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14 pages, 269 KiB

Open AccessArticle

“To Show in a Frozen Moment”: Camp Models and Dioramas as Forms of Holocaust Representation and Memory

by Jamie Lee Wraight

Genealogy 2023, 7(2), 34; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7020034 - 10 May 2023

Viewed by 2580

Abstract

This article seeks to investigate the design and creation of several models and dioramas of Holocaust death camps as spatial and historical representations of Holocaust memory. It broadly discusses their use as pedagogical tools, forms of art, testimonial expression and memorialization. It also [...] Read more.

This article seeks to investigate the design and creation of several models and dioramas of Holocaust death camps as spatial and historical representations of Holocaust memory. It broadly discusses their use as pedagogical tools, forms of art, testimonial expression and memorialization. It also addresses questions concerning the intention of their designers and creators, as well as the ethical considerations of recreating these spaces. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Space in Holocaust Memory and Representation)

7 pages, 224 KiB

Open AccessArticle

More than an Afterimage: Music as Holocaust Spatial Representation and Legacy

by Kellie D. Brown

Genealogy 2023, 7(2), 24; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7020024 - 30 Mar 2023

Viewed by 2114

Abstract

Music occupies a unique and multi-faceted role in spatial representation of the Holocaust, both in terms of documenting its horrors and in cultivating legacy. This uniqueness derives from music’s dual temporal and physical essence as it is represented by written scores that serve [...] Read more.

Music occupies a unique and multi-faceted role in spatial representation of the Holocaust, both in terms of documenting its horrors and in cultivating legacy. This uniqueness derives from music’s dual temporal and physical essence as it is represented by written scores that serve as a blueprint, as sonic events that fill both time and space, and as musical instruments that operate as conduits for both. String instruments, in particular, have occupied a vital place in Jewish culture and, consequently, during the Holocaust. In the most tragic sense, some of these instruments even became actual containers of genocidal evidence as with violins played outside concentration camp crematoria that filled with the human ash that fell. This article will demonstrate that, when played, these instruments transform into living artifacts and musical witnesses, with voices that can speak for those who have been silenced, and that the resulting music that resonates from the printed page fills a sonic space that serves as a powerful medium for memory and representation. The phrase “bearing witness” often refers to representing the stories of people, places, and experiences through words, either written or spoken. But material culture also has a role to play in representation. While objects, art, and architecture certainly support language-based witness, they also provide their own unique lens and conduit for testimony. This seems especially true for music, which has the ability to exist as and cross between both words and objects. Nevertheless, music as material witness remains a complex and often understudied aspect of historical testimony. As a result, this paper will explore through an interdisciplinary approach the divergent nature of music as an aural form, as a creative art, and as a cultural artifact and will offer examples of how music can enhance, elucidate, and complicate Holocaust representation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Space in Holocaust Memory and Representation)

13 pages, 293 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Drancy–La Muette: Concentrationary Urbanism and Psychogeographical Memory in Alexandre Lacroix’s La Muette (2017)

by Diane Minami Otosaka

Genealogy 2023, 7(1), 23; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7010023 - 20 Mar 2023

Viewed by 2036

Abstract

That the Drancy transit and internment camp—the main camp from which Jews were deported from France—is currently inhabited, having reverted to its pre-war name ‘La Muette’ and initial function as a housing estate at the end of the 1940s, remains little-known. As a [...] Read more.

That the Drancy transit and internment camp—the main camp from which Jews were deported from France—is currently inhabited, having reverted to its pre-war name ‘La Muette’ and initial function as a housing estate at the end of the 1940s, remains little-known. As a result of this multi-layered history, the site is deeply ambivalent, being both haunted and inhabited. Through a theoretical framework informed by psychogeography, this article brings to light the concentrationary presence that is layered onto the space of everyday life at the site of Drancy–La Muette and investigates the possibility of resisting the resulting spatial politics of dehumanisation. Through a close reading of Alexandre Lacroix’s novel La Muette (2017) and its spatial poetics, this article argues that it is by elaborating new ways of seeing, whereby the interpenetration of past and present, the visible and the invisible, comes to the fore, that the traumatic space of Drancy–La Muette may open up. This, in turn, allows for the circulation of affective resonances between the built environment and the individual, which resist the concentrationary logic. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Space in Holocaust Memory and Representation)

24 pages, 6905 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Outlining the Victims of the Holocaust and the Argentinian Dictatorship: Jerzy Skąpski’s Każdy Dzień Oświęcimia and Rodolfo Aguerreberry, Julio Flores, and Guillermo Kexel’s “El Siluetazo”

by Jessica Paola Marino

Genealogy 2023, 7(1), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7010021 - 15 Mar 2023

Viewed by 2216

Abstract

In this article, I examine two case studies of spatial representation of atrocity and trauma: Jerzy Skąpski’s poster Każdy Dzień Oświęcimia (Every Day at Auschwitz) (1974), published in the October 1978 edition of The Unesco Courier, and the aesthetic/activist action [...] Read more.

In this article, I examine two case studies of spatial representation of atrocity and trauma: Jerzy Skąpski’s poster Każdy Dzień Oświęcimia (Every Day at Auschwitz) (1974), published in the October 1978 edition of The Unesco Courier, and the aesthetic/activist action known as “El Siluetazo” (1983), which was created by Rodolfo Aguerreberry, Julio Flores, and Guillermo Kexel, and carried out as a memory-activist intervention by the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and the Argentinian public on 21–22 September 1983. To examine the interconnections of Holocaust memory within these two case studies, I follow Michael Rothberg’s notion of multidirectional memory and Astrid Erll’s conceptualization of transcultural and travelling memory. In particular, I analyze how Skąpski’s use of silhouettes to spatially depict the victims of Auschwitz is adopted and transformed by the Argentinian artists and public to denounce the disappearance of 30,000 of their compatriots. I argue that in outlining the figures of the victims of the Holocaust and the Argentinian dictatorship, respectively, these creative works exemplify the transcultural use of silhouettes originating in Holocaust memory and the multidirectional influence, derived from their organic connection, of spatial visualizations of absent bodies as they commemorate and make present the victims of these traumatic histories. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Space in Holocaust Memory and Representation)

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17 pages, 3260 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Blurred Edges: Representation of Space in Transgenerational Memory of the Nazi Euthanasia Program

by Erika Silvestri

Genealogy 2023, 7(1), 19; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7010019 - 10 Mar 2023

Viewed by 1938

Abstract

Maria Fenski was born on 14 August 1905, in Papenburg. At the age of seventeen, she was diagnosed with “dementia” and hospitalized at the Provinzial-Heil-und Pflegeanstalt Osnabrück, where she remained until 16 January 1923. After a marriage, three children, some happy family years, [...] Read more.

Maria Fenski was born on 14 August 1905, in Papenburg. At the age of seventeen, she was diagnosed with “dementia” and hospitalized at the Provinzial-Heil-und Pflegeanstalt Osnabrück, where she remained until 16 January 1923. After a marriage, three children, some happy family years, and various commitments to different clinics, she was killed in Neuruppin State Institution in Brandenburg in 1942, as one of the people murdered in the Nazi Euthanasia Program. Her granddaughter, Hannah, produced a series of sixteen paintings dedicated to her grandmother’s story. There are almost no people in Hannah’s artwork, but empty, lonely, symbolic spaces able to create a bond between past and present. The lack of human figures, the use of cold colors and the blurred edges contribute to creating a suspended atmosphere that seems to be full of painful silences and negations. Hannah transferred onto the canvas an echo of the feelings the victims could have felt, living in conditions they could not understand, separated from the world before they were each made to face a solitary death, far from any contact with their families. Analyzing her work, I reflect on the importance of the concept of “Space” in this specific transgenerational transmission of “Aktion T4” family memory. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Space in Holocaust Memory and Representation)

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16 pages, 312 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Real and Imagined Places in the Diary of Gabriella Trebits

by Heléna Huhák and András Szécsényi

Genealogy 2023, 7(1), 16; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7010016 - 27 Feb 2023

Viewed by 1859

Abstract

Gabriella Trebits was a prisoner of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp between November 1944 and April 1945. The spaces present in her diary include both the places of the camp and her typhoid hallucinations. Gabriella described venues through their sensuous dimensions. Since the sensory [...] Read more.

Gabriella Trebits was a prisoner of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp between November 1944 and April 1945. The spaces present in her diary include both the places of the camp and her typhoid hallucinations. Gabriella described venues through their sensuous dimensions. Since the sensory experiences of everyday life mingled with her visions, her diary became a “textual journey” between real and imagined places. Her narratives helped her to express the difficulties caused by her physical environment and the confusion caused by her hallucinations. As a result, the references to changes in her sensory impressions created a discursive space for the diarist to express her feelings. Since her narrative depicts a suffering and painful condition, we use Joanna Bourke’s concept of pain talk in our analysis. Moreover, the diary demonstrates that it was possible for typhoid patients to connect with their environment despite their isolated situation. Even on the periphery of the camp space, social life persisted. This exploration will not only uncover the narrative strategy of one diarist but also contribute to a deeper understanding of the ways in which tens of thousands died of starvation and diseases―without mass executions or gas chambers―in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during the spring of 1945. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Space in Holocaust Memory and Representation)

13 pages, 786 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Stereometry of Non-Memory: Mapping a Lost Past in W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz

by Michael Holden

Genealogy 2023, 7(1), 15; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7010015 - 27 Feb 2023

Viewed by 1946

Abstract

This article presents a consideration of W.G. Sebald’s 2001 work Austerlitz—his final novel—according to a variety of spatial and cartographic concepts, including ‘fluid cartography,’ and the notion of countermapping. Particularly, the article will explore the eponymous protagonist’s sense that ‘time [does] not [...] Read more.

This article presents a consideration of W.G. Sebald’s 2001 work Austerlitz—his final novel—according to a variety of spatial and cartographic concepts, including ‘fluid cartography,’ and the notion of countermapping. Particularly, the article will explore the eponymous protagonist’s sense that ‘time [does] not exist at all, only various spaces interlocking according to the rules of a higher form of stereometry,’ and will demonstrate how this subjective experience of time is a consequence of the absence of memory experienced by the protagonist in relation to his origins as a Kindertransport survivor of the Holocaust. Similarly, the article will explore how spaces—particularly buildings—and material artefacts come to act as an (insufficient) surrogate for memory within the text. All of the above will be framed according to a reading of the fundamental spatiality of Sebald’s works, and particularly their map-like quality. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Space in Holocaust Memory and Representation)

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13 pages, 314 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A City in Dérive: Bucharest in Mihail Sebastian’s Journal 1935–1944: The Fascist Years

by Carmen Levick

Genealogy 2023, 7(1), 14; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7010014 - 23 Feb 2023

Viewed by 1952

Abstract

Mihail Sebastian’s Journal 1935–1944 accurately reflects the changing historical realities in Romania in general and in the capital city of Bucharest in particular, before and during the Second World War. As a Jewish Romanian writer, Sebastian records a landscape of ideological change that [...] Read more.

Mihail Sebastian’s Journal 1935–1944 accurately reflects the changing historical realities in Romania in general and in the capital city of Bucharest in particular, before and during the Second World War. As a Jewish Romanian writer, Sebastian records a landscape of ideological change that has a clear impact on him as a lawyer, an intellectual and a member of the city’s literary high society. This article proposes a new reading and analysis of Sebastian’s work, by focusing on the close relationship between the writer and the city as a vibrant, organic space. My work introduces a new critical vocabulary to the literary analysis of Sebastian’s Journal, through the use of terminology commonly employed by performance studies. The Situationist practices of walking and drifting, further conceptualised by performance studies scholar Carl Lavery, will be utilised as methods of exploring the visual and emotional richness of Sebastian’s work. The intimate relationship between the writer and the city will be constantly framed by the historical and political realities of the time, ensuring a balanced discussion of both literary achievement and historical witnessing. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Space in Holocaust Memory and Representation)

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Jump to: Research

11 pages, 213 KiB

Open AccessEssay

The Kindertransport Everyday: The Complexities of Domestic Space for Child Refugees

by Hannah Louise Coombs

Genealogy 2023, 7(2), 25; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7020025 - 11 Apr 2023

Viewed by 1727

Abstract

Analysis of refugee experiences often stands in the context of broad and visible experiences, despite the accounts of child refugees consistently recalling their experiences through domestic, everyday experience. Over 80 years since the Kindertransport, the autobiographical literature bears witness to the lived realities [...] Read more.

Analysis of refugee experiences often stands in the context of broad and visible experiences, despite the accounts of child refugees consistently recalling their experiences through domestic, everyday experience. Over 80 years since the Kindertransport, the autobiographical literature bears witness to the lived realities of Kindertransport refugees, standing as memorials to their alternative experiences of the Holocaust. This paper addresses accounts shared through autobiographical texts, arguing that the Kinder constantly negotiated their identity performance in response to new ‘home’ spaces, creating new relationships with space in the homes of others. This article discusses spatial theory and identity performance to analyse the ways in which domestic spaces were a defining factor in the Kinder’s experiences and identity development, and likewise, how the Kinder’s experiences shaped their perceptions of domestic space. Everyday experiences exert affective impacts through repetitive encounters, and the Kindertransport saw children immersed in new everyday norms. Entering new, shared spaces during childhood, the Kinder experienced long-lasting impacts on identity development as they became distanced from familiar norms and suddenly immersed in new alternatives. Kinder found themselves with limited privacy in seemingly private homes as they entered into already-inhabited domestic environments. Blurred boundaries between public and private within these spaces contributed to an unusual constancy of performance as the Kinder were constantly before an audience. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Space in Holocaust Memory and Representation)

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