woman created 784 paintings while hiding from the Nazis
<p>Between 1940 and 1942 Charlotte Salomon, a young German-Jewish artist, created a sequence of 784 paintings while hiding from the Nazi authorities. She gave the sequence a single title: Leben? oder Theater? (Life? or Theatre?). Viewed in the 21st century, Salomon’s artwork could be considered a precursor to the contemporary graphic novel, creating a complex web of narratives through words and images. </p>
<p>Together these sequential images tell a family history, focussing on a central character called Charlotte Kann, a semi-autobiographical version of Salomon herself. They document Charlotte’s development as an artist, her struggles against madness and her first love affair, all painted against a backdrop of increasingly violent Nazi rule. As a new exhibit of Salomon’s work opens at the <a href="https://jewishmuseum.org.uk/exhibitions/charlotte-salomon/">Jewish Museum in London</a> audiences have a rare opportunity to view this unique masterpiece. </p>
<h2>Words and images</h2>
<p>Many of the early paintings in the sequence are divided into tight grids and panels, their structure and arrangement highly reminiscent of comics. Tiny figures stride across the divided paintings cutting scenes and structuring the narrative’s flow. </p>
<p>At the heart of Life? or Theatre? is the question of whether to commit an act of self-destruction. In the early scenes, we are introduced to Charlotte’s parents, Albert and Franziska, through brief glimpses of their wedding night, the joyful announcement of Charlotte’s birth, and Franziska’s rapid descent into depression. </p>
<p>Despite medical intervention, Franziska ends her life. Although the news is initially hidden from a young Charlotte, she later discovers the true circumstances of Franziska’s death, as well as a long history of mental illness within her family. Over 40 paintings later, after witnessing her grandmother’s suicide, Charlotte sits beside an open window in a scene of fiery colours and pleads: “dear God, please don’t let me go mad”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308643/original/file-20200106-123395-4rsh2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308643/original/file-20200106-123395-4rsh2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308643/original/file-20200106-123395-4rsh2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308643/original/file-20200106-123395-4rsh2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=773&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308643/original/file-20200106-123395-4rsh2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308643/original/file-20200106-123395-4rsh2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308643/original/file-20200106-123395-4rsh2z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=972&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Kann’s family home.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Collection Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam/ © Charlotte Salomon Foundation/Charlotte Salomon ®</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s not just the narrative use of imagery which connect Life? or Theatre? to modern comics. Salomon taped semi-transparent overlays covered in writing on more than 200 of her paintings. Combining text and image, the pieces become a graphic narrative, telling the intertwining stories of many lives. </p>
<p>Although the overlays themselves are too fragile to display, the Jewish Museum recreates these painted words on the gallery walls to great effect.</p>
<h2>The spaces between</h2>
<p>The spaces between the images are also important, as is the case in modern comics. This is most clearly seen in three of the paintings that depict Franziska’s suicide. </p>
<p>The first painting contains a sequence of images on a single page, showing Franziska’s intense depression and her family’s mounting concern.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309276/original/file-20200109-80122-1agw4ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/309276/original/file-20200109-80122-1agw4ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309276/original/file-20200109-80122-1agw4ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309276/original/file-20200109-80122-1agw4ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=776&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309276/original/file-20200109-80122-1agw4ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309276/original/file-20200109-80122-1agw4ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/309276/original/file-20200109-80122-1agw4ho.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=976&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">From time to time she is allowed to receive a visit from her husband and Charlotte. It is hoped (and therefore believed) that she is considerably better.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Collection Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam/ © Charlotte Salomon Foundation/Charlotte Salomon ®</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Franziska is subsequently kept under “the strict observation of a nurse”. But in the next the nurse fatally “… for one moment – which is utilised by Franziska to throw herself out the window – leaves the room”. She commits suicide in the space between dashes. She uses the break in the sentence – represented in the painting as a brief lapse in the nurse’s attention – to make her exit out of the window.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308644/original/file-20200106-123403-1bqi6m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308644/original/file-20200106-123403-1bqi6m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308644/original/file-20200106-123403-1bqi6m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308644/original/file-20200106-123403-1bqi6m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=782&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308644/original/file-20200106-123403-1bqi6m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308644/original/file-20200106-123403-1bqi6m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308644/original/file-20200106-123403-1bqi6m3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=983&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Franziska: ‘I cannot bear it any longer, I’m always so alone.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Collection Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam/ © Charlotte Salomon Foundation/Charlotte Salomon ®</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This second painting is a vital one within the exhibition. It highlights how we not only connect the sequence of images and captions but how we also project meaning into the gaps between paintings. Because this single image is divided into multiple panels, we watch Franziska get up and open the window. In the bottom left-hand corner of the image, her feet disappear off the page. </p>
<p>The third image within the sequence is a full-page spread of Franziska’s body – a pool of scarlet seeping from beneath her crumpled arms suggesting fatal damage.</p>
<p>We work out what takes place in the spaces between the scenes. We imagine Franziska stepping onto the ledge, leaping into the darkness and crashing onto the pavement below. As cartoonist and comics theorist Scott McCloud explains in <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Understanding-Comics-Invisible-Scott-McCloud/dp/006097625X">Understanding Comics</a>: we read between the gaps of graphic narratives, connecting images into a sequence, creating a story.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308646/original/file-20200106-123373-1nua5tu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/308646/original/file-20200106-123373-1nua5tu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308646/original/file-20200106-123373-1nua5tu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308646/original/file-20200106-123373-1nua5tu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=775&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308646/original/file-20200106-123373-1nua5tu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308646/original/file-20200106-123373-1nua5tu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/308646/original/file-20200106-123373-1nua5tu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=974&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Franziska died immediately, the apartment being on the third floor. There is nothing more to be done about the tragedy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Collection Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam/ © Charlotte Salomon Foundation/Charlotte Salomon ®</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As the Jewish Museum’s exhibition makes clear, Life? or Theatre? is not just about death and despair. At the heart of these paintings is the story of hope and creativity in the darkest of times. Charlotte is faced with the choice to follow her mother and grandmother over the windowsill, or to “create her world anew” in a radical act of self-representation. She chooses life, despite the likelihood of her own destruction. </p>
<p>Salomon’s death in Auschwitz, aged 26, almost ensured her <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/nov/06/charlotte-salomon-life-or-theatre-review-jewish-museum-london-graphic-autobiography">historical erasure</a>. Shortly before her death, Salomon entrusted the paintings to a friend, asking that they hide the artwork from the authorities. Now Life? or Theatre? is part of a broader revival of <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300100723/charlotte-salomon-and-theatre-memory">academic</a> and <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-obsessive-art-and-great-confession-of-charlotte-salomon">public</a> interest in Salomon’s work, securing her place within the history of 20th century art.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://charlotte.jck.nl/detail/M004743">one picture</a> Charlotte’s older lover announces “you know child, some of your pictures are quite excellent”. In <a href="https://charlotte.jck.nl/detail/M004744">the next</a> he speculates that “one day people will be looking at us two”. His patronising prediction is entirely accurate. By assembling a visual narrative, which anticipates contemporary graphic novels, Salomon’s remarkable paintings do indeed demand that we carry on looking, over 70 years after their creation. </p>
<p><em>Charlotte Salomon: Life? or Theatre? is at The Jewish Museum, London until March 1</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129020/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Parker receives doctoral funding from the White Rose College of the Arts and Humanities (WRoCAH) as part of the AHRC. </span></em></p>
Charlotte Salomon’s dizzying work of hope and creativity amid destruction and despair, is a moving early example of the contemporary graphic novel
Emma Parker, PhD Candidate, School of English, University of Leeds
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/118191
2019-06-04T12:51:06Z
2019-06-04T12:51:06Z
Dark holiday: D-Day and the growth of ‘grief tourism’
<p>As Britain prepares for the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-48478849">75th anniversary of D-Day</a> on June 6, visitors will be travelling in huge numbers to pay their respects at the Normandy beach landing sites. Back in England, Portsmouth on the south coast was the assembly point from which much of the invasion force sailed – and the city is the focal point for UK’s commemoration. </p>
<p>The event takes place while US president, Donald Trump, is <a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-in-the-uk-a-state-visit-offered-in-haste-and-regretted-at-leisure-118192https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-in-the-uk-a-state-visit-offered-in-haste-and-regretted-at-leisure-118192">on a state visit to the UK</a> – and, on June 5, Portsmouth will host Queen Elizabeth II, Trump, the UK prime minister (for a few more days) Theresa May and other heads of state, including including French president, Emmanuel Macron, and German chancellor, Angela Merkel, to mark this occasion. </p>
<p>More than 300 D-Day veterans will sail to Normandy in northern France on MV Boudicca, a ship chartered by the The Royal British Legion to Normandy for the anniversary itself on Thursday, which will be escorted by a Royal Navy vessel. Altogether it is estimated that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/22/normandy-prepares-for-75th-anniversary-of-d-day-landings">two million “remembrance tourists”</a> will visit the beaches at Normandy to mark the 75th anniversary this year. </p>
<p>It’s easy to understand why so many people want to travel to see the major sites of what is, after all, one of the defining moments of World War II in western Europe, especially for any veterans or for the families of those who risked and sacrificed their lives. But there are also those who find the idea of visiting places linked with such death and destruction to be <a href="https://theconversation.com/it-may-be-macabre-but-dark-tourism-helps-us-learn-from-the-worst-of-human-history-60966">a little macabre</a>. There have been reports that Chinese authorities are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/04/tiananmen-china-hong-kong-vigil-anniversary">keeping tight security</a> around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on the 30th anniversary of crushing of student protests in 1989 in which hundreds were killed. </p>
<h2>Holidays in hell</h2>
<p>“Dark tourism” is a growing market. Whether the whole point of a holiday is to visit all the battlefields of Normandy, or whether it’s a side trip on a visit to Poland to take in Auschwitz – and people have plenty of good reasons to take a detour to this appalling death camp, not least as an educational experience – many people, at least once in their lives, decide to skip the beach resort and opt instead to visit dark tourism sites.</p>
<p>Dark tourism (also known as “black-spot tourism”, “morbid tourism” or <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261517717300092">thanatourism</a> – after the Greek word “<em>thanatos</em>” meaning death) was identified in the 1990s. It is defined as “an attraction for places associated with death”. Researchers have found the trend <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269352606_Battlefield_sites_as_dark_tourism_attractions_An_analysis_of_experience">difficult to accurately pinpoint</a> as tourists may not necessarily realise they are visiting a site identified as a “dark destination”. But more than 2.1 million people visited the concentration camp at Auschwitz in 2018 while the 9/11 memorial in New York attracted more than 6.8 million visits in 2017. </p>
<p>The notorious Alcatraz prison in the US attracts an estimated 1.4 million visitors each year. And, interestingly, given the widespread perception of the health risks involved, the site of the 1986 nuclear disaster at <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-46923899">Chernobyl in Ukraine</a> is also becoming a popular destination for the curious. </p>
<p>Following the huge success of the <a href="https://metro.co.uk/2019/05/23/watch-chernobyl-tv-series-cast-9668750/">recent television drama series</a> about the disaster, you wouldn’t bet against visitor numbers to Chernobyl increasing from the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/nuclear-disaster-chernobyl-booming-tourism-180909063156810.html">estimated 50,000 people</a> who visited in 2017. The same trend is identifiable at the site of the 2011 nuclear disaster at Fukushima in Japan, which received <a href="http://www.fukushimaminponews.com/news.html?id=943">an estimated 17,000</a> visitors in 2018.</p>
<h2>Morbid fascination?</h2>
<p>The reasons that people give for visiting these dark tourism sites are <a href="https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0261517717300092?token=6BB2057C8619103149A9DD5B413BADD4A3CAB2FB1B15FAB8A047CACAE3C5CED78FCBFDC1A204647C046902D0EF677E6F">many and varied</a>. They can include wanting to understand one’s family history and paying respect to relatives. There is also a desire for empathy or identification with the victims of atrocity or wanting to see a significant site for the purpose of education and understanding. Of course, sometimes, there is an element of voyeuristic attraction to horror.</p>
<p>Sadly not everyone approaches these sites with the respect they deserve. We live in the era of the “selfie” and, despite being obviously inappropriate, there have been reports of hordes of tourists queuing to take photos of themselves at the 9/11 memorial. This, in turn, has led to calls for <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-sept11-mood/sorrow-selfies-compete-at-new-yorks-9-11-memorial-15-years-on-idUKKCN11F1CAhttps://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-sept11-mood/sorrow-selfies-compete-at-new-yorks-9-11-memorial-15-years-on-idUKKCN11F1CA">“selfie sticks” to be banned from Ground Zero</a>. Similarly, visitors to Auschwitz have been asked to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/auschwitz-selfies-visitors-posing-railway-poland-a8833746.html">stop posing for photos</a> while balancing on its infamous railway tracks.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-tourists-go-to-sites-associated-with-death-and-suffering-81015">Why tourists go to sites associated with death and suffering</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Whatever their reasons for visiting sites associated with suffering, death and grief, many people find their visits cathartic and fulfilling. There’s no doubt that among the many people coming to Portsmouth – or travelling to the battlefields of France – for the 75th anniversary of D-Day there will be many for whom it is the first chance to pay tribute to a parent or grandparent who sacrificed their lives for a greater good. </p>
<p>So for anyone else who might be drawn to these places out of a sense of curiosity, or simply because it is a “bucket list” destination, remember that for many people you are treading on sacred ground – so walk softly.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118191/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liz Sharples does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
You might think it morbid, but people have many reasons for visiting the sites of battles and disasters.
Liz Sharples, Senior Teaching Fellow (Tourism), University of Portsmouth
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/110137
2019-01-27T01:22:03Z
2019-01-27T01:22:03Z
How will generations that didn’t experience the Holocaust remember it?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255636/original/file-20190125-108367-1e9buh8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Childhood Holocaust survivors Simon Gronowski and Alice Gerstel Weit touring the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Holocaust-Survivors-Reunion/26adb791d9684a329ee1dae2328ee23e/23/0">AP Photo/Reed Saxon</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Soviet Red Army liberated the most notorious of the Nazi death camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau, on Jan. 27, 1945.</p>
<p>This year, the United Nations and 39 countries will commemorate that date with <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/international-holocaust-remembrance-day">International Holocaust Remembrance Day</a>. </p>
<p>This date acknowledges the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. But, as a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=list_works&hl=en&user=YQoXcIcAAAAJ">Jewish studies scholar</a>, I have found it also reveals how traumatic memory works in the present and can serve as a reminder about the need for collective action. </p>
<h2>Remembering past crimes</h2>
<p>The United Nations memorial day connects Holocaust memory to issues in the present. </p>
<p>Since 2010, <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/international-holocaust-remembrance-day">the United Nations has set specific themes</a> to not only remember past crimes, but prevent future ones. For example, the central theme of 2010 was about Holocaust survivors and what future generations can learn from them. </p>
<p>As the world confronts more <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/prosecute-myanmar-army-chief-rohingya-genocide-envoy-190125112535665.html">crimes against humanity</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36130006">growing nationalism</a> and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/01/european-union-golden-visas-wealthy/581074/">global refugee crises</a>, keeping the memory of the Holocaust has become increasingly important because it can bring awareness to contemporary atrocities. </p>
<p>In recent years, the focus of the United Nations has ranged from issues such as violence against women and children to increasing tolerance. In 2018, the day specifically explored the theme of shared responsibility. The day has also been used to speak about the unprecedented refugee crises in other parts of the world, such as the <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/confront-genocide/cases/syria/introduction/syria">attacks on civilians in Syria</a>.</p>
<p>Sociologist <a href="https://sociology.yale.edu/people/jeffrey-alexander">Jeffrey Alexander</a> says the memory of these events provides <a href="https://sociology.yale.edu/publications/trauma-social-theory">lessons for the future</a>. The very act of remembering brings these events into the present and makes them relevant to our own times.</p>
<h2>Intergenerational memory</h2>
<p>My research looks at how traumatic memory is transmitted down through the generations. </p>
<p>Scholar <a href="http://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/mh2349/">Marianne Hirsch</a> shows in her “postmemory” work how trauma is transmitted to the children of survivors. These memories are transmitted so deeply that they become the <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-generation-of-postmemory/9780231156530">memories of the second generation</a> themselves. </p>
<p>According to Hirsch, descendants of survivors may “remember” past trauma though stories, mannerisms and images. She looks at traumatic memories being transferred through fiction, art, memoir and testimony. An example of this postmemory art is American novelist Art Spiegelman’s “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Complete_Maus.html?id=ASajL1zsziAC">Maus</a>.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255638/original/file-20190125-108351-mr8bl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255638/original/file-20190125-108351-mr8bl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255638/original/file-20190125-108351-mr8bl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255638/original/file-20190125-108351-mr8bl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255638/original/file-20190125-108351-mr8bl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255638/original/file-20190125-108351-mr8bl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255638/original/file-20190125-108351-mr8bl5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=511&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Holocaust survivor Sarah Modern Irom looks at an old photograph in her home in Tulsa, Oklahoma.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/What-The-Children-Remember/964872a0a0e04886bd47f676a3a4c2f0/60/0">AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In this graphic novel, Spiegelman represents his father’s memories of the Holocaust. He does this by capturing both his and his father’s stories. Spiegelman’s present is <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-generation-of-postmemory/9780231156530">dominated by events that preceded his birth</a>. This deep personal connection explains how postmemory works. </p>
<h2>Remembering matters</h2>
<p>As Holocaust survivors age, the challenge will be to keep this intergenerational memory. Once the survivors of Holocaust pass on, who will tell their stories?</p>
<p>To prevent the loss of survivors’ testimony, it has been documented and cataloged by several museums and foundations such as the <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/">United States Holocaust Memorial Museum</a>, the <a href="https://sfi.usc.edu/">USC Shoah Foundation</a>, <a href="https://fortunoff.library.yale.edu/">Yale University’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies</a> and others.</p>
<p>The act of remembering matters for what it tells us about the past – and about the present.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110137/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy Langille does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Memory is traumatic but also important in Holocaust remembrance. It also serves a critical role in providing lessons for the future.
Timothy Langille, Lecturer, Arizona State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/102023
2019-01-24T11:54:26Z
2019-01-24T11:54:26Z
Digital technology offers new ways to teach lessons from the Holocaust
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255204/original/file-20190123-135157-1yskuoy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A student speaks with Holocaust survivor William Morgan using an interactive virtual conversation exhibit at the the Holocaust Museum Houston in January 2019.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Interactive-Holocaust-Testimonies/333051c52da54d908a60dfa146a0b95a/16/0">David J. Phillip/AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When it comes to understanding the horrors of the Holocaust, most millennials are woefully lacking in knowledge. That much was laid bare in a <a href="http://www.claimscon.org/study/">2018 study</a> commissioned by the <a href="http://www.claimscon.org/">Claims Conference</a> – an organization that supports survivors of the Holocaust.</p>
<p>For instance, the study found that nearly half of all <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/topics/millennials/">millennials</a> – that is, those born from the <a href="https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2015/cb15-113.html">early 1980s through the 1990s</a> - are unable to name even one of the more than <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-camps">42,000 camps and ghettos</a> in existence during the Holocaust. The same study found that 41 percent of millennials believe that substantially fewer Jewish people were murdered during the Holocaust than the accepted <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/the-holocaust">6 million</a> figure.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.holocausteducation.org.uk/">The Centre for Holocaust Education</a> at the University College London found similar <a href="https://www.holocausteducation.org.uk/research/young-people-understand-holocaust/key-findings/">gaps in knowledge</a>. For instance, the University College London study found that a third of England’s high school students “massively underestimated the scale of the murder of Jewish people.”</p>
<p>This is a problem when you consider that millennials and young people worldwide have entered or will soon enter classrooms in the United States and elsewhere as teachers.</p>
<p>I’ve found similar deficits in knowledge in my own <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=tB-wZZ0AAAAJ&hl=en">research into Holocaust education</a>. Several years ago, I conducted a study that measured what student teacher candidates in New Jersey knew about the Holocaust.</p>
<p>The study – which is soon to be published in the journal <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/vtss20/current">The Social Studies</a> – found that teachers had giant gaps in their knowledge. Their responses prompted me to probe deeper.</p>
<h2>Deficits in knowledge</h2>
<p>In my survey of nearly 200 future teachers, I found that only 30 percent knew that the Jewish people were the primary victim of the Holocaust. Even fewer knew the correct century in which the Holocaust took place. Auschwitz was the only concentration camp they identified – although, in their responses, the teaching students spelled it 28 different ways. </p>
<p>This past fall – spurred in part by a <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/reports/2017-audit-of-anti-semitic-incidents">rise in anti-Semitism</a> – I conducted a follow-up survey to measure if these future teachers were learning anything more than in the past. The sample was modest but representative - 75 students, all on track to become teachers in another year or so. All had attended New Jersey public schools.</p>
<p>When the student teachers saw the questions, they groaned and uttered things such as, “I can’t believe I don’t know this.” (If you want to figure out how you might have done on the survey, you can ask yourself if you know the answers to the following survey questions: When did the Holocaust take place? What was the political party that perpetrated the Holocaust? Who were the victim groups? Who was the American president? What other genocides can you identify?)</p>
<p>After they completed the survey, the student teachers immediately began to search for the correct answers online. They were disappointed to see just how far off they were. One student teacher after another placed the Holocaust in the 1800s. Others listed Ronald Reagan as the American president during the Holocaust. Perhaps most disturbingly, many listed the number of victims in the thousands, which falls way short of the actual figure.</p>
<h2>Digital lessons emerge</h2>
<p>Every person cannot be expected to know every single facet of the Holocaust. At the same time, it’s deeply disturbing when large segments of the population don’t know basic facts about one of the most horrendous atrocities – actually a series of atrocities – ever perpetrated against humanity.</p>
<p>Knowing about the Holocaust is a <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/457/Lindquist.pdf?1548256318">vital part of historical understanding</a>. It is a means of <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/458/Cowan.pdf?1548256389">promoting tolerance and inclusion.</a> And it also serves as a <a href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/static_files/files/456/Jennings.pdf?1548256205">form of innoculation</a> against future atrocities.</p>
<p>Fortunately, new advances in learning about the Holocaust through digital humanities offer new ways for American students and teachers – or anyone who cares to learn more about the Holocaust - to learn about an event that took place nearly three-quarters of a century ago. </p>
<p>Here are three examples:</p>
<h2>Courtroom 600</h2>
<p>The University of Connecticut recently unveiled <a href="https://today.uconn.edu/2019/01/reviving-holocaust-history-virtual-reality/">Courtroom 600</a>, a project that places users inside the courtroom at the Nuremberg trials where Nazis and collaborators were tried. This project, still in prototype form, allows users to engage with virtual reality technology in order to interact with a fictitious member of the United States team of prosecutors. It also enables users to read primary source documents, gather evidence and prosecute select defendants.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255205/original/file-20190123-135136-1cn696f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255205/original/file-20190123-135136-1cn696f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255205/original/file-20190123-135136-1cn696f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255205/original/file-20190123-135136-1cn696f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255205/original/file-20190123-135136-1cn696f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255205/original/file-20190123-135136-1cn696f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255205/original/file-20190123-135136-1cn696f.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ken Thompson, assistant professor-in-residence of game design, takes 3D scans of Courtroom 600 in the Justizpalast in Nuremberg, Germany.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://today.uconn.edu/2019/01/reviving-holocaust-history-virtual-reality/">University of Connecticut</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>IWitness and holograms</h2>
<p>Another digital resource is available through the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation. The foundation, perhaps best known as the holder of thousands of Holocaust survivor testimonies, has created the <a href="https://iwitness.usc.edu/SFI/">IWitness program</a>. This is a collection of 1,500 testimonies of survivors and witnesses to genocide – the Holocaust, as well as others like the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/japan/nanjing-massacre">Nanjing Massacre</a> in China. The testimonies can be searched by subject. There are also ready-made lessons for teachers that can be accessed from anywhere and used freely at any time.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255206/original/file-20190123-135145-1b32p3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255206/original/file-20190123-135145-1b32p3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/255206/original/file-20190123-135145-1b32p3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255206/original/file-20190123-135145-1b32p3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255206/original/file-20190123-135145-1b32p3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=432&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255206/original/file-20190123-135145-1b32p3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255206/original/file-20190123-135145-1b32p3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/255206/original/file-20190123-135145-1b32p3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=543&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A Dimensions in Testimony exhibit featuring Holocaust survivor William Morgan using an interactive virtual conversation is shown at the the Holocaust Museum Houston. The University of Southern California Shoah Foundation has recorded 18 interactive testimonies with Holocaust survivors over the last several years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Interactive-Holocaust-Testimonies/007b24d3db4e448a9dec464322d72278/17/0">David J. Phillip</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Shoah Foundation has also recently launched 3D holograms of survivors, giving users the experience of having a conversation with a survivor rather than passively viewing testimony. This project, called <a href="https://sfi.usc.edu/collections/holocaust/ndt">Dimensions in Testimony</a>, is groundbreaking. It encourages students and others to engage with survivor testimony in new ways. For instance, each survivor hologram is able to participate in a “conversation,” with responses to commonly asked questions about faith, life before, during and after the war. </p>
<h2>Digital source documents</h2>
<p>Finally, a partnership between the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Wiener Library in London, and the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany, has produced two online sourcebooks that feature primary sources that deal with the Holocaust. These online sources focus on <a href="https://archive.org/details/bib267157_001_001">the camp system</a> and <a href="https://archive.org/details/bib259530_001_001">women under Nazi persecution</a>.</p>
<p>Each guide provides images of primary sources found in the International Tracing Service database, descriptions, questions to guide conversation and further avenues of investigation for students. A high school teacher who is using these guides – even though they were originally intended for university-level classes – told me that the documents are easy to modify. She uses them to discuss how to read and engage with primary sources.</p>
<p>The International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen has also produced an “<a href="https://eguide.its-arolsen.org/en/">ITS e-guide</a>,” intended to help families and scholars better understand the vast array of paperwork that was produced for any given survivor or victim of the Holocaust. By clicking on an image of a document, users are able to learn more about what the document was used for, how to decode it, who created it, and what to consider when reading the document. Examples include prisoner registration cards, malaria cards and personal effects cards. These artifacts show the great lengths that Nazis went to keep records – even as they carried out one of the most horrific massacres that humanity has ever experienced.</p>
<p>Ultimately, there is not a single solution for the challenges that face Holocaust education. Still, these digital examples all move teaching and learning from passively reading textbooks to actively engaging with history.</p>
<p>As for the answers to the survey questions I mentioned above, the Holocaust took place <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-holocaust-and-world-war-ii-key-dates">from 1933 to 1945</a>. The <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/remember/the-holocaust-survivors-and-victims-resource-center/survivors-and-victims">victim groups</a> included Jews, Poles, Roma and Sinti, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, people with disabilities and other groups deemed inferior. The American president during the Holocaust was <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/franklin-d-roosevelt/">Franklin D. Roosevelt</a>. <a href="https://libguides.enc.edu/genocide/timeline">Other genocides in the 20th century</a> include the Armenian, Cambodian, Rwandan and Bosnian genocides.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102023/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Rich does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In anticipation of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a scholar explains how digital technologies can help close knowledge gaps about the catastrophe that claimed the lives of 6 million Jews.
Jennifer Rich, Assistant Professor; Director of Research and Education for the Rowan Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Rowan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/107201
2018-11-20T13:40:11Z
2018-11-20T13:40:11Z
Silent images speak through time in one family’s story of Poland under the Nazis
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246460/original/file-20181120-161624-8wzrnr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">One of the photographs from Terry Kurgan's book. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied/Jasek Kurgan</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The first photograph in Terry Kurgan’s <a href="http://fourthwallbooks.com/product/everyone-is-present/">Everyone is Present</a> shows what appears to be a mid-20th century idyllic scene of a young family at a spa in southern Poland. </p>
<p>It’s a scene that puts one in mind of the reverie in old photographs described by French theorist Roland Barthes in <a href="https://monoskop.org/images/c/c5/Barthes_Roland_Camera_Lucida_Reflections_on_Photography.pdf">Camera Lucida</a> and the nostalgic fragments used so evocatively by the Anglo-German novelist W.G Sebald in <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-375-50483-9">Austerlitz</a> and elsewhere. </p>
<p>But Kurgan, the Johannesburg-based artist, writer and curator, is more forceful in her efforts to wrest meaning from this and other images. She “longs to be able to sit inside this photograph”, as she puts it, to work actively on its subject. She juxtaposes this image with others from the album she inherited from her grandfather, Jasek, to include the rest of the extended family and something of their complicated histories.</p>
<p>And she correlates the album with correspondence with family members and extracts from Jasek’s diary. That woman in the photograph is Jasek’s wife, Tusia, Kurgan’s grandmother. The child is Kurgan’s mother and the man reclining on the deck chair is Doctor Lax, who at that time was Tusia’s lover.</p>
<p>This photograph, she discovers, must have been taken in the summer of 1939, as Kurgan writes, “on the eve of one of the greatest atrocities of the twentieth century”. </p>
<p>In other photographs taken at the spa, people are shown reading newspapers that were likely reporting the threat from Nazi Germany. But there appears to be no reaction to this impending catastrophe. It’s the silence of these images on such matters that drives Kurgan to devise forceful new techniques to unlock their meaning.</p>
<p>She scans the photographs and scrutinises them on her computer screen: clothing, expressions, gestures all take on new significance as their detail is revealed. Objects or, as Kurgan calls them, “stuff”, are discovered and identified in the shadows and revealed as the repositories of intensely personal histories: what happened to the furniture when the apartment was abandoned? What happened to the cat? Did anybody water the flowers? </p>
<h2>Connectedness, strife and betrayal</h2>
<p>In another bid to get closer to her subject, Kurgan Googles the spa depicted in these early images. It is now trading on the days of its former glory, typified in the furniture and other objects shown in Jasek’s photographs.</p>
<p>The photograph that underpins the second section of the book on the family’s flight from Poland as the Nazis invaded – and were welcomed by a large section of the local population – shows the street below the family’s apartment in the town of Bielsko. It is deserted except for two unknown men who appear to react to Jasek at the window. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246205/original/file-20181119-76131-13og8bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246205/original/file-20181119-76131-13og8bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246205/original/file-20181119-76131-13og8bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246205/original/file-20181119-76131-13og8bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=375&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246205/original/file-20181119-76131-13og8bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246205/original/file-20181119-76131-13og8bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246205/original/file-20181119-76131-13og8bg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=471&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Locals welcome Nazis as they invade Poland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Kurgan uses Google Street View to determine that the neighbourhood has changed very little over the past 70 years. But while Google allowed Kurgan an astonishing proximity to this distant place, it’s the random connection with the two men on the street in Jasek’s photograph that she ultimately finds to be more meaningful and real. She writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As social beings, we want to matter, to be noticed, to connect.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In a similar bid for connection, Kurgan regularly elides time when she wants to communicate the horror of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/world-politics-explainer-the-holocaust-100657">Holocaust</a>, the Polish population’s complicity in this history, and even the lasting influence of previous generations of one’s own family. </p>
<p>She reacts to Jasek’s account of his arrival at <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/auschwitz">Auschwitz</a> – the concentration camp at which more than 1.1 million people were killed during the Holocaust – while it was still an ordinary Polish market town:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This short sentence plummets through the page, through my desk, through this grey concrete floor, and through the deep red Johannesburg earth. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>And, on Jasek’s photograph of Roza, formidable mother of his perennially flirtatious wife: “She rebuffs him and ourselves in that split-second moment, and forever, as we gaze at her across more than seventy-five years. Now.”</p>
<p>Kurgan weaves major themes of modern Jewish history around Jasek’s account, in the diary and the photographs, of the family’s perilous flight from Poland via Romania, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, India and Kenya to Cape Town. </p>
<p>She notes repeatedly the different forms of betrayal perpetrated on Eastern Europe’s Jews by the people they had lived among for generations, when endemic anti-Semitism erupted on the back of the Nazi invasions, whether through direct assault, complicity or simply looting. Again, these are the histories of “stuff”. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246203/original/file-20181119-76140-1de5zee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/246203/original/file-20181119-76140-1de5zee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246203/original/file-20181119-76140-1de5zee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246203/original/file-20181119-76140-1de5zee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246203/original/file-20181119-76140-1de5zee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246203/original/file-20181119-76140-1de5zee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/246203/original/file-20181119-76140-1de5zee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1036&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>For the affluent, their flight was not quite comparable to the current waves of migration moving, as Kurgan notes, in the opposite direction into Europe. But the experience of prejudiced bureaucracy, arbitrary closing of borders and abrupt implementation of quotas must have been just as humiliating. </p>
<p>Jasek’s photographs seemingly ignore these awful realities. They focus for the most part on family life with its own versions of strife and betrayal. Indeed, by all accounts, it was impossible for those caught up in it to make sense of this maelstrom. </p>
<h2>History is now</h2>
<p>In the end, Kurgan herself visited Poland: both the sites of her personal family history and those monuments of evil, the death camps. </p>
<p>Noticing her own reflection in a mirror as she tries with her camera to capture “a molecule of air they might have breathed”, she accepts the impossibility of this “very particular kind of retrieval”. </p>
<p>But that, of course, is the point. History is as much about the questions we ask as the answers it provides. In this book – by turns lyrical, angry, frustrated and forgiving – time collapses. The photographic present joins the past to the present. Everyone is present. Now.</p>
<p><a href="http://fourthwallbooks.com/">Fourthwall’s</a> production of the book, the quality of its images and the sensitivity of its design provide an excellent vehicle for both the strength and the delicacy of Kurgan’s essay.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107201/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Godby receives funding from the National Research Foundation and the University of Cape Town Research Fund.</span></em></p>
In Terry Kurgan’s book family history, however tortuous, is subsumed into a greater history of the greatest atrocity.
Michael Godby, Emeritus Professor, University of Cape Town
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/106221
2018-11-05T11:43:35Z
2018-11-05T11:43:35Z
How to make meaning in aftermath of Pittsburgh and other violent acts
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243706/original/file-20181102-83641-16my9qo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A makeshift memorial outside the Tree of Life synagogue, Nov. 1, 2018. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Shooting-Synagogue/0a8351ab37eb412d99ae018eb80cadd2/19/0">Gene J. Puskar/AP Photo</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/11/02/pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting-rose-mallinger-laid-rest-funeral/1858264002/">last of the funerals</a> were held for the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/us/active-shooter-pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting.html">11 people gunned down</a> at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, many of the survivors, their loved ones and the world are left with terribly heavy hearts. How do we emotionally digest such hatred and tremendous loss of life? How do we make sense out of something so senseless?</p>
<p>As a trauma psychologist, let me say there is no single formula for recovery from traumatic events. But creating meaning and finding a coherent narrative is often very positive adaptive psychological response. </p>
<p>For many of us, <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/1992-97250-000">trauma shatters our basic assumptions</a>. The slaughtering of innocent people, be it in a place of worship, a school, a nightclub or a concert, violates our sense that the world is a good and safe place. We wonder how some people in our world have become, not only unhinged, but venomous and vile. In an attempt to make sense out of extremely stressful and traumatic events, some people find that finding or creating meaning or purpose helps them transcend the pain. Meaning-making goes beyond a surface understanding of the facts. It is a concerted attempt to process and resolve violations by restoring a sense that the world is meaningful and life worthwhile. It involves people reappraising their experiences and looking for <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1077801215590670">opportunities to learn and grow</a>. For some, meaning-making is a <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2011-16528-001">core coping mechanism</a>, a salve to the aching soul.</p>
<h2>Viktor Frankl’s gift to the world</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Viktor-Emil-Frankl">Dr. Viktor Frankl</a>, an Austrian psychiatrist, was a prisoner in four different German concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Dachau, during World War II. His parents, brother and wife were all killed in the camps. Frankl witnessed people being sent to the crematoriums. He watched fellow prisoners descend from denial to apathy. How did Frankl and others like him work through their traumas and transcend such historic and mass violent loss?</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243711/original/file-20181102-83644-vapzf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/243711/original/file-20181102-83644-vapzf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243711/original/file-20181102-83644-vapzf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243711/original/file-20181102-83644-vapzf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243711/original/file-20181102-83644-vapzf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243711/original/file-20181102-83644-vapzf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/243711/original/file-20181102-83644-vapzf7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Viktor Frankl in a 1995 photo. The renowned psychiatrist died Sept. 2, 1997.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/AP-I-AUT-VIE107-FILE-AUSTRIA-OBIT-FRANKL/60e57c2ac3e0da11af9f0014c2589dfb/2/0">Ronald Zak/AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Frankl’s survival strategy in the face of such prolonged and severe trauma was to try to help his fellow prisoners re-establish their own psychological health. In 1946, he wrote a book titled <a href="http://www.beacon.org/Mans-Search-for-Meaning-P607.aspx">“Man’s Search for Meaning,”</a> describing his concentration camp experiences as well as a new type of therapy. </p>
<p>In this piece of survival literature, Frankl argued that even when an individual is transgressed upon in the most vicious and evil of ways, they must make a choice to search for value and meaning and move forward with renewed purpose. By the time of Frankl’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/04/world/dr-viktor-e-frankl-of-vienna-psychiatrist-of-the-search-for-meaning-dies-at-92.html">death in 1997</a>, “Man’s Search for Meaning” had become incredibly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/20/books/book-notes-059091.html">influential</a> – having sold more than 10 million copies in 24 languages.</p>
<h2>Curbing the pain as best as possible</h2>
<p>Extensive research has taken place on the concept of meaning-making after a wide variety of traumatic experiences and stressful events. In an examination of how 133 older adult Holocaust survivors <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10911350903274997">dealt with their trauma</a>, many reported that even while they were still imprisoned, they kept hope alive by believing in liberation, trying to envision the positives the future might hold, and cultivating constructive attitudes, such as gratitude. Post-captivity, these survivors empowered themselves by taking moral stands to fight oppression and hatred where they could. </p>
<p>In general, when a person is successful in meaning-making, he or she often experiences <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10926771.2015.1062451">less emotional distress</a>. But, meaning-making takes effort and is multifaceted. And, whether it’s necessary or <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3565080/">adaptive</a> depends on a number of factors. The <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2147337">meaning-making process</a> typically occurs in one of three ways: searching for and finding meaning; searching for and never finding meaning; and never searching for meaning.</p>
<p>Many find that trauma puts good things in perspective. For some, it can improve relationships with others and promote religious or spiritual growth. Some even experience a greater appreciation of life and become more aware of their psychological strengths. Others, however, find it <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/record/2008-00724-010">impossible to make any meaning of their trauma</a>. Some struggle with wondering “Why me?” or “Why us?” Although this is normal and understandable, if left unresolved, this might actually maintain psychic harm.</p>
<h2>Harden not our hearts</h2>
<p>It’s no secret that many <a href="https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2018/10/generation-z-stressed.aspx">Americans are feeling</a> frightened that the social fabric that binds and weaves us together is under attack. There is a cost to being unaware of evil, but there is a larger price to hardening our hearts and closing ourselves into a heavily fortified bunker. Social and behavioral science researchers know a lot about <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1754073917751229">how hate happens</a> and why. Developing a psychological, sociocultural, or philosophical explanation or view may help to make it more digestible, or at least a little less personal.</p>
<p>Creating meaning post-trauma is often the product of effort and intention. It is frequently a struggle or a deliberate search and can facilitate multiple positive changes. For example, individuals who offer <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0971333613516231">support to others</a> during a traumatic event also experience lower levels of distress themselves. Their show of compassion also increases their ability to find meaning in the trauma. Moving from dread or numbness toward vital <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3892724/">connection with others</a> is important. </p>
<p>Some people find meaning through action - volunteering to get the word out to vote, campaigning for open-hearted political candidates, making donations, joining a civic organization, or engaging in spirituality. Down deep most of us realize that the alternative is to be isolated and alone, excessively fearful and restricted.</p>
<h2>Living in a world of violence</h2>
<p>It will likely remain hard to bear witness to the kinds of suffering we saw in Pittsburgh, to remind ourselves of good when we see so much evil and hatred. It is likely true that many of us will probably not see an ending to such senseless violence and hate in our lifetimes. </p>
<p>But, I hope we can all tap into Dr. Frankl’s amazing will and strength to endure and find ways to repair, heal, grow and learn. May we forge meaning and closure to this violent loss.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/106221/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joan M. Cook has received funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, PCORI and the AHRQ.</span></em></p>
The deaths of 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue filled people with sadness and fear. Transforming the grief into meaning is very difficult, a trauma psychologist writes, but ultimately healing.
Joan M. Cook, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Yale University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/98549
2018-06-20T23:03:49Z
2018-06-20T23:03:49Z
The dreadful history of children in concentration camps
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224101/original/file-20180620-137720-1su7b84.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Child survivors of Auschwitz are seen in this 1945 photograph.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Creative Commons)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Children and family have been central to the institution of the concentration camp from its beginnings 120 years ago. Wikipedia has now added the notorious American border detention centres to its <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/d3kjma/wikipedia-us-detention-centers-concentration-camps-vgtrn">list of concentration camps</a>, and the #<a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23FamiliesBelongTogether&src=tyah">FamiliesBelongTogether</a> Twitter hashtag has brought up frequent comparisons. </p>
<p>The merits of the comparison between detention centres and concentration camps <a href="https://qz.com/1308141/are-us-immigrant-child-detention-centers-concentration-camps/">have been debated elsewhere</a>, but can we learn anything from this dreadful history of children behind barbed wire, even as the Trump administration <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/20/us/politics/trump-immigration-children-executive-order.html">finally moved to end the practice?</a></p>
<p>The British constructed camps during the 1899-1902 South African War in order to divide families. They hoped that Boer men who were fighting British forces would give up once they discovered that their wives and children were held in camps. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224108/original/file-20180620-137741-184qykf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224108/original/file-20180620-137741-184qykf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224108/original/file-20180620-137741-184qykf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224108/original/file-20180620-137741-184qykf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224108/original/file-20180620-137741-184qykf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224108/original/file-20180620-137741-184qykf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224108/original/file-20180620-137741-184qykf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A deceased young girl is seen at a concentration camp where the British housed Boer women and children during the Second Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Creative Commons)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Similar to the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/18/politics/family-separation-deterrence-dhs/index.html">Trump administration’s apparent hope that the breakup of families would deter unwanted migration</a>, the British sought to deter Boer fighters. British parliamentarians critical of the policy labelled these “concentration camps,” alluding to the Spanish policy of the “reconcentration” of civilians during the Spanish-American War (1898).</p>
<p>Conditions in the British-run camps were horrific, particularly for children, with <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/591094">mortality rates upwards of 25 per cent</a>. An <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/1171343">epidemic of measles</a> accounted for roughly 40 per cent of childhood deaths in these camps, and other diseases such as typhus and dysentery were also devastating.</p>
<h2>Families broken up in former Soviet Union</h2>
<p>The Soviet Union’s system of camps that reached their peak during Joseph Stalin’s rule from the 1930s to the 1950s also reveals the destruction of families. While mass arrests broke up the family, and children of “enemies of the people” were separated from their parents, there were also many children in the Gulag itself.</p>
<p>Prison camps developed an infrastructure that, on the surface, <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/579144">supported pregnancy and childbirth</a>. There were maternity wards in some camp clinics, as well as nurseries, and pregnant women and nursing mothers officially received increased rations. </p>
<p>In practice, the system was regularly a nightmare. Children born in the camps were separated from their mothers, who only managed to see them at set times for nursing. </p>
<p>Hava Volovich, whose own daughter died in the camps, remembers that hundreds of camp children died each year, meaning that there were “<a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=YWHvXP7VfxAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=vilensky+till+my+tale+is+told&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj2v7b_p-HbAhVdIDQIHUtmBBMQ6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=plenty%20of%20empty%20beds&f=false">plenty of empty beds in the infants’ shelter even though the birth rate in the camps was relatively high</a>.” </p>
<p>At the age of two, many of the surviving children were sent either to orphanages or to relatives — a forced redistribution of children away from their parents, who, as Gulag prisoners, were at best stigmatized, and at worst seen as a major threat to Soviet society. </p>
<p>The Gulag also held camps for young offenders, where teenagers worked as forced labourers and faced horrific living conditions.</p>
<h2>Nazis crushed families</h2>
<p>Nazi policy included both large-scale deportations and large-scale importations of population groups, with major implications for families. </p>
<p>The Nazis removed citizenship from German Jews then, during the Second World War, sent most Jews, from Germany and elsewhere, to camps outside the borders of pre-war Germany. Yet, as the war progressed, Germany brought in huge numbers of forced labourers from all over Europe (U.S. Attorney General <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/19/politics/jeff-sessions-immigration-border-separation/index.html">Jeff Sessions’ claim that German-run camps were designed to keep Jews in</a>, rather than out, is unfounded). </p>
<p>Nazi family policy was a pivotal part of the concentration camp. Once the death camps were operational, the Nazis crushed the family unit among undesirable populations, focusing on Jews. </p>
<p>The selection process at Auschwitz could result in the temporary survival of one or both parents, if they were physically fit (or just lucky), but children were usually sent directly to their deaths.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224112/original/file-20180620-137750-1jq7c28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224112/original/file-20180620-137750-1jq7c28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224112/original/file-20180620-137750-1jq7c28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224112/original/file-20180620-137750-1jq7c28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224112/original/file-20180620-137750-1jq7c28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224112/original/file-20180620-137750-1jq7c28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224112/original/file-20180620-137750-1jq7c28.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The late Elie Wiesel is seen in this 2012 photograph.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Jewish writer <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007176">Elie Wiesel</a> lost his mother and sister right away, and only survived selection because he lied about his age, claiming he was 18 and not 15, his actual age. </p>
<p>The unimaginable cruelty of many practices —the smashing of babies’ heads against walls, the medical experimentation, particularly on twins —reveals an extreme dehumanization. </p>
<p>Even at the show camp of Terezin, which included a family camp, <a href="http://www.terezin.org/the-history-of-terezin/">only 150 of the roughly 15,000 children sent there survived</a>.</p>
<h2>High mortality rates</h2>
<p>What do these historical cases have in common? All involved the separation, either immediate or eventual, of children from one or both parents, and all involved horrific conditions and extremely high mortality rates for the children. </p>
<p>In all cases, the dehumanization of the unwanted population was a key starting point. As <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/591094">historian Aidan Forth writes</a> of the South African case, Gen. Herbert Kitchener referred to the Boers as “savages with only a thin white veneer,” and British officials often described the Afrikaners as “dirty, careless, [and lazy.]”</p>
<p>Former Gulag prisoners frequently reported that guards and officials <a href="http://gulaghistory.org/exhibits/days-and-lives/guards/4">referred to them as animals or as “scum.”</a> As <a href="https://www.sakharov-center.ru/asfcd/auth/?t=page&num=11058">one former prisoner wrote</a>, quoting a camp boss: “A person? … There aren’t any here! Here are enemies of the people, traitors of the motherland, bandits, crooks. The dregs of humanity, scum, riff raff, that’s who is here!” </p>
<p>The dehumanization of the Nazi camps is well known, as Nazi propaganda frequently likened the Jews to vermin or to an infectious disease, making Trump’s tweet about asylum seekers particularly chilling:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1009071403918864385"}"></div></p>
<p>Another commonality can be found in the experiences of the victims.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-long-term-separation-from-parents-harms-kids-97515">Why long-term separation from parents harms kids</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In all cases, children separated from parents could not have known if they would ever see their parents again, or under what circumstances. The children of the camps had to rely, for the most part, on other children, for any support or security. Often, the separation was permanent.</p>
<p>These comparisons only take us so far, however. Some commentators have looked not at European powers, but to a long North American history — <a href="http://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/featured/americas-legacy-slavery-seen-trump-policy-separating-children-families/">including slavery</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/Goodeeeeee/status/1009272719257604097">residential schools</a> — of separating non-white children from their parents.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224109/original/file-20180620-137714-1l4ugnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/224109/original/file-20180620-137714-1l4ugnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224109/original/file-20180620-137714-1l4ugnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224109/original/file-20180620-137714-1l4ugnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224109/original/file-20180620-137714-1l4ugnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224109/original/file-20180620-137714-1l4ugnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/224109/original/file-20180620-137714-1l4ugnz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Children at a residential school in Fort Resolution, Northwest Territories, are seen in this undated photo.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(National Archives of Canada)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If there is any optimism to be found in the historical examples of children in concentration camps, perhaps the history of public reactions can provide some hope. </p>
<p>In South Africa, reports by Emily Hobhouse and then the Fawcett Commission, particularly on starving children, galvanized public pressure to force the British government to <a href="https://www.angloboerwar.com/other-information/16-other-information/1847-emily-hobhouse">improve conditions at the camps</a>. </p>
<h2>Outcry helped end practice</h2>
<p>In contrast, in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, there could be neither public nor parliamentary discussion of inhumane internment conditions. </p>
<p>Bu today, some U.S. reporters and lawmakers have visited the American detention centres, and non-governmental organizations such as <a href="https://act.amnestyusa.org/page/25820/action/1">Amnesty International</a> and even the <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/methodists-bring-church-charges-against-jeff-sessions_us_5b28fc2ee4b0a4dc9920b9dd">Methodist Church</a>, as well as many elected officials, maligned the policy. </p>
<p>The public discussion, and the public outcry against the separation of children from their parents that eventually caused U.S. President Donald Trump to cave and end the policy, perhaps makes the American case more similar to that of South Africa than either the Nazi or Soviet camps. </p>
<p>This similarity, however, depends on the actions now of the Trump administration, <a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-war-on-children-is-an-act-of-state-terrorism-98612">which for several weeks before its reversal included denial, deflecting blame and even justification</a>. </p>
<p>But with reports of children being torn away from <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/migrant-children-border-facility-w521518">their mothers’ arms while breastfeeding</a>, the more notorious concentration camps of the 20th century must serve as a stark reminder that the act of dehumanization is a slippery slope towards violence and further atrocities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98549/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wilson T. Bell received an Insight Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), June 2015-May 2018. He is a member of the Canadian Association of Slavists and the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. </span></em></p>
The more notorious concentration camps of the 20th century must serve as a stark reminder of the depravity of tearing children away from their parents and putting them in camps.
Wilson T. Bell, Assistant Professor of History and Politics, Thompson Rivers University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/96068
2018-05-23T10:41:45Z
2018-05-23T10:41:45Z
Why we need to rethink how to teach the Holocaust
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220016/original/file-20180522-51098-1j3q5b4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Photos and history of Holocaust victims frame the ceiling of the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2008/01/images/20080111_p011108cg-0081-515h.html">White House photo by Chris Greenberg</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>A recent <a href="http://cc-69bd.kxcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Holocaust-Knowledge-Awareness-Study_Executive-Summary-2018.pdf">national survey</a> reported that millennials are struggling with their knowledge of the Holocaust. The survey results show that 22 percent of millennials have not heard of, or are not sure if they have heard of the Holocaust, and that 66 percent could not identify <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005189">Auschwitz</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=7G-F_nQAAAAJ&hl=en">As a scholar of Holocaust education and teacher education</a>, I argue that knowledge of specific facts is only a small part of knowing about any historical event, including the Holocaust. A more important question to consider is: What do we want students to learn from the Holocaust, and given there are fewer and fewer survivors alive to tell their story, is there a need to rethink how it is taught? </p>
<h2>Why learn about Holocaust?</h2>
<p>History educator <a href="https://ed.stanford.edu/faculty/wineburg">Sam Wineburg</a> argues that history as a discipline has the unique capacity to humanize us. More specifically, scholars <a href="https://education.indiana.edu/about/directory/profiles/barton-keith-c.html">Keith Barton</a> and <a href="https://www.as.uky.edu/users/llevs01">Linda Levstik</a> argue that <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Teaching-History-for-the-Common-Good/Barton-Levstik/p/book/9780805839319">history education</a> can and should promote reasoned judgment, help students develop an expanded view of humanity, and encourage deliberation of the common good. </p>
<p>From this perspective, the most important rationale for Holocaust education would be to create a better society. Indeed, when studying the Holocaust learners need to grapple with <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/topics/holocaust">complicated moral issues</a> that blur the lines between right and wrong. It also challenges ideas about how individuals could (or should) act in society. In other words, the Holocaust <a href="https://hhrecny.org/">provides lessons</a> in human rights and human conduct.</p>
<p>It is not surprising that more state legislatures are now requiring Holocaust and genocide education as a way of dealing with the increase in hate crimes. Noting a <a href="https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/anti-semitic-incidents-surged-nearly-60-in-2017-according-to-new-adl-report">spike in anti-Semitism</a>, on May 7, 2018, the Connecticut House followed their Senate colleagues and <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/connecticut/articles/2018-05-07/connecticut-lawmakers-vote-to-require-holocaust-education">voted unanimously</a> to require Holocaust and genocide education in Connecticut schools. <a href="http://www.wpsdlocal6.com/2018/04/12/new-kentucky-law-requires-holocaust-education/">Kentucky also recently passed a Holocaust education law</a>, increasing the total number of states with such requirements to 10.</p>
<p>Connecticut and Kentucky were among the 20 states last year whose lawmakers <a href="https://www.jta.org/2017/04/24/news-opinion/united-states/lawmakers-from-20-states-pledge-to-mandate-holocaust-education">pledged</a> to mandate Holocaust education in their states. </p>
<h2>The changing context for Holocaust education</h2>
<p>While for many states the position appears clear, for educators, it is not so simple. Teaching the Holocaust is an evolving and challenging context. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220009/original/file-20180522-51109-1kpy0sh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220009/original/file-20180522-51109-1kpy0sh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220009/original/file-20180522-51109-1kpy0sh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220009/original/file-20180522-51109-1kpy0sh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220009/original/file-20180522-51109-1kpy0sh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220009/original/file-20180522-51109-1kpy0sh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220009/original/file-20180522-51109-1kpy0sh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=508&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A survivor gestures toward a display case of his family’s Holocaust documents and photographs in Springfield, Mass.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Charles Krupa</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Foundational to the work of Holocaust educators and many teachers have been the survivors, whose presence – physically, emotionally, intellectually – has <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/reluctant-witnesses-9780199733583?cc=us&lang=en&">shaped every aspect</a> of Holocaust education and representation. </p>
<p>Holocaust survivors are the ones who provided the moral and political will to <a href="https://cup.columbia.edu/book/preserving-memory/9780231124072">create many of the Holocaust museums</a> and memorials that exist today. Many <a href="https://echoesandreflections.org/">Holocaust education programs</a> were designed in collaboration with survivors and rely on survivor testimony as a key element. </p>
<p>This education, however, is nearing an end. In 2001, there were estimated to be over <a href="http://www.claimscon.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Jewish-Survivors-USA_v2-_3_25_14.pdf">160,000 survivors in the U.S</a>. That number is expected to drop to about 67,000 by 2020 with more than half over the age of 85. </p>
<p>Historian Sam Wineburg reminds educators of the important difference between <a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1518_reg.html">lived memory and learned memory</a>. Survivors, and their lived memory of having experienced the event, help young people connect to the past and make learning about the Holocaust relevant. Without survivors, the Holocaust will pass into being taught strictly from learned memory.</p>
<p>It is difficult to imagine a more powerful experience in Holocaust education than hearing from the people who survived. Interactions with survivors helps learners to personally connect to the Holocaust and develop empathy. The Holocaust, which may seem distant to many students today, becomes more real with eyewitness experiences. </p>
<h2>The future of Holocaust education</h2>
<p>This raises important dilemmas for teachers, curriculum developers and museum professionals about the future of Holocaust education. How do educators inform future generations? And how do they recreate the powerful empathetic moments? </p>
<p>Museums are taking the lead in adapting Holocaust education to a post-survivor world. One example is the <a href="http://www.foreverproject.co.uk/">Forever Project</a> at the <a href="https://www.holocaust.org.uk/">National Holocaust Centre and Museum</a> in England, where staff are taking video of survivors in 3D and students can watch survivor testimony, and using the latest technology, ask questions and listen to answers.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://sfi.usc.edu/collections/holocaust/ndt">Shoah Foundation</a> in the U.S. has a similar project working with Holocaust museums and using multidimensional video recordings of Holocaust survivors. The <a href="https://www.annefrank.com/">Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect</a> in New York is working on applying the lessons of the Holocaust to today, including its <a href="https://www.annefrank.com/">50 State Genocide Education Project</a>, which aims to encourage all 50 states to teach about the Holocaust and genocide with specific connections between events in the past and the present. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220011/original/file-20180522-51115-64nrd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/220011/original/file-20180522-51115-64nrd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220011/original/file-20180522-51115-64nrd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220011/original/file-20180522-51115-64nrd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220011/original/file-20180522-51115-64nrd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220011/original/file-20180522-51115-64nrd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/220011/original/file-20180522-51115-64nrd8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Director of youth education for the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County, NY, speaks during the Rising Stars anti-bullying seminar.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">John Minchillo / AP Images for Rising Stars</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Holocaust education has the potential to encourage young people to think about how to improve humanity through individual and group actions. Its real test lies in how young people live out their daily lives. What happens, for example, when they see someone being bullied? How do they respond to a political leader whose words or policies promote stereotyping or hatred?</p>
<p>The effectiveness of Holocaust education is not one that we can readily measure, but it is more important than ever.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96068/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Marcus does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Foundational to the work of Holocaust educators and many teachers have been the survivors. Given there are fewer survivors who are alive today, how do educators inform future generations?
Alan Marcus, Associate Professor, University of Connecticut
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/81015
2017-08-17T01:28:11Z
2017-08-17T01:28:11Z
Why tourists go to sites associated with death and suffering
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181244/original/file-20170807-25535-1ln6g1c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students at Ponar Forest in Lithuania, where Nazis massacred many Jews.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniel B. Bitran</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On a beautiful summer day in 2016, as I walked with a group of college students along a well-trodden path sprinkled with needles and cones from majestic pine trees, our mood was somber and morose. The chirping of birds and the burning off of the dew on the grassy hills by the rising sun in this idyllic setting did not help either.</p>
<p>We were cognizant of what had happened here not too long ago. </p>
<p>This place – <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09528829608576624">the Ponar Forest</a> – is the site where 72,000 Jewish men, women and children from Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, and nearby villages were massacred by the Nazis and their collaborators.</p>
<p>I am an educator of the Holocaust, and my travel course takes students through Central Europe to a number of Holocaust sites. The aim is to provide students with a hands-on learning experience. </p>
<p>However, some could well argue that this course is just another form of “dark tourism” – an interest in locations that are associated with human suffering and death. </p>
<p>What is so problematic about dark tourism? And are there redeeming features that make it worthwhile? </p>
<h2>Is it voyerism?</h2>
<p>First, let’s understand what dark tourism is.</p>
<p>In January 2016, Otto Warmbier, an American college student, was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/world/asia/north-korea-otto-warmbier-sentenced.html">arrested in Pyongyang, North Korea,</a> for allegedly stealing a political propaganda poster. He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor after a one-hour trial. A mere 17 months later, Warmbier was released to his parents in a vegetative state. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/19/otto-warmbier-dies-coma-student-north-korea-prison">He died a few days after.</a> </p>
<p>Warmbier was on a trip advertised by <a href="http://www.youngpioneertours.com/">Young Pioneer Tours</a> to destinations that, they said, “your mother would rather you stayed away from.” This tragic incident vividly illustrates the perils associated with certain locations.</p>
<p>This then is what is referred to as <a href="http://hdl.handle.net/1959.9/346560">“dark tourism.”</a> It involves traveling to sites associated with death, natural disaster, acts of violence, tragedy and crimes against humanity. It could also include <a href="https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCTHR-07-2012-0059">travel to dangerous political hotspots</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181245/original/file-20170807-25565-1qxr1cy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181245/original/file-20170807-25565-1qxr1cy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181245/original/file-20170807-25565-1qxr1cy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181245/original/file-20170807-25565-1qxr1cy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181245/original/file-20170807-25565-1qxr1cy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181245/original/file-20170807-25565-1qxr1cy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181245/original/file-20170807-25565-1qxr1cy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Auschwitz, Poland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/_fabrizio_/26256754755/in/photolist-G1dJqc-zJcmG7-aEtfeo-4Bcb5v-QosgFr-K4GA3N-8GoWkX-8xcZqv-JkgkKK-8SYNnh-zrA6Ai-QauyAE-QotTyr-dPKg23-sa2o4C-6dGM92-QotLEB-P7eMsE-Pa5Ntr-QkesL7-Qdfetk-Qp1LZo-QouTAi-PPByDQ-QavGMs-PPy66E-QosPjg-P76JZE-QddE8z-QovAmB-P9V8Wz-QkcDuq-QdfzGM-QdfsTB-P7784u-P9W18g-QatGK7-P9Vni4-PPAkfY-QkcTvS-QovdyD-QouNW8-9dxt5L-PPzXwC-PPCdyC-QowQPn-PPyxCN-PPAuiY-P9X9aM-QaxoJu">Fabrizio Sciami</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While data about the number of people embarking on dark tourism are not readily available, there are indications that it is becoming more popular. Over the past 20 years there has been a dramatic <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2017.01.011">increase in the number of peer-reviewed articles on dark tourism.</a> From 1996 through 2010, between three and seven papers appeared annually; from 2011 to 2016, that number increased to between 14 and 25. My own Google search of “dark tourism” yielded nearly four million hits.</p>
<p>Some scholars have argued that <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2014.948813">dark tourism is akin to voyerism</a>: that is, fulfilling a desire for the forbidden. Other researchers though have found little evidence that people are interested in death per se. A commonly reported motive seems to be <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2017.01.011">learning about past events</a>, a curiosity that drives an interest in such sites. </p>
<p>Of course, it is hard to say with certainty what the real motives might be. Studies rely on self-reported data, and <a href="http://www.sciencebrainwaves.com/the-dangers-of-self-report/">respondents in such studies like to be perceived in a positive light.</a> This is especially true if the questionnaire touches on a sensitive subject that may reveal a disquieting or troubling characteristic.</p>
<h2>Ethics of travel to some spots</h2>
<p>Nonetheless, there is an important <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2017/06/23/tourism-to-north-korea-isnt-about-engagement-its-torture-porn/?utm_term=.f20ff6354833">ethical dimension to dark tourism</a>. Take the case of tourism in North Korea. Proponents have argued that anti-American sentiment may be decreased by the people-to-people contact enabled by such tourism, or that such visits may create a subversive effect. Proponents believe through such exposure North Koreans may come to appreciate the liberties enjoyed by people in the developed world and begin to question their own ways of living. </p>
<p>Indeed, the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2015.1032896">past decade has opened up North Korea to tourism</a>, allowing citizens from most countries to visit. Critics, however, argue that the average North Korean does not interact with tourists; <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/north-korea-holidays-tourism-how-to-travel-pyongyang-is-it-right-human-rights-record-a7203306.html">the guided tours are well-scripted</a>, allowing engagement with the regime and not the people. Moreover, tourism legitimizes the regime while enriching it at the same time. In North Korea, for example, it is estimated that <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2016.1232635">tourism is a US$45 million per year industry</a>. </p>
<p>The question that emerges then is whether it is ethical to promote a repressive regime that is repeatedly cited for human rights violations. This question is germane to all tourist locations that have <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/amnesty-international-reveals-the-10-worst-attacks-on-human-rights-across-the-world-last-year-a6892911.html">questionable human rights records</a>, from China to Hungary. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181246/original/file-20170807-25576-161cew8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/181246/original/file-20170807-25576-161cew8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181246/original/file-20170807-25576-161cew8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181246/original/file-20170807-25576-161cew8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181246/original/file-20170807-25576-161cew8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181246/original/file-20170807-25576-161cew8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/181246/original/file-20170807-25576-161cew8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A memorial to the victims of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/atomicallyspeaking/31942119213/in/photolist-QEBHck-Rr6oUq-UvLFJ1-RX8AcC-RPNywP-S1JRQc-QJg5mU-GtmYaE-RUzG4n-RUywHF-QC3sfq-7fPE9v-6qxqAm-RqLEbq-RzXz6U-Bo4Gq1-SF9XQi-RCvbJx-Rp62WA-SF9h32-SNS9DU-SSsimr-QEBb9P-SCEB5u-QHVUqE-RCvLMx-AchzHU-S2bcNZ-QJfJr3-SSsDqz-6qxrvs-RPNLU4-ShBhWE-8y2hGB-RMPpHr-RWH3dA-7wJa5b-dMhewR-dMhewP-NtZgqR-V8JULm-dMnMVd-QMcnza-SSsnbR-dMnNk1-RX6YvE-6qthUk-dMnNmE-RMYw7k-6qxrHG">atomicallyspeaking</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And what of places of human suffering from <a href="https://www.smartertravel.com/2017/06/19/disaster-tourism-tragedy-draws-tourists/">disasters</a> such as the <a href="https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/chernobyl-bg.html">Chernobyl nuclear power plant</a> in Ukraine, or from fascist regimes that are no longer in existence such as the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/08/07/why-the-world-should-not-forget-khmer-rouge-and-the-killing-fields-of-cambodia/?utm_term=.07e29c3fd704">killing fields of Phnom Penh, Cambodia</a>? Are they free from ethical constraints? </p>
<p>Few would doubt that it is immoral to benefit from others’ calamities, no matter how far removed these incidents may be from our present time or place.</p>
<h2>Observing boundaries</h2>
<p>So how do we in particular, as Holocaust educators, escape the trappings of dark tourism?</p>
<p>I strive to provide my students with an educational experience that pays tribute to the social, cultural and artistic aspects of European Jewry. For example, we pay a visit to the Polin Museum in Warsaw, which tells the history of Polish Jews. At the same time, however, going to the former concentration camps of Auschwitz, Majdanek or Treblinka does privilege places of human suffering and death. </p>
<p>How then do we maintain our intended purpose?</p>
<p>An important point of emphasis in our Holocaust travel course is the need to respect the sites we visit. My students are told clearly, especially in places of death and martyrdom, that exhibits and artifacts are to be inspected visually. Never should they reach out to touch or take anything. </p>
<p>Students can, at times, fail to understand the criminal meaning of some acts and get into a great deal of trouble. In 2015, for example, <a href="http://time.com/3931830/teenagers-arrested-auschwitz-artifacts/">two teenagers were arrested</a> for taking found objects at Auschwitz. More recently, another student stole some artifacts from Auschwitz in order to <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4991041,00.html">complete an art project</a> for her graduate degree.</p>
<h2>Why intent matters</h2>
<p>When places of death and torture are respected from the perspective of valuing the sanctity of life and not seen as a source of titillation resulting from a <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2014.948813">voyeuristic need</a>, then these behaviors, I believe, will not occur.</p>
<p>Indeed, the atmosphere at the Auschwitz museum cafe may appear to be <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0458063x.2017.1295720">Disneyland-like</a>, with visitors casually resting over their cups of coffee or ice creams. In fact, however, it is the attitude or intent of the visitor that ultimately determines dark tourism’s presence.</p>
<p>Even in Auschwitz, then, a visit per se is not a sufficient criterion for dark tourism. Snapping a smiling selfie at such a site, however, should be of some concern.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/81015/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel B. Bitran does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In recent years, the number of people traveling to sites of death, natural disaster, acts of violence, tragedy and crimes against humanity has dramatically increased. Is it immoral?
Daniel B. Bitran, Professor of Psychology, College of the Holy Cross
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/76704
2017-04-29T08:38:12Z
2017-04-29T08:38:12Z
70 years on, Primo Levi’s If This is A Man is still a powerful reminder of what it means to be human
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167249/original/file-20170429-12987-14nwduh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The book provides an account of Primo Levi's survival in Auschwitz.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp#/media/File:Auschwitz_I_entrance_snow.jpg">Logaritmo/Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When he was captured by the Fascist militia in December of 1943, <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/primo-levi-9380562">Primo Levi</a> (1919-1987) preferred to declare his status as an “Italian citizen of the Jewish race” than admit to the political activities of which he was suspected, which he supposed would have resulted in torture and certain death. </p>
<p>As a Jew, he was consequently sent to a detention camp at Fossoli, which assembled all the various categories of persons no longer welcome in the recently established Fascist Republic. Two months later, following the inspection of a small squad of German SS men, he was loaded onto a train, together with all the other Jewish members of the camp, for expatriation from the Republic altogether. </p>
<p>His destination, he was to learn, was Auschwitz; a name that at the time held no significance for him, but that initially provided a sense of relief, since it at least implied “some place on this earth”. </p>
<p>Of the 650 who departed Fossoli that day, only three would return. Yet Levi’s magnificent testimony of the Lager, <em><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6181.If_This_Is_a_Man_The_Truce">Se questo è un uomo</a></em> (If This is a Man) – which he would compose in the immediate aftermath of the resumption of his life in Turin, and which was first published 70 years ago in 1947, making it one of the earliest eyewitness accounts we have – is far from a heroic description of his “survival in Auschwitz” (as the American title given to his text would have it). Although in an important sense it is also that. </p>
<p>Indeed, what is striking about Levi’s contribution, still today, is the conspicuous absence of a heroic register from its pages, whose appropriateness in this context – which is in large part what Levi teaches us – must surely be as questionable as the temptation to invoke it is strong. </p>
<p>With characteristic, but unsettling irony, it is the word fortune that appears instead in the very first sentence of his text (“It was my good fortune to be deported to Auschwitz only in 1944…”) and that sets the tone for all that follows. In the camp, it is not virtue that governs fortune; it is fortune that governs virtue. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167247/original/file-20170429-12994-1py71le.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167247/original/file-20170429-12994-1py71le.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167247/original/file-20170429-12994-1py71le.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167247/original/file-20170429-12994-1py71le.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167247/original/file-20170429-12994-1py71le.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167247/original/file-20170429-12994-1py71le.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167247/original/file-20170429-12994-1py71le.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Levi was sent to the detention camp at Fossoli after his capture.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/jacqueline_poggi/22201126893/">Jacqueline Poggi/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is the original title of Levi’s book that in truth gives expression to what will be his principal concern. Yet this is easily misunderstood. It is not exactly a question, and certainly not one that solicits an answer. But it is not even a question whose answer would be provided by the text itself, which claims no such privilege. </p>
<p>As we learn from the poem that opens the text, it must be understood instead to contain an implicit imperative: “Consider if this is man…” It is an order, a command (“I command these words to you”); one that is linked, moreover, to an imprecation: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Carve them in your hearts </p>
<p>… Repeat them to your children, </p>
<p>Or may your house fall apart, </p>
<p>May illness impede you, </p>
<p>May your children turn their faces from you. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is thus an admonition that we (“You who live safe/In your warm houses”) not avert our gaze. But since Levi, remarkably, includes even himself in this category, it functions also as a kind of self-admonition.</p>
<p>For the description of what Levi calls the “ambiguous life of the Lager” alters our understanding of the very structure of witnessing. And it does so by bringing to light the existence of a distinct oppositional pair much less evident in ordinary life: the drowned (<em>i sommersi</em>) and the saved (<em>i salvati</em>). </p>
<p>In Auschwitz, all the ritual humiliations appeared as if designed to hasten the prisoner’s descent to what Levi termed “the bottom”. But this process was especially accelerated in the case of those he called the drowned: “they followed the slope down to the bottom, like streams that run down to the sea”. </p>
<p>These were the prisoners who, for whatever reason (and the reasons were many), never adjusted to the brutal regimen of life in the camp; whose time in the camp was thus consequently very brief; yet whose number was apparently endless. </p>
<p>In the jargon of the camp, these were the <em>Muselmänner</em>, the “Muslims”, whose tenuous existence, even prior to their imminent selection for the gas chamber, already hovered in an indistinct zone between life and death, human and non-human. These, according to Levi, were the ones who had truly seen all the way to the bottom: the ones who (as he would later powerfully record) had truly seen the Gorgon.</p>
<p>With respect to the “anonymous mass” of the drowned, the number of the saved, on the other hand, was comparatively few. Yet by no means did it consist of the best, and certainly not of the elect. To invoke the guiding hand of providence in the midst of such atrocity was nothing short of abhorrent to Levi. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167248/original/file-20170429-12999-63u7rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/167248/original/file-20170429-12999-63u7rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167248/original/file-20170429-12999-63u7rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167248/original/file-20170429-12999-63u7rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=917&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167248/original/file-20170429-12999-63u7rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167248/original/file-20170429-12999-63u7rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/167248/original/file-20170429-12999-63u7rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1152&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Primo Levi in the 1950s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3APrimo_Levi.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He is unflinching on precisely this delicate point: with rare exceptions, the saved comprised those who, in one way or another, whether through fortune or astuteness, had managed to gain some position of privilege in the structured hierarchy of the camp. </p>
<p>More often than not, this entailed the renunciation of at least a part of the moral universe that existed outside the camp. Not that the saved, any more than the drowned, are to be judged on this account. As Levi insists, words such as good and evil, just and unjust, quickly cease to have any meaning on this side of the barbed wire. </p>
<p>It was nonetheless his conviction that those who had not fathomed all the way to the bottom could not be the true witnesses. Yet far from invalidating the survivor’s testimony this made it all the more urgent. </p>
<p>According to Levi, it is the saved who must bear witness for the drowned, but also to the drowned. For in him is mirrored what he himself saw. </p>
<p>“Consider if this is a man…”: the imperative issued by Levi’s text is thus not that one should persist in seeing the human in the inhuman. It is more like its opposite: that one bear must witness to the inhuman in the human. And that our humanity in some sense depends on this.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76704/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Heron does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The imperative issued by Levi’s text is not that one should persist in seeing the human in the inhuman. It is more like its opposite: that one bear must witness to the inhuman in the human.
Nicholas Heron, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, The University of Queensland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/71774
2017-01-26T20:55:02Z
2017-01-26T20:55:02Z
Exploring the complexities of forgiveness
<p>Friday, Jan. 27 is International Holocaust Remembrance Day – an annual day that honors the memories of the victims of the Nazi era. Seven decades after Hitler perpetrated his terrible genocide on the Jewish people, the world is faced with a disturbing question: Can the Nazis be forgiven?</p>
<p>As a member of a Jewish family that endured the war, this is more of an emotional question. I grew up in Australia, where my grandparents came after the war. I was surrounded by many survivors – members of my own family among them. Australia has the <a href="https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2011/194/4/ageing-holocaust-survivors-australia">highest number</a> of Holocaust survivors per capita outside Israel. </p>
<p>I grew up in a community of these remarkable people, but not once did I hear the topic of forgiveness for the Nazis discussed. The Nazis hardly warranted their consideration. Instead, what prevailed was the distinctive Jewish response to the tragedy of the Holocaust of not asking why, but what do we do now. Invariably the answer was a single-minded determination and commitment to rebuilding a new generation of proud and committed Jews.</p>
<p>As a rabbi and teacher, however, I see the question as more complicated. It challenges us toward a more profound examination of some of Judaism’s deepest ethical mores and theological beliefs.</p>
<h2>Forgiveness: What is it?</h2>
<p>First, it is important to understand the concept of forgiveness and its place in Jewish belief and practice.</p>
<p>In the Jewish belief there is a distinction between forgiveness and consequences. Lack of consequences is not synonymous with forgiveness and negative consequences does not equate with lack of forgiveness, as in forgiving one’s child for demonstrating carelessness or inconsideration while still holding her accountable. </p>
<p>Rather, according to <a href="http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/911908/jewish/Teshuvah-Chapter-Seven.htm">Jewish teaching</a>, the essence of forgiveness is that the forgiver allows for his relationship with the forgiven to be healed. It is a way of saying to the offender, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“You have hurt, you have injured, you have wronged, and you will suffer the consequences – but despite all that, I accept you, and I can still have a relationship with you.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, why forgive?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154325/original/image-20170125-23854-ct6w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154325/original/image-20170125-23854-ct6w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154325/original/image-20170125-23854-ct6w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154325/original/image-20170125-23854-ct6w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154325/original/image-20170125-23854-ct6w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154325/original/image-20170125-23854-ct6w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154325/original/image-20170125-23854-ct6w7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">What does Judaism say about forgiveness?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gtwiggs/58822134/in/photolist-6ctLJ-atgwUB-8yhKSf-e7eNdT-pFE9Me-9gBc4C-5uhyHz-63CV4c-5uhrrr-dkVGrD-bmPGrX-7QBfzv-dJu49c-9EVAjB-6QJdyp-dSz74c-fj8rD-9hLP5g-qzgDoN-8ppkn5-pMPsPi-6fSXcE-8XgMPk-dtsRHQ-4s2K9w-KgeeK-4NeZqh-bmPKXH-9rs9Tz-7dweuQ-6dpxzW-7yGCdL-co3tss-9EVyDp-avtDCx-9EYuzf-dYqzeW-nqocft-ERufb5-8rPkCX-4k4PP2-9Y4Hqr-8LTb5G-dJu9p4-b47brz-99y7WN-a3ehza-bmPJep-6fNE8x-skPfwv">Glenn Twiggs</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Judaism teaches that the concept of forgiveness constitutes one of the most essential fundamentals of the human relationship with God and with each other. </p>
<p>Throughout the Bible there are numerous examples of <a href="http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/9895/jewish/Chapter-34.htm">God forgiving human sin</a> and humans forgiving their <a href="http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/8215/jewish/Chapter-20.htm">fellow beings</a>. Furthermore, one of the <a href="http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/9975/jewish/Chapter-11.htm">basic principles of Jewish ethics</a> is that humans are mandated to emulate the divine characteristics through which God relates to us. </p>
<p>Thus, just as He is kind, merciful and forgiving, so too must we strive to conduct our own lives in the same manner toward others. And indeed, inasmuch as every human being is imperfect and needs the favor of forgiveness from God and from his fellows, Judaism’s <a href="http://www.sefaria.org/Shabbat.31a?lang=bi">“Golden Rule”</a> necessitates that we be prepared to grant others the very same favor that we expect from them.</p>
<p>But far from being just a necessary but regrettable allowance, Judaism teaches that the practice of forgiveness was divinely designed from the very outset of creation. Thus, the reason why God deliberately <a href="http://www.sefaria.org/Bereishit_Rabbah.3?lang=bi">created us imperfect</a> is because through the process of sin and reconciliation, both the forgiver and the forgiven can experience tremendous <a href="http://www.chabad.org/library/tanya/tanya_cdo/aid/7906/jewish/Chapter-27.htm">personal and religious growth</a>. </p>
<p>It is common experience that when two people in a relationship are able to forgive one another for their flaws and offenses, this process draws them even closer than they would have been had the offense never taken place.</p>
<h2>Elements of forgiveness</h2>
<p>Yet, everything has its limitations. So, what are the parameters of forgiveness, and what are the requirements for it to be earned?</p>
<p>According to Jewish law, a <a href="http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/911891/jewish/Teshuvah-Chapter-Two.htm">person may not expect forgiveness</a> unless he undergoes a sincere effort to perform “teshuvah,” meaning “repentance” or “return.” The elements of teshuvah include rigorous self-examination and require the perpetrator to engage with the victim, by confessing, expressing regret and making every effort possible to right the wrong that he committed. </p>
<p>By sincerely fulfilling all of these elements of “teshuvah,” the offender has done everything in his power to earn the right to ask the victim for forgiveness. So, <a href="http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/911891/jewish/Teshuvah-Chapter-Two.htm">Jewish law states</a> that a truly repentant “returnee” whose repeated requests for forgiveness are rejected on three occasions by his victim, has done all he can and need not make further efforts at reconciliation. At this point, the blame for the lack of resolution is transferred to the victim of the original offense.</p>
<p>It remains clear, however, that if the perpetrator fails to perform the requirements of teshuvah, forgiveness has not been earned and cannot be granted. For while granting earned forgiveness is an act of grace that may be emotionally restorative, uplifting and inspiring, nevertheless, to grant unearned forgiveness is not kind but callous, and can only further desensitize both the perpetrator and the victim to distinctions of morality. </p>
<h2>Not on behalf of another</h2>
<p>Consequently, if the victim is no longer alive, is absent or otherwise unable to receive the perpetrator’s teshuvah, the possibility for the perpetrator to seek forgiveness is <a href="http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/911898/jewish/Teshuvah-Chapter-Four.htm">seriously impeded</a>. For at no time can any person presume to offer forgiveness to a perpetrator of a crime to which he was not a victim.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154329/original/image-20170125-23858-1f4cx4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154329/original/image-20170125-23858-1f4cx4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154329/original/image-20170125-23858-1f4cx4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154329/original/image-20170125-23858-1f4cx4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154329/original/image-20170125-23858-1f4cx4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154329/original/image-20170125-23858-1f4cx4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154329/original/image-20170125-23858-1f4cx4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Forgiveness cannot be granted when the victims are not there to forgive.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/us_embassy_newzealand/16301426229/in/photolist-qQv55V-jyVXpD-njX49P-jyXT9o-jyWTLL-DwVWcC-nfWTdR-bP4UDx-9Avg9L-ubM4U-e9Dzjn-jAv6Ny-8V79fL-rSJuS3-ubLuK-8V6Kfm-rSSQca-bBGWcf-rSJDKJ-7yKgZE-rQZKWT-bzRvrq-bQBCrK-bzRvxS-rSKPGs-bBGWkm-s831hA-sagJ6n-8V72hA-8V7bf1-7yKh3L-ec84pc-8V77DW-8V3LPk-8V6WTA-8V45H4-ec7Byx-8V6TTW-8V6Lnw-7yFukR-8V6Yqf-8V3Z8Z-8V718Q-8V3JDr-sagHAV-7yFuj4-eogC6t-8V42eg-8V6MGo-8V6Qhy">US Embassy</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In such cases, the perpetrator must realize that he has no recourse to obtain forgiveness from any human being. Certainly, he must endeavor to complete all of the elements of teshuvah, which may include (for example) sincere and wholehearted efforts to make restitution to the victim’s relatives or community. </p>
<p>Ultimately, however, the only source from whom he may obtain forgiveness is from the heavenly court, and God alone will judge if his “teshuvah” has been sufficient to earn it.</p>
<h2>Why it is not possible to forgive</h2>
<p>The answer then to our original question of whether the Nazis can be forgiven becomes clear. The level of teshuvah that would be necessary to rectify the monstrous Nazi crimes would be enormous indeed. It also begs us to ask another question: Has any individual Nazi ever demonstrated this type of remorse, contrition and superhuman determination to make amends?</p>
<p>I have not heard of a single such instance. And even if there was such a person, his murdered victims are no longer alive to even consider granting forgiveness.</p>
<p>So, since we are human beings who still have a conscience to discern good from evil, the only conclusion we must come to is that we cannot in any way forgive the Nazis. To think otherwise would be to dishonor the victims of the Holocaust and to degrade our own moral compass.</p>
<h2>How can we honor the victims of the Holocaust?</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/9895/jewish/Chapter-34.htm#showrashi=true">Jewish law and thought</a> believes that the the power for good can always be stronger than the power for evil. </p>
<p>The Nazis showed a truly terrifying power for destruction and brought much darkness to the world.</p>
<p>But together we can choose to illuminate the world with the light of morality and kindness, one good deed at a time. Our efforts will surely bring our world much needed peace and harmony. As the Sages assure us, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“a little bit of light dispels a great deal of darkness.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>Rabbi Raphael Jaworowski, a Jewish scholar and writer, contributed to this article.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71774/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yerachmiel Gorelik does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Can the Nazis be forgiven? A rabbi explains why this question needs a more profound examination of some of Judaism’s deepest ethical mores and theological beliefs
Yerachmiel Gorelik, Lecturer, Philosophy of Traditional Judaism, Colorado State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/71730
2017-01-26T13:45:44Z
2017-01-26T13:45:44Z
Auschwitz to Rwanda: the link between science, colonialism and genocide
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154387/original/image-20170126-30401-14ypwmk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The remainsof victims of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda displayed at Kigali Memorial Center.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Dai Kurokawa </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the Soviet army liberated the Auschwitz death camp on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/27/auschwitz-short-history-liberation-concentration-camp-holocaust">27 January 1945</a>, among the prisoners left behind were a number of young twins. The surviving children and many more who had died were the subject of disturbing human experiments by Josef Mengele, a physician known as the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30933718">“Angel of Death”</a>. </p>
<p>About 3,000 twins were selected from an estimated <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005189">1.3 million people who arrived at Auschwitz</a> for Mengele’s deadly “scientific” experiments. Only about <a href="http://history1900s.about.com/od/auschwitz/a/mengeletwins.htm">200 of them survived</a>.</p>
<p>Mengele is significant for understanding the complicity of science with the mass atrocities of the 20th century. The elegant young doctor defied the stereotypical image of the Nazi brute. He was no crazy drunken beast with a whip. This was an ambitious researcher of human genetics, holding <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=nmthADUYzQYC&pg=PT35&lpg=PT35&dq=Mengele,+doctrates+in+Anthropology+and+Medicine&source=bl&ots=GlzWoQtAAC&sig=Jp2ueycLi3TLkMQu_osEyHC9qUc&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi7j8Hfy9_RAhWGBsAKHQOlD60Q6AEIJzAC#v=onepage&q=Mengele%2C%20doctrates%20in%20Anthropology%20and%20Medicine&f=false">doctorates in anthropology and medicine</a>.</p>
<p>Mengele worked in Auschwitz from May 1943. The death camp presented him with a “perfect” laboratory. It provided an unlimited supply of human specimens to study genetics, and he wouldn’t get into trouble if they died following lethal injections and other <a href="http://history1900s.about.com/od/auschwitz/a/mengeletwins.htm">gruesome experiments</a>.</p>
<p>Mengele was well-connected. In 1942 his former doctoral supervisor, <a href="http://www.estherlederberg.com/Eugenics%20(Anecdotes)/Otmar%20Freiherr%20von%20Verschuer.html">Otmar von Verschuer</a>, a scientist conducting genetics research with a particular interest in twins, had become the director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics <a href="http://eugenicsarchive.ca/discover/connections/5233cdc25c2ec500000000a8in">(KWI-A)</a> in Berlin. Under Verschuer the KWI-A played a key role as an institution of science in the implementation of Nazi racist ideology and policy during the holocaust. Mengele also spent time as a <a href="https://books.google.de/books?isbn=0252029305">researcher at the KWI-A</a>.</p>
<p>The KWI-A’s story connects the Nazi atrocities of the 1940s with the colonial origins of racial science.</p>
<h2>Nazis and colonial ‘racial science’</h2>
<p>The institute’s first director in 1927 was the well-known physical anthropologist <a href="http://www.estherlederberg.com/Eugenics%20(Anecdotes)/Eugen%20Fischer.html">Eugen Fischer</a>. Fischer was a prolific researcher who had earned his scientific merits in genetics and racial science in the then German colony of German South West Africa (today’s Namibia).</p>
<p>His 1908 field study, published in 1913, focused on the effects of racial mixing (“miscegenation”), applying the genetic theory of <a href="http://www.dnaftb.org/1/bio.html">Gregor Mendel</a>. Fischer examined 310 children of the <a href="http://rehobothbasters.org/news/241-who-are-the-rehoboth-basters-n">“Basters” of Rehoboth</a>, a community of “mixed-race” people living to the South of Windhoek in Namibia. </p>
<p>The Rehobother offspring of Nama women and white men were observed and subjected to physical measurements. Based on these “scientific” methods, Fischer classified the mixed-race population. </p>
<p>His verdict that African blood imparted impurity resulted in the <a href="http://www.estherlederberg.com/Eugenics%20(CSHL_List)/Eugen%20Fischer.html">prohibition of mixed-race marriages</a> in all German colonies by 1912. In Namibia interracial marriage was already <a href="http://namibian-studies.com/index.php/JNS/article/viewFile/107/76">prohibited in 1905</a>. </p>
<p>German colonialism ended after World War I. This, however, was not the end of racial science. Incubated in the colonial laboratories of southern Africa, it was brought back and applied in “civilised” central Europe. Fischer first followed up his <a href="http://www.estherlederberg.com/Eugenics%20(Anecdotes)/Bastard%20studies.html">“bastard studies”</a> in the 1920s and early 1930s with the <a href="http://www.estherlederberg.com/Eugenics%20(Anecdotes)/Eugen%20Fischer.html">“Rhineland bastards”</a>, children born to German mothers and fathers from the French African colonies. Few black Germans perished during the Nazi era. But, many were <a href="http://www.dreamdeferred.org.uk/2014/04/the-holocausts-forgotten-victims-the-rhineland-bastards/">forcibly sterilised</a>.</p>
<p>The story of the KWI-A demonstrates how several significant dimensions connect 20th century racial science, colonialism and genocide. </p>
<h2>Race, politics and economics of science</h2>
<p>Firstly, the concept of <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/race/">“race”</a> as a classification of humans according to supposed genetic givens links science, colonial rule, and the Nazi mass murders. </p>
<p>The similarities in the ways physical anthropologists and colonial officials classified Africans at the beginning of the 20th century, and the Nazis’ classification of the Jews are obvious. Like Africans in the German colonies, Jews were regarded as alien and threats to the purity of German ‘blood’, who had to be excluded from the body of the German “Volk” (people). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154395/original/image-20170126-30428-d644xk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154395/original/image-20170126-30428-d644xk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154395/original/image-20170126-30428-d644xk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154395/original/image-20170126-30428-d644xk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154395/original/image-20170126-30428-d644xk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154395/original/image-20170126-30428-d644xk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154395/original/image-20170126-30428-d644xk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Prisoners who survived the Nazi German Auschwitz death camp in Poland.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Fischer only joined the Nazi party in 1940. But he made antisemitic utterances earlier. His private correspondence provides evidence that he regarded the “Jewish question” as a <a href="http://www.estherlederberg.com/Eugenics%20(Anecdotes)/Eugen%20Fischer.html">“question of race”</a></p>
<p>The social construction of the category “race” to classify humans was a prerequisite of the Nazi mass murders. In the 1930s, the KWI-A was centrally involved in the application of race-based laws to exclude Jews from the German “Volk”. Stellenbosch University anthropologist Steven Robins has shown this in his book, <a href="http://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/letters-stone/9781776090242">“Letters of Stone”</a>, which tells his family’s story from Nazi Germany to South Africa. </p>
<p>Secondly, however, the KWI-A demonstrates the pitfalls of typical, unbridled ambition in scientists. This is disturbing indeed. Fischer did not so much become involved in the Nazi racial policy because he was a vicious racist, but because of the politics and economics of research. </p>
<p>In exchange for their scientific services for the Nazi regime, Fischer and his Institute received official recognition. Most importantly, the scientists obtained privileged access to very generous state funding. </p>
<p>Thirdly, the KWI-A and its scientists provide chilling illustrations of some significant writings on the colonial origins of the dehumanisation and objectification of racially and the “eugenically undesirable”. The philosopher Hannah Arendt, herself a holocaust refugee from Germany, explained in 1951 that European imperialism played a crucial role in the development of <a href="Monoskop.org/images/7/7e/Arendt_Hannah_The_Origins_of_Totalitarianism_1979.pdf">Nazi totalitarianism</a> and associated genocides.</p>
<h2>Belgians and Rwanda</h2>
<p>The Nazi genocides have gone down in history as unique. They were organised with German industrial precision during the infamous Wannsee-Konferenz of 19 January 1942. The connection of science, racial policy and genocide, however, has a strong <a href="http://hgs.oxfordjournals.org/content/29/1/132.short">international dimension</a>.</p>
<p>Rwanda is a horrid example. In central Africa, the Belgians drew on <a href="http://www.dictionary.com/browse/craniology">craniology</a> specifically, the “scientific” study of the shape and size of the skulls of different human “races”. With additional differences in height and skin tone, the colonial administration fixed earlier social stratification between Tutsi, Hutu and Twa - all identified as Banyarwanda - into racial categories. From 1933 onwards, those were included in <a href="http://www.genocidewatch.org/images/AboutGen_Group_Classification_on_National_ID_Cards.pdf">Rwandan ID cards</a>. </p>
<p>In the years before Rwandan independence, finally granted in 1962, the colonial ideology of Tutsi racial superiority was turned around by politicians who created a <a href="http://www.beyondintractability.org/casestudy/fornace-rwandan">Hutu racial philosophy</a>. In 1994 hundreds of thousands Rwandans were murdered because their ID cards identified them as Tutsi. Others died because their physical appearance corresponded with the racial stereotype. </p>
<h2>The dark underbelly of Western modernity</h2>
<p>In 1955 the writer from Martinique, Aimé Césaire made a radical statement on the colonial origins of the holocaust. He wrote that in the 1940s <a href="http://www.rlwclarke.net/theory/SourcesPrimary/CesaireDiscourseonColonialism.pdf">the Nazis</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>applied to Europe colonialist procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for the Arabs of Algeria, the coolies of India, and the niggers of Africa.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These were important observations during the decade of African struggles to end colonialism. Sixty years later, the recurrent connections of science and genocide still demonstrate the dark underbelly of Western modernity in Africa, Europe, and the global world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71730/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Heike Becker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Significant links connect racial science in colonial southern Africa with the holocaust of the European Jews. Colonial racial science also contributed to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
Heike Becker, Professor of Anthropology, University of the Western Cape
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/65862
2016-10-06T15:00:52Z
2016-10-06T15:00:52Z
Stories from Holocaust prisoners forced to work in the gas chambers should be heard, not silenced
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140756/original/image-20161006-32708-1lpl4bz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/chrismaidlow/7855719694/in/photolist-skyxK-qvathr-cYbBM1-4bgVtj-bmK6Zo-5bAioy-7fSQWx-fbt16o-7fXnX9-3YtvCk-7fTvzv-8iE1Qv-5btQDT-5by2Xz-28f2Th-7fSTre-bzDZRP-5by3Jc-28aKkr-5bBY5J-bmK7rd-5uuc8x-5bC86w-5by7nN-5bxP1V-5bxEHK-5bC16S-5uyA2b-5by4or-9Sm2n7-J33Yw-4zLeJo-7fToCV-5n9jJP-82WHbV-5bChWq-8iHf1G-5bxZ36-5bxZPk-5by5JJ-8BNwsx-5bC2NE-5bxPTF-5bxJwg-5bCiKS-7MGdbJ-BwVwm1-CkfQ3V-wmrc5j-cJG74Y">chrismaidlow/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>On October 7 1944, a group of prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau took up tools and stones and attacked their SS guards. Some attempted to flee, others ran into a nearby building and set it on fire. Another section of their group stationed some half mile away killed a <em>kapo</em>, or prisoner-overseer, broke out of their building, cut the wire fence and escaped into the countryside. Before they had covered more than a few miles, they were tracked down and killed.</p>
<p>This revolt was the largest and most determined uprising that happened in Auschwitz-Birkenau. But it met with little success. It certainly did not save the lives of those who took part in it: about <a href="https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/exhibit/gQgsxfhh">450 members</a> of their work group were killed in the uprising or in retaliation for it. Nor does it seem to have had much effect on Birkenau’s killing capacity.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140862/original/image-20161007-8965-1o6mi6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140862/original/image-20161007-8965-1o6mi6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140862/original/image-20161007-8965-1o6mi6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140862/original/image-20161007-8965-1o6mi6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140862/original/image-20161007-8965-1o6mi6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140862/original/image-20161007-8965-1o6mi6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140862/original/image-20161007-8965-1o6mi6.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ruins of an Auschwitz-Birkenau crematorium.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nicholas Chare</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But this probably does not account for the relative obscurity of the revolt. Instead, the status of those who were involved in it often causes people to hesitate before discussing them. This work group, or “special squad”, is more often known by its German name, <a href="https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/exhibit/gQgsxfhh"><em>Sonderkommando</em></a>. They were slave labourers, almost entirely drawn from Jewish arrivals to Auschwitz, who were forced to process and dispose of the bodies of those murdered in the gas chambers. They were marked for death in their turn. Indeed, their revolt was a response to the imminent threat of being deported and murdered.</p>
<p>Cut off from the rest of the camp, the <em>Sonderkommando</em> became objects of queasy fascination even before its liberation. Myths of them as <a href="https://archive.org/stream/HermannLangbeinPeopleInAuschwitz/Hermann_Langbein_People_in_Auschwitz_djvu.txt">unfeeling drunkards</a> who had given up their humanity for a few more weeks of life circulated between prisoners, and were perpetuated afterwards.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140740/original/image-20161006-32737-epjs57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140740/original/image-20161006-32737-epjs57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/140740/original/image-20161006-32737-epjs57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140740/original/image-20161006-32737-epjs57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140740/original/image-20161006-32737-epjs57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=908&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140740/original/image-20161006-32737-epjs57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140740/original/image-20161006-32737-epjs57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/140740/original/image-20161006-32737-epjs57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1141&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Photograph taken secretly by Sonderkommando member and smuggled out of Auschwitz.</span>
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<p>In fact, their resistance to their “work” went far beyond the last minute scramble to save their lives on October 7. They made efforts to record what they saw in photographs smuggled outside the camp and writings buried in the grounds of the crematoria. The photographs are the only ones taken of the extermination process within Birkenau. The writings, sometimes called the “Scrolls of Auschwitz”, discovered between 1945 and 1980, show them to have been planning a revolt for months, but also to be agonisingly self-aware, and concerned with communicating their knowledge to the outside world. </p>
<p>Post-war discussions of the Holocaust have had little to say about these writings, however. While few historians have said much about the <em>Sonderkommando</em> (with the major exception of <a href="http://yalebooks.com/book/9780300211979/we-wept-without-tears">Gideon Greif</a>), literature and film have taken some interest, but in ways that serve to circulate the myths.</p>
<h2><em>Sonderkommando</em> stories</h2>
<p>In some of the earliest novels in North America to address the Holocaust in the 1950s and 1960s, characters who are former members of the <em>Sonderkommando</em> function as archetypal survivors: psychologically damaged but also morally suspect. Holocaust survivors in general were often greeted with unease, facing questions of what compromises they had made and at whose expense. The <em>Sonderkommando</em> clearly stood for this moral dilemma more than any other figure.</p>
<p>By the 1980s, a very different set of ways of presenting the <em>Sonderkommando</em> arose. Greater knowledge of the specific details of the Holocaust produced more of a sense that the Holocaust was a uniquely total attempt to exterminate a people, and a concomitant belief that it tested the capacity of art to represent it.</p>
<p>Claude Lanzmann placed one member of the Auschwitz <em>Sonderkommando</em>, Filip Müller, at the centre of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090015/">Shoah</a> (1985), his nine-and-a-half-hour documentary film about the “final solution”. For Lanzmann, Müller’s story could only be told through testing the boundaries of film making, stretching it out almost beyond the limits of an audience’s endurance. Müller’s speech rhythms were slowed to a glacial pace, the spliced-in silences resonated with the emptiness of the landscapes over which it served as a voice-over.</p>
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<p>And Primo Levi devoted part of his essay “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/1988/apr/15/fiction.society">The Grey Zone</a>” (1986) to the <em>Sonderkommando</em>. For him too, silence was the only possible response. He urged readers to dwell on rather than pass over the <em>Sonderkommando</em>’s situation, but argued that such meditation could only end in the impossibility of judging them.</p>
<h2>New voices</h2>
<p>In the 21st century, with the distance of time and a greater sense that it is possible to draw links between the Holocaust and other genocides and atrocities, the story of this group has become more readily tellable. The fiction film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0252480/">The Grey Zone</a> (2001) and an <a href="http://uk.ign.com/articles/2009/02/04/x-men-magneto-testament-5-review">X-men comic</a>, for example, both dared to present narratives of their lives within the crematoria. But they did so by working with rather than against generic conventions, casting them as anti-heroes. </p>
<p>As these examples show, this new readiness to tell stories about the <em>Sonderkommando</em> does not mean that their voices are listened to. In Martin Amis’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/07/the-zone-of-interest-review-martin-amis-impressive-holocaust">Zone of Interest</a>, a fictional <em>Sonderkommando</em> quotes one real member’s writings and calls them “disgusting”. The first part of Sebastian Faulks’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/sep/20/possible-life-sebastian-faulks-review">A Possible Life</a>, a tale of a British POW who is forced to work in a camp crematorium, is based on a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_J._Watt">fake memoir</a>.</p>
<p>Even the far more thoughtful and impressive <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3808342/">Son of Saul</a> (2015), for all its formal strictures of filming, tells a story with a well-defined plot: one protagonist on a quest to bury one child. And this premise was adapted from an account recorded by Miklós Nyiszli, who knew, but was not part of, the <em>Sonderkommando</em>. </p>
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<p>But there are stories from the <em>Sonderkommando</em> themselves – found in the “Scrolls of Auschwitz” – that show them mourning and memorialising relatives and friends, not as the traumatised, unfeeling automata of legend. </p>
<p>Zalman Gradowski dedicated the beginning of each section of his manuscript to the dead members of his family. Leyb Langfus powerfully recorded his own feelings of helplessness when he was unable to protect his son, devoting a chapter in his account of the extermination of his home town. Zalman Lewental, who recorded a history of the revolt, also took the time to list the names and even sketch out the personalities of those he saw as the main figures of the resistance. All of them devoted material and creative resources to conveying how they felt to future audiences, not simply to provide them with the necessary facts, but to allow their readers to gain insight into them as human beings.</p>
<p>So the increasing interest in the <em>Sonderkommando</em> should be taken as an opportunity to attend to <a href="http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=ChareMatters">the stories they themselves told</a>, rather than simply placing them within easier, wider narratives.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65862/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dominic Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Myths of the Sonderkommando as unfeeling drunkards do them an injustice and damage history.
Dominic Williams, Montague Burton Fellow in Jewish Studies, University of Leeds
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.