Popescu, Diana I. y Schult, Tanja (The Holocaust and Its Contexts) Revisiting Holocaust Representation in The Post-Witness Era-Palgrave Macmillan UK (2015) PDF

Revisiting Holocaust Representation in the
Post-Witness Era
The Holocaust and its Contexts
Series Editors: Olaf Jensen, University of Leicester, UK and Claus-Christian W. Szejnmann,
Loughborough University, UK.
Series Editorial Board: Wolfgang Benz, Robert G. Moeller and Mirjam Wenzel
More than sixty years on, the Holocaust remains a subject of intense debate with ever-widening
ramifications. This series aims to demonstrate the continuing relevance of the Holocaust and
related issues in contemporary society, politics and culture; studying the Holocaust and its history
broadens our understanding not only of the events themselves but also of their present-day sig-
nificance. The series acknowledges and responds to the continuing gaps in our knowledge about
the events that constituted the Holocaust, the various forms in which the Holocaust has been
remembered, interpreted and discussed, and the increasing importance of the Holocaust today to
many individuals and communities.
Titles include:
Nicholas Chare and Dominic Williams (editors)
REPRESENTING AUSCHWITZ
At the Margins of Testimony
Antero Holmila
REPORTING THE HOLOCAUST IN THE BRITISH, SWEDISH AND FINNISH PRESS, 1945–50
Olaf Jensen and Claus-Christian W. Szejnmann (editors)
ORDINARY PEOPLE AS MASS MURDERERS
Perpetrators in Comparative Perspectives
Karolin Machtans and Martin A. Ruehl (editors)
HITLER – FILMS FROM GERMANY
History, Cinema and Politics since 1945
Simo Muir and Hana Worthen (editors)
FINLAND’S HOLOCAUST
Silences of History
Henning Pieper
FEGELEIN’S HORSEMEN AND GENOCIDAL WARFARE
The SS Cavalry Brigade in the Soviet Union
Diana I. Popescu and Tanja Schult (editors)
REVISITING HOLOCAUST REPRESENTATION IN THE POST-WITNESS ERA
Tanja Schult
A HERO’S MANY FACES
Raoul Wallenberg in Contemporary Monuments
Caroline Sharples and Olaf Jensen (editors)
BRITAIN AND THE HOLOCAUST
Chris Szejnmann and Maiken Umbach (editors)
HEIMAT, REGION, AND EMPIRE
Spatial Identities under National Socialism
The Holocaust and Its Contexts Series

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Revisiting Holocaust
Representation in the
Post-Witness Era
Diana I. Popescu
Birkbeck, University of London, UK
and
Tanja Schult
Stockholm University, Sweden
Editorial matter and selection © Diana I. Popescu and Tanja Schult 2015
Remaining chapters © Respective authors 2015
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Contents
List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgements ix
Notes on Contributors x
1 Introduction: Memory and Imagination in the

Post-Witness Era 1
Diana I. Popescu
Part I Revisiting Artistic Practices of Holocaust Commemoration

2 List Mania in Holocaust Commemoration 11
Ernst van Alphen
3 Acts of Remembering in the Work of Esther Shalev-Gerz –
From Embodied to Mediated Memory 28
Jacob Lund
4 Countermonuments as Spaces for Deep Memory 44
James E. Young
5 Sites that Matter: Current Developments of Urban
Holocaust Commemoration in Berlin and Munich 53
Imke Girßmann
6 Contemporary Holocaust Memorials in Berlin: On the
Borders of the Sacred and the Profane 73
Tracy Jean Rosenberg
Part II Sites of Struggle with Haunting Pasts

7 Holocaust Tourism: The Strange yet Familiar/the Familiar
yet Strange 93
Tim Cole
8 To Go or Not to Go? Reflections on the Iconic Status of
Auschwitz, its Increasing Distance and Prevailing Urgency 107
Tanja Schult
9 Holocaust Zombies: Mourning and Memory in Polish
Contemporary Culture 132
Jan Borowicz
10 ‘A Picnic Underpinned with Unease’: Spring in Warsaw
and New Genre Polish-Jewish Memory Work 149
Erica Lehrer and Magdalena Waligórska
v
vi Contents
11 The Limits of Forgiveness and Postmodern Art 163

Ceri Eldin
Part III Rethinking Representation in Literature and
Popular Culture
12 Auschwitz, Adorno and the Ambivalence of Representation:
The Holocaust as a Point of Reference in Contemporary
Literature 183
Hampus Östh Gustafsson
13 Questions of Re(Presentation) in Uwe Boll’s Auschwitz (2011) 198
Elizabeth M. Ward
14 ‘Ordinary Women’ as Perpetrators in European
Holocaust Films 214
Ingrid Lewis
15 Real Imagination? Holocaust Comics in Europe 231
Christine Gundermann
Part IV Memory Politics in Post-2000 (Trans)National Contexts

16 Austria’s Post-Holocaust Jewish Community: A Subaltern
Counterpublic between the Ethics and Morality of Memory 253
Christian Karner
17 Cosmopolitan Memory in a National Context: The Case of
the ‘Living History Forum’ 272
Kristin Wagrell
18 Holocaust Remembrance as ‘Civil Religion’: The Case of
the Stockholm Declaration (2000) 288
Larissa Allwork
Index 305
List of Illustrations
3.1 Esther Shalev-Gerz, Between Listening and Telling: Last

Witnesses, Auschwitz 1945–2005, 2005, installation view,
Hôtel de Ville, Paris, 2005. Photo by P. Simon.
© Esther Shalev-Gerz 31
3.2 Esther Shalev-Gerz, Between Listening and Telling:
Last Witnesses, Auschwitz 1945–2005, 2005, installation view,
Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2010. Photo by Arno Gisinger.
3.3 Esther Shalev-Gerz, MenschenDinge/The Human Aspect of
Objects, 2006, installation view, Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2010.
Photo by Arno Gisinger. © Esther Shalev-Gerz 38
3.4 Esther Shalev-Gerz, MenschenDinge/The Human Aspect of
Objects, 2006, Pewter Broach. Photo by Esther Shalev-Gerz.
5.1 Dani Karavan’s Memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe Murdered
under the National Socialist regime, Berlin. Detail. © Tanja Schult 58
5.2 Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset’s Memorial to the
Homosexuals Persecuted under the National Socialist Regime,
Berlin. © Tanja Schult 61
5.3 Screenshot of Michaela Melián’s Memory Loops.
© Michaela Melián 65
6.1 Interior of the Neue Wache with Käthe Kollwitz’s sculpture.
© Tracy Jean Rosenberg 81
6.2 Gunter Demnig’s Stolpersteine in Berlin’s Prenzlauer
Berg district. © Tracy Jean Rosenberg 82
6.3 Peter Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
© Tanja Schult 85
8.1 Patrick Nilsson, Sensmoral or Death, 2001. © Patrick Nilsson 108
8.2 Patrick Nilsson, Sensmoral or Death, 2001. © Patrick Nilsson 109
8.3 Aleksandra Kucharska, Untitled, from the series Auschwitz
through a train window, 2008. © Aleksandra Kucharska 110
vii
viii List of Illustrations
8.5 Aleksandra Kucharska, Untitled from the series Auschwitz

8.6 Aleksandra Kucharska, Untitled from the series Auschwitz
8.7 Mikołaj Grynberg, Auschwitz – what am I doing here? 2009.
© Mikołaj Grynberg 116
13.1 The subtle repositioning of the camera in the shooting
sequence exposes the narrative models used and reused
in the depiction of Holocaust crimes. Film stills from
Auschwitz (Boll, 2010). © Uwe Boll 204
15.1 Auschwitz, cover by Pascal Croci, 2005. © Ehapa
Comic Collection 236
15.2 Cover of Roman Kroke’s The Spider and its Web, 2012.
© Roman Kroke, Mediel 244
Acknowledgements
The essays gathered in this collection have their origin in the international
conference Holocaust Memory Revisited which the editors organized in
Uppsala in March 2013. The conference was a cooperative venture between
the Hugo Valentin Centre, Uppsala University, and the Department of
History at Stockholm University and received financial support from the
Riksbankens Jubileumsfond and the German Embassy in Stockholm. We
want to express our warmest gratitude to all contributors and conference
participants.
Our special gratitude goes to the contributors, who have relentlessly and
patiently refined their chapters. We are also very thankful to all artists who
have allowed the use of their works within this publication. Lastly, for the
editors this has been an immensely thought-provoking and inspiring col-
laboration leading to a new research project on Holocaust memory.
ix
Notes on Contributors
Larissa Allwork is a Lecturer at the University of Northampton School of

the Arts. She completed her PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London
in 2011. Her monograph Holocaust Remembrance between the National and the
Transnational is forthcoming (Bloomsbury Academic). She also participates
in the Marie Curie Initial Training Network ‘Diasporic Constructions of
Home and Belonging’ and the University of Northampton Working Group
for Interdisciplinary Research in Trauma, Narrative and Performance.
Jan Borowicz is a PhD student at the Institute of Polish Culture, Section

of Film and Visual Culture, University of Warsaw, Poland. He graduated in
psychology and cultural studies. His main areas of research and publication
centre on psychoanalysis, Holocaust studies and anthropology of the body.
He currently works on a book about body politics in film propaganda of the
Third Reich, whereas in his dissertation he aims to examine the utility of the
category of perversion in the analysis of representations of the Holocaust.
He works also as an educator of Jewish culture and as a psychologist in a
public mental institution in Warsaw.
Tim Cole is Professor of Social History at the University of Bristol and

the author of Images of the Holocaust/Selling the Holocaust (1999), Holocaust
City (2003) and Traces of the Holocaust (2011) and a co-editor of Militarized
Landscapes (2010) and Geographies of the Holocaust (2014). He is currently
completing a book on Holocaust landscapes.
Ceri Eldin was a postgraduate student of Holocaust and Genocide Studies

at the Hugo Valentin Centre, Uppsala University between September 2012
and May 2014. Prior to this she studied Cultural Studies, History of Art
and English Literature at the University of Leeds and the University of
Copenhagen and has been working in the arts sector since 2010.
Imke Giramann is a PhD candidate at the Institut für Kunst und visuelle
Kultur, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg. Her dissertation project,
which deals with the production of commemoration and representa-
tion in the centre of Berlin, is funded by the Evangelisches Studienwerk
Villigst. Having studied Cultural studies, Art History and Polish Studies in
Bremen and Gdansk, Imke Girßmann received her Master’s degree from the
University of Bremen in 2010. Her research interests encompass commemo-
rative culture, discourse analysis and gender/queer studies.
Christine Gundermann studied history, ethics and philosophy in Halle/

Saale and Rotterdam from 1998 to 2005. From 2005 to 2013 she worked at
x
Notes on Contributors xi
the Freie Universität Berlin as a teaching and research assistant at the chair
of Professor Paul Nolte. In 2013 she finished her PhD about the relevance of
memories of World War II in Dutch-German encounters from 1945 to 2000.
Since 2014 she teaches public history at the University of Cologne.
Hampus Östh Gustafsson completed an MA in Intellectual History, History

and Literature at Uppsala University and University of Manchester. In his
Master’s thesis he analyzed how the social contract of the humanities was
renegotiated in Sweden in the context of World War II. Other interests
include the history of historical thinking. His articles have appeared in
Personhistorisk tidskrift and Militärhistorisk tidskrift.
Christian Karner is Associate Professor in the School of Sociology and Social

Policy at the University of Nottingham. He has researched and published
widely within urban sociology and on the negotiations of ethnic, religious,
national and local identities across various empirical contexts, particularly
in Austria, and against the wider backdrop of contemporary globaliza-
tion. His books include Negotiating National Identities (2011), Ethnicity and
Everyday Life (2007), Writing History, Constructing Religion (co-edited with
James Crossley, 2005), and he is co-editor of The Use and Abuse of Memory:
Interpreting World War II in Contemporary European Politics (2013). He has pre-
viously held a Leverhulme Special Research Fellowship and he is currently
co-investigator, with David Parker, on a Heritage Lottery funded project on
local and life histories in a deprived part of inner-city Birmingham.
Erica Lehrer is Associate Professor in the Departments of History and

Sociology/Anthropology and the director of the Centre for Ethnographic
Research and Exhibition in the Aftermath of Violence (CEREV) at the
Concordia University in Montreal. She is the author of Jewish Poland
Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places (2013).
Ingrid Lewis is a PhD candidate at the School of Communications, Dublin

City University, Ireland. Her current research focuses on the representation
of women (both as victims and perpetrators) in European Holocaust films.
She was one of the twelve researchers selected from around the world to take
part in the first EHRI (European Holocaust Research Infrastructure) summer
school in Holocaust Studies which took place in July 2013 at the Shoah
Memorial – Museum, Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation,
Paris, France. In 2010 she was the coordinator of the Focus on Romanian
Cinema at the 26th edition of the Festival International du Film d’Amour
held in Mons, Belgium.
Jacob Lund is Associate Professor of Aesthetics and Culture and Director of

the Research Programme in Mediality, Materiality, and Aesthetic Meaning
at Aarhus University, Denmark. He is Editor-in-Chief of The Nordic Journal of
Aesthetics, and his authored books include Den subjektive rest: Udsigelse og (de)
xii Notes on Contributors
subjektivering i kunst og teori (The subjective Remnant: Enunciation and (De)

subjectification in Art and Theory, 2008), and Erindringens æstetik – essays
(The Aesthetics of Memory, 2011).
Diana I. Popescu is a cultural historian in Holocaust and Jewish studies.

She has published on defamiliarizing strategies of Holocaust representa-
tion in the visual arts, audience responses to representations of Nazism
in art, and Jewish art museums’ engagement with the topic of Holocaust
memory. Articles have appeared in Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture
and History, PaRdes Journal of the Association of Jewish Studies, Jewish Culture
and History and Images: A Journal of Jewish Art and Visual Culture. She was an
AHRC-sponsored research student at the University of Southampton where
she completed her PhD in 2013. Since 2015 she has worked as a Research
Fellow on a collaborative research project with Tanja Schult, sponsored by
the Swedish Research Council. This project will investigate performative
practices of Holocaust commemoration and their impact upon audiences.
Tracy Jean Rosenberg is a doctoral student in Sociology at Goethe University

in Frankfurt and Project Coordinator for the International Holocaust
Remembrance Alliance. She is writing her dissertation on Soviet Jewish
immigration to West Berlin and West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s. She
has a BA from Sarah Lawrence College in New York, where she concentrated
in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and an MEd in International Education
Policy and Management from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.
Tanja Schult is a researcher and senior lecturer at Stockholm University.

She completed her PhD in 2007 at Humboldt University, Berlin. She is the
author of A Hero’s Many Faces: Raoul Wallenberg in Contemporary Monuments
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and the editor (together with Eva Kingsepp) of
Hitler für alle: Populärkulturella perspektiv på Nazityskland, andra världskriget
och Förintelsen (2012). Her research project ‘The Holocaust in Swedish Art’
(2009–12) was funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. Together with Diana
Popescu, she has received a research grant from the Swedish Research
Council to commence in 2015, situated at the Department of Culture and
Aesthetics at Stockholm University. The project has the title ‘Making the
Past Present: Public Perceptions of Performative Holocaust Commemoration
since the year 2000’. She also works as an art consultant and curator.
Ernst van Alphen is Professor of Literary Studies at Leiden University.

Books authored by van Alphen include Caught by History: Holocaust Effects in
Contemporary Art, Literature, and Theory (1997), Art in Mind: How Contemporary
Images Shape Thought (2005), and Staging the Archive: Art and Photography in
Times of New Media (2014).
Kristin Wagrell recently finished her Master’s thesis in History, titled History
at the Limit, Swedish Holocaust Historiography, 1995–2012. In 2012, she
completed an MSc in Comparative Politics (conflict studies) at the London
Notes on Contributors xiii
School of Economics and Political Science. Her current focus is on com-

memorative and educational institutions and the manner in which these
shape collective memory.
Magdalena Waligórska is a cultural historian and sociologist, working in
the field of Jewish heritage revival in Poland and Germany. She is currently
Humboldt Fellow at the German Department of the Free University, Berlin.
She is the author of Klezmer’s Afterlife: An Ethnography of the Jewish Music
Revival in Poland and Germany (2013).
Elizabeth M. Ward is a PhD student at the University of Leeds. Having read
Modern and Medieval Languages before completing an MPhil in Screen
Media and Cultures at the University of Cambridge, her research interests
include the Holocaust on Film and German cinema during the Cold War.
Her PhD examines depictions of Jewish persecution during the Third Reich
in East German cinema and considers how films dealing with racial perse-
cution were presented within a state which framed the past as a political
conflict in which communists were both the victims and victors of National
Socialism. She has recently coordinated a project to develop German skills
among secondary school pupils through film which was funded by the
British Arts and Humanities Research Council.
James E. Young is Distinguished University Professor and Director of the
Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at the University
of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the author of At Memory’s Edge (2000) and
The Texture of Memory (1993), among other works, and was appointed by the
Berlin Senate to the Findungskommission that chose a design for Germany’s
national Holocaust memorial, unveiled and dedicated in Berlin in May
2005. In 2003, he was appointed to the jury for the World Trade Center
Memorial design competition, which in 2004 selected Michael Arad and
Peter Walker’s design, Reflecting Absence, dedicated on 11 September 2011.
1
Introduction: Memory and
Imagination in the Post-Witness Era
Diana I. Popescu
Memory and imagination are the unusual companions of creative thought,

the domain of creativity being located in the in-between spaces of the
two faculties. Structurally very similar, memory and imagination can eas-
ily slip into one another, since displacements of the self occur both when
one remembers and imagines (Sokolowski, 2000: 71). While imagination
relies on memory to reconfigure the present in ways that ensures a certain
commitment to remembering the past, memory has the potential to invest
‘imagination with social responsibility observable in calls to “never forget”
or indictments of “never again”’ (Keightley and Pickering, 2012b: 123).1
Despite these phenomenological insights, in the context of Holocaust
Studies the relationship between memory and imagination continues to
elicit considerable unease. The notion that imagination is an assault on both
the history and the memory of the Holocaust is prominent in the scholarly
discourse of the late 1990s and the early 2000s.2 Memory has been viewed
as imagination’s opposite, since remembering involves reconstructing the
past as it was, unspoilt by the distortive capacities of imagination. Those
opposing the imaginative discourse invoke the dangers of giving warrant to
Holocaust denial, while others conjure Theodor W. Adorno’s statement as
a prohibition forbidding poetic licence. Imagination was perceived as inca-
pable of dealing with the rupture that was caused by the Holocaust since,
argued Hannah Arendt, ‘the horror of the concentration and extermination
camps can never be fully embraced by the imagination for the very reason
that it stands outside of life and death’ (Arendt, 1966: 444). In a similar
vein, Saul Friedländer invoked ‘the total dissonance between the apocalypse
that was and the normality that is makes adequate representation elusive,
because the human imagination stumbles when faced with the fundamental
contradiction of apocalypse within normality’ (Friedländer, 1993: 51).
In the arising discursive arena of the post-witness era, this volume endeavours
to shift focus from discussions on the ethics of representation and the limits
ensuing from it, to the relevance of imagination in representing the Holocaust.
Imagination, it will be argued, can play a significant role for the post-memory
1
2 Diana I. Popescu
generations as it offers the possibility to work against closure and silence.

Within an imaginative discourse, silence can become an articulate silence
(Tanja Schult) that lends a sense of urgency to remembering. The transfer of
memory and the domain of post-ness itself are increasingly dependent on a
capacity to imagine.
History needs to be translated through imagination, so that its meaningful-
ness can be passed on to future generations and become part of a vivid
memory. Yann Martel, author of Beatrice and Virgil, praises art’s potential
to convey the urgency of active memory, arguing that: ‘If history does not
become story it dies to everyone except the historian. Art is the suitcase of
history, carrying the essentials. Art is the life buoy of history. Art is seed, art
is memory, art is vaccine’ (Martel, 2010: 16). The imaginative investigations
of the Holocaust discussed in this volume confirm a moral commitment –
not only valid for survivor artists and direct descendants, but also for distant
inheritors of memory – to repair what was broken despite the possibility of
failing that this effort entails. They remind of the fact that imagination can
serve as a humble tool that opposes oblivion. Hence, acts of imagining the
Holocaust in popular or highbrow culture need not be rejected, but sub-
jected to critical interrogation not for the sake of distinguishing between
good and bad, correct and incorrect Holocaust representation, but for reach-
ing a better understanding of how mediation works in lending the historical
past a sense of urgency that speaks to and about the present. While not all
representations are effective in conveying an anti-redemptive stance, each
one of them deserves attention, if only for the new questions that they may
unwittingly raise. In the absence of full evidence, one can only assume that
an educated public is able to distinguish between history and its cultural
representation, and recognize the latter as a form of translation that does
not entirely include or exclude history.
In addition to historical narrative, imagination becomes a vital way to
connect with the past that is likely to provide new possibilities to carry out
the work of memory. Georges Didi-Huberman’s plea for the role of imagina-
tion gives further meaning and depth to this volume’s essays. To ‘imagine
for ourselves … the hell of Auschwitz’, is, he argues, ‘a response that we must
offer, as a debt to the words and images that certain prisoners snatched, for
us, from the harrowing Real of their experience’ (Didi-Huberman, 2008: 3).
Through imagination one establishes an emotional relationship with
what one encounters. Didi-Huberman reminds that even the archival image,
a metonym for any historical evidence of the Holocaust or any other his-
toric event, ‘is merely an object … an indecipherable and insignificant
photographic printing so long as I have not established the relation – the
imaginative and speculative relation – between what I see here and what
I know from elsewhere’ (Didi-Huberman, 2008: 112). These imaginative
and speculative relations are also the domain of post-memory and of medi-
ated memory. It is through imaginative practices that the ‘deep memory’
Memory and Imagination in the Post-witness Era 3
articulated by the survivors’ generation can be glimpsed once again by

post-war generations (Delbo, 1995).
Holocaust Representation in the Post-Witness Era acknowledges imagination
as a tool by means of which younger generations can translate the past in a
way that serves their memory work. The contributors of this anthology ask
why are artistic imaginative representations of the Holocaust important now –
when we are drawing near a crucial transfer of the Holocaust legacy from the
realm of ‘living memory’ contained by the survivors and their families to
a culturally and politically mediated memory work realized by post-witness
generations. Consequently, this transfer begs the question of what are the
effects of the looming disconnect with the past and what it may bring to
bear? How do artistic representations tackle this rupture and work around
this sense of ‘afterwardness’?
The guardianship of Holocaust memory does not rest only in the hands
of the descendants of the survivors of World War II. Within the creative
domain many artists with no biographical ties to the Holocaust engage this
topic using a variety of media. In the growing distance and soon de facto the
absence of ‘a sense of living connection’ (Hoffman, 2004: xv), a turn to the
imaginative discourse is not only desirable but essential in lending a sense
of urgency and relevance to why the genocide of the European Jews should
be kept alive in contemporary public consciousness.
Many of this volume’s essays explore what Andreas Huyssen defined as the
‘constitutive gap between reality and its representation in language [and]
image … which cannot be closed by any orthodoxy of correct representa-
tion’ (Huyssen, 2003: 19). The contributors present examples of artworks,
memorial art, film, comics and literature which point to a diversification
of approaches and re-presentations of the Holocaust, where memory and
imagination are more intimately intertwined. They offer snapshots of the
latest artistic engagements with Holocaust memory, in particular from
Central and Northern Europe. These examinations make apparent the genu-
ine struggle among those born after the Holocaust, whether Polish, German,
Austrian or Swedish, to make the past relevant in the present, well aware
that one cannot fully own or comprehend the past.
The discussed cultural representations emerge after important developments
of the 1990s, such as the boom of filmic and pop-cultural productions deal-
ing with the Holocaust, the memorial and representational debates, the
establishment of institutional and political Holocaust commemoration,
and the turn to perpetrator studies. They engage critically with the impact
these representational legacies have upon post-2000s artistic engagements.
Questions of afterwardness are raised. How can one remember after the
witnesses have gone? What forms do cinematic representations take after
Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List? What does German memorial culture look
like after Peter Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe has been
integrated within the German politics of national self-representation? What
4 Diana I. Popescu
happened with European comic books after Art Spiegelman’s Maus? What
shape does Holocaust remembrance take after Austria’s public recognition of
historical guilt, or after the intense public debates caused by Jan T. Gross’s
Neighbors in Poland? What are the repercussions of the 2000 Stockholm
declaration in Sweden on the European politics of memory?
The essays are organized in four parts whose thematic concerns overlap
and merge rather than remain separate. Familiar thematic engagements with
the return of the repressed and the presence of the uncanny in recent com-
memorative practices and devices, questions of transfer of memory from
living to mediated memory, the relations of memory sites with identity
politics, and the preoccupation with Auschwitz as a site and a symbol are
revisited against new and hardly discussed artworks. Taken as a whole, the
essays offer a diverse range of insights upon the relevance of a creative and
reflective mediation of the Holocaust within the evolving temporal and
ethical framework in the post-witness era.
Part I reconsiders the aesthetics and politics of practices of commemoration.
The rise of the device of listing, frequently employed in Holocaust memorial-
ization, needs critical attention especially because listing is already contami-
nated by Nazi history. Its unreflective adoption by commemorative culture
cannot go unnoticed or unchallenged, argues Ernst van Alphen. The conti-
nued need for reflective art and its potential to make visible that which is
concealed emerges in Jacob Lund’s and James E. Young’s engagements with
Esther Shalev-Gerz’s installations Between Listening and Telling: Last Witnesses,
Auschwitz 1945–2005 (2005) and The Human Aspect of Objects (2006). Both
essays are concerned with how deep memory is communicated through
gestures and silences from the prism of the ‘countermonument’ (Young),
and the lens of philosophical reflections upon the meaning of silence (Lund).
In the post-witness era, memory needs imagination’s resourcefulness to
decipher, interpret and translate the silences of survivors and endow them
with meaning.
Observing the effect memorial art has upon the public can tell us more
about the next directions public commemoration may take to meet the
audiences’ expectations, imaginations and memories. Tracy Jean Rosenberg’s
reading of Berlin’s memorials through the notion of the sacred and the
profane reveals visitors’ expectations and behaviours at memory sites and
makes visible how recent memorial design, through its blurring of separation
between sacred and profane, challenges us to rethink our engagement with
these sites. The current focus on Berlin as the centre of Germany’s national
remembrance may also shift. Hence, Imke Girßmann explores the notion of
decentralized memory work by comparing Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock’s
well-known project Places of Remembrance in Berlin-Schöneberg (1993) with
Michaela Melián’s audio project Memory Loops (2010) in Munich.
Part II asks what happens when younger generations of Poles, Jews or
Swedes encounter the sites of mass murder. What perspectives do physical
proximity to Auschwitz make possible? What is gained or lost through tem-

poral lapse? Why is it (ir)relevant to gain distance? How can one reconcile
the urgency for remembrance and the moral responsibilities of preserving
the legacies of the Holocaust with the tendency to take a step backward
from this past? Conceptual, emotional and intellectual struggles with places
where horrific crimes were committed are made apparent in Tanja Schult’s
and Jan Borowicz’s examination of Polish and Swedish contemporary art
and literature, Ceri Eldin’s analysis of Swedish video art, and Erica Lehrer’s
and Magdalena Waligórska’s reading of Spring in Warsaw, an Israeli public
participatory performance in the Polish capital. Questions of engagement
with the site of Auschwitz re-emerge in Tim Cole’s interrogation of the
changes and continuities in tourist practices at Auschwitz from their war-
time origins to the present. These Polish landscapes become witnesses them-
selves to new forms of memorial work and are perpetually renewed through
the diverse perceptions and experiences of contemporary visitors.
Part III deals with aspects of style, genre and narrative structure under-
pinning filmic and literary restagings of the Holocaust. What happens
when, as Huyssen feared, the ‘imagined past is sucked into the timeless pre-
sent of the all-pervasive virtual space of consumer culture?’ Is popular media
fostering ‘uncreative forgetting [and] the bliss of amnesia?’ (Huyssen, 2003:
10). How does the past continue to haunt contemporary literary imagina-
tion? These unresolved questions surface in Hampus Östh Gustafsson’s
comparison of Norwegian-American Siri Hustvedt’s What I Loved (2003)
and Swedish Bodil Malmsten’s The Last Book from Finistère (2008). Elizabeth
M. Ward’s analysis of German filmmaker Uwe Boll’s Auschwitz (2011) grapples
with historical authenticity and cinematic manipulation. How can contempo-
rary filmmakers expose the very mechanisms of image formation? Issues of
filmic re-presentations and how they involve the viewers are also central in
Ingrid Lewis’s investigation of women perpetrators in recent European films.
The interplay between fact and fiction is tackled by Christine Gundermann
through a comprehensive survey of European comics dealing with the
Holocaust.
The concluding section of the volume is concerned with how the Holocaust
is invoked in public debates, state memorialization and EU politics.
Christian Karner looks at Austrian Jewish memory of the Holocaust from a
fresh interpretative angle inspired by Avishai Margalit’s categories of moral-
ity and ethics of memory. While there is much division and disagreement
about how the Holocaust is invoked, its centrality for Jewish contemporary
identities in Europe and in shaping interpretations of present circumstances
remains unshakable. In a similar vein, through revealing case studies of art
exhibitions held by the Swedish public authority the Living History Forum,
Kristin Wagrell investigates the extent to which staging the Holocaust within
exhibition settings can teach the country’s youth about contemporary intol-
erance and racism. How effective is this approach in conveying historical
6 Diana I. Popescu
responsibility? Concluding the volume, Larissa Allwork evaluates the role of

the Stockholm International Forum in institutionalizing Holocaust memory
as a civil religion in liberal Western nation-states, and seeks to nuance our
understanding of Holocaust memory within a European political discourse
prone to encourage narratives that sacralize the past.
It is worth noting that the majority of the essays enclosed in this col-
lection are authored by a younger generation of emerging researchers and
academics for whom the past is largely mediated and imagined. Their con-
tributions, read alongside essays by well-established scholars in the field
document recent developments in the representation of the Holocaust as
an imaginative discourse concerned with memory influenced by what the
loss of the ‘living connection’ will signify in the future. Their contributions
draw attention to a certain vicariousness of representation which invokes
the workings of imagination as well as the obligation to remember. It is our
wish that this volume will inspire new thoughts on the relation between
memory and imagination in the context of the post-witness era, and serve as
a useful resource to both specialists in the field as well as to non-specialized
audiences.
Notes
1. Keightley and Pickering employ the concept ‘mnemonic imagination’ to explain
the relationship between memory and imagination as ‘an active synthesis of
remembering and imagining’ (2012a: 7). This refers to ‘the ways in which we
continuously qualify, adapt, refine and resynthesize past experience, our own and
that of others, into qualitatively new understandings of ourselves and other peo-
ple, including those to whom we stand in immediate or proximate relation, and
those from whom we are more distant’ (Keightley and Pickering, 2012b: 121). The
concept is used in relation to second generation descendants of survivors, and not
necessarily vis-à-vis those with no biographical ties to the event. While acknowl-
edging the theoretical possibilities this may open up, we have chosen not to adopt
their terminology for lack of sufficient evidence on how this concept may relate to
the artistic discourse of generations far removed from this historical event.
2. See critical viewpoints by Elie Wiesel, Claude Lanzmann, Ernst van Alphen and
Sidra Dekoven Ezrahi (2001).
References
Arendt, Hannah (1966) The Origins of Totalitarianism, New York: Harvest.
DeKoven Ezrahi, Sidra (2001) ‘After Such Knowledge, What Laughter?’, The Yale
Journal of Criticism 14.1, pp. 287–313.
Delbo, Charlotte (1995) Auschwitz and After, trans. Rosette C. Lamont, intro. Lawrence
L. Langer, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Didi-Huberman, Georges (2008) Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz,
trans. Shane B. Lillis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Friedländer, Saul (1993) Memory, History, and the Extermination of the Jews of Europe,
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Hartman, Geoffrey H. (1996) The Longest Shadow: In the Aftermath of the Holocaust,
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hoffman, Eva (2004) After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the
Holocaust, New York: Public Affairs.
Huyssen, Andreas (2003) Present Pasts, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Keightley, Emily, and Michael Pickering (2012a) The Mnemonic Imagination:
Remembering as Creative Practice, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Keightley, Emily, and Michael Pickering (2012b) ‘Communities of Memory and the
Problem of Transmission’, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 16.1, pp. 115–31.
Lanzmann, Claude (1994) ‘Holocauste, la Representation Impossible’, Le Monde, 3
March.
Martel, Yann (2010), Beatrice and Virgil: A Novel, New York: Spiegel & Grau.
Sokolowski, Robert (2000) Introduction to Phenomenology, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Van Alphen, Ernst (1997) Caught by History: Holocaust Effects in Contemporary Art,
Literature, and Theory, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Wiesel, Elie (1989) ‘Art and the Holocaust: Trivializing Memory’, New York Times,
11 June, available at http://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/11/movies/art-and-the-
holocaust-trivializing-memory.html accessed 27 March 2015.
Part I
Revisiting Artistic Practices of
Holocaust Commemoration
2
List Mania in Holocaust
Commemoration
Ernst van Alphen
The rise of the archival mode in Holocaust commemoration is a relatively

recent phenomenon. Although archival lists have been used widely since
the end of the Second World War, they were at first not always considered to
be effective as memorials. Lists were rather seen as instrumental, because
they gave access to referential information. In the first few decades after the
end of the war it was the narrative mode of diaries and testimonies that was
viewed as the most effective means of Holocaust commemoration. The refer-
ential information provided by narrative was more extensive, comprehensive
and elaborate than the basic information offered by lists.
This essay argues that since the beginning of the 21st century the archi-
val mode is increasing in importance, especially in the form of lists. The
continuing establishment of Holocaust museums and memorials seems to
be an important phenomenon of the last ten years. Often these memorials
are not made according to the conventional format of the monument, or of
the counter-monument (another important trend in the 1990s, in addition
to perpetrator art, that has become a convention in itself; see Young, 1994).
Many of the recent memorials consist of lists, are presented in digital form
and can be visited on the web. The most well-known example is probably
the redesigned Hall of Names at Yad Vashem in Israel, reopened in 2005. The
Hall of Names commemorates every Jew who perished in the Holocaust. It
houses the extensive collection Pages of Testimony – a listing of short biog-
raphies of each Holocaust victim.1 Over two million pages are stored in this
collection. In close connection to the Hall of Names exists the digital Shoah
Names Database, initiated in 1999, in which the names and biographical
details of two-thirds of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis have been
collected and recorded.2
Another example of a memorial consisting of a list and being digi-
tal is Digitaal Monument Joodse Gemeenschap in the Netherlands (Digital
Monument Jewish Community). The historian Isaac Lipschits initiated this
digital monument in the year 2000 and since 2005 it can be visited and
consulted on the web. The main goal of this website is to be a memorial. It
11
12 Ernst van Alphen
wants to keep alive the memory of all Dutch Jews who died in the Holocaust.
This means that around 101,800 victims are being commemorated by listing
them with their names, date, place and country of birth, and the date and
camp where they were killed. In case more information about a specific per-
son is available, for example partner, children and other relatives, it is also
added on a subsequent page. The second goal of this work is educational:
to offer later generations the chance to find out about the Dutch Jewish
victims of the Holocaust.
In the Netherlands another impressive memorial has been established,
although this one is not digital. It is devoted to all Jewish and Roma chil-
dren in the Netherlands who were killed during the Holocaust. It is titled
In Memoriam: De gedeporteerde en vermoorde Joodse, Roma en Sinti kinderen
1942–1945. (In Memoriam: The Deported and Killed Jewish, Roma and
Sinti Children 1942–1945) This memorial was first presented in 2012 in
the form of an exhibition, then in book format. Its initiator, Guus Luijters,
was inspired by the project of Serge Klarsfeld in France, who already in
1995 published Mémorial des enfants juifs deportés de France. What these
two memorials of children have in common is that adding photographs of
the children to the listed names and dates compensates the factuality and
impersonality of lists. The issue I would like to address in this essay is what
exactly do these recent memorials, digital or not, perform when they are
based on the genre or format of the list and the activity of listing. Within
Holocaust Studies and Holocaust commemoration the format of the list is
highly respected as well as highly problematic. It is respected because all
victims can be acknowledged and represented. Not by means of one symbol
or allegory that is supposed to represent all victims, but through their own
individual names and through information that confirms the individuality
of those persons, like date of birth and date on which their life ended. That
same activity of listing is, however, also problematic because the genre of
listing is potentially contaminated by its history, as the Nazis had particularly
excelled in listing.
Killing through Archiving
The Nazis pursued what they called restlose Erfassung, which means a
total registering, without loose ends; an expression that connotes also
‘all-embracing seizure’. This ambition led to a fanatic policy of counting,
making lists and conducting censuses. Keeping the registry of the inhabit-
ants of the German Reich up-to-date was the main task of the Bureau for
Publications of the SS Security Office, the so-called Sicherheitsdienst. But
the total registering did not stop with the registration of all inhabitants
of the Reich; it was also performed in the concentration camps. In other
words, the Nazis excelled as archivists. Let me explain in more detail which
structural principles of the camps can be characterized as archival. In many
List Mania in Holocaust Commemoration 13
concentration camps the Nazis were fanatic in making lists of all the people
who were put on transport, who entered the camps; whether they went to
the labour camps, or went directly to the gas chambers. It is thanks to the
existence of these lists that after the liberation it was possible in many cases
to find out if the detainees had survived, and if not, in which camp and on
which date they had been killed (for the role of the archive in Nazism see
Ketelaar, 2002).
On arrival in Auschwitz-Birkenau, detainees would get a number tattooed
on their arm, being in this way transformed into archived objects. They were
no longer individuals with a name, but objects with a number. Like objects
in an archive or museum, the inscription classified them as traceable ele-
ments within a collection. Upon entering the camps they were also sorted
into groups: men with men, women with women; children, old people and
pregnant women to the gas chambers. Political prisoners, resistance fighters,
were not mixed with Jews, and received no tattooed numbers on their arms.
Artists, musicians, architects were usually sent to camps like Theresienstadt.
Selecting and sorting on the basis of a fixed set of categories are basic
archival activities and so is the making of lists.
When Holocaust memorials or artworks are based on the format of the
list, they can be responsible for producing uncanny effects. In my earlier
work I called this a Holocaust effect (Van Alphen, 1997). Listing creates an
effect of the Holocaust because it adopts, usually unreflectively, processes or
devices that were also used by the Nazis in implementing the Holocaust.3
The making of lists was a crucial device. Guus Luijters, responsible for the
In Memoriam (2012a) for the Jewish children, is not unaware of the fact that
he deploys Nazi categories for his memorial. He explains that when we use
the term ‘Jewish children’ we in fact use Nazi definitions and terminology.
He quotes from Deborah Dwork’s Children with a Star (1993) to explain why
these Nazi categories are problematic: ‘It is not new, but it should be said
again that the deployment of racial – and racist – laws that were adopted
or imposed all over Europe, identified many people as Jewish, many people
who did not consider themselves as Jewish’ (Dwork, 1993: 12). Yet Dwork
uses the term ‘Jewish children’ on purpose, and so does Luijters. He is well
aware of the fact that terms like ‘transit camp’, ‘transport’, ‘Jewish counsel’,
‘mixed marriage’, ‘list’, ‘selection’, ‘transport list’ are contaminated terms,
which conceal the truth. Still we have to use these terms, according to Luijters.
He does not explain why.
But using the terms ‘list’ and ‘transport list’ as a way of giving insight
into Nazi historical reality, is not the same as using listing as a device for
making a memorial. A memorial that is based on listing, as most of our
contemporary memorials are, does not necessarily convey historical knowl-
edge about the Nazi past or Nazi practices. At first sight its use seems to be
unreflective and highly contaminated by the Nazi use of it. That is why
I argue that memorials, which use listing as their main device do not only
14 Ernst van Alphen
commemorate the Holocaust, they also create Holocaust effects. Therefore,

my question should be reformulated in the following way: can the produc-
tion of Holocaust effects be an effective and responsible way of Holocaust
commemoration? ‘Listing’ then is a performative verb. In order to answer
this question, I will first discuss several art works that are highly self-reflexive
in their deployment of the device of listing. They use the list in order to
understand and expose what a list is and what a list does.
The Referentiality of Lists
The representational genre of the list is often legitimized by its referential

efficiency: a list does not refer generally, metaphorically, but refers to all
items, all individuals, in the case of a Holocaust memorial, to all victims, by
explicitly mentioning them all. French artist Christian Boltanski who has
turned listing into a privileged practice for making art works, explores this
referential function of listing.
Boltanski has produced many artist books, usually in the context of an
exhibition. They are not catalogues documenting the exhibition; they dem-
onstrate in the material form of the book the issues that are also at stake,
but differently, in the framework of the museum exhibition. Those books
usually consist of lists. They list photographs, items, names, descriptions of
art works and the like. Let me list a few of these books in order to give some
examples of Boltanski’s obsession with listing:
• In Liste des artistes ayant participé à la Biennale de Venise 1895–1995 (1995),

Boltanski lists the names of artists who have been shown at the Biennale
of Venice.
• In Erwerbungen rheinischer Kunstmuseen in den Jahren 1935–1945 (1993c),
Boltanski lists all the acquisitions of museums in the Rhineland area in
Germany between 1935 and 1945.
• In Diese Kinder suchen ihre Eltern (1994a), he lists the posters printed by
the Red Cross of children who were left displaced or homeless in dev-
astated post-war Germany. Each poster has a portrait of the child and
information on special characteristics in an attempt to find a family for
them again.
• In Archives (1989), he lists photographs which he cut in 1972 from a
weekly journal about crime. The listing shows the faces of perpetrators
and victims without indicating the difference.
• In Liste des Suisses morts dans le canton du Valais en 1991 (1993a), he lists
all Swiss inhabitants of the canton Valais who died in the year 1991. The
list is organized on the basis of the days of that year, of who died on
which day in 1991.
• In Archive of the Carnegie International 1896–1991 (1992a), he lists alpha-
betically the names of the artists who were included in the Carnegie
international shows between 1896 and 1991, indicating in each case in

which year they were presented. Boltanski is himself included in the list.
His work was shown in 1991.
• In Les Suisses morts (1991), he lists the portraits of people who died in the
Swiss canton Valais. These portraits were taken from obituary notices of
the deceased, cut from the regional Swiss paper Le nouveliste du Valais in
the 1980s.
In yet another artist book Boltanski demonstrates the fact that the refer-
ential function of lists is to a certain extent illusionary. This book consists
of the real telephone directory of the Swedish town Malmö. The directory is
from the year 1993. All he changed was the cover of the original directory.
A white sheet of paper was glued on top of the original cover, printed with
the name of the artist, the name of the museum responsible for this publica-
tion (Malmö Konsthall), and the title Les habitants de Malmö (The Inhabitants
of Malmö, 1993b). The telephone directory as artist book foregrounds how
the referential nature of pragmatic lists is ultimately illusionary. The referenti-
ality begins to evaporate from the moment such a listing is being performed.
More and more people of the list will move to other places or they will die.
After some time the list only provides the names of people who once lived in
Malmö but who are now gone or dead. Boltanski foregrounds the illusionary
referentiality of the directory by adding a four-page errata to the directory. A
three-page list of names of people is introduced by the following statement
‘You can’t reach these inhabitants of Malmö on the phone anymore. They
died in 1993’ (Boltanski, 1993b: n.p.). Boltanski’s telephone directory cre-
ates a Holocaust effect comparable to what his well-known installations do,
but this time it is the listing of names that is responsible for it. Over time
the directory becomes a memorial of all the former inhabitants of Malmö.
Similarly to what Boltanski did with the Malmö telephone directory, the
referential function of these previously mentioned lists is challenged. But
the way he undermines the referential function is now different. These lists
stand for human beings or objects in the real world. Like arrows they refer
to them. But in small remarks in the introductions to these artist books
Boltanski redirects their representational function. In the case of the book
project Diese Kinder suchen ihre Eltern (These children are looking for their
parents) he introduces the Red Cross posters in the following way:
Now fifty years have passed, and when I look at the faces of these lost
children I find myself trying to imagine what has become of them.
They have become part of the post-war history of Germany with all its
changes. Has fate brought them happy or unhappy lives, made them rich
or poor? I would like to find them again. They are about my own age,
and their history is similar in some ways to mine, to ours. We too, are in
search of our parents. (Boltanski, 1994a: 7)
16 Ernst van Alphen
The referential reading of the list transforms into a metaphorical reading of

it. Whereas the portraits in combination with the added information first
referred to specific children, now grown up, Boltanski reads the listed por-
traits in what they have in common with himself, or with anybody: in one
way or another we are all looking for our parents. Whereas the enumeration
of lists is usually seen as an alternative for articulation by means of analogy
or symbolization, Boltanski creates analogies on the basis of enumeration.
His reading of the list is metaphorical. The same semiotic transformation
takes place in the presentation of his book Les Suisses morts (The Dead Swiss).
Explaining why this book exclusively focuses on Swiss people, he states the
following:
Previously I made works concerned with dead Jews. But ‘Jew’ and ‘dead’
go too well together, the combination is too illuminating. By contrast,
there is nothing more normal than the Swiss. There is really no reason
at all why they should die; in a certain sense they are more frightening,
because they are like us. (Boltanski, 1993a: 86)
Boltanski reads the list of dead Swiss as a memento mori, as a warning that
we should all remember our mortality. The referentiality of the list is not
completely cancelled but it is overruled by the analogy with the fact that the
mortality of these Swiss people is not different from our mortality.
What exactly enables Boltanski’s reading of lists as metaphorical instead
of as referential? Although each item in the list has a referent, the fact that
the list as such makes the impression of being endless makes the referential-
ity lose its specificity. The referentiality becomes general or abstract, which
creates a paradox. The gradual evaporation of referentiality is an effect pro-
duced by listing: the more endless the list, the less specific its referentiality.
When the referential function loses its strength, the symbolic reading of the
list imposes itself.
Seen from this paradoxical effect of listing it is not really surprising that
since the opening of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC in
1982, designed by Maya Lin, so many other memorials have been modelled
on this memorial consisting of a list of all US military who died in Vietnam.
The listing of individual names seems to make these soldiers’ referentially
present.4 Each name stands for a soldier who died. Their absence or death is
momentarily transcended; referentially they are made present again. But the
listing, seemingly endless, of all those names has an opposite effect. These
memorials are so effective because the listing results in an overwhelming
effect of absence. Ultimately, it is the incredible, that is, uncountable num-
ber of the people who died that overwhelms us. Whereas each individual
soldier can be imagined, made ‘present’ by means of a referential name or
portrait, the endlessness of the list cannot be imagined. The unimaginable
number of people who died strikes us by their absence. This is the moment
that the referential function transforms into a metaphorical – or symbolic –

one, and the pragmatic list that can be consulted to know who died,
transforms into a memorial for all those who died. And perhaps also into a
memento mori for those who still have to die. The success of such memorials
in the form of a list depends entirely on the dissolution of referentiality.
The Imposition of Categories
Boltanski’s obsessive listing shows another problem with the referentiality

of pragmatic lists. At different moments in his career Boltanski published
artist books that consist of inventories of his own works. Whereas Marcel
Duchamp archived his oeuvre by means of the archival practice of storage
in his Green and White Box, Boltanski archives his oeuvre by means of a
listing of his works. In 1992 he published a so-called Catalogue (Boltanski,
1992b). This catalogue lists chronologically all his books, printed matter
and ‘Ephemera’ of the period 1966 to 1991. His other art works, installa-
tions and exhibitions are not included in this list. All items are numbered;
the list consists of 80 items. The Catalogue looks like a real catalogue: it has
no image on the cover, only the name of the artist, the title and the names
of the publishers (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Köln; Portikus,
Frankfurt am Main). It could be the kind of catalogue that is used in archives
or museums. In 2009 Boltanski published a book titled Archives. This book
looks like a typical archival cahier that is used in archives or libraries for
archival recording. It looks administrative, utterly functional and objective.
This archival cahier is wrapped in the kind of plastic bag that is also used
in archives to protect documents, to keep them acid free and dust free. The
archival ‘look’ of Boltanski’s books and catalogues is strongest and most
convincing in the case of the publication titled Lost (1994b), made on
the occasion of exhibitions in 1994 in Glasgow, Dublin and Halifax. This
publication consists of a cardboard sleeve containing a folder that can be
closed with an elastic band. The folder contains several folders with papers,
and index cards organized in bundles. The form of this publication looks in
all details like the folders used in archives for keeping documents. Also the
index cards inescapably evoke archival organization. Archives (2009) lists all
of his works that were not included in the earlier catalogue of his books and
printed matters. It contains a catalogue raisonné, a list of publications about
his work, a list of personal exhibitions, and a list of collective exhibitions.
The catalogue raisonné is organized on the basis of the different ‘genres’ prac-
tised by Boltanski: his paintings, his reference vitrines, his inventories, his
family albums, his biscuit tins, and more.
The fact that Boltanski published listings of his own works at different
moments in his career demonstrates that those listings are already not
complete the moment that they appear. The catalogue that lists all of his
books and printed matter is itself not included in the inventory in which
18 Ernst van Alphen
this listing is performed. This indicates that listing is a time-bound process:

it lists past items, but not present or future items. In the case of a living art-
ist such listing can never be complete. If total control in the sense of com-
plete overview is being intended, then this listing should take the form of
an open-ended practice. But the two listings by Boltanski of his own works
point also at another characteristic of listing. Listing is the result of distinc-
tions imposed on the work. One listing concerns his artist books and printed
matter, the other one his other artistic works, his installations and exhibi-
tions. Of course, this is a very conventional distinction because the genre of
the book is ambiguous, not only used by artists but also by writers. To make
a separate list for this ambiguous genre seems at first sight not arbitrary and
imposed on the work, but seems almost ‘natural’ and inherent to the kind
of work. Another one of Boltanski’s lists makes the arbitrariness of categories
imposed on the work more visible. In his Inventaire du Cabinet d’art graphique
1977–1998 he lists the acquisitions of the Prints and Drawings Department
of the Centre Pompidou in Paris between 1977 and 1998. Curator Jonas
Storsve explains in the introduction that Boltanski’s listing did not pursue
completeness but was the result of strict distinctions and categories imposed
on all prints and drawings. They were the following:
• aesthetic criteria do not matter;

• the listing concerns the artist who had entered the collection not his or
her works; each artist is going to be presented by one work, arbitrarily
chosen;
• the artists are listed alphabetically;
• works with the following characteristics will not be included in the list:
– those of which the size is bigger than one metre
– those that consist of oil paint on paper
– works that incorporate lamps
– architectural drawings
– carnets and artist books
– the collection of illustrations titled L’oiseau qui n’existe pas of which
the first donation was done before the official opening of the Centre
Pompidou
– diptyques
– works that consist of series of which each part is framed independently
– oeuvres that consist of volumes
– drawings representing a rhinoceros. (Boltanski, 2000: n.p.)
Especially the rules of exclusion turn Boltanski’s list into a Borgesian list
that is the result of arbitrary, incomprehensible distinctions and categories.
The first criterion, aesthetic criteria do not matter, imposes negatively a dis-
tinction on the prints and drawings collection of a museum that is usually
central to art museums. Whereas museums and archives are closely related
because they are institutionally dependent on storage, inventories and cata-

logues, they differ in the imposition of aesthetic criteria. Boltanski’s listing
has resulted in a list in which masterworks of a certain artist are excluded
and marginal works and marginal artists are incorporated. Boltanski’s listing
of works of the Centre Pompidou’s Prints and Drawings Department fore-
grounds the awareness that listings are only partly the result of what they
referentially refer to. They are to a great extent the result of the distinctions
and categories on the basis of which the listing takes place. What is made
present by means of listing is not simply the referential world of objects
implied in the list, but the conceptual categories used by the archivist and
imposed on the referential world.
The Addendum of Lists
In the same year that Guus Luijters presented his In Memoriam for Dutch
Jewish and Roma children, a so-called Addendum (Luitjers, 2012b) was pub-
lished. This Addendum contains new lists that were not part of the original
lists of In Memoriam. First of all, a list of addresses frequently referred to,
such as of pioneer camps, or of orphanages. Second, a list of Dutch children,
who were not deported from Dutch transit camps, but who had been sent
to other countries by their parents, had been caught and then transported
from transit camps in Belgium or France, namely Mechelen and Drancy.
Luijters regretted that his first listing was the result of the decision to insert
only children in the list who had been deported from the Netherlands, even
if these children were originally German, Hungarian, Turkish, Belgian or
French. Because of this curatorial decision Dutch children deported from
other countries than the Netherlands remained unmentioned and invisible
in the list. His reconsideration indicates, however, the crucial importance of
the agent who makes the list. Comparable to what Boltanski did when he
made a list of all the acquisitions of the Prints and Drawings Department of
the Centre Pompidou in Paris, it is clear that Luijters is responsible for what
the list looks like in crucial ways. The list is not referential in an unproblem-
atic way. It is also the result of categories, motivated or not, chosen by the
list maker or curator of the list.
After the two added lists, a list follows with corrections in the transport
lists out of which the original In Memoriam consisted. In the introduction
to these corrected transport lists, the kind of mistakes that have been cor-
rected are listed. As becomes clear, the list is presumably never complete, but
produces new lists, and lists within lists. There never seems to be an end to
this process. The question that imposes itself then is if this proliferation of
lists is the result of a listing mania or listing obsession, in this case the one
of Guus Luijters, (instead of the differently fuelled obsession of the Nazis
of the Sicherheitsdient), or is the referential function of lists by definition
illusionary, and lists can be expanded endlessly.
20 Ernst van Alphen
It is not only Luijters In Memoriam that raises this question. It seems to

be a structural problem of all works based on lists commemorating the
Holocaust. The memorial list that has served as source of inspiration for
In Memoriam, Serge Klarsfeld’s Mémorial des enfants juives deportés de France
(1995) poses this question even more pertinently. This memorial list does
not have one ‘erratum’, or ‘addendum’ but has eight of them, in French
called additif.5 After the memorial had been opened in 1994, eight extra
lists with new information and corrections appeared from 1995 until 2007.
Those additives did not only make all kinds of corrections in the original
list, but also added new categories of listing to the original one. When one
begins to list, there seems to be no end to this impulse.
The Mnemonic Function of Listing
Since the Enlightenment when the rhetorical tradition fell into decline, the
referential function of listing has become the dominant one. In the rhetorical
tradition of the classical period the organization of a list had, instead, espe-
cially a mnemonic function. When things are arranged and presented in a
given order they help us to remember them by recalling the place they occu-
pied in the image of the world. Listing as a mnemonic device was especially
practised by means of an architectural walk through a building. Through
compiling all the architectural elements one passed by when walking through
a specific building, one could remember the elements, or building blocks, of
an argumentation, which one wanted to ‘build’ into a speech to be delivered.
By remembering the tour through the building, one was able to remember
different building blocks of one’s argument in the right order.6
At first sight the mnemonic function of listing seems to be highly perti-
nent for those Holocaust memorials that use listing as their main device. For
their main function is also mnemonic. But what this mnemonic function
of listing exactly consists of, how it works and what it does, first has to be
further examined. In what follows, I will discuss some works that are highly
self-reflexive in their use of listing in order to activate memory.
The mnemonic function of listing seems to have been reactivated in texts
by Georges Perec. His books Espèces d’espaces (Species of Spaces, 1999) from
1974 and also his well-known La vie mode d’emploi (Life: A User’s Manual,
2008) from 1978 consist of lists. The role of memory is not immediately
clear, but minor remarks indicate the crucial function of memory. The first
book Species of Spaces is clearly not narrative. Browsing through the book we
immediately identify a great number of lists, but in the overall framework
of the text we do not immediately recognize a visual pattern of listing; at
that level no rhetoric of listing seems to have been used. The table of con-
tents indicates, however, that the sequence of chapters forms a list of spaces,
arranged from nearby to spaces further away, which embed the earlier
spaces. The very first space is the space that brings about the intimate space
of reading and imagination, namely the page. From there we go to the bed
(where the writer writes and reads), next to the room, the apartment, the
apartment building, the street, the neighbourhood, the town, the country-
side, the country, Europe, the World, and finally Space. In the last chapter
on ‘Space’ the nature of this listing is described in a nutshell by means of
an anecdote told by Perec about how, when he was young, probably as all
children did, he wrote his address in his calendar:
Georges Perec
18, Rue de l’Assomption
Staircase A
Third Floor
Right-hand door
Paris 16e
Seine
France
Europe
The World
The Universe. (Perec, 1999: 84)
In each chapter Perec describes from a diversity of angles the space the
chapter is about: physically, functionally, activities that take place in that
space, memories connected to the space, and so on. In the chapter about the
bedroom Perec relates memories evoked by this space:
My memories are attached to the narrowness of that bed, to the nar-

rowness of that room, to the lingering bitterness of the tea that was too
strong and too cold. [evoked memoires follow]. That summer, I drank
‘pink gins’, or glasses of gin improved by a drop of angostura, I flirted,
somewhat fruitlessly, with the daughter of a cotton-mill-owner who had
recently returned from Alexandria, I decided to become a writer. (Perec,
1999: 21)
It is clear that the bedroom is a privileged space in the sense that it succeeds
better than any other space to activate memories. This privileged role of
the bedroom turns the whole project of Espèces d’espaces into a Proustian
endeavour. And indeed, Species of Spaces is a rigorous application of Proust
as a method of writing, with the difference that it does not limit itself to the
bedroom but also includes a gradual extension of spaces within which the
bedroom is embedded.
These spaces are real, physical and material. That is especially true for
the bedroom, which can be described in great detail. But real and material
they may be, time wears them away. In the two final paragraphs of the last
chapter ‘Space’, Perec reflects on the instability and tangibility of spaces.
22 Ernst van Alphen
Spaces fail as points of reference. It is at this moment that Perec deviates

from a Proustian poetics. Also, spaces ultimately fail in resurrecting memo-
ries, because spaces are not stable but fragile. Spaces change over time, or
even disappear. That is why they cannot be counted upon as storage of
memories. The solution for this instability of spaces is mediating them
by means of listing them. The transposition from real space to written
space safeguards the mnemonic function of space. The very last words of
the chapter indicate that the mediation of space through writing, or more
specific listing, can guarantee the survival of memories: ‘To write, to try
meticulously to retain something, to cause something to survive; to wrest a
few scraps from the void as it grows, to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace,
a mark or a few signs’ (Perec, 1999: 92). It is this closure of Species of Spaces
that explains the function of the listing of spaces of which this text con-
sists. It is not space as such that performs the mnemonic function. Spaces
can only have that function after having been mediated in the form of a
remembered or written list.
Perec’s experimental text demonstrates the importance of listing. Material
objects and spaces, like his bedroom, but also traditional monuments, are
not stable. Although they are material, they change over time, they fall
apart, are destroyed in wars, in natural disasters, or more profane, by what-
ever kind of human agency. But mediated in the form of a list, memories
can survive. Because the wreckage of time will ultimately destroy material
objects; yet memories will survive when they are mediated in traces. For
to write, but also to list, concerns ‘to wrest a few scraps from the void as it
grows, to leave somewhere a furrow, a trace, a mark or a few signs’ (Perec,
1999: 92).
This mnemonic potential of the listing of spaces seems to be negatively
confirmed by another experimental list of Perec. In 1975 he published
Tentative d’épuisement d’un lieu Parisien (An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in
Paris, 2010). This text is in many respects the opposite of Species of Spaces.
Like that text it is not narrative. He described the text himself as the result
of a quest of ‘what happens when nothing happens’. But in contrast to
Species of Spaces it is not the spatial dimension on which the listing of dif-
ferent chapters and sections is based, but the temporal dimension. From the
beginning to the end the text offers descriptions of only one single space:
Place Saint-Sulpice in Paris. What he describes during different moments
of the day, and that during three days, is what he records at this Parisian
square. The only variation in this sequence of observations is the location
at the square from which he observes what happens at the square. This can
be the Tabac Saint-Sulpice, the Café de la Mairie, the Café La Fontaine Saint-
Sulpice, a bench (looking in the direction of the fountain). Perec returns to
the same locations at different days. In every section he lists the sequence
of his observations at the square. So, he does not describe the physical
characteristics of the place, but rather what evolves temporally: one observa-
tion after the other. As a reader of these lists we follow Perec, the focalizer.
This results in lists like the following:
(date: 18 October 1974, Time: 12.40 pm, location: Café de la Mairie)

[…]
An 86 passes by. An 87 passes by. A 63 passes by
People stumble. Micro-accidents.
A 96 passes by. A 70 passes by.
It is twenty after one.
Return (uncertain) of previously seen individuals: a young boy in a navy
blue peacoat holding a plastic bag in his hand passes by the café again
An 86 passes by. An 86 passes by. A 63 passes by.
The café is full
On the plaza a child is taking his dog for a run (looks like Snowy)
Right by the café, at the foot of the window and at three different spots,
a fairly young man draws a sort of ‘V’ on the sidewalk with chalk, with a
kind of question mark inside it (land art?)
A 63 passes by. (Perec, 2010: 12)
In this text the writer Perec seems to be imprisoned in the present tense of
his observations. He records the sequence of his observations, which does
not result in a narrative account of what took place at the Parisian square
but in a listing of what he saw moment after moment. But there is no
temporal coherence, no cause-and-effect relation, between the sequences
of observations. The only coherence is spatial: all these observations were
recorded at the same place, Square Saint-Sulpice in Paris. On the second day
there is, however, a moment that fatigue undermines his observation. His
focalization is momentarily displaced from the external world of the square
to his inner, subjective world. He then lists the following observations:
A Paris-Vision bus goes by. The tourists have headphones

The sky is gray. Fleeting sunny spells.
Weary vision: obsessive fear of apple-green 2CVs.
Unsatisfied curiosity (what I came here to find, the memory floating in
this café…).
(Perec, 2010: 33)
The displacement of his focalization to his inner world makes the reader
aware of Perec’s fear of apple-green 2CVs. This is indeed a recurring topos
in his observations. But having now access to his inner world leads, subse-
quently, to the revelation of Perec’s motivation behind the experimental
24 Ernst van Alphen
project An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris. The project was a systematic

procedure for the quest for memories. But taking the listing of time instead
of the listing of space as its structural principle this quest utterly fails. No
memories are released by using this structural principle.
Yet, there is more about this listing of observations, moment after
moment. This list of external observations makes the reader aware of the
degree to which our perception of the outer world is formulated through
categories and classifications that are utterly conventional or even stereo-
typical. There is no development in Perec’s observations (no narrative), his
observations do not show a learning process: no gradual increasing capability
to see more, better, or more intensely. The only moment that his observa-
tions become less formulaic and conventional, the only moment that he
can see more, is when his focalization for just a few seconds displaces itself
from the external to his inner world.
Listing Photographs
Most of the Holocaust memorials using listing as their main device seem
to suffer from the same shortcomings as Perec’s An Attempt. The kind of
traces to the past offered by these memorials is also extremely formulaic
and conventional. All we get to know is the most basic coordinates of the
people commemorated: their names, dates and places of birth, and dates
of places of when they died. Their individuality is paradoxically defined
only by what distinguishes them differentially, that is chronologically and
regionally. It is place and time that substantiates the name. The contours of
each individual person remain, however, invisible. Yet, in the case of these
Holocaust Memorials the listing of names is significant in a way that cannot
be compared to Perec’s practice of listing. Listing the names of Holocaust
victims also means giving back to them their names. These names were
taken from them in the camps as a way of deindividualizing them. They
had become anonymous. In some camps their names were replaced by a
tattooed number. So, listing names of Holocaust victims is a device that
reattributes individuality to them.
The contrast between Perec’s Species of Spaces and his An Attempt to Exhaust
a Place in Paris provides us with more insight into the difference between
Luijter’s In Memoriam and Klarfeld’s Mémorial discussed earlier and the
Holocaust memorials that consist just of names, dates and places. In the
Dutch context, for instance, the Digital Monument of the Jewish Community
(2005), mentioned in the beginning of this text, and the publication from
1995, also titled In Memoriam that contains the names of 101,414 Dutch
Jews deported from the Netherlands and who died in the Holocaust. Why
is it that Klarsfeld’s and Luijters’s memorial lists seem to be so much more
effective as memorials than the other Holocaust memorial lists, whereas
these were also intended to function as memorials? Is it because the latter
are first of all historical instruments, which offer information, whereas in

the case of Luijters and Klarsfeld the commemorative function dominates?
I don’t think it has anything to do with the fact that the latter two
memorials are exclusively devoted to children. This difference would only
create a sentimental effect on the viewer. A fundamental difference between
Luijters’s and Klarfeld’s memorials and the other memorial listings is the
addition of photographic portraits to the names and dates of the victims.
These photos document their lives before they were transported. Usually,
they were taken as family portraits. Or they were taken at school, to docu-
ment a certain age when they were in a certain grade. These photographs
make it possible to imagine lives still untouched by the Nazi persecution.
Although by means of a single image, the individual portrait reconstructs
the life that we know no longer exists. At the same time the photographic
portrait confronts us with the fact that this life belongs to the past. It is the
medium of photography as such that connotes that what we see is a past
that has been erased.7
The addition of the photographic portrait compensates for the lack of
referentiality that comes with names in the course of time. In my reflection
on listing I have distinguished a double function of the list. First of all it is
referential; each item of the list refers to something or somebody. The list
as a whole evokes endlessness and makes us aware of the enormous scale of
the Holocaust. The commemoration of individual victims is served by the
first function, whereas the scale of the Holocaust as such is evoked by the
second one. The referential function becomes, however, weaker over time.
For the second and third generation of survivors the names and their coor-
dinates still speak to them. On the basis of these names they can reimagine
the relatives or friends they lost. But for generations that come after them
the referential function evaporates and it is the other function of evoking
the enormity of the Holocaust that remains.
It is this presence of the photographic portrait that enables the list to
function as memorial for generations that have no personal connection to
the victims. The memorial listings of names, dates and places commemorate
people who died, not their lives before they died. It was Perec’s experimen-
tal listing in Attempt to Exhaust a Place that made us aware of the degree to
which our perception of the outer world is formulated through categories
and classifications that are utterly conventional or even stereotypical. The
listing of names, dates and places is not able to escape this effect of the con-
ventional and stereotypical. The victims of the Holocaust are only defined
by their names, date and place of birth, date and place of death. Although
all this information delineates what is specific for one individual person,
these elements are at the same time rather powerless in evoking what this
individuality consisted of.
The listing of descriptions of different spaces in Perec’s Species of Spaces is,
however, much more effective and successful in activating memories and in
26 Ernst van Alphen
evoking what is personally specific. From this I deduce that the In Memoriam
for children, not the names and dates as such but the photographs, over-
whelm us with the intimate existence of the children who died.8 The visual
details represented by the photographic medium confront us with the living
existence of the children who were murdered. In the case of each photograph
we are drawn into the life it represents, knowing what follows. This happens,
even if we have no familial relation with the individuals in the photographs.
Although the names, dates and places produce a referent, a referent that is
one individual person, this referentiality remains at the level of information.
The referent is only embodied when the photograph is added. It is only then
that historical information transforms into commemoration of that person, of
a person who can be imagined. The embodied individuality of each child is,
however, at the same time, transcended. This is the paradoxical effect of the
seemingly endless list. As explained before, the endlessness of the list makes
referentiality lose its specificity. Referentiality becomes general or abstract
which creates a paradox. The gradual evaporation of referentiality is an effect
produced by listing: the more endless the list, the less specific its referentiality.
Whereas thanks to the photographs each child can be imagined, the endless-
ness of the list cannot be imagined. The unimaginable number of children
who died, by their absence, strikes us. This is the moment that the referential
function transforms into a metaphorical – or symbolic one – and the prag-
matic list that can be consulted to know who died, transforms into a memorial
for all those who died. So, the children are commemorated in two respects:
first, as anonymous beings, all looking the same and part of an unimaginable
number of children who died in the Holocaust; second, through their por-
traits as individual living beings. It is then paradoxically their anonymity that
contributes to the effect of unimaginability. What is now imaginable is their
individual existence; what remains unimaginable is the number of children
who died. Their individual existence is not commemorated by means of their
deaths, as happens in the memorial listings of names, dates and places, but by
means of the lives they were living before being murdered.
Notes
1. See http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/hall_of_names/what_are_pot.asp
(accessed 1 May 2013).
2. See http://db.yadvashem.org/names/search.html?language=en (accessed 1 May 2013).
3. In her article ‘Bad Holocaust Art’, Katherine Biber argues that in many cases our
‘obsession with fascism’ bears an ‘uncanny resemblance’ to the phenomenon itself
(2009: 116).
4. Maya Lin Vietnam memorial orders the list of names according to the day the
soldiers died – not alphabetically – which gives an insight to the dimension of the
war. This ordering places the individual into the course of the events.
5. The first additif appeared in 1995, no. 2 in 1997, no. 3 in 1998, no. 4 in 2000, no. 5
in 2003, no. 6 in 2004, no. 7 in 2006, and no. 8 in 2007.
6. For the role architecture played in the mnemonic practices in the classical period,
see Yates (2001 [1966]).
7. For an analysis of the photographic image in terms of a reality that unavoidably

belongs to the past, see Roland Barthes’ seminal text Camera Lucida (1981).
8. For the role of photography see Marianne Hirsch (1997).
References
Alphen, Ernst van (1997) Caught by History: Holocaust Effects in Contemporary Art,
Literature, and Theory, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Barthes, Roland (1981) Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by
Richard Howard, New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux.
Biber, Katherine (2009) ‘Bad Holocaust Art’, Law Text Culture 13.1, pp. 226–59.
Boltanski, Christian (1989) Archives, Le Méjan: Actes Sud.
—— (1991) Les Suisses morts, Frankfurt am Main: Museum für Moderne Kunst.
—— (1992a) Archive of the Carnegie International, Pittsburgh: Carnegie Museum of Art.
—— (1992b) Catalogue: Books, Printed Matter, Ephemera 1966–1991, Cologne: Walther
König.
—— (1993a) Liste des Suisses morts dans le Canton Valais en 1991, Lausanne: le Musée
cantonal des Beaux-Arts de Lausanne.
—— (1993b) Les Habitants de Malmö, Malmö: Malmö Konsthall.
—— (1993c) Erwerbungen Rheinischer Kunstmuseen in den Jahren 1935–1945, Mönchen-
gladbach: Städtisches Museum Abteiberg Mönchengladbach.
—— (1994a) Diese Kinder suchen ihre Eltern, München: Gina Kehayoff Verlag.
—— (1994b) Lost, Glasgow: CCA & Tramway.
—— (1995) Liste des artistes ayant participé à la Biennale de Venise 1895–1995, Venise:
XLVIe Biennale de Venise.
—— (2000) Inventaire du Cabinet d’art graphique 1977–1998, Paris: éditions du Centre
Pompidou.
—— (2009) Archives 01, Paris: éditions 591.
Digitaal Monument Joodse Gemeenschap, http://www.joodsmonument.nl/ (accessed 1
May 2013).
Dwork, Deborah (1993) Children with a Star: Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe, New Haven:
Yale University Press.
Hirsch, Marianne (1997) Family Frames: Narrative, Photography and Postmemory, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Ketelaar, Eric (2002) ‘Archival Temples, Archival Prisons: Modes of Power and
Protection’, Archival Science 2, pp. 221–38.
Klarsfeld, Serge (1995) Mémorial des Enfants juifs deportés de France, Paris: Fayard.
Kleeblatt, Norman (ed.) (2002) Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery / Recent Art, New York:
Jewish Museum.
Luijters, Guus (2012a) In Memoriam: De gedeporteerde en vermoorde Joodse, Roma en Sinti
kinderen 1942–1945, Amsterdam: Nieuw Amsterdam.
—— (2012b) In Memoriam: Addendum, Amsterdam: Nieuw Amsterdam.
Perec, Georges (1999 [1974]) Species of Spaces and Other Pieces, ed. and trans. John
Sturrock, London: Penguin Classics.
—— (2008 [1978]) Life: A User’s Manual, trans. David Bellos, London: Vintage.
—— (2010 [1975]) An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris, trans. Marc Lowenthal,
Cambridge, MA: Wakefield Press.
Yates, Francis (2001 [1966]) The Art of Memory, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Young, E. James (1994) The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning, New
Haven: Yale University Press.
3
Acts of Remembering in the Work of
Esther Shalev-Gerz – From Embodied
to Mediated Memory
Jacob Lund
How are we to transmit and represent the traumatic events that we collect
under the designation ‘the Holocaust’ today? How can the events be repre-
sented without being transformed into abstractions, and in a way in which
we, who did not live when they took place, can relate to them? How can
that specific past be actualized and re-membered in the present so that we
do not forget or simply place the genocide of the European Jews in the
archive as completed and past history?
Paris-based artist Esther Shalev-Gerz’s installation works Between Listening
and Telling: Last Witnesses, Auschwitz 1945–2005 (2005) and MenschenDinge/
The Human Aspect of Objects (2006) constitute in different ways specific acts
of remembering the Holocaust while at the same time investigating the
very workings and nature of remembering. These two works built the frame
for this article in which I will analyse and discuss what I find to be some
of the main issues involved in current debates on the representation and
actualization of the Holocaust.1
Remembering
The act of remembering necessitates that things and events are brought
out of the indifference of the archives and that they are being given value,
while others are being left and forgotten. According to Aristotle, remem-
bering is ‘some kind of search’, that is, an activity, a process (Bloch, 2007:
453a4–14). Remembering or re-collection, that is, the active and intel-
lectual process of re-calling, anamnesis in Greek, is a vital human activity
that forms our relations to the past, and the ways in which we remember
are a decisive part of defining who we are in the present. Thus, it could
be claimed that remembering in a certain sense is a re-presentation that
belongs to the present (cf. Huyssen, 2003: 3).
How do these general characteristics of remembering relate to the case
of the Holocaust and our endeavours to re-present and thus remember this
particular event? The introductory questions about the representation of the
28
Acts of Remembering: From Embodied to Mediated Memory 29
Holocaust above become even more urgent as the generation of witnesses

and survivors is passing away, and we, the post-generations, are beginning
to accept the fact that our access to the events of the Holocaust is neces-
sarily mediated. It could be claimed that the function and the purpose of
the representation of the Nazi crimes has changed. The primary purpose
and function of testimonies and representations is no longer to establish
specific knowledge of the historical facts. Within the last couple of decades,
representations have become more a question of inscribing, maintaining
and actualizing these past events in the present. In other words, contemporary
representations and memories often have the function of being a means
of communicating and transmitting the experience of Auschwitz to the
post-Holocaust generations; a way of working against oblivion, instead of
just consigning what has happened to the archive. Thus, the Holocaust is
becoming what American scholar of Holocaust memory James E. Young has
called a ‘vicarious past’ or ‘received history’, and the question is, within the
artistic context of this article, how today’s artists are supposed to represent
and ‘remember’ events they never experienced directly (cf. Young, 2000: 1).
This means that post-Holocaust representations of the Holocaust, that is,
Holocaust representations made by artists belonging to the post-generations,
are often rather representations of relations to the past than representations
of the past itself while also thematizing themselves as acts of remembering.
Thus, the question is no longer just about remembering but also about
how and what to remember, how the object of memory is evoked and how
the mode and medium of this calling forth influences what is called forth.
The past is not simply there in memory, but it has to be formed and articu-
lated to become memory, which stresses the importance of the very mode
of representation and mediation, of how we try to present the Holocaust
through images, words, sounds, silences and gestures.
Shalev-Gerz’s Dialogical Aesthetics
Esther Shalev-Gerz’s work is emphatically of the present; it takes its point of

departure in the here and now when addressing and articulating the past,
not in ‘history as it happened’. Based on different forms of collaboration
and exchange with the audience, her works are instigations of dialogue
(cf. Ravini, 2006), shapings of interlocutory situations through which mean-
ing and signification are configured and re-configured (cf. Didi-Huberman,
2012: 60), variants of what American art historian Grant H. Kester has coined
as dialogical aesthetics (Kester, 2004). They almost always involve specific
interlocutors. With the terminology of French linguist Émile Benveniste one
could say that their mode of enunciation is discursive rather than historical,
meaning that what is said is closely connected to the time and space of the
speaking persons. Their use of deictic markers, such as ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘here’, ‘now’,
refer to the time, space and participants of the act of communication – instead
30 Jacob Lund
of, as in a historical enunciation, being disconnected from the present in a

narrative mode in the past tense in which the narrated events seem to nar-
rate themselves without recourse to the productive act behind the narrative.
The speaker does not interfere with what is narrated and the events are in
a certain sense objectified by being detached from the present, situated in
a past time that lies outside the person who nevertheless narrates them.
Contrary to the always personal and subjective discursive discourse, the his-
torical discourse is a discourse that tries to objectify and authorize itself by
excluding the marks of discursive enunciation, by negating the enunciative
apparatus from which it inevitably arises (Benveniste, 1966).
Shalev-Gerz’s dialogical aesthetics, on the other hand, brings this ‘enun-
ciative apparatus’ to the fore. Letting herself be guided by the contributions
of the participants, she usually starts out by presenting her idea within a
shared space where the work is exposed to the interventions of others and
to their approval. Her objective, she states, is a work form that is not tied
to the ego of the artist (cf. Ravini, 2006), but rather one that is oriented
towards the construction of a space for memory through active participation
by the audience:
the moment when the supposed spectator becomes a participant by writ-

ing his name, using his voice or sending in his photo. Thanks to the
traces left during these acts, the participants keep the memory of their
own participation in the work’s procedure, which also bears witness to
their responsibility to their own times. (Shalev-Gerz, 2002: 87)
Consequently, her works are dependent upon memories and narratives that
are constructed and changed by the participants: ‘As an artist, it is very
important for me to trust the participants – whom I approach (right away) as
equals, and whose contributions are an element of the project’ (Shalev-Gerz,
2010: 157). The work is conditioned by her ‘trust in the other person’s intel-
ligence’ (ibid.), and she does not define the aesthetic parameters in advance
and does not begin to form the work until she has received the participants’
contributions in the shape of narratives or stories, which brings a distinct
dynamic character to her artistic practice that also distinguishes it from
the more art internal so-called relational aesthetics theorized by Nicolas
Bourriaud (2002).2
The Silent Gestures of the Last Witnesses
Shalev-Gerz’s work constitutes specific present acts of remembering while

at the same time investigating the very workings of the act of remembering
whereby it places itself in the centre of the current debates on the representa-
tion of the Holocaust. I shall argue that Shalev-Gerz’s aforementioned instal-
lations attest to the transition phase between first-hand sense-perceptually
based embodied memory and so-called ‘vicarious’ post-memory in which we

find ourselves today (cf. Hirsch, 2012). Thus, I claim that these works can be
seen to represent the gesture of testifying to the experience of the events and the
gesture of witnessing and actualizing the remnants of the events, respectively –
depicting in the first instance the dying out generation of survivors and in
the second the post-generation.
The installation entitled Between Listening and Telling: Last Witnesses,
Auschwitz 1945–2005 was presented in the Hôtel de Ville in Paris in 2005, to
mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau con-
centration camp (Figure 3.1). The project was chosen from three proposals
for exhibiting the testimonies of 60 survivors living in the Paris area invited
by the mayor of Paris and the Holocaust memorial in Paris, Mémorial de la
Shoah. Thus, the installation consisted of 60 unedited newly recorded inter-
views with survivors conducted by four teams comprising a sound engineer,
a camera man, and a journalist who were to have the survivors talk about
their lives before, during and after the war.3 The audience could watch and
Figure 3.1 Esther Shalev-Gerz, Between Listening and Telling: Last Witnesses, Auschwitz
1945–2005, 2005, installation view, Hôtel de Ville, Paris, 2005. Photo by P. Simon.
© Esther Shalev-Gerz.
32 Jacob Lund
Figure 3.2 Esther Shalev-Gerz, Between Listening and Telling: Last Witnesses, Auschwitz
1945–2005, 2005, installation view, Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2010. Photo by Arno Gisinger.
© Esther Shalev-Gerz.
listen to the testimonies at four long winding red tables with small DVD
monitors and headphones. The duration of the interviews – which can now
be consulted at the Mémorial de la Shoah – was between two and nine hours
each. At the end of the spacious exhibition room, onto three large screens
hung side-by-side, each video of the interviews with the survivors was pro-
jected but with a seven-second time lapse (see Figure 3.2). In slow motion
the faces of the survivors filmed in close-up were depicted in silence, their
expressions captured between words, between a question and their articula-
tion of an answer.
In this manner the spectators become the witnesses’s witnesses; witnesses
to the act of testifying by the last witnesses. The work is very much about
silence, about showing silence and allowing silence to take part in the forma-
tion of signification, about showing the gesture of testimony. It is a silence,
however, that differs substantially from the sublime aesthetics of silence and
of the unpresentable that French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard sees in
the gestures of the witnesses depicted in French philosopher and filmmaker
Claude Lanzmann’s nine-hour film Shoah (1985). Lyotard famously claims
that Auschwitz defies images and words, that it cannot be represented without
slipping away, without being missed and forgotten again, but:
Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah is an exception, maybe the only one. Not
only because it rejects representation in images and music but because it
scarcely offers a testimony where the unpresentable of the Holocaust is not

indicated, be it but for a moment, by the alteration in the tone of a voice,
a knotted throat, sobbing, tears, a witness fleeing off-camera, a disturbance
in the tone of the narrative, an uncontrolled gesture. (Lyotard, 1990: 26)
In Lyotard’s thinking the sublime art of the unpresentable is the only art
adequate and ethically proper to Auschwitz and therefore he is looking for
the gestures that indicate the unpresentable to verify his aesthetics of the
sublime according to which Auschwitz is an unsayable and unimaginable
event that evades any realistic or figural representation. Within recent years,
however, this ethics of silence that puts a ban on images and words has, right-
fully, been problematized, not least by French philosopher Jacques Rancière
who points out, echoing American historian Hayden White’s emplotment
theory, that the unrepresentable does not exist as a property of an event:
‘An event in itself neither imposes nor prohibits any specific artistic means.
And neither does it impose any duty on art to represent or not to represent
it in this or that way’ (Rancière, 2001: 96). From Rancière’s perspective,
Lanzmann’s Shoah does not confirm Lyotard’s thesis, but refutes it. One of
the most important aspects of the film, according to Rancière, is that it dem-
onstrates that the question of the representable/unrepresentable relationship
is first and foremost a question of means (Rancière, 2002: 150).
Lanzmann’s film – the transcription of whose narratives was published
with the title Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust – is to a great extent
about gesture in testimony (Lanzmann, 1985). It shows the survivors and
witnesses recounting their experiences to Lanzmann and the camera, and
thus it is also emphatically about the time of narration, the very time of
enunciation and the very act of testifying, and not only about the text or
content of the testimony, that is, the narrated past events to which they
try to bear witness. The documentation and testimony to the Shoah is an
act and gesture of the present. Hence, the first words of the film: ‘The story
begins in the present.’
In Between Listening and Telling Shalev-Gerz stresses this gestural aspect
even more by giving time and attention to the survivors’ gestures before
speech, before the words endow what was experienced with a certain mean-
ing. However, it is not a gesture indicating a sublime unpresentability but
rather the very moment of articulation and signification, of configuration
and reconfiguration of meaning, in which singular experiences connect
to collective communication in an actualization of language. Thus, the
installation by Shalev-Gerz is not about silence as such. It is not a matter
of rejecting words and images. Her extraction and subsequent montage of
the silent moments of the interviewed survivors is not an endeavour to
isolate the silences, but rather to confront them with the words spoken in
order to show the silences as a decisive part of the process of signification.
As French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman observes in a text written
34 Jacob Lund
for the catalogue of Shalev-Gerz’s retrospective in the Musée des Beaux-Arts

in Lausanne in 2012–13: ‘The gaps are really there – not only as absences,
but as fundamental gestures – and that is what the work of Esther Shalev-
Gerz shows’ (Didi-Huberman, 2012: 58). The projected montage of silences
appears as a collection of transitory moments between articulation and
non-articulation. Even though they are being shown in slow motion every
gesture pertaining to these breaks in speech are quickly replaced by the one
that follows, which gives the viewer the impression of visual discontinuities
while the silences persist.
Between Listening and Telling makes these moments between articulation
and non-articulation, these silent fundamental gestures of the testimonies
visible. The fundamental gestures do not, however, indicate a sublime unpre-
sentability, and they should not be seen as dissociated from the language
or discourse that they punctuate. Rather than non-linguistic elements they
are closely tied to language in the way in which Italian philosopher Giorgio
Agamben understands gesture as a forceful presence in language itself, a
presence that is more originary than conceptual expression: ‘[I]f speech is
originary gesture, then what is at issue in gesture is not so much a prelin-
guistic content as, so to speak, the other side of language, the muteness
inherent in humankind’s very capacity for language, its speechless dwelling
in language’ (Agamben, 1999b: 78). Following the Aristotelian definition of
man as zoon logon echon, Agamben sees the human as the living being who
has language, but this human ‘having of language’ also implies that the
human subject is capable of not having language, that it is capable of its own
infancy or wordlessness, and that it thus becomes the site where language
can or cannot be realized or actualized in discourse, that is, the possibility
that language does not take place (cf. Agamben, 1999a: 146). Furthermore
‘man’ according to Agamben, ‘is the living being who, in language, separates
and opposes himself to his own bare life and, at the same time, maintains
himself in relation to that bare life in an inclusive exclusion’ (Agamben,
1998: 8). In that sense the silent embodied memory of the survivors is
tied to their ‘bare life’ as well as to their experience of the Nazi attempt
to desubjectify them and reduce them to such bare life, to Muselmänner
without language. The survivors’ gestures of silence interrupt the medium
of language in its very being-medium, and thus they come to exhibit the
mediality of language as such, including their own relation to this medium
of expression. Shalev-Gerz makes visible their gestures between articulation
and non-articulation as gags:
[I]n its essence gesture is always a gesture of a non-making of sense in

language, it is always a gag in the strict meaning of the term, indicating
in the first instance something that is put in the mouth to hinder speech,
and subsequently the actor’s improvisation to make up for a memory
lapse or some impossibility of speech. (Agamben, 2007: 156)
Thus, silence is not necessarily non-communicative, and in some cases it can

be more telling than words; actually we often hear survivors and witnesses
talk and talk without end, sometimes frenetically, in order, consciously or
unconsciously, to cover up the experiences they are talking about or in fact
leaving out. As Rancière has remarked, silence in Shalev-Gerz’s work ‘is never
an empty space ... it is primarily thought at work inside the bodies: thought
trying to speak, trying to understand, and forcing us to do so as well, even
in the course of reflection’ (Rancière, 2006: 10). Giving testimony is about
sharing experiences. The montage and linking together of all the moments of
silence in Between Listening and Telling may be said to form a community of
breaks of speech that makes what cannot be put into words visible, to form an
image addressed to us, an image of silence as part of the communication of the
survivors’ experiences and of the pain associated with this communication.
Didi-Huberman calls the breaks in the survivors’ speeches ‘emanations
of suffering that come, so to speak, to poison their will to tell their story ...
imprisons them mutely in the unbearable nature of a remembered image
that fails to be unraveled in words’ (Didi-Huberman, 2012: 61). The close-ups
of the projected film display the spaces between words when memory is still
internal and dynamically alive in the minds of the testifying subjects, before
what is remembered is verbalized and thereby fixed in a particular image or
idea. Usually aesthetics, framing and formal elements in general are down-
played in audio-visual testimonies as they, if obtrusive, are thought to dis-
tract the attention from the testimonial enunciation, which is often painful,
precarious and elliptical. According to this logic, the formal elements should
not interfere with the audience’s receptivity and ability to listen openly, but
as has also been argued by American documentary film scholar Michael
Renov, the close-up framing is the composition best suited to engaging the
viewer (cf. Renov, 2013: 3). Seen in close-up, without words or between
words, our attention is drawn to the survivors’ faces, their mouths and their
eyes in the act of remembering. The involuntary responses and gestures of
their bodies – rendered sensible to our eyes and ears – come to the fore as
a multimodal expression of memory and suffering that is incommensurate
to words alone. Without knowing what is being remembered we become
witnesses to their inward search for memory. In Shalev-Gerz’s composition
their gestures and facial expressions display a capacity to convey memory
and suffering outside of, beyond, or on the other side of language, rendering
visible an excess of emotion and embodied memory that exists outside or
apart from what is narrated. Were there to be only written transcripts of the
testimonies, the tearful eyes and the failing voices would escape the process
of signification (cf. Renov, 2013). This is the reason why the book Shoah:
An Oral History of the Holocaust. The Complete Text of the Film only captures
a fraction of Lanzmann’s filmed testimonies. Between Listening and Telling
allows us to become witnesses to the survivors’ search for adequate words
to verbalize their memory, to their inability to find such words, and to the
36 Jacob Lund
suffering their memories now re-inflict on them (cf. Young, 2012: 82). In
many cases we seem to be made attentive to their struggles with their buried
selves, with their ‘deep memory’ in the terminology of American scholar
of Holocaust literature and testimony Lawrence L. Langer (Langer, 1991).
Through the framing and the installation of the close-ups of the remember-
ing faces Shalev-Gerz manages, however, not to turn us into voyeurs because
of the camera distance and our position in relation to the projections. The
gaze of the camera appears curious, open-minded or ‘listening’ and engag-
ing without being interrogative and without indulging in overidentification
with the survivors’ suffering and victimization, demonstrating her respect
and aforementioned ‘trust in the other person’s intelligence’ (Shalev-Gerz,
2010: 157).
However, as I have already argued, the close-ups in Between Listening and
Telling should not be considered as replacements for language but rather as
its important supplements, indeed the close-ups are of speaking subjects
captured between words so that the process of enunciation and what is
actually said are intertwined (cf. Renov, 2013: 6). In Benveniste’s termino-
logy it is a discursive mode of enunciation in which what is said is closely
connected to the time and space of the speaking – or, in accordance with
Agamben’s understanding of gesture, non-speaking – persons. The silences
of the survivors imply that something is addressed to us without being
uttered. They are events of speech and authentic events in the testimonies
of the survivors, but testimony is not only silence. Silence is part of it,
but silence cannot stand alone any longer – if it ever could. Today we also
need to know what the silence refers to. Otherwise we, who were born
after, may run the risk of losing sight of the historical events, of turning
them into abstractions, of not having an idea of what it is that cannot be
represented and put into words and images. This danger of losing sight of
the actual historical events would be my objection to American architect
Peter Eisenman’s abstract Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin,
had it not been supplemented by an information centre underground that
so to speak ‘guides’ the abstraction above. And that is why – at least in my
reading – the edited silence in Shalev-Gerz’s installation is contextualized
by the unedited actual testimonies in which each survivor relates his or her
experiences of the camps and describes his or her life before, during and
after internment.
The articulation and externalization of the survivors’ experiences in
words and images implies a depersonalization while these words and
images at the same time also provide a necessary support for memory.
It is in a dialogical exchange with the media of words and images that
the work of memory takes place. Memory and representation are inter-
dependent. As, among others, German-American cultural critic Andreas
Huyssen has argued, all representation is inescapably based on memory.
Re-presentation always comes after, despite some media’s endeavour to

appear as pure presence. Memory, on the other hand, does not lead us to
an authentic origin and does not constitute a verifiable access to the real;
memory, in its belatedness, is itself conditioned on representation: ‘The
past is not simply there in memory, but it must be articulated to become
memory’ (Huyssen, 1995: 2). The testifying subject experiences, however,
in the very articulation of his or her past a loss of his or her singular per-
sonal inner memories and images. In order to be communicated they are
expropriated in a sense, no longer only his or hers. In that perspective it is
indicative that one of the witnesses retracted his recorded testimony just
before completion of Shalev-Gerz’s project. He had told neither his family
nor his friends about his internment and at the last moment he took his
testimony back into his own possession, reappropriated it, unable to dis-
close it (cf. Didi-Huberman, 2012: 59).4 The testifying subject experiences
that such ‘inner memory’ or image is not a static thing and that memories
about the past are being constructed and reconstructed, configured and
reconfigured in the present rather than simply and ‘purely’ being relived
and recollected from the past.
Translating and Interpreting the Human Aspect of Objects
In line with this ‘constructivist’ understanding of memory, this interde-

pendency between memory, images and words, Shalev-Gerz states that
she believes ‘images are, actually, the reality of our past. When we reflect
at what happened before, we depend on images and stories’ (Shalev-Gerz,
2006b: 100). This leads us to the other work, namely the piece representing
the gesture of witnessing and actualizing the remnants of the events of the
Holocaust, depicting the post-generation.
In 2006 Shalev-Gerz completed a two-year long process of developing
an installation for the Buchenwald Memorial (Figure 3.3). The installation
called MenschenDinge/The Human Aspect of Objects comprises videos and pho-
tographs that represent objects found in the soil of the former concentration
camp. Among the many objects she had only chosen those that had been
modified, engraved, repurposed and personalized by the detainees during
their imprisonment. The objects are presented in film and photographs
slightly out of focus, for instance a ruler comb, a pewter broach, a pair of
cloth and cardboard slippers, an aluminium mirror, and a wire ring (Figure
3.4). Five videos show representatives of the memorial – the director, a
historian, an archaeologist, a conservator and a photographer – disclosing
their understanding of the selected objects and describing their professional,
personal and imaginary relationships with these traces of the past while
handling them with their hands, voices and bodies. The historian Harry
Stein, for example, sits by the desk in his office with a range of different found
38 Jacob Lund
Figure 3.3 Esther Shalev-Gerz, MenschenDinge/The Human Aspect of Objects, 2006, instal-
lation view, Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2010. Photo by Arno Gisinger. © Esther Shalev-Gerz.
Figure 3.4 Esther Shalev-Gerz, MenschenDinge/The Human Aspect of Objects, 2006,

Pewter Broach. Photo by Esther Shalev-Gerz. © Esther Shalev-Gerz.
objects – bowls, spoons, knives, dishes, etc. – picking up different bowls in

his hands, turning them around and investigating them while talking:
Those are really badly dented bowls, they look awful and half eaten away
by rust; they’re no longer of any use. And the aspect that had been so
fascinating for us, namely that something was coming from history itself,
as a trace, that in some cases people had expressed themselves – like here
on this bowl [he picks up a bowl from the desk], which is inscribed in
Russian: Take yours and not mine! And then it is signed Zigan. So you can
say that maybe he went by the name of Zigan. But if you keep translat-
ing, it means: Take yours and not mine – you gipsy. This means in other
words that the bowl tells a story. There were very few bowls. A bowl was
a very valuable possession, because with a bowl you could go get food for
yourself, and accordingly people stole each other’s bowls. Here someone
wrote his initials on it; we weren’t able to decipher them, but it said:
This is mine … [H]ere is someone who says: Take yours and not mine,
mine is important for my life. A statement like that, in that situation ...
(MenschenDinge, and Shalev-Gerz, 2006a: 75)
Another example of the endeavours to make the objects communicate is

the archaeologist Ronald Hirte who at one point picks up an object, which
presumably has functioned as an improvised iron made from a French army
mess tin and scraps of different material that could be found in the camp:
And what we have is an iron, which you can heat accordingly and then
iron with it. But the question remains, what sense does ironing make in
the camp, what sense does ironing make in the Small Camp, since that’s
where the iron was found. Sooner or later, by reading a lot, searching the
archives a lot, you hit on something ... [T]here was a description of how
inmates in the Small Camp or in Buchenwald sub-camps disinfected their
clothing to guard against body lice. You can kill body lice by ironing ...
And that immediately makes sense – that at Buchenwald’s most extreme
site, where there were always pathogens going around, you somehow
simply find a way of protecting yourself against these pathogens. Dishes
were generally very rare in the camp, and anyone who had a dish was
already a bit privileged. Apparently it was possible to sacrifice this one,
though. In order to construct an iron for himself, someone gave up this
mess tin. (Shalev-Gerz, 2006a: 91)
In the video recordings Stein and Hirte picks up a number of different things
in their hands and try to interpret them and endow them with meaning, but
the actual objects remain unexhibited in the installation. They only appear
through the perception of the people who work with and actualize them,
through re-presentations. Focalizing the objects through these people living
now also makes their relation to the past part of the content of the work –
this interest in our relationship to the past is also emphasized in the video
with the photographer Naomi Tereza Salmon:
Essentially my concern is not with the things, in other words it’s not
with a fetish. It’s not about touching them and developing a relationship
to them, but my concern is about our relationship to the past, the way
40 Jacob Lund
it then simply comes to light through these objects. I leave that to the
viewer, essentially his thoughts, his feelings ... And there are no texts.
(Shalev-Gerz, 2006a: 84)
With reference to Walter Benjamin, Shalev-Gerz sees the objects as ‘dialecti-

cal images’ through and between which historical truth appears. ‘They are
time-interfaces because they connect the present with the past, like indices,
material traces that trigger other images and open up new imaginary spaces’,
she says (Shalev-Gerz, 2006b: 100).
Even though Buchenwald was not a death-camp, 56,000 people lost their
life in the camp. The exhibition is, however, not a representation of or a
testimony to the suffering and the mass murder, but rather it is dealing
with the memory-work of the living, with the endeavour to actualize the
objects in the present. As Harry Stein remarks in the video: ‘When I tell
these stories, I also always tell a little of myself’ (Shalev-Gerz, 2006a: 79). It is
more about the construction of memory and the handling of the past in the
present than about narrating history as it happened. The absence of testimo-
nies and the absence of the people who created the objects, leaves a silence
which points to the need for translation and activation by post-generations.
What Shalev-Gerz is trying to stage is exactly ‘the process of translation ...
interpretation, the constant flux of rethinking history starting from the
object and the absences that are inherent’ (Shalev-Gerz, 2006b: 101).
Postgenerational Forensic Sensibility
This last installation by Shalev-Gerz may suggest that we need to supple-

ment the subjective linguistic testimonies of survivors – very soon there will
be no survivors left – with what London-based Israeli architect and theorist
Eyal Weizman has called a forensic sensibility or ‘forensic aesthetics’, which
implies an attention to the communicative capacity, agency and power of
things, an object-oriented culture that is immersed in matter and materiali-
ties (Weizman, 2012: 389). For instance French artist Christian Boltanski’s
many ‘inventories’, such as Inventaire des objets ayant appartenu a une femme
de Bois-Colombes (Inventory of objects that belonged to a woman of Bois-
Colombes, 1974), may be regarded as taking part in such forensic aesthetics
and thus to be artistically related to Shalev-Gerz’s work – Boltanski claims that
‘All my work is more or less about the Holocaust’ (Gjessing, 1994: 43) – but
without people engaging in their interpretation as an integral part of the work
as we see in MenschenDinge. The so-called ‘era of the witness’ has, according
to Weizman, been saturated with representation of testimonies of trauma,
written, recorded, filmed, archived and exhibited. As the creative resistance
represented by the objects of MenschenDinge implies, this primacy of trauma
as a site of history also runs the risk of turning into a depoliticized ‘politics
of compassion’, focusing too much on victimization – something that
Shalev-Gerz also delicately avoids in the presentation of the recorded survi-

vor testimonies in Between Listening and Telling. The risk of such a one-sided
focus on victimization may be countered by a forensic sensibility. Derived
from the Latin forensis the root of the word forensics refers to ‘forum’.
Forensics deals with the presentation of scientific findings and the making
of an argument before a gathering, a forum. Part of making such argument
involves having objects that do not speak for themselves address the forum,
for which reason the things need to be translated, mediated or interpreted in
order to be understood (cf. Keenan and Weizman, 2012: 28). The forums are
not fixed, but dynamic and contingent. They are gathered around disputed
things, emerging around found evidence. The MenschenDinge installation can
be considered as such a gathering, a forum where the objects found at the site
of the former concentration camp are being translated and interpreted. It is
a forensic aesthetics, understood as:
an arduous labor of truth construction, one employing a spectrum of

technologies that the forum provides, and all sorts of scientific, rhetori-
cal, theatrical, and visual mechanisms. It is in the gestures, techniques,
and turns of demonstration, whether poetic, dramatic, or narrative, that
a forensic aesthetics can make things appear in the world. The forums
in which facts are debated are the technologies of persuasion, represen-
tation, and power – not of truth, but of truth construction. (Keenan and
Weizman, 2012: 67)
From First-hand to Mediated Memory
Between Listening and Telling represents the gesture of testifying to the

experience of the events of the Holocaust, including the significance of
non-linguistic gestural elements, while MenschenDinge represents the ges-
ture of witnessing and actualizing the remnants of these events. The two
installations by Esther Shalev-Gerz function as remembering acts and ‘truth
constructions’ of the present, and taken together they measure the ongoing
transition from embodied first-hand memory to mediated post-memory.
In these different actualizations, Shalev-Gerz moves beyond the sublime
aesthetics of silence and makes visible the ways in which memory is not
simply representation and re-collection from the past, but rather presenta-
tion, an act in and of the present. The installations thematize the activity of
remembering and make room for different subject positions in this activity,
in these works the survivors and the post-generations in particular, which
of course could be further differentiated. The participants appear as eman-
cipated individuals, intelligent persons, who have to create their own rela-
tion to the past by interpreting, translating and endowing it with meaning.
The works analysed above respectfully make visible the embodied memory
of the last witnesses trying to communicate their past experiences and the
42 Jacob Lund
post-generations’ necessarily mediated relation to this past and their need –

and right – to establish their own relation to this past, their need to ‘open
up new imaginary spaces’ (Shalev-Gerz, 2006b: 110).
Notes
1. I would like to thank Esther Shalev-Gerz for kindly providing images of her works and
for the permission to reproduce these images. I also wish to thank Stephanie Rotem,
Rachel Perry and Ernst van Alphen for useful comments to the initial paper version
of this article as well as Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen for commenting on the final one.
2. Cf. Esther Shalev-Gerz’s comprehensive website for descriptions, images and
videos of her work: http://www.shalev-gerz.net (accessed 14 August 2013). For a
description and critique of participatory art and ‘the social turn’ cf. Bishop (2012).
In the article ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics’, Claire Bishop criticizes
Bourriaud’s micro-utopian, undifferentiated relational aesthetics for not consider-
ing the quality of the human relations established by pointing out: ‘if relational
art produces human relations, then the next logical question to ask is what types
of relations are being produced, for whom, and why?’ (Bishop, 2004: 65).
3. Shalev-Gerz described these circumstances and how the installation came about to
me in a personal correspondence on 24 July 2013.
4. Shalev-Gerz told me about this survivor’s silence about his captivity in a personal
correspondence on 24 July 2013.
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MenschenDinge, Video-clips from the installation MenschenDinge/The Human Aspect of
Objects, http://www.shalev-gerz.net/EN/index.html#/2006/menschendinge/men-
schendinge1 (accessed 14 August 2013).
Rancière, Jacques (2001) ‘S’il y a de l’irreprésentable’, in Jean-Luc Nancy (ed.), L’art et
la mémoire des camps: Représenter exterminer, Paris: Seuil, pp. 81–102.
—— (2002) ‘The Aesthetic Revolution and its Outcomes’, New Left Review, 14, March–
April, pp. 133–51.
—— (2006) ‘Die Arbeit des Bildes/The Work of the Image’, in Esther Shalev-Gerz,
MenschenDinge/The Human Aspect of Objects, Weimar: Stiftung Gedenkstätten
Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora, pp. 8–25.
Ravini, Sinziana (2006) ‘Dialogisk estetik och den relationella estetikens uppgång och
fall’ [Dialogical aesthetics and the rise and fall of relational aesthetics], Paletten:
tidskrift för konst, 264.2, pp. 4–9.
Renov, Michael (2013) ‘The Facial Closeup in Audio-Visual Testimony: The Power
of Embodied Memory’, pp. 1–8, http://www.preserving-survivors-memories.org/
media/presentations/Michael_Renov_The_Facial_Closeup_in_Audio-Visual_
Testimony.pdf?1354623339 (accessed 7 May 2013).
Shalev-Gerz, Esther (2002) Est-ce que ton image me regarde?/Geht dein Bild mich an?/Does
your image reflect me?, Hannover: Sprengel Museum.
—— (2006a) MenschenDinge / The Human Aspect of Objects, Weimar: Stiftung
Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora.
—— (2006b) ‘Esther Shalev-Gerz in Conversation with Ulrich Krempel’, in Esther
Shalev-Gerz, MenschenDinge / The Human Aspect of Objects, Weimar: Stiftung
Gedenkstätten Buchenwald und Mittelbau-Dora, pp. 100–3.
—— (2010) Esther Shalev-Gerz (exhibition catalogue), Paris: Fage éditions & Éditions
du Jeu de Paume.
Weizman, Eyal (2012) ‘Forensic Architecture: Notes from Fields and Forums’, in
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (ed.), dOCUMENTA (13) – The Book of Books, Ostfildern:
Hatje Cantz, pp. 389–92.
Young, James E. (2000) At Memory’s Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary
Art and Architecture, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
—— (2012) ‘Spaces for Deep Memory: Esther Shalev-Gerz and the First Counter-
Monuments’, in Nicole Schweizer (ed.), Esther Shalev-Gerz: Between Telling and
Listening – Entre l’écoute et la parole, Zurich: JRP Ringier, pp. 79–82.
4
Countermonuments as Spaces for
Deep Memory1
James E. Young
In 1981, Maya Lin – a 21-year-old architecture student at Yale University –

won an open, blind competition for the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, to be
sited on the national mall in Washington, DC. In her minimalist ‘negative-
form’ design, Maya Lin openly acknowledged her debt to both Sir Edwin
Lutyens’s Memorial to the Missing of the Somme (1924) in Thiepval, France;
and to George-Henri Pingusson’s Memorial to the Martyrs of the Deportation
(1962) on the Île de la Cité in Paris. Both were precursors to the ‘counter-
monument’ realized so brilliantly by Lin, both articulations of uncompen-
sated loss and absence, represented by carved-out pieces of landscape, as
well as by the visitor’s descent downward (and inward) into memory.2
Carved into the ground, a black wound in the landscape and an explicit
counter-point to Washington’s prevailing white, neo-classical obelisks and
statuary, Maya Lin’s design articulated loss without redemption, and formal-
ized a national ambivalence surrounding the memory of American soldiers
sent to fight and die in a war the country now abhorred. In Maya Lin’s words,
she ‘imagined taking a knife and cutting into the earth, opening it up, an
initial violence and pain that in time would heal’ (Lin, 2000: 4:09). That is,
she opened a space in the landscape that would open a space within us for
memory. ‘I never looked at the memorial as a wall, an object’, Maya Lin has
said, ‘but as an edge to the earth, an opened side’. Instead of a positive V-form
(like a jutting elbow or a flying-wedge military formation), she opened up
the V’s obverse space, a negative-space to be filled by those who come to
remember America’s fallen soldiers.
After the dedication of Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial in 1982,
a generation of young German memorial artists seemed to find in it a
contrarian memorial vernacular for the expression of their own national
shame and ambivalence toward memory of the Holocaust; they also found
a memorial medium for their revulsion against traditionally authori-
tarian, complacent and self-certain national shrines. Preoccupied with
absence and irredeemable loss, and with a broken and irreparable world,
these artists and architects would arrive at their own, counter-memorial
44
Countermonuments as Spaces for Deep Memory 45
architectural vernacular to express the breach in their faith in civilization

without mending it. Eventually, counter-memorial artists and architects
such as Esther Shalev-Gerz, Jochen Gerz, Horst Hoheisel, Micha Ullman and
Daniel Libeskind (among others) would acknowledge that Maya Lin’s design
for the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial broke the mould that made their own
counter-memorial work possible.
How amazing then, that in 1983, without yet having seen or heard about
the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, Esther Shalev would uncannily counter-
point her nation’s own memorial tradition in Oil on Stone (Tel Hai, 1983) –
what must be called the ‘other’ first counter-monument of its generation.
Immigrating to Israel as an 8-year-old from Vilna in 1957, Esther Shalev
(like others in her generation), lived through a succession of wars, includ-
ing the 1967 Six-day War, the Yom Kippur War of 1973, the Litani invasion
of 1978, and the Lebanon War of 1982. But it was this last war, the Israeli
invasion of Lebanon in June 1982, a desperate attempt to run the PLO and
its rockets out of Lebanon and away from Israel’s northern border that broke
an entire generation’s heart and national spirit. The aerial bombardment
of Beirut, the Christian Phalangists’ mass murder of Palestinians in the
Sabra and Shatilla refugee camp under Israel’s guard, and the death of an
Israeli university student and peace demonstrator in a grenade attack by an
Israeli counter-demonstrator led to mass demonstrations and the eventual
resignation of then-defence minister, Ariel Sharon.
An entire generation of Israeli writers, artists and academics – already
war-weary and sceptical of the government’s rationale for Israel’s first ‘war
of choice’ – would now challenge not just the war but also their own young
nation’s founding myths and narratives, especially as they seemed to
buttress the government’s war claims and continued occupation of the
West Bank. Israeli soldier-poets and play-wrights suddenly began to evoke
Holocaust imagery in their depictions of young Palestinian and Lebanese
victims of Israel’s invasion. Authors like Amos Oz and A.B. Yehoshua publicly
upbraided Prime Minister Menachem Begin for comparing Yasser Arafat in
Beirut to Adolf Hitler in his Berlin bunker.3 A rising school of Israeli aca-
demics, ‘the New Historians’, openly began to question the State’s found-
ing fathers’ version of the 1948 War of Independence and the subsequent
Palestinian refugee crisis.
In 1982, Esther Shalev took part in a large exhibition of contemporary art
Here and Now at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. In her piece, Oil on Metal
Shalev took a large sheet of steel, folded to be free-standing, and cut out
a laser-etched human figure, inspired by Picasso, she would later say. The
figure is absent, an empty space in the oil-painted metal sheet. Invited the
next year to participate in a large outdoor landscape exhibition at Tel Hai in
the northern Galilee, Shalev fabricated this same ‘missing figure’ in a mor-
tared wall of white stone blocks, which had been cut from a single large slab
of Jerusalem stone. She installed Oil on Stone on a wild, rocky hillside, just
46 James E. Young
north of and entirely visible from the national shrine to Yoseph Trumpeldor,
an early Zionist pioneer and military hero killed while defending a small
Jewish settlement at Tel Hai in 1920. According to Yael Zerubavel, ‘When
the State of Israel was founded, Tel Hai was established as an Israeli national
‘myth of beginning’, representing the pioneering era in Israeli history …
[T]o the Jewish community in Palestine, the battle at Tel Hai symbolized
a major transformation of Jewish national character and the emergence of
a new spirit of heroism and self-sacrifice’ (1991: 193; see also Zerubavel,
1995). As the national site of Israel’s transformational myth of origins, Tel
Hai would now become the site of yet another transformation in national
consciousness.
Permanently installed in 1983, Shalev’s Oil on Stone planted its missing
human figure as a counter-point to both the surrounding natural landscape
and the white Jerusalem stone blocks composing The Roaring Lion sculptor
Abraham Melnikov’s memorial to the legendary Trumpeldor, designed in
the blocky Assyrian-style of its time, and dedicated at Tel Hai in 1934. By
installing Oil on Stone within the sightlines of Roaring Lion, Shalev physically
and visually countered this national memorial with another kind of memo-
rial, challenging the fixed, heroic idealization of Trumpeldor with a work
of sculpture that changes as visitors move around it. In its two carved out
panels of stone blocks, placed at 45 degrees to each other, the absent human
silhouette seems to move as one passes by, changing form, before seeming to
crumble into fallen ruins. In its spatial dialogue with the national memorial
to Yoseph Trumpeldor, Oil on Stone turns itself from a free-standing negative-
form sculpture into a national counter-memorial par excellence – the other
great ‘counter-monument’ of its generation – challenging (but not negating)
the fixed memory of Israel’s national origins.
The Vanishing Monument in Harburg
Other notable artists also participated in the Tel Hai open-air exhibition,
including Israeli artist Micha Ullman, whose installation Sky consisted of a
trench dug into the hillside, an early negative-form monument and medita-
tion on absence. Years later, Ullman would become renowned for his elo-
quent Book Burning Memorial, Bibliotek, a room of empty book shelves built
beneath Berlin’s Bebelplatz. His description of the empty library later echoed
the pit he had dug out at Tel Hai: ‘It begins with the void that exists in every
pit and will not disappear. You could say that emptiness is a state, a situation
formed by the sides of the pit: The deeper it is, the more sky there will be,
and the greater the void. In the library containing the missing books, that
void is more palpable’ (quoted in Azoulay, 2009).
At the Tel Hai exhibition, Esther Shalev met another artist, Jochen Gerz, a
Berlin-born conceptual artist of erasure and self-effacement. This was 1983,
and a match was made between the Israeli artist whose patience with her
national narrative and its shrines had run out and the German artist whose
scepticism of monumental and other fixed art forms seem to have been
bred into him. By 1972, Jochen Gerz had already mounted an exhibition –
Exit/Dachau – which offered an explicit critique of Germany’s attempt to
memorialize its victims, suggesting that in its pedagogical rigidity, the
national memorial at Dachau was actually an extension of the authoritarian
principles whose victims it would now claim to memorialize. Thus matched
in the ‘holy land’ and married soon after, Esther Shalev-Gerz and Jochen
Gerz would collaborate on what is commonly regarded as their generation’s
first and greatest counter-monument to the victims of Nazi Germany: the
vanishing Monument against Fascism, War, and Violence – and for Peace and
Human Rights in Hamburg-Harburg, Germany (1986–93).
In fact, in Germany the issues surrounding Holocaust memorialization
come into the sharpest, most painful relief. In the land of what Saul Friedländer
has called ‘redemptory anti-Semitism’ (Friedländer, 1997: 3) the possibility
that art might redeem mass murder with beauty (or with ugliness), or that
memorials might somehow redeem this past with the instrumentalization
of its memory, continues to haunt a post-war generation of memory-artists.
Moreover, artists in Germany are both plagued and inspired by a series of
impossible memorial questions: How does a state incorporate shame into its
national memorial landscape? How does a state recite, much less comme-
morate, the litany of its misdeeds, making them part of its reason for being?
Under what memorial aegis does a nation remember its own barbarity?
Where is the tradition for memorial mea culpa? By 1989, Germany’s ‘Jewish
question’ had morphed into a two-pronged memorial question: How does
a nation mourn the victims of a mass-murder perpetrated in its name?
How does a nation reunite itself on the bedrock memory of its horrendous
crimes?
Further complicating Germany’s memorial equation was the post-war
generation’s deep distrust of monumental forms in light of their systematic
exploitation by the Nazis. In their eyes, the didactic logic of monuments –
their demagogical rigidity and certainty of history – continued to recall
too closely traits associated with fascism itself. A monument against fas-
cism, therefore, would have to be a monument against itself: against the
traditionally didactic function of monuments, against their tendency to
displace the past they would have us contemplate; and, finally, against the
authoritarian propensity in monumental spaces that reduces viewers to
passive spectators. Rather than attempting to resolve such memorial ques-
tions, Esther Shalev-Gerz and Jochen Gerz would now strive for their formal
articulation.
Within months of meeting Esther at Tel Hai in 1983, Jochen Gerz had
been invited as one of six artists to propose a design in Hamburg for a
Monument against Fascism, War, and Violence – and for Peace and Human
Rights, a tortuously convoluted title in Germany for a kind of ‘Holocaust
48 James E. Young
monument’. According to Shalev, when Gerz first broached this invita-

tion with her, she replied by gesturing out her window to Israel’s own
monument-strewn landscape. ‘What do we need with another monument?
We have too many already. What we need is one that disappears’ (Young,
2000: 128). Here she agreed to work with Gerz toward finding a form that
challenged the monument’s traditional illusions of permanence, its authori-
tarian rigidity. The resulting collaboration between Shalev-Gerz and Gerz
would thus combine a traditional Jewish scepticism of material icons and a
postwar German suspicion of monumental forms. ‘What we did not want’,
they declared, ‘was an enormous pedestal with something on it presuming
to tell people what they ought to think’ (Gintz, 1987: 87). Theirs would be
a self-abnegating monument, literally self-effacing, and it won the competi-
tion for the Hamburg-Harburg memorial. Unveiled in Harburg in 1986, this
12-metre high, 1-metre square pillar was made of hollow aluminium plated
with a thin layer of soft, dark lead. An inscription near its base read in seven
languages:
We invite the citizens of Harburg, and visitors to the town, to add their
names here to ours. In doing so, we commit ourselves to remain vigilant.
As more and more names cover this 12-meter tall lead column, it will
gradually be lowered into the ground. One day it will have disappeared
completely, and the site of the Harburg monument against fascism will
be empty. In the end, it is only we ourselves who can rise up against
injustice.
Wary that such memorials had too often served as substitutes for inter-
vention rather than as calls for action, the artists reminded visitors that it
was we, not our monuments, who would have to rise up against injustice.
With audacious simplicity, the artists’ counter-monument would thus flout
nearly every cherished memorial convention: its aim was not to console
but to provoke; not to remain fixed but to change; not to be everlasting
but to disappear; not to be ignored by its passers-by but to demand interac-
tion; not to remain pristine but to invite its own violation; not to accept
graciously the burden of memory but to throw it back at the town’s feet.
How better to remember the murdered Jews of Europe than by a vanishing
monument? After several lowerings over the next seven years, the Monument
against Fascism itself vanished on 10 November 1993 with its last sinking.
Nothing is left above ground but the top surface of the monument, even
as a section of the sunken monument itself is partly visible through a glass
window into its underground chamber, suggesting its having been internal-
ized by the earth. On its complete sinking, the artists hoped that it would
return the burden of memory to those who came looking for it. Now all
that stands here are the memory-tourists, forced to rise and to remember
for themselves.
Between Listening and Telling
Whether opening up spaces for dialogue between sculptures in the land-

scape, or opening up the space in a cityscape previously occupied by a
now-vanished monument, Esther Shalev-Gerz lives and creates by a singular
credo: ‘You have to open up spaces’ (Shalev-Gerz, 2008: 45).
Moreover, in her words, ‘Spatial constructions are not static. They are per-
sistently transformed and re-defined by the people that “practice” the space
they are in’ (2008: 53). In her extraordinary 2005 installation at the Hotel de
Ville in Paris, Between Listening and Telling: Last Witnesses, Auschwitz 1945–2005,
Shalev-Gerz visually plumbed the depths of what may be the most pro-
foundly elusive of all memory-spaces: that space between a survivor’s deep
memory of traumatic experience and its verbal articulation.
Holocaust historian Saul Friedländer has drawn a clear distinction between
what he terms ‘common memory’ and ‘deep memory’ of the Holocaust:
common memory as that which ‘tends to restore or establish coherence,
closure and possibly a redemptive stance’, and deep memory as that which
remains essentially inarticulable and unrepresentable, that which continues
to exist as unresolved trauma just beyond the reach of meaning (Friedländer,
1992: 41). Not only are these two orders of memory irreducible to each
other, Friedländer says, but ‘Any attempt at building a coherent self found-
ers on the intractable return of the repressed and recurring deep memory’
(p. 41). That is, to some extent, every common memory of the Holocaust
is haunted by that, which it necessarily leaves unstated, its coherence a
necessary but ultimately misleading evasion.
As his sole example of deep memory, Friedländer refers to the last frame of
Art Spiegelman’s Holocaust commix-book, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale in which
the dying father addresses his son, Artie, with the name of Richieu, Artie’s
brother who died in the Holocaust before Artie was even born (Spiegelman,
1991: 135). The still apparently unassimilated trauma of his first son’s death
remains inarticulable – and thereby deep – and so is represented here only
indirectly as a kind of manifest behaviour. But this example is significant for
Friedländer in other ways as well, coming as it does at the end of the survi-
vor’s life. For Friedländer wonders, profoundly I think, what will become
of this deep memory after the survivors are gone. ‘The question remains’,
he says, ‘whether at the collective level … an event such as the Shoah may,
after all the survivors have disappeared, leave traces of a deep memory
beyond individual recall, which will defy any attempts to give it meaning’
(Friedländer, 1992: 41). The implication is that, beyond the next genera-
tion’s artistic and literary representations of it, such deep memory may be
lost to history altogether.
In fact, there is another moment in Spiegelman’s Maus that may also
exemplify a survivor’s deep memory and its untranslatability into narrative.
It occurs during a session between Artie and his psychotherapist Pavel who,
50 James E. Young
like Artie’s father, is a Holocaust survivor. Here Spiegelman seems also to be

asking how we write the stories of the dead without filling in their absence.
In a way, the co-mixture of image and narrative allows the artist to do just
this, to make visible crucial parts of memory-work usually lost to narrative
alone, such as the silences and spaces between words. In a series of four
frames, Art listens as Pavel compares all that is written about the Holocaust
to the absolute silence of the dead, the absence of the dead victims’ stories.
How to show a necessary silence? Pavel suggests that because ‘life always
takes the side of life … the victims who died can never tell THEIR side of
the story, so maybe it’s better not to have any more stories’. To which Art
responds in the next panel, ‘Uh-huh. Samuel Beckett once said: ‘Every word
is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.’ This is followed
by a panel without words, only Art and his therapist sitting silently, smok-
ing and thinking, a moment in the therapeutic context as fraught with
significance as narrative itself. This is not silence as an absence of words
but silence as something that actively passes between two people – the
only frame in the two volumes without words or some other sign denoting
words. In the next panel, Art gesticulates ‘On the other hand, he SAID it.’
Pavel replies in the same panel, ‘He was right. Maybe you can use it in your
book’ (Spiegelman, 1991: 45).
Conceived to mark the 60th anniversary of the Red Army’s liberation of
Auschwitz, Between Listening and Telling turned the elegant space of the Hotel
de Ville’s Grande Salle outside-in, taking an interior space and inviting visi-
tors to further interiorize the spaces between survivors’ video-taped words.
What was commemorated here would not be the physical liberation of sur-
vivors from the camp, but the non-liberation of survivors from their own
internal memories. Being freed from Auschwitz is not tantamount to being
freed from one’s memory of what happened there. But how to show this?
In 2005, a team of videographers recorded the testimonies of some 60
Auschwitz survivors living in Paris, in which they described their lives before,
during and after their internment. Leaving these taped interviews unedited,
Shalev-Gerz showed them on 15 small monitors and DVD players, with
headphones, allowing viewers to watch and listen to any of the audio-visual
testimonies they chose, as they sat in four parallel rows of tables and chairs
running the length of the Grande Salle. At the end of the room, on three
large screens mounted side-by-side, a single silent video of survivors’ testi-
monies was projected, but with a seven-second time lapse clip showing only
the slow-motion faces of survivors in the silent spaces between their words.
It is the space between words, the artist suggests, when memory remains
wholly internal and still alive in the mind. Words may be necessary when
one wants to share memory, but they also inevitably fix memory into
a sound, an idea that it was not when it remained wholly internal and
unverbalized. Without words, or between words, our eyes are drawn to the
survivors’ faces and eyes, where we can see them remembering, without
knowing what is being remembered. Here we become witnesses to the sur-

vivors’ inward search for memory, witnesses to their search for language
commensurate to their memory, witnesses to their inability to find such
language, witnesses to the pain such memory now re-inflicts on them. We
watch as memory remains within, as it finds expression in facial contor-
tions, but not in speech. Whereas writers and speakers must necessarily
break silence in order to represent it, silence remains audio and visually
palpable here. Silence that cannot exist in print except in blank pages is now
accompanied by the image of one who is silent, who cannot find the words,
who may have no words for such memory. In this installation, we are wit-
ness to the speaking and to the not-speaking. This is how Shalev-Gerz shows
us not only the profound space between listening and telling, but also the
untraversible space between a survivor’s memory and her verbal testimony.
It is almost as if, once verbalized, such memory is no longer the survivor’s
memory at all, but now only our own.
In his concluding chapter of Oblivion (entitled ‘A Duty to Forget’), ethno-
grapher and social theorist Marc Auge echoes Nietzsche’s case against the
kinds of fixed memory that disable life. But here he extends this critique by
reminding us that because memory and oblivion ‘stand together, both […]
necessary for the full use of time’, only together can they enable life (Auge,
2004: 89). Even survivors of the Nazi concentration camps, who do not
need to be reminded of their duty to remember, may have the additional
duty to survive memory itself. And to do this may mean to begin forget-
ting, according to Auge, ‘in order to find faith in the everyday again and
mastery over their time’ (Auge, 2004: 88). In this view, the value of life in its
quotidian unfolding and the meaning we find in such life are animated by a
constant, fragile calculus of remembering and forgetting, a constant tug and
pull between memory and oblivion, each an inverted trace of the other. ‘We
must forget in order to remain present, forget in order not to die, forget in
order to remain faithful’ Auge concludes. ‘Faithful to what?’ we ask. Faithful
to life in its present, quotidian moment, I say.
Notes
1. This chapter is adapted from ‘Spaces for Deep Memory: Esther Shalev-Gerz and the
First Countermonuments’, in Nicole Schweizer (ed.) The Memory Works of Esther
Shalev-Gerz: A Retrospective, Lausanne: Musee des Beaux-Arts, 2012, pp. 79–87.
2. See Lin (2000: 4:09). Lin’s reference to the Pingusson memorial in Paris came in a
private conversation with the author.
3. See Young (1988). Also see Oz (1983), Bauer (1982) and Mankowitz (1982).
References
Auge, Marc (2004) Oblivion, Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.
Azoulay, Ellie Armon (2009) ‘The Accidental Sculptor’, Ha’Aretz, 27 September.
52 James E. Young
Bauer, Yehuda (1982) ‘Fruits of Fear’, Jerusalem Post, 3 June, p. 8.

Friedländer, Saul (1997) Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1, New York: HarperCollins.
—— (1992) ‘Trauma, Transference, and “Working Through” in Writing the History of
the Shoah’, History and Memory 1.4 (Spring-Summer), pp. 39–59.
Gintz, Claude (1987) ‘“L’Anti-Monument” de Jochen & Esther Gerz’, Galeries Magazine
19, June–July, p. 87.
Lin, Maya Ling (2000) Boundaries, New York and London: Simon & Schuster.
Mankowitz, Ze’ev (1982) ‘Beirut Is Not Berlin’, Jerusalem Post, 4 August, p. 8.
Oz, Amos (1983) ‘Hitler kvar met, adoni rosh hamemshalah [Hitler’s Already Dead,
Mr. Prime Minister]’, reprinted in Chatziat Gevul: Shirim Mimilhemet Levanon [Border
Crossing: Poems from the Lebanon War], Tel Aviv: Sifriat Poalim.
Shalev-Gerz, Esther (2008) ‘There Is No Together Place Here: A Conversation between
Esther Shalev-Gerz and Moira Jeffrey’, in Esther Shalev-Gerz: A Thread, Glasgow:
Centre for Contemporary Arts, p. 45.
Spiegelman, Art (1991 [1986]) Maus: A Survivor’s Tale 1 and 2, New York: Pantheon.
Young, James E. (1988) ‘When Soldier Poets Remember the Holocaust’, Writing and
Rewriting the Holocaust, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
—— (2000) At Memory’s Edge: After-Images of the Holocaust in Contemporary Art and
Architecture, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
—— (2006) ‘The Stages of Memory at Ground Zero’, in Oren Baruch Stier and J. Shawn
Landres (eds.) Religion, Violence, Memory, and Place, Bloomington and Indianapolis:
Indiana University Press.
—— (2006) ‘Die Gedenkstatte des World Trade Center: Bericht Eines Jurymitglieds
uber die Stadien der Erinnerung’, in Gunter Schlusche (ed.) Architektur der
Erinnerung: NS-Verbrechen in der europaischen Gedenkkultur, Berlin: Nicolai/Akademie
der Kunste.
Zerubavel, Yael (1991) ‘New Beginning, Old Past: The Collective Memory of Pioneering
in Israeli Culture’, in Laurence J. Silberstein (ed.), New Perspectives on Israeli History,
New York and London: New York University Press.
—— (1995), Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National
Tradition, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
5
Sites that Matter: Current
Developments of Urban Holocaust
Commemoration in Berlin and
Munich
Imke Girßmann
A Sunday Walk through History
Let us imagine you are a visitor in Berlin and take a walk through the
historically relevant places in the city centre, as Berlin’s tourist material
might have recommended. You start your walk at Peter Eisenman’s Memorial
to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which before its dedication was by Germany’s
former chancellor Gerhard Schröder imagined as ‘Ein Ort, an den man gerne
geht’ – ‘A place, one likes to visit’1 (as quoted by Jureit, 2010: 36). Sunbathing
residents and picture-taking tourists at the field of stelae seem to confirm
Schröder’s idea since the opening in 2005. Just a few steps away from it, if
yet somewhat hidden, you find the Memorial to the Homosexuals Persecuted
under the National Socialist Regime at the edge of the Tiergarten, Berlin’s largest
inner-city park. The work of Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, dedicated
in 2008, consists of one single concrete stele, similar to those of Eisenman’s
memorial, but slanted. On a screen inside you can watch a video-loop of
kissing same-sex couples. Since October 2012 a few steps further through the
Tiergarten in the direction of the building of the Reichstag, the historical and
present place of the Parliament, you come across the Memorial to the Sinti and
Roma of Europe Murdered under the National Socialist Regime. The work by Dani
Karavan consists of a well with a retractable stone in the middle, onto which
a fresh flower is placed every day.
How to continue your walk? A well-known city planner, Florian Mausbach,
has pictured a Sunday walk in the capital, leading along a, what he calls
‘Feststraße der Republik’ (a Boulevard of the Republic) (Mausbach, 2009: 30).
He suggests that after visiting the Reichstag and having taken part in the com-
memoration at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe you pace through
the Brandenburger Tor, popular Prussian symbol of the city, which in the
last decades was mainly perceived first as a symbol of the separation of two
German states and then their unification. As you continue your walk along
the boulevard Unter den Linden, the historical main axis of the city, you
53
54 Imke Girßmann
take a look at the Neue Wache, another Prussian building, which was after
the German reunification rededicated as the Central Memorial for the Victims
of War and Tyranny (see Rosenberg’s chapter within this volume). Walking
further you pass the German Historical Museum and a few steps ahead, as a
final stop, next to the still to be rebuilt historical Berlin Palace (the historical
Prussian castle, damaged in World War II, demolished by the GDR in 1950
and transformed into the “Palace of the Republic”), you will probably soon be
able to reach the Monument for Freedom and Unity to the German Reunification
(inauguration planned for 2017) which is currently in the planning process.
In Mausbach’s eyes the aim of this walk is to be conducive for Berlin residents
and visitors to a ‘cultural elevation’ (kulturelle Erbauung) (Mausbach, 2009: 30).
In reunified Berlin, the national symbolic space – also referred to as ‘the
normality of the special’ – according to the classical concept of the capital
since the nineteenth century, is currently still being (re-)established (Binder,
2002: 30). This imaginary Sunday walk indicates a desire for a representa-
tion of Berlin as a grown democratic national and cosmopolitan capital.
Against this background, I will take a closer look at the recent development
of the official national memorials for the commemoration of victims of
National Socialism in Berlin, examining entanglements of desires for vis-
ibility, memory culture, city planning and identity politics. Adopting a com-
parative approach, I shall revisit Places of Remembrance by Renata Stih and
Frieder Schnock in the quarter of Berlin-Schöneberg in relation to memorial
art in the Bavarian capital city of Munich, formerly called the Hauptstadt
der Bewegung (capital of the NS-Movement). Munich’s suppressed NS past
has since 2010 been dealt with through Michaela Melián’s audio artwork
Memory Loops, which I will argue, proposes a decentralized commemora-
tive approach. Her work contrasts, in ways I will outline in the following,
with Berlin’s centralized memory culture. This comparison will lead me to
considerations about the importance of these approaches in the time of
disappearing contemporary witnesses besides urban acts of representation.
From National Repression to a National Memorial to the

Murdered Jews of Europe
The official German central Holocaust memorial is now a must-see for tour-
ists as well as for foreign politicians paying a state visit. However, it is the
result of more than ten years of intense debates. In 1988 the journalist Lea
Rosh demanded that a memorial to the murdered Jews had to be estab-
lished in the land of the perpetrators. She started an initiative that stressed
that it was a scandal that a central memorial was still missing in Germany
(Kirsch, 2003: 86). After gaining many prominent supporters, the project
grew from a private initiative into an action supported by the government.
A crucial change happened in 1992 when Chancellor Helmut Kohl of the
conservative party CDU (Christlich Demokratische Union) gave his official
Sites that Matter 55
statement of support and the project was, at least partly, transferred to the
field of national representation, thus gaining significance. Kohl’s commit-
ment, however, resulted from an agreement about the capital’s commemo-
rative space with Ignatz Bubis, chairman of the Central Council of Jews in
Germany at that time. Bubis had given his assent for the renewal of the
Neue Wache as the Central Memorial for the Victims of War and Tyranny,
which had been criticized by Jewish and non-Jewish organizations and indi-
viduals for its vague dedication and a tendency to show a national German
community as victims of National Socialism, on condition that Kohl would
advocate the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Stavginski, 2002: 66).
The spatial focus for the memorial shifted after Germany’s reunification
from another area to the new centre. After the fall of the Berlin wall, a site
south of the Brandenburger Tor, which had been part of the death zone
of the GDR border, became available. It was chosen by the initiative both
because of the potential to represent the German history of separation
and because of its direct proximity to the former place of Hitler’s Neue
Reichskanzlei, an important part of the NS-government (Kirsch, 2003: 89).
At the same time the setting would be close to the Reichstag, the upcoming
seat of the parliament in Berlin, which would soon become the capital of a
reunified Germany.
Although strong criticism emerged towards the idea of a monumental
memorial in this place, many artists did not question the assignment and
drafted monumental designs for the area. Only a few handed in conceptual
drafts that questioned the ‘central’ place in the capital for future ritual-
ized acts of commemoration. Beyond critical academic spheres, no broader
debates about how to or how not to deal with the place occurred.
In 1999 the Parliament, at that point under the new reigning coalition
of Social Democrats and the Green Party, after a competition characterized
by conflicts, decided to realize the proposal ‘Eisenman II’. This design goes
back to a decision by Chancellor Kohl, against the jury’s preferences, and
was also modified after his suggestions. The well-known design, completed
in 2005, consists of 2,711 concrete slabs, each more than 2 metres wide
and varying in height from 20 centimetres to more than 4 metres. These
stelae are placed on ‘gently and unevenly sloping ground covering 19,000
square metres’ (Stiftung Denkmal, 2013a). Eisenman explained that by
walking through this ‘wave-like form’ people are invited to feel ‘solitude’
and ‘being an outsider’ in order to comprehend the ‘situation of persecuted
Jews’ (Eisenman quoted by Kirsch, 2003: 289). The memorial is, according to
the modifications on the original proposal, accompanied by a subterranean
Information Centre for documentation about the Holocaust.
That a national memorial to the victims of the Holocaust became possible
in Germany is the result of a development that began in the 1980s and
led to changes in political and public awareness. Before, efforts for public
commemoration of victims of the Holocaust were mainly organized by
56 Imke Girßmann
non-governmental grassroots initiatives and often faced opposition in

politics and society (Tomberger, 2007: 11). In the 1980s this commitment
grew, leading to networked local history workshops (Geschichtswerkstätten),
which approached governmental authorities with demands for memorial
tablets, monuments and memorial sites. Through national funding, a transi-
tion from non-governmental to governmental commemorative culture took
place. Today, historian Volkhard Knigge stresses that commemorative cul-
ture in Germany has become a national task (cf. Tomberger, 2007: 11). The
turning point is often seen in Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker’s
speech in 1985 on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the end of World
War II, in which he clearly articulated Germany’s guilt and responsibility
and demanded active remembering. It is remarkable that the land of the per-
petrators is willing to erect a visible memorial in its capital centre. However,
this also bears a risk. Art historian Silke Wenk points out the difficulty of the
assignment that tries to combine two incompatible intentions – erecting a
monument to the murdered Jews and at the same time erecting a national
German monument. Wenk highlights this as highly problematic since this
means a monument to the victims of genocide committed by Germans and
at the same time a monument for ‘us’, ‘the “new” Germans, articulating a
relationship to history in the new German capital. Thus the victims risk to
become ‘sacrifices for the new republic’ (Wenk, 1997: 342f).
Completing the Capital’s Commemorative Centre? The

Memorials to Homosexuals and Sinti and Roma Persecuted
under National Socialism
During the process leading to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
and Eisenman’s monument in particular, the question of dedication was
highly contested. The government was in favour for Rosh’s initiative that
demanded an exclusive dedication to the murdered Jews, considering anti-
Semitism as the fundamental centre of National Socialism and not only
a part of it. For this reason, demands by the Central Council of Sinti and
Roma in Germany, arguing that Sinti and Roma had become victims of the
same genocide programme (Kirsch, 2003: 171), were rejected.
Rosh and others did not object to a national commemoration of the
other victim groups in general, but wanted separate memorials. Taking this
attitude, the governmental decision implied the future obligation to ‘duly
honour all other victims of National Socialism’ (Stiftung Denkmal, 2013b).
Despite this obligation, the changing governmental coalitions did not put a
lot of effort into the memorial project for the commemoration of Sinti and
Roma, although Germany’s Social Democratic Chancellor Helmut Schmidt
already in 1982 recognized their persecution and murder as genocide.
The first step towards the project’s realization was made in 2001, when
Romani Rose, chairman of the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma,
succeeded in gaining prominent supporters in an international petition.

After this, the Federal Government and the Berlin Senate took responsibility
for the realization.
However, the actions of government institutions supervising the project
gave the impression that they were not unhappy that they had to post-
pone the project indefinitely again and again due to different conflicts that
occurred at different steps of the process. A debate about the appropriate
dedication text between the governmental institutions, representatives of
the Sinti Allianz, an association of German Sinti, and the Central Council
of Sinti and Roma occurred and a long quarrel about expensive building
materials between Karavan and the Berlin Senate temporarily stopped the
project.
The question of the appropriate location was controversial for a long time.
In 1995, the Berlin Senate had promised the Central Council of Sinti and Roma
the site near the Reichstag, where the memorial is situated today, when the
plans for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews were finalized. This had happened
in an informal way, presumably to keep the discussions of victim hierarchies
to a minimum at this point (Longerich, 2012). The Central Council erected
a sign there in 1999, saying that this would be the site of the future national
Memorial to Sinti and Roma murdered by National Socialism in Europe. This
acted as a reminder to the parliament, but also displayed the group’s claim for
a place within the further developing national memorial setting.
However, in the same year, Eberhard Diepgen (CDU), Berlin’s mayor from
1991 to 2001, denied the Roma and Sinti Memorial a central location in
Berlin. He and others instead voted for a monument at the periphery of the
city, making use of the argument of the authentic place: there, in the district
of Marzahn, the Nazis had raised a so-called gypsy camp in the 1930s, from
where Roma and Sinti families were deported to Auschwitz. Since 1986 there
have already been several remarkable efforts for visible commemoration at
this site, going back to private initiatives. In 2011 a ‘Place for Remembrance
and Information’ with an ongoing open air exhibition was opened by
the Landesverband Deutscher Sinti und Roma Berlin-Brandenburg e.V. (see
Landesverband, 2013). The idea to place memorials at an authentic location
is a reasonable approach. But in this context of planning new memorials
in the capital, after the central memorial to the murdered Jews had been
approved, this argument was seen not only by the initiators as a further act
of marginalization and as a refusal to recognize the plight of the Roma and
Sinti under National Socialism. Diepgen and other opponents had to make
concessions. Dani Karavan, who had already been chosen beforehand by
Romani Rose, was now contracted to design the memorial.
Karavan chose a dark-coloured basin that when filled with water would
look like a deep hole (see Figure 5.1). On the water’s surface, reflections of
the sky, the Reichstag and the visitors would be seen (Karavan, 2012: 55). In
the middle of the well there is a triangle out of dark granite, a reminder of
58 Imke Girßmann
Figure 5.1 Dani Karavan’s Memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe Murdered under the
National Socialist regime, Berlin. Detail. © Tanja Schult.
the black triangle Roma and Sinti had to wear in concentration camps. On
top of this lies a wild flower, reminding of the fact that most of the victims
lack a grave (Karavan, 2012: 57). Every day it is replaced by a fresh one. At
the scenery a traditional tune by a Sinti musician playing the violin is trans-
mitted by loudspeakers. Around the well’s edge runs the poem Auschwitz
by Santino Spinelli Slate slabs on the ground with engraved names of
concentration camps lead to standing glass plates at the path through the
Tiergarten. On these glass plates, a chronology of the NS persecution of Sinti
and Roma can be read, as well as quotations by former German Chancellor
Helmut Schmidt and former Federal President Roman Herzog, acknowledg-
ing the persecution of the Roma and Sinti as genocide. Karavan himself
originally did not want to integrate text in his design. By doing so he fol-
lowed a compromise that ended the conflict about the dedication words.
Art historian Stefanie Endlich interprets the work as a ‘calm and contem-
plative space, connecting with traditional motifs of cemeteries and mourn-
ing rituals’ (Endlich, 2013: 25). In a similar way Karavan himself described
his approach of being led by ‘a sense of reverence and awe’ (as quoted by
Endlich, 2013: 25). However, he changed his initial plans of a rather simple
work with only a small path leading into the design of a ‘bigger and more
imposing’ entrance at the path where ‘hundreds of people pass daily from
the Brandenburg Gate through the park to the Reichstag’ (Karavan, 2012: 58).
In the official opening speeches everyone praised the central location:

Federal Government Commissioner for Culture, Bernd Neumann (CDU)
designated the new memorial ‘a dignified place in the centre of Berlin’
(Neumann, 2012). Zoni Weisz, a Sinto survivor called it a ‘wonderful place
in the heart of Berlin’ (Weisz, 2012). The memorial’s initiator, Romani Rose,
stressed that he regards the placement in the direct neighbourhood of the
Reichstag as a ‘special sign of paying homage’ to the Sinti and Roma victims
and a ‘highly visible symbol’ for Sinti and Roma being part of the German
state and its history (Rose, 2012: 15). Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU)
added: ‘[T]he Brandenburg Gate, landmark of this once separated and today
cosmopolitan city, is in direct proximity. In the midst of Berlin, in the midst
of the vibrant metropolis, amongst us, there is this place of commemorating
the dead’ (Merkel, 2012). After admitting Germany’s guilt and honouring
the victims of persecution, the memorial’s connection with building the
identity of the reunited modern capital is noticeable in Merkel’s words.
At the same time the strong desire by the victim groups for acknowledge-
ment and visibility in the centre of the city is obvious. The words of Romani
Rose indicate the wish of Sinti and Roma to be part of the nation – despite the
fact of persecution and ongoing discrimination by the same nation. Tímea
Junghaus, Roma art historian and curator, attributes to the artwork and its
location a potential for an identity-generating ritual for Roma, a substitu-
tion for their own lacking political and cultural infrastructure (Junghaus,
2012: 75). Without a doubt this new memorial between Reichstag and the
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe becomes loaded with expectations for
functions of mourning rituals, remembering and commemoration, national
representation and identity-building for a city, nation and minority group.
Similar claims and hopes are connected with the Memorial to the
Homosexuals Persecuted under the National Socialist Regime, a ten-minute walk
from the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma. Calls for a ‘national’ and ‘central’
memorial dedicated to persecuted homosexual men started likewise in the
beginning of the 1990s in relation to the discussions and planning for the
Memorial to the Murdered Jews. They were announced by the initiative Der
homosexuellen NS-Opfer gedenken (Remembering the Homosexual Victims of
National Socialism). Having been not very well-known or popular in the
beginning, the initiative managed to become acknowledged by a broader
liberal political public. The protagonists achieved this by gaining prominent
supporters, among them the key figures of the other two planned memorials,
Lea Rosh and Romani Rose, and by teaming up with the widely recognized
Lesben-und Schwulenverband in Deutschland (Lesbian and Gay Federation in
Germany). The latter step entailed, as Corinna Tomberger analyses, a com-
promise for the initiative, as it meant including lesbians in the dedication.
Before, the initiative’s focus on men was visible in the title ‘Der schwulen
Opfer des Nationalsozialismus gedenken!’ and ‘Initiative Schwulendenkmal’ since
‘schwul’ refers to homosexual men only (Tomberger, 2012: 189).
60 Imke Girßmann
This progress took place, however, without encouraging more – urgently

needed – research of different backgrounds and practices of persecution of
sexually ‘deviant’ men and women under National Socialism, but with a
stronger application in today’s problems of discrimination instead. This
matched with official federal anti-discrimination campaigns (Tomberger,
2012: 193ff). The memorial became a project of the reigning coalition of
Social Democrats and the Green Party, which connected the project with
its anti-discrimination agenda concerning gender and homosexuality
(Tomberger, 2012: 195). The Parliament passed the resolution to erect a
memorial in 2003 and an official call for the artistic competition followed.
Since 2008, the memorial to the persecuted homosexuals is literally only
a stone’s throw away from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. With
the permission of Peter Eisenman, the winning artists, Michael Elmgreen
and Ingar Dragset, took and alienated a piece of his design and placed a
slanting cement stele at the edge of the Tiergarten, just across the street
(see Figure 5.2). Michael Elmgreen stated: ‘It is as if one of the slabs of the
Holocaust Memorial had walked across the street at night, stood up in the
forest and now says: “Hey, look, I’m part of the whole story, but I’m also
different. I’m gay”’ (as quoted by Bernau, 2006). By this artistic strategy they
manage to show that although homosexuals were not exposed to genocide,
their persecution was part of the same ideological concept.
The design of the stele includes a screen inside, on which a seemingly
endless kiss between two young men can be watched. The artists explained
that their aim was to show that although there have been some achieve-
ments and improvements in society, the visual representation of same-sex
love is often not accepted (Endlich, 2012: 181f). Their idea was to ‘make
homosexuality visible in the heterosexual public sphere’ by a kiss, a harmless
image, ‘that everyone can identify with’ (as quoted by Endlich, 2012: 182).
When the proposed design was awarded first place a harsh debate occurred,
mainly among historians, feminists, lesbian activists and male gay activists,
about the missing representation of women. The result was a ‘compro-
mise’, decided by the Federal Government, saying that the video would be
replaced every two years by another video containing more ‘interpretations
of a same-sex kissing scenes’ (Stiftung Denkmal, 2013b).
The loop by Gerald Backhaus, Bernd Fischer and Ibrahim Gülnar, imple-
mented in 2012, is a sequence of different male as well as female couples kissing
and having to deal with reactions in public places. In contrast to the original
single loop by Elmgreen and Dragset, the new one shows a dramaturgy, a story
of gay emancipation (Tomberger, 2012: 205). Also in the processes of the two
memorials to the murdered Jews and Sinti and Roma the artists had to modify
their original designs after discussions with the institutions, but this change of
the original artwork’s statement was probably the most drastic one. The gov-
ernment’s direct interaction with the artists’ autonomy indicates the political
loading of ‘national’ memorial projects (Endlich, 2012: 186).
Figure 5.2 Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset’s Memorial to the Homosexuals
Persecuted under the National Socialist Regime, Berlin. © Tanja Schult.
Let us return to the process for finding the appropriate place for the memo-
rial. This process was closely connected to the planning of the memorials
to the murdered Jews and to the murdered Sinti and Roma. At first the
initiative for the monument had, besides this site at the Tiergarten, also con-
sidered another place: the rather off-centred Nollendorfplatz in the district
of Schöneberg, an urban hotspot of gay subculture in the 1920s and again
after the Nazi regime until today. There was already a memorial plaque
for the remembrance of persecuted homosexuals since 1989. But after the
Parliament had chosen the clearing in the Tiergarten between the Reichstag
and the Brandenburger Tor and close to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews
of Europe for the future memorial for Sinti and Roma, the initiators of the
62 Imke Girßmann
so-called ‘Homo-Monument’ began to favour using a site nearby. In this way,

it was stressed, the monument would have its place among the other monu-
ments in the centre of the capital (Initiative Schwulendenkmal, 1995: 17).
The initiative tied this place to issues of identity-building as well since this
part of the Tiergarten has a tradition of being a (for a long time rather secret)
meeting place for gay men (Endlich, 2012: 173). At the same time they
outlined that the Tiergarten is also a ‘park of remembrance for Prussian and
German history’ (Initiative Schwulendenkmal, 1995: 17) with monuments
from different epochs – and now gay history could be made visible there
as well. The proximity to the Reichstag, the initiators argued, would also
be a reminder that at this place the legal ground for discrimination against
homosexual men was laid (Initiative Schwulendenkmal, 1995: 17).
In the same way as the Central Council of Sinti and Roma had acted two
years before, the initiative erected a symbolic construction sign at the site
in 2001 (Kirsch, 2003: 337). Not only the desire for an acknowledgement
of the persecution can be seen, but also for visibility in the centre and a
broad public, for Berlin citizens as well as visitors from all over the world.
Furthermore, in both cases a desire to be part of the nation that also caused
this suffering seems to manifest itself.
A memorial to homosexuals, dedicated by the government and officially
inaugurated by a conservative Federal Government Commissioner for
Culture, Bernd Neumann,2 whose party for a long time had opposed the
project, is by no means the most common thing and this development was
widely appreciated. At the same time the ‘Homo-Monument’ seems to be
used for a representation of Berlin’s identity of an open-minded capital of
a nation respecting and protecting minorities, far away from the past. The
Berliner Zeitung summarized: ‘The monument draws the eyes of tourists to
the city’s great gay culture and at the same time to a chapter of German
horror’ (Preuss, 2008).
Signifying Space
These developments in Berlin show how the acknowledgement of the murder

of the European Jews leads to the acknowledgements of other victim groups
which in turn leads to visible signs in the public space.3 If the memorials
themselves will lead to a deeper change in society, a growing acceptance of the
different groups, remains to be seen. Given their proximity to the Reichstag
they reflect the intention to present the reunified Germany as a democracy
willing to commemorate the crimes formerly committed by Germans and to
a huge extent organized from this capital city. A nation admitting its biggest
historical crime in the centre of its capital is something entirely new in the
sphere of symbolic politics, as stressed by Norbert Frei before the opening
of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Frei, 2005: 8). For the repre-
sentatives of the victim groups it seems to be an important ‘signal of homage’
(Rose, 2012: 15) to be in the direct neighbourhood of the Reichstag, seen as a

specific symbol of the German state and capital and to be seen in the ‘heart’
of the city (on this metaphor see Binder, 2000: 8).
But the development of a ‘national’ and ‘central’ ensemble of memorials
in the capital cannot be separated from a broader dynamics of signifying
and constituting the capital’s national representative space. The desire for
visibility by the victim groups intertwines with the project of transforming
Berlin into a ‘proper’ capital city with a central sphere of government and
monuments. In the same period of time, governmental buildings were estab-
lished at the historic part at the river Spree (Wenk, 1996: 10). The decision for
the demolition of the GDR’s Palace of the Republic and the reconstruction
of the Berlin Palace was passed. The plans for the Memorial to Freedom and
Unity to the German Reunification were made as well as the erection of the
Bundeswehrehrenmal, the first national military monument after 1945 dedi-
cated to soldiers who died in foreign countries, took place (2009). All of these
are also forming the new ‘centre’.
The plans for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the decision
for its exclusive dedication naturally entailed the desire and demand of other
victim groups to be part of that new arising landscape. However, it comes
along with the risk of being a part of the self-representation of the nation.
Michaela Melián’s Memory Loops in Munich
Historian Ulrike Jureit describes contemporary commemorative culture in

Europe as a paradigm with problematic fixed forms and iconographies for a
morally binding and simple emotional identification with the victims, but
without posing questions to history (Jureit, 2010: 23–33). The iconogra-
phies of the new national monuments in Berlin are, despite appreciation to
the artist’s ideas, no exception. The aesthetics of grief and contemplation
(as in the Memorial to the Murdered Sinti and Roma, according to Endlich,
2013: 25), calculated separation and uncertainty (as in the Memorial to the
Murdered Jews of Europe, according to Endlich, 2013: 25) and fragility (as in
the Memorial to the Persecuted Homosexuals) rather represent universal motifs
(by working with traditional monument materials) than particular examina-
tions of National Socialist atrocities in the land of the perpetrators and in
this way would fit into any European capital’s boulevard.
Moving on to the city of Munich, the provincial capital of Bavaria in the
south of Germany, will show an interesting different development in con-
temporary urban memorial art, concerning questions of place and likewise
iconography. There are many, more or less noticeable, architectural relics of
National Socialism left in Munich. The city played an important role along
with Berlin: After Hitler’s rise had begun in Munich, it was his strategic
goal to strengthen the NSDAP at first in this city (Haerendel, 1993: 13). The
title Hauptstadt der Bewegung (Capital of the NS-movement), given by Hitler
64 Imke Girßmann
himself, helped Munich to get over the loss of being the capital of a sover-
eign Bavarian state. Important parts of the National Socialist infrastructure
had been established in Munich (as the Reichsleitung of the NSDAP), and
the city’s second title ‘capital of German arts’ was confirmed by its role as a
central place for exhibitions as, for example, Degenerate Art (1937) and The
Eternal Jew (1937/1938) (Haerendel, 1993: 11, 14). The municipal govern-
ment tried to build an exemplary city of National Socialism. Not to forget
that on 9 November 1938 the pogrom had started there.
But coming to terms with the past took a very long time in Munich.
A documentation centre for the history of National Socialism, proposed
in the 1980s by citizens’ initiatives and rejected for several years by the
Bavarian Federal State government, will finally be realized in 2015.
In 2006 the exhibition Ort und Erinnerung. Nationalsozialismus in München
(Place and Memory: National Socialism in Munich) in the Museum of
Architecture of the University of Technology showed a detailed documen-
tation of National Socialism in Munich accompanied by a high number
of different maps linked to different topics as ‘rise of the NSDAP’, ‘self-
expressions of National Socialism in Munich’, ‘deprivation of rights and
persecution’ (documented in Nerdinger, 2006). In a way, artist and musician
Michaela Melián ties in with this project by making use of the medium of a
city map, but adds the dimension of everyday experiences by contemporary
witnesses. Her project Memory Loops: 175 Audio Tracks on Sites of NS Terror
in Munich, 1933–1945 won the first prize in a competition for New Forms of
Remembering and Remembrance for victims of National Socialism in 2008. The
competition was initiated by the Bavarian State Capital, acknowledging that
a contemporary approach to commemoration needed new ways, where ref-
erences to victims and perpetrators should become visible and, through an
artistic approach, connected with the city space (München, 2012).
Memory Loops, realized in cooperation with the Bayerischer Rundfunk’s
department of radio play and media art in 2010, is an audio artwork based
on transcriptions of historical and recent reports by and interviews with
victims of National Socialism and contemporary witnesses. From this mate-
rial Melián has created 300 audio tracks (175 of them in English), each a few
minutes long. They are thematically linked to the topography of National
Socialism in Munich. This happens in very different ways. For example, in
the track titled ‘Kölner Platz, hospital München-Schwabing’ the narrator
tells of the struggles of her mother, a Jewish doctor, whose licence to prac-
tise had been taken away. In ‘Stiglmaierplatz, Löwenbräukeller’ one listens
to the announcement of NSDAP rallies at different places around the town.
Often more than one track refers to the same place seen from a different
perspective. In this way they form a topographical collage that includes the
whole city area as a memorial. Melián skips a categorizing of the tracks in
favour of creating a palimpsest of the city with the tracks interfering with
each other as the overlapping circles on the stylized map indicate. The
readings are accompanied by musical scores, created by Melián, often out of

original fragments by composers as, for example Coco Schumann and Kurt
Weill and the artist’s own instrumental tracks.
The virtual monument works on different levels. The central element is the
website memoryloops.net (see Figure 5.3). Here all audio tracks, in German
and in English, are playable and downloadable by zooming into the circles of
a map, drawn by the artist, or by searching in the list of streets. So you can
move from place to place, following the route you are interested in, virtually
or in reality, having stored selected tracks on an mp3 player or similar device.
Another level lies within the city itself, which makes the artwork more
than just virtual since 60 selected audio tracks are made visible by signs all
over the city. To listen to the respective tracks you have the option to dial a
free telephone number, use a smartphone application or hire an mp3 player
with five different one-hour loops referring to different districts of the city
at several museums and other institutions.
What is important to Melián is that there is no presenter’s voice explaining
who the person speaking is, in order to avoid a mere documentary and
Figure 5.3 Screenshot of Michaela Melián’s Memory Loops. © Michaela Melián.

66 Imke Girßmann
didactic style. Furthermore, the transcripts are read by today’s actors and
actresses in low-key voices, a stylistic device that prevents the reports and
topographical references from seeming far away in time (Stakemeier, 2011:
3f). There is a strong and terrifying distancing effect, especially when Nazi
documents – legal texts and announcements of regulations – are read by
children’s voices. Melián sees these fragments working as ‘images’ within
the memorial (as quoted by Stakemeier, 2011: 4). Some of these images also
indicate blank spaces and question marks. The cultural programme of 9
November 1938 is read, illustrating that in fact many people must have been
out in the city that night, in theatres, cinemas, cabarets, and thus posing
the question of more witnesses’ narrations of the pogrom (Eckhorst, 2010:
2). This leads to further questions about the involvement of society on that
night and throughout the NS period. A few tracks deal with today’s memory
culture and politics on a meta-level, for example with the political indiffer-
ence after 1945 about turning the former concentration camp Dachau, near
Munich, into a memorial site (Eckhorst, 2010: 2).
The structure of Melián’s memorial is unique and differs from a simple
audio guide. First, it is repeatedly fractured by the heterogenic material
that is read. Second, while the central memorials in Berlin are based on
rather replaceable iconographies, Melián’s project works in a very specific
way. By listening to the tracks one gets an idea of daily repressions against
Jews and other groups that led to their elimination. Memory Loops achieves
this in a way an obligatory presentation board next to a static monument
could not. The spoken documents appear more vivid and refer to particular
sites still existing in the city and the broader topography. Despite spatial
references, the narrations or documents being read and listened to remain
more important than the places where they are located. This contrasts with
Berlin’s centre where the monuments’ contents tend to be less important
than their locations.
Although by now Melián’s work is very widely received, praised by critics
and won awards (Radioplay of the year 2010; Grimme-Online-Award 2012),
local politicians had difficulties with it. When the jury of the competi-
tion announced the proposal as one of the favourites, politicians and city
representatives across all parties harshly criticized the project as not being
‘central’ and emotional enough and not even visible (Käppner and Neff,
2010; see also Winkler, 2011). The project ‘at least could be worth a com-
mercial gimmick of a mobile phone company’ a representative for cultural
policy stated (quoted by Käppner and Neff, 2010). When Melián officially
dedicated the memorial to the city, hardly any higher representatives of the
political parties showed up (Stakemeier, 2011: 6); again, a very different situ-
ation than the dedication ceremonies in Berlin. Although the call explicitly
asked for ‘new forms’, the above-mentioned comments reflect a deep desire
for a central and what is understood as representative place in the regional
capital. In fact, Melián’s Memory Loops strongly objects to a usage for official
commemorative rituals. It is worth recalling that this was possible due to

the way in which the call for proposals was phrased and that the absence
of official representatives is hard to understand as it contradicts the goal of
the competition.
However, in the meantime Memory Loops seems to have become more
appreciated also in the official sphere: While the city of Munich did not – for
a long time – assume any responsibility for the phone signs, many of which
had been damaged or simply had been removed to make way for new traffic
signs (Melián, 2013), the municipal works service now takes care of regular
check-ups and maintenance (Melián, 2015).
Revisiting Places of Remembrance in Berlin-Schöneberg
By following the tracks in Munich one might be reminded of another,

already more than 20-year-old work, dealing with concrete traces of
National Socialist injustice in urban space that gained a high international
reputation. This leads us back to Berlin. In 1993, the artists Renata Stih and
Frieder Schnock realized their work Places of Remembrance in the Bavarian
Quarter in the Schöneberg district of Berlin, a neighbourhood where a high
percentage of Jewish inhabitants once lived. It consists of 80 signs put up
on lampposts throughout the whole neighbourhood. On the one side there
is a simple image or icon, colourfully printed, and on the other side a cor-
responding short text in black and white, taken from anti-Jewish orders and
regulations, passed between 1933 and 1945.4 Very specific and at the same
time very disturbing, is the number of signs referring to the public infra-
structure still used today, for example a plate indicating an underground
station – and by its text on the backside revealing the prohibition of usage
for Jews from 1942 on. These signs clearly remind inhabitants, passers-by
and visitors of ‘the daily deprivation of rights and humiliation … of Jews
during the Nazi era’ (Stih and Schnock, 2013) and show their gradual exclu-
sion from social life, leading to their elimination (Straka, 1993: 1).
Places of Remembrance are located in the daily context of a neighbourhood
and thus make the visitor aware of consequences of National Socialist poli-
tics in this district. In this regard Memory Loops and Places of Remembrance
work in a similar way. Melián and Stih/Schnock operate with concrete
memories and with specific places, linking past and present. The signs in
Schöneberg as well as the (real) signs and (virtual) circles in Munich refer to
particular urban spaces and places, but without loading a perpetrator’s place
or its surroundings with new significations as it can be observed in Berlin’s
centre. Instead they pose questions about the perpetrators actions.
A difference is that Melián’s tracks are multi-layered and deal with different
points of views and different aspects (different victim groups, perpetrators
and also actions and groups of resistance) and thereby give an idea of the
complexity of the historic situation. The strength of Stih’s and Schnock’s
68 Imke Girßmann
signs is, in contrast, their explicit focus on Nazi persecution of Jews in this
neighbourhood and thus to evoke questions about the involvement or
knowledge of non-Jewish neighbours in the injustice and atrocities under
National Socialism. Both work with a strong distancing or asymmetrical
effect – Melián by using today’s (children’s) voices for reading the historical
documents, Stih and Schnock by a combination of icons and texts that is
not always congruent at first sight – for instance, when in a sign a German
shepherd, ‘generally associated with Nazis and Neo-Nazis’ (Sinka, 2006: 215),
appears combined with regulations that Jewish veterinarians were no longer
allowed to open practices.
Both works have a high potential to communicate about the past and
about how to mediate this past in the future, much more so than the
‘national’ and ‘central’ memorials. Those, in contrast, bear the risk of rather
cutting off this still-, and in the time of disappearing contemporary witnesses
even more, needed communication through the symbolic acts of placement
and also through their aesthetics which are, at least the memorials to the
murdered Jews and Sinti and Roma, to a big extent iconographies of the
‘inexpressible’ (for this term see Klüger, 1996: 32).
Conclusion
Let us return to the city planner’s ‘Sunday walk through history’ described in
the beginning. The urban historical walks created by Places of Remembrance
and Memory Loops and their visitors are different to the one aiming at ‘cultural
elevation’ (Mausbach, 2009: 30). In Berlin-Schöneberg and Munich one can
hardly switch focus from where it is: exploring how and where people became
victims of the Nazi Regime in this city and posing questions of how this
happened and why it happened. Both memorials elude the usage for official
commemorative rituals as wreath ceremonies or other political, be it national
or local, representative means. A Jewish citizen of Munich told Melián that he
is very grateful for this kind of memorial since he is not able to bear the usual
Holocaust commemorative rituals together with Germans (Melián, 2013).
However, the centralized and the decentralized approaches cannot be
separated from each other or seen as a mere contradiction. Instead, they
are both part of the process of German memory culture. The history of the
Places of Remembrance is closely connected with the Memorial to the Murdered
Jews of Europe. First, the decentralized project based on the commitment of
local initiatives and Geschichtswerkstätten could be seen as a precondition
for the realization of ‘national’ Holocaust memorials. Second, as Margit
Sinka points out, the discussions and quarrels about the big central monu-
ment and its placement in the 1990s encouraged the initiators in Berlin-
Schöneberg to clarify their different approaches of dealing with urban space
and consequently realize the work of Stih and Schnock (Sinka, 2006: 208).
Memory Loops can also be regarded as a reflection on the developments
and blank spaces of coming to terms with the National Socialist past and
memory culture in Germany and the city of Munich.
The central memorials in the capital show that at least today the crimes
are acknowledged and integrated into historiography and contemporary
memorial practices. The victim groups’ demands for being seen and repre-
sented in the capital’s centre have been heard. In contrast, the reception of
Memory Loops makes clear that it was not much acclaimed by official rep-
resentatives of victim organizations, but in fact found much appreciation
from individuals, mainly children of Holocaust survivors, and also survivors
themselves, who spent a lot of time with the virtual or real walks and found
them very worthwhile (Melián, 2013). In the time of disappearing contem-
porary witnesses and the crucial question how to mediate this past through
the arts, this may be an import argument for returning to the approaches of
local history workshop groups and for working more intensively on decen-
tralized, non-monumental projects than on representations of the victims
within the capital’s ‘historical landscape’.
Considering the risk to be taken for city- or nation-branding strategies,
for the delegates of victim groups the question that needs to be dealt with
is if visibility and acknowledgement can really only be gained in the ‘heart’
of the capital.
Notes
1. Translation of all quotations from German by the author.
2. At the time of the inauguration the Federal Government had changed from the
coalition of Social Democrats and the Green Party to a coalition of CDU and the
classical liberal Freie Demokratische Partei.
3. After having completed this essay, in 2014 the inauguration of the Memorial for the
Victims of National Socialist ‘Euthanasia’ Killings followed.
4. A variety of images is to be found on the artists’ website: http://www.stih-schnock.
de/remembrance.html
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6
Contemporary Holocaust Memorials
in Berlin: On the Borders of the
Sacred and the Profane
Tracy Jean Rosenberg
Berlin’s memorial landscape has been the focus of much international debate
and controversy since the German reunification. How to remember the past
in a city where nearly every address has its own story to tell – not only of the
Holocaust, but also of the brutality of the National Socialist dictatorship and
subsequent war, in addition to the scars of the city’s division and the commu-
nist regime in the GDR – is a difficult question. Memorial design has become
a source of contentious debate in the media and government. By looking at
some of those memorials that have been built, installed and dedicated over the
last two decades, we can see the emergence of some patterns. One such trend is
the increase of memorials that test the boundaries between the sacred and pro-
fane and challenge traditional ideas of what makes a memorial a sacred place.
The convergence of the sacred and the profane – normally kept at a distance
from one another – has been on the rise in memorial design in Germany’s
capital city. Using both James Mayo’s 1988 article ‘War Memorials as Political
Memory’ and Émile Durkheim’s theories as starting points, this article looks at
the use of sacred and profane space in contemporary memorials in Berlin. Sacred
and profane spaces, while remaining separate, have come closer together and
have found novel ways of interacting with one another in recent memorials.
This article first looks at a traditional memorial installed two decades ago –
the Neue Wache as it was designed in 1993 – along with the reasons why it
was not well received and its implications for the memorials that followed. It
then turns to more recent, ambiguous memorials, which may not use tradi-
tional forms and ask the visitor to – using their own knowledge and under-
standing – construct meaning at the memorial site. Here the Stolpersteine and
the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe are considered. This article looks at
the ways in which they test the boundaries of the sacred and profane.
Mayo and Durkheim: The Sacred and the Profane
In his 1988 article ‘War Memorials as Political Memory’, James Mayo

discusses the social and political purposes of memorials. Following on
73
74 Tracy Jean Rosenberg
Durkheim’s theories, he sees memorials as either sacred or profane spaces,

with this division manifesting itself primarily in the type of memorial built,
but also in its location and use. A sacred memorial, for instance, might be a
statue, perhaps surrounded by a meticulously landscaped garden. The space
is used in a ritualistic manner, generally treated with respect. As it is located
outside of spaces used in daily life, a visit to such a memorial is generally a
planned and intentional act. These spaces may also be used for commemo-
rative ceremonies, for example on holidays and anniversaries. The continual
use of these spaces in such a ritualistic manner marks them as sacred spaces.
The purpose of this space is primarily to remember – or to come as close
to remembering as is possible for people who did not, themselves, experi-
ence the memorialized events. A profane space, on the other hand, has a
primarily utilitarian function; for example, a school or hospital dedicated in
the name of a war hero. While these spaces are dedicated as memorials (or
in memory of an individual or group), their use is not generally related to
that memory. The purpose of the structure is not solely to commemorate
or memorialize, and people do not treat it as sacred. Rather, they go about
business as they normally would in such a building.
Durkheim defines the sacred and the profane as two profoundly opposed
categories. Sacred items are those set physically and mentally apart from
everyday life. They have meaning attached to them, reinforced by ritualistic
behaviours performed by those who recognize the items as sacred. In this
sense, sacredness ‘is inherently impermanent and so must be added to the
object again and again, just as it was originally: by collective human doing’
(Fields, 1995: xliv). The ritual act is constantly necessary for an item or space to
retain its status. In addition to the necessity of rituals and certain behaviours
being applied to sacred spaces, other behaviours, seen as improper or dis-
respectful, are prohibited in their presence. The behaviours excluded from
sacred spaces are accepted, even condoned, in profane space. For instance,
it is generally seen as disrespectful for children to play around on a sacred
memorial, whereas in profane space (which may include profane memorials,
e.g. a memorial playground) this behaviour might be normal and expected.
Durkheim emphasizes the separateness of the sacred and the profane,
stating that ‘In the history of human thought, there is no other example
of two categories of things as profoundly differentiated or as radically
opposed to one another’ (Durkheim, 1995: 36). One type of object or
space can become the other, but there is no middle ground. In the process
of changing, Durkheim notes, there is a ‘true metamorphosis’ (Durkheim,
1995: 37). In addition to the two categories being separate, the sacred and
profane are also kept at a physical distance from one another. If they are
not – and this is an emotion utilized in contemporary memorial design –
people may feel shocked or upset. As Durkheim described it:
The mind experiences deep repugnance about mingling, even simple

contact, between the corresponding things, because the notion of the
Contemporary Holocaust Memorials in Berlin 75
sacred is always and everywhere separate from the notion of the profane
in man’s mind, and because we imagine a kind of logical void between
them. The state of dissociation in which the ideas are found in conscious-
ness is too strongly contradicted by such mingling, or even by their being
too close to one another. (Durkheim, 1995: 37–8)
This is constantly reinforced by behaviour. There is a sense that sacred

things must be protected (and thus removed) from everyday life. They are,
after all, not everyday items. There is an inherent danger in minimizing the
distance between the two; the more a sacred item or memorial is present
in the profane space of daily life, the less it will be subject to ritualistic
behaviour. In the thoughts and actions of ever more passers-by, it will cease
to be sacred and, in doing so, become profane.
The Forms of the Sacred in Contemporary Memorials
According to Mayo (1988), in profane memorials meaning is amorphous and

depends on visitors’ purposes in being there. A child attending a memorial
school may never consider its namesake; his or her purpose at school has
nothing to do with that fallen soldier or victim. At the same time, a child
who goes on a class or family trip to a sacred memorial is generally aware of
its meaning and the trip itself contributes to the memorial’s status as sacred.
A sacred memorial has a distinct meaning, conveyed by its content, form
and the way in which it is used. A statue of an able-bodied soldier standing
proud, or of a mother mourning a son, is not ambiguous. It can be easily
recognized for its memorial purpose. Such a memorial translates fairly easily
across cultural and linguistic barriers.
Sacred memorials place certain behavioural expectations on visitors. They
are located outside of profane spaces, in clearly defined areas that mark
where respectful behaviour is expected. To see disrespectful or profane
behaviour in the vicinity of a memorial could be offensive to another visi-
tor and could work to erode the site’s status as sacred. Expected behaviours
may be culturally specific as well, for example the Jewish tradition of pla-
cing pebbles on graves has carried over to many Holocaust memorials. These
behaviours may include ritualistic commemorations at specific times or on
specific dates.
More than two decades have passed and much has changed in the world
since Mayo first wrote his article about sacred and profane war memori-
als. Sacred and profane spaces, while remaining separate, have come closer
together and have found novel ways of interacting with one another in
recent memorial design. Many memorials constructed in Germany since the
fall of the Berlin Wall are designed to be neither wholly sacred nor wholly
profane. Rather, they are located somewhere ambiguously in the middle and
can be perceived as either sacred or profane space depending on their use.
These memorials can thus mean different things to different people and
can be sacred in the mind of one and profane in the mind of another, all in
the same moment. In general one can state that it is important to note the
intentions behind sacred memorials and how they differ from those that are
profane, as well as the nature of rituals associated with sacred memorials.
Designers of recent memorials expect certain ritualistic behaviours that were
not anticipated in older, more traditional designs. Older memorials may
have aimed for quiet, respect, mourning, or awe from visitors, along with
evoking related memories in the mind of the viewer.
Memorials – Places of Knowledge Transfer
Because visitors may not have a personal connection to the commemo-

rated events, learning becomes a second purpose of memorials, thus the
ritual of reading. According to Caroline Wiedmer, professor of Comparative
Literary and Cultural Studies at Franklin College, this may even be their
main purpose: ‘The task for today’s memorials is to make an era vivid and
understandable which has passed from personal experience to the stuff of
textbooks’ (Wiedmer, 1999: 151). It is an attempt to give the individual
that personal connection, that memory or knowledge, passed down from
another source.
As time passes, the events and actual memories people have of them get
further and further away. Naming learning as a purpose of memorials comes
with a number of challenges. First among these are the expectations placed
on visitors, that they will be interested in or curious about these histories.
It is unlikely that every visitor will arrive with an open mind, ready to
learn. Not all visitors seek out and read background information when it is
available at a site.
This brings up a second issue: how much information ought to be avail-
able at a memorial site? This is a function, first, of how much the designers
or interpreters expect visitors to know upon arrival. This will likely vary
widely. It is also a function of the amount of space available at a site. The
decision about the amount of information available at a memorial site is
often made at the political level; with the Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden
Europas (Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe), for example, it was felt
that the abstract form of the memorial made an information centre a nece-
ssity (Uhl, 2008: 2003). At the same time, the 2009 call for submissions for
the Freiheits- und Einheitsdenkmal (Freedom and Unity Monument) clearly
stated that an informational area was not to be included, since the German
Historical Museum – with a detailed exhibition on German division and
reunification – is located close to the memorial’s planned site in Berlin’s
historical centre (Bundesamt für Bauwesen und Raumordnung, 2011: 14).
In general, educational information is set ‘a respectful distance away’
from the memorial itself (Jordan, 2006: 104), perhaps to leave the memo-
rial space uninterrupted for ritual behaviour, but this is not always the case.
With increasing frequency, written information takes a central place in

memorials. At times, a memorial consists entirely of information (e.g. some
of the more elaborate historical plaques). Along Wilhelmstraße in Berlin’s
Mitte district, the area where the National Socialist government was head-
quartered, is now marked not by statues or other memorial forms, but rather
by plaques providing information about specific buildings and people. On
the other hand, some of even the most recently built memorials are nearly
devoid of information. These may have a different focus, for example, to
create in visitors an emotional rather than a knowledge-based connection
to the events. This emotional approach to history relies even more on the
visitors’ prior knowledge, as discussed by Kirsten Harjes, a lecturer in the
German department at UC Davis: ‘Whether “feeling” history and memory
stimulates intellectual reflection, or sets in motion unfamiliar thoughts
on the subject, thereby fulfilling the memorial’s educational function, is
entirely dependent upon the previous knowledge and intellectual inquisi-
tiveness of the individual visitor’ (Harjes, 2005: 142–3). When effective, the
connection formed by such knowledge or information may be deep and
lasting, but they also leave themselves open to misinterpretation.
A third issue relates back to the site itself. Authenticity is understood
in a number of ways within tourism studies (e.g. MacCannell, 1999), but,
when speaking of memorials, it is generally taken to mean ‘original objects
or actual physical sites where events had occurred’ (Wiedmer, 1999: 165).
An authentic site is thought to have a certain emotional power and, related
to that power, increased pedagogical value. In a city like Berlin authentic
sites, in this sense, abound. Nearly every block could potentially be put in
historical context.
Many forces are at work in delineating where memorials do come into
existence. Jordan details these forces, among them passionate advocates and
available public space. Through the work of these advocates, whom Jordan
terms memorial entrepreneurs, a site is set aside, given meaning and pur-
pose, protected, and thus made sacred. Jordan herself references Durkheim’s
understanding of the sacred in saying that ‘no place evokes its own
untouchability’ (Jordan, 2006: 15). As with the act of visiting a memorial,
the work of advocates on behalf of these sites works to make sacred both the
sites and the memories they represent.
Berlin’s Memorial Landscape
Memorials in Berlin are numerous, to the extent that Allan Cochrane calls
Berlin ‘a city of monuments and memorials and of absences’ (Cochrane,
2006: 12). Their variety allows for many narratives and approaches, for a
number of stories to be told. Because of this diversity, different histories
sometimes overlap. In Wilhelmstraße the Berlin Conference of 1884–85,
during which European powers formalized the process of colonization
in Africa, is discussed next to the National Socialist political apparatus.

A memorial on the Bösebrücke, the first border crossing to open on 9
November 1989, discusses not only those events, but dedicates a large sec-
tion of the memorial to a different 9 November: Kristallnacht, the Night
of Broken Glasses, in 1938. In this way, memorials in Berlin form an
interlocking web. No single memorial can tell Berlin’s story – as the luke-
warm reception of the redesigned Neue Wache demonstrates – so rather
than attempt it most of Berlin’s memorials address a single aspect, event,
or location that is part of the larger story, adding nuance and specificity of
place. This memorial landscape is always changing. As the memorials change
the story they tell also changes, at least slightly, slowly and subtly. Cochrane
states this best: ‘Berlin’s histories past and present are always in the process
of being made, always provisional, never finalized’ (Cochrane, 2006: 22).
Due to the events in which it has played a part, Berlin is set the task, what
might be considered a responsibility, of memorializing not its heroism and
valour, but its wrong-doing. This is a fairly recent development. As Norbert
Frei states, West Germany was, in the first few decades following the war, anx-
ious to move past what happened; to forget if they could and, if they could
not, to see ‘the Third Reich as something like an alien regime descending
upon Germany, making use of a small number of “collaborators” and a mass
of harmless fellow travelers” (Frei, 2002: 312). At the same time, East Germany
was using the past for its own political purposes and, for this reason, was also
interested in portraying the Holocaust and World War II in simplified terms.
It is only in the last three decades that Germany has begun to tackle its past,
with its complications, difficulties and grey areas, in the public sphere.
The Holocaust itself is seen as a unique crime, and its scope and magni-
tude thus need to be handled in a unique way. While in other countries
blame can be apportioned to Germans or Nazis without too much introspec-
tion, even if the existence of collaborators begs such a process, Germany
must acknowledge itself as the land of the perpetrators. Thus, Germany’s
memorials tend to be more ambiguous, and less traditional, in form.
Traditional memorial forms – the fallen soldier, the weeping mother, the
triumphant hero – are for the most part deemed inappropriate for these
purposes, as the narrative they present is far too simple. This dates as far
back as World War I, when a shift from the Denkmal, or monument, to
the Mahnmal, or ‘monument to express a mixture of grief and warning’,
occurred (Verheyen, 2008: 25). Where the English language might refer sim-
ply to a memorial or monument, German uses a myriad of words, including
but not limited to: Denkmal, Mahnmal, Gedenkstätte, Erinnerungsstätte and
Ehrenmal. Each carries a slightly different connotation. At this point, many
artists felt that abstract, non-traditional forms were better able to express
the inexpressible and were less likely to be misused (Schult, 2009: 13). After
World War II, the trend towards the Mahnmal continued. Because these
events were so complex, they cannot be simplified into traditional memorial
form – the lack of a clear victor or enemy precludes that without distorting
history (as, for instance, the East German government did, representing
the Holocaust as the persecution of anti-Fascist resistance fighters in their
memorials). This also led to counter-monuments, such as the Hamburg-
Harburg Monument against Fascism or the Mahnmal Aschrottbrunnen, which
turned traditional memorial forms, sometimes literally, on their heads in
creative ways in order to challenge traditional narratives and bring attention
to the impermanence of memory (Young, 1992: 294). Although traditional
symbolic memorial forms continue to appear, they are used less often and
are less frequently the central and sole focus of newer memorials. This is part
of why the educational aspect of modern memorials becomes so important:
In recent times, reaching into the post-reunification era, Germany has

seen an increased tendency to combine the notion of a Mahnmal with
the educational dimension of commemoration in the form of more or
less elaborate documentation. The sense has grown that a mere dedicated
sculpture no longer speaks for itself. It is thus more and more appropriate
to speak of a Gedenkstätte (memorial site) where several plaques with
information or perhaps even a full-fledged documentation centre add
a distinct learning component to the commemoration, giving rise to
what some have called a Lern-und Gedenkort (a place for learning and
remembrance). Although such a site may still provide an opportunity for
the laying of wreaths and related commemorative rituals, the education
component is increasingly seen as highly decisive. (Verheyen, 2008: 26)
Here it is not just the traditional form that is displaced, but the traditional
ritual associated with it. The act of learning – of reading and searching for
understanding – becomes a central action for visitors when interacting with
a memorial.
One of the most remarkable aspects of Berlin’s memorial landscape is
the way in which it tests the boundaries of the sacred and profane. Newer
memorials are designed with this (largely unspoken) intention, while older
ones are revamped to reflect current standards as best they can, although
their location and form have long been set. In the examples that follow,
memorials test the boundaries of sacred and profane through their location,
content, and form. By taking advantage of the strong emotions people feel
when the two categories come too close to one another, these memorials
attempt to startle and shock, to provoke an emotional reaction and, in some
cases, to turn these emotions into learning.
Neue Wache
The Neue Wache (New Guard) was constructed in 1816 not as a memorial, but
as a military guard house. After World War I, it was redesigned by Heinrich
Tessenow as a memorial to the German soldiers lost in that war. During

the following decades the memorial changed with the times and successive
governments. From its construction until reunification in 1990, the Neue
Wache remained, at least partially, in military use. Guards were positioned
outside the memorial, and it was used in military parades, the weekly chang-
ing of the guard, and as a site of ‘the May 1st military ceremonies honouring
East German anti-fascist heroes’ (Kattago, 1998: 89). After reunification, this
explicit military presence was deemed inappropriate. The memorial was,
based on the 1993 decision of German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, redone to
reflect the collective mourning of a unified Germany. This new design was
widely considered a failure, however, as it was no longer regarded as repre-
senting German national identity (Wiedmer, 1999: 119–20).
Installed in 1993, this redesign used a traditional sculptural form, the
pietà, placed under the skylight in the Neue Wache. The sculpture is an
enlarged version of Käthe Kollwitz’s Mother with her Dead Son (Figure 6.1).
The original sculpture, created by Kollwitz in 1937, was only 38 centimetres
high, and ‘symbolized her personal grief after the death of her son, who had
served as a volunteer in World War I’ (Kattago, 1998: 98). It was enlarged
specifically for placement in the Neue Wache. The rest of the building was
left largely unchanged, other than removing the East German memorial
and adding informational plaques outside the entrance. The design of the
building itself, dating as it did from 1816, lent itself to a traditional memo-
rial form, one in which the memorial was kept isolated from the outside
world.
In order to see Kollwitz’s sculpture, a visitor must come at least to the
entrance of the building and normally has to go inside to see past the crowd
which stays a respectful distance from the sculpture. Once there, it appar-
ently feels inappropriate to approach or touch the work, although it is not
cordoned off. The sculpture sits under an open skylight, placing it in dra-
matic lighting. The rest of the large, empty room seems dark and shadowy
in contrast. The drama of this arrangement is inescapable; it gives the space
a heavily emotional, nearly religious feeling, which is further emphasized
by the use of the pietà form. This atmosphere seems to ask visitors for, or to
require of them, a certain type of respectful posture and behaviour, similar
to that expected in a church or other place of worship.
The informational plaques at the entrance detail the history of the
building and list all the groups who are remembered there. The list is exten-
sive: the victims of war and specifically the World Wars; those who died in
the Holocaust, with persecuted groups delineated; victims of tyranny and
persecution more generally; and those who resisted totalitarianism and fas-
cism. Due to this attempt to memorialize the victims of all wars and violence,
it was perceived as combining in one place the memories of both victims and
perpetrators. Here is where the memorial was considered to have failed –
in trying to create a unified national memorial to mourn all of Germany’s
Figure 6.1 Interior of the Neue Wache with Käthe Kollwitz’s sculpture. © Tracy Jean
Rosenberg.
victims at once, both German soldiers and those killed by German hands,
the Neue Wache was regressing to an earlier period in national memorial
design, one that had been incompatible with the complexities of German
history since at least World War II. The previous military use of the building
also opens the new design to different interpretations that emphasize fallen
soldiers and military heroes over other victims. The fact that the site has
a military history but no historical connection to the Holocaust or other
instances of persecution reinforces this understanding of the Neue Wache.
The sacred uses of previous eras, the military celebrations and parades, have
marked this site, then, as dedicated to purposes other than to remember
victims.
Stolpersteine – Stumbling Stones
Another type of memorial has proliferated throughout Germany since the

early 1990s. Gunther Demnig’s Stolpersteine, or stumbling stones, are small
metallic plaques, reminiscent of cobblestones, placed into the sidewalk
throughout Germany (Figure 6.2). They are located in front of the homes of
victims of Nazi persecution and each states the name, birth date, deporta-
tion date and destination, and fate of a single person. If an entire family was
deported from one home, there might be a group of stones in front of that
house or apartment building. These memorials are not unique to Berlin and
in fact started across the country in Cologne. They have now stretched out
through much of Europe (Demnig, 2013).
Figure 6.2 Gunter Demnig’s Stolpersteine in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district. © Tracy
Jean Rosenberg.
What is unique about Stolpersteine in Berlin is the way in which this style
of memorialization – small memorials in unexpected, often residential
areas, each one able in a sense to stand on its own, but really part of a larger
whole – has become integrated into the city. Beginning with Renata Stih’s
and Frieder Schnock’s Places of Remembrance in 1992 (the same year the
Stolpersteine project began – see Imke Girβmann’s chapter in this volume)
and continuing with other projects, including 2013’s Zerstörte Vielfalt
(Diversity Destroyed), a multimedia presentation of Berlin’s history dis-
played throughout the city, such memorialization has helped augment the
feeling that history is ubiquitous and inescapable in Berlin.
Here is a memorial, something traditionally treated as sacred, removed
from the daily business of life, treated differently and with respect, installed
in the most mundane of places – the sidewalks of residential neighbourhoods.
People may walk by them without noticing them or, even if they do notice,
may not have the time or interest to stop. Some will step on them – an action
which, while more or less unavoidable with plaques installed in the ground,
some may find disrespectful to those lives commemorated on the plaques. The
power of this type of memorial is its ability to catch interest. The first time
someone stops to read a stumbling stone, they may be surprised to find that
it is a memorial. They may find its presence in their neighbourhood, and
the text’s content, a somewhat off-putting addition to their normal routine.
In the act of stumbling upon these blocks, the past becomes something sud-
denly and physically present. In essence, the Stolpersteine expect to disrupt
the profane and change an individual’s behaviour to that expected in sacred
spaces. They pause, look down, read and attempt to understand the historic
events that took place at this very spot some decades earlier.
In doing so, they are stopping in the middle of a sidewalk, pausing apart
of their normal life, changing in that moment from profane to sacred
behaviour. In changing posture and behaviour, how they see that space,
as either sacred or profane, may change too. They may lean forward to
read and figure out what is written on the plaques. Ideally, the Stolpersteine
should awaken the viewer’s interest and inspire them to seek out addi-
tional information. They might also remind a viewer that these events did
not happen far away, but rather impacted even the spot where they are
standing.
The audience of this type of memorial differs substantially from that of
traditional memorial forms. It targets locals, people less likely to seek out
the more visible national monuments. This can be an uncomfortable con-
frontation, as those targeted may be living in the victims’ former homes, or
at the very least in their neighbourhoods. As Wiedmer states, the role of the
passer-by in such a memorial ‘is not an easy one to play’ (Wiedmer, 1999:
113). Although there is less educational content, there is an expectation
that viewers will understand the meaning and context of the stones with-
out too much explanation. The small amount of text also signifies a shorter
expected time commitment to viewing the memorial. Thus, although the

educational component of these memorials is less individually, the expecta-
tion that the viewer is a local, who may, over time, see more of Germany’s
memorial landscape, makes the collective impact of the stones impressive.
Spending an extended amount of time in this memorial landscape may
also have adverse effects, including perhaps decreased sensitivity to such
memorials, as elaborated by Harjes:
Through their plenitude, their inconspicuous locations, and their lack of

explanatory texts or documentation, Stolpersteine can, on the one hand,
surprise and irritate those who pass by. On the other hand, these decen-
tralized memorial pieces can blend into the city like pieces of furniture,
becoming familiar, unnoticed objects to the people who see them every
day. (Harjes, 2005: 144)
These memorials may cease to be recognized and treated as sacred spaces,

or their location may mean that they are never recognized as such but by
the most thoughtful and inquisitive of residents. This illustrates the dif-
ficulty of what Harjes sees as the Stolpersteine’s purpose – ‘the moral duty of
remembering and taking responsibility for that which lies in one’s proxim-
ity’ (Harjes, 2005: 147–8).
The rituals associated with Stolpersteine are few: stopping, reading, per-
haps considering the impact of history on the neighbourhood where the
stones have been placed. However, contrary to Harje’s fears, they continue
to generate interest in the communities where they are placed: new plaques
are welcomed by dedication ceremonies and in some cities groups gather to
clean them. A sidewalk is inherently profane space; by bringing memorials
into such unexpected locations, the Stolpersteine are introducing some ritual-
istic behaviour – behaviour that would normally belong to the sacred space
of a memorial: stopping, reading and remembering. In the moment of that
interaction, the Stolpersteine can become sacred through the behaviours
applied to them, even if they are at the same moment ignored by other
passers-by, who continue to treat the sidewalk as profane space.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, located just south of the
Brandenburg Gate and across from the Tiergarten, creates tension between
the sacred and profane in a fairly novel way. Controversial long before its
construction, this was intended to be Germany’s national memorial to the
Jewish victims of Nazi persecution. For that reason, it was allotted a large
piece of land, a city block, in the former death strip where the Berlin Wall
once stood. It is near Wilhelmstraße, where the National Socialist government
was headquartered and where Hitler’s bunker was located.
Completed in 2005, over a decade of planning and debate went into this
memorial (Leggewie and Meyer, 2005). It was controversial partially because
of the choice to dedicate it solely to Jewish victims, not more generally to
the victims of Nazi policies. A compromise was reached in which other
victim groups were promised their own memorials (compare Girβmann’s
chapter).
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (Figure 6.3), originally a
cooperation between Peter Eisenman and Richard Serra, later continued
by Eisenman alone after Serra left the project, is made up of 2711 stelae
installed in rows throughout the area (Stiftung Denkmal für die ermordeten
Juden Europas, 2013). The stelae, made of grey concrete, are all identically
deep and wide, but are of varying heights. They range from 20 centimetres
to 2 metres. The ground rises and sinks and thus, as the visitor enters the
‘field of stelae’ he or she becomes immersed or engulfed in the memorial.
The experience of the memorial is described by Andrew Gross, professor of
North American Studies:
The close placement of the pillars forces visitors to walk alone; entering
the field of pillars is like descending into a maze that partially cuts out
light sound and the surrounding buildings; and the uneven ground of
both structures increases the feeling of disorientation and unease (Gross,
2006: 88–9).
Figure 6.3 Peter Eisenman’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. © Tanja Schult.
The bustling city life of Berlin fades away almost instantly upon entrance
to the memorial. The behaviour expected at this memorial is prescribed
both by the design and in writing, as plaques located on the memorial’s
edges state, in both English and German, that ‘[w]ithout exception, the Field
of Stelae can only be entered slowly and on foot’.
When visitors come in large groups, it is impossible to stay together.
Groups must split up, allowing individuals to go alone or in pairs. Despite
the large number of people who may be walking the memorial’s paths at any
time, there is an intense feeling of loneliness and unease that comes with
the design. A visitor can then wander within the memorial, or exit. As it is
open along all sides and the ground slopes up, the visitor emerges slowly
from the memorial, and is greeted with city life again. While there is an edu-
cational area, the Information Centre, which is located underground, only
a sixth of the memorial’s visitors ever see it (Ahr, 2008: 292). Its existence is
not readily apparent, and likely goes unnoticed by many. In fact, the non-
centrality of the Information Centre may be due to the fact that it was not
included in the original design, but was rather added for political reasons
during the development process.
One of the most remarkable things about this memorial is the way in
which it incorporates the life of the city. This activity is not happening apart
from the memorial, but rather on and in it. By placing lower stelae along the
memorial’s borders, Eisenman invited visitors and passers-by to stop and sit,
to hang out with friends, to take a break from sightseeing, have a snack, and
engage in conversation. This is not typical memorial behaviour, and in fact
might be considered disrespectful. In contrast to the memorial’s topic – the
murder of almost six million individuals – this type of behaviour, normally
kept in profane space, may evoke that feeling of revulsion that to Durkheim
was indicative of mixing the sacred and profane. There are even plaques,
installed in the ground on each side of the memorial, that describe types of
prohibited (profane) behaviour, yet the rules included in these plaques were
far from the designer, the architect Peter Eisenman’s, intentions with the
memorial. In response to hearing that people were sitting, eating and play-
ing on the memorial, he stated that he was happy to hear that people were
using it in such a way: ‘I think it’s great’ (Eisenman, 2005, quoted in Pennell,
2008: 96). Pennell decides, after reflecting on the memorial’s purpose and
use, that visitors cannot be blamed for this behaviour and it cannot be
construed as disrespectful, as it ‘results from the Memorial’s permissively
abstract design’ (Pennell, 2008: 96). Even with lists of rules placed on the
memorial’s borders that restrict behaviour at the site, its design allows the
visitor to treat the space differently.
By accepting profane behaviour, and even expecting it to become a part
of the experience of visiting this memorial, it becomes impossible to clas-
sify the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe as either a sacred or profane
memorial in Mayo’s terminology. To the person walking in silence through
the field of stelae, contemplating the memorialized events, experiencing the

emotions evoked by the memorial’s design – to him or her the memorial
could be considered sacred space. To the people snacking on the field’s out-
skirts, the memorial may be seen or treated as profane space, although their
behaviour is equally related to the memorial’s design. And the two can and
do change places – the people on the outskirts enter the memorial and the
others come out, sit down and chat or make a phone call.
Although this type of contradictory behaviour occurs at other memorials
and sacred sites, it is not an intention of the design as it is here. Here,
behaviour that would normally be considered profane is actually incor-
porated into the traditionally sacred space of the memorial. Although the
laughing people and playing children become part of the memorial, their
behaviour is still not really profane; it can be seen as an unspoken ritual of
this memorial. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe questions what
makes a memorial sacred space; which behaviour is profane and which
sacred becomes unclear in this memorial space.
Conclusion
Memorials – at least in Berlin, which faces its own unique set of challenges
with remembrance as a city – are now designed with inquisitive visitors in
mind. These visitors have as their primary motive for visiting the memorial
a search for knowledge and understanding of the events commemorated
there. Reading and searching for context thus become rituals involved in
the contemporary memorial experience in a way they never were previously.
Texts, often lengthy ones, are incorporated into the memorials themselves
or on nearby plaques. Explanation is given to the history commemorated,
the location, and/or the memorial’s design. This is at least in part due to
the make-up of the audience and what they expect from Berlin’s memorials.
These must be designed with a variety of groups in mind, including tourists
and locals, young and old. Among visitors, there is a wide variety of knowl-
edge and familiarity with Berlin’s history. One kind of gap exists between
tourists, who have a physical distance in their lives from these events, and
locals. Both may have strong emotional connections, but these can be very
different, informed as they are by different cultural and historical contexts.
Another consideration, which often overlaps with the first, is one of age
and thus temporal distance from the events. The framing of a memorial
has to be more concrete when visitors cannot be expected to remember the
events memorialized. As the memorials discussed here were designed and
installed in the last two decades, there could be no expectation on behalf of
the designers that visitors would have first-hand knowledge of events (even
if they have significant knowledge gained through schools, museums and
the media), particularly when memorials pertain to the Holocaust and World
War II. In Berlin, even older memorials have been contextualized in recent
years to give background information. Plaques with historical information

have been placed at all three of Berlin’s Soviet War Memorials and in areas of
the city that were previously left without memorialization or where physical
evidence of the Nazi regime’s crimes was destroyed in the post-war years.
What is the purpose of these memorials to the most difficult aspects of
Berlin’s past? It cannot be to remember, as most visitors lack first-hand
memories of these events. Visitors are not remembering the events them-
selves, but rather the fact that these events happened. They are reminded of
the importance of those events; that they were meaningful. Some memori-
als, such as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, suggest a meaning
through their form, while others ask visitors to construct or remember their
own understanding of that meaning. Remembering in this sense is a ritual.
Through it, the memory, now encapsulated in the minds of a few as well as
the places where events transpired, is made sacred. Here the memorial acts
as a vehicle, sacred due to its direct relationship with memory. The memo-
rial visit may itself become the memory for some visitors, as discussed by
Wiedmer: ‘For younger generations the site itself becomes the memory, not
the medium for recalling events that took place there’ (Wiedmer, 1999: 166).
This is the reverse of the way memory functioned in the years following
these destructive events, when there was only limited marking and memo-
rialization of sites and their meaning was carried by the people who knew
and remembered them.
New memorials in Berlin test the borders of sacred and profane in novel
ways, bringing them closer to one another than might have been possible in
earlier designs. The sacred and profane come in contact with one another,
although they do not combine. In these designs the designations of sacred
and profane are left more to the mind and feelings of the visitor than was
previously the case. The two categories remain separate, as in Durkheim’s
theory. The separation may be temporal or differ based on the viewer, as
with the Stolpersteine. In the same moment they may be treated as sacred,
read and quietly contemplated, by one, but treated as profane by another
who steps on them.
In this way and others, architects and artists appear to be including, more
and more since the fall of the Berlin Wall, an understanding of the nature of
the sacred and profane in their memorial designs. Both seem to be utilized,
whereas older memorials relied on the distinct spatial and mental separation
of sacred and profane. Now the tension between the two comes into focus –
perhaps as a way to attract the visitor’s attention in an unexpected way, to
awaken his or her curiosity and deepen the connection to history.
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the “Negative Sublime”’, Journeys, 7.2, pp. 73–100.
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and Democratic Inclusion in Berlin’: German Politics and Society, 23.1, pp. 1389–51.
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and Beyond, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
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Wache and Unified German Memory’, German Politics and Society, 16.3, pp. 86–104.
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Today’: Critical Inquiry, 18.2, pp. 267–96.
Part II
Sites of Struggle with Haunting
Pasts
7
Holocaust Tourism: The Strange yet
Familiar/the Familiar yet Strange
Tim Cole
On 31 August 1940, Adam Czerniakow, the chairman of the Jewish Council

in Warsaw, received a telephone call from the SS, requesting that he make
provision for ‘some tourists’ to visit the synagogue. It was an unusual
enough request to make it into the pages of his diary, although after the
creation and closing of the ghetto, it seems that the trail of German tourists
continued. On 30 April 1941, Czerniakow met with members of the SS and
‘tourists’ from the Wehrmacht, who he ‘briefed … about the Community’.
Later a fellow council member led the group on a ‘guided tour’ of the ghetto
(Hilberg et al., 1979: 192, 227). Three-quarters of a century after Czerniakow
received ‘tourists’ to the synagogue and ghetto, contemporary western tour-
ists to Warsaw are still directed to these places. For guide books such as the
Rough Guide to Poland, the Nozyk Synagogue – ‘the only one of the ghetto’s
three synagogues still standing’ – should be the ‘first stop on any itinerary of
Jewish Warsaw’ (Bousfield and Salter, 2005: 106). Twenty-first century visi-
tors to Warsaw are also encouraged to visit the array of monuments erected
on the site of the former ghetto as well as the surviving fragments of the
ghetto wall (Bousfield and Salter, 2005: 107–9). The guide Let’s Go Eastern
Europe offers its clientele of largely American student backpackers a ‘Warsaw
Ghetto Walking Tour’ (Let’s Go, 2005: 522).
Does anything connect Wehrmacht ghetto tourists in 1941 with the west-
ern backpacker, guidebook in hand, who visits the site of the Warsaw ghetto
today? In this essay I take two key aspects of tourist practice – following the
advice in the pages of the guidebooks over where to visit and the taking of
photographs once there – as a way in to examine changes and continuities in
Holocaust tourism as well as to move beyond German soldiers and backpack-
ers in Poland to explore the experiences of another group of contemporary
visitors to Holocaust sites: returning survivors. Survivors’ experiences of revis-
iting the former sites of their incarceration pose questions of the assumptions
underlying the moral imperative to undertake Holocaust tourism.
At a very basic level, the contemporary tourist clutching a copy of the
Rough Guide to Poland in their hand, reading the map of Warsaw which
93
94 Tim Cole
shows them where the ghetto district used to be, is adopting a radically
different tourist practice from members of the Wehrmacht visiting Warsaw
in the early 1940s. The German Army-produced tour book of Warsaw from
1942 made no reference to the city’s Jews. There was little more in the 1943
Baedecker tourist guide to the General Government, where, Rudy Koshar
concludes, ‘for the most part, silence was the rule with regard to “the Jewish
problem”’. Although clearly exhibiting racist assumptions about the inferi-
ority of both Jews and Poles, the 1943 Baedecker guide kept the German
tourist away from the few remaining Jewish ghettos and the other physi-
cal sites associated with the implementation of ‘the final solution of the
Jewish Question’. Holocaust tourism was not an officially sanctioned activity.
A similar picture emerged from the Woerl guidebook to Posen, published in
1940, which made only passing reference to the ‘separated and barricaded
ghetto of Posen’ not as a site to be visited, but simply being in the locale of
the Old Market Square (Koshar, 2000: 153–5).
In contrast, foreign visitors to contemporary Poland are strongly encour-
aged to engage in Holocaust tourism as part and parcel of their visit. Holocaust
sites are literally mapped out, both on national and local maps. Tourist
guidebooks are unanimous in their endorsement of Auschwitz as a ‘must
see’ destination for the visitor to Cracow in particular, and Poland in gen-
eral. In the state published series of Polish travel guides for English-speaking
visitors from the early 1960s, Auschwitz – described as ‘undoubtedly …
one of the most appalling museums in Europe’ – was the recommended
stopping off point on Route 62, for those motoring from Cracow to Bielsko-
Biała (Uszynska, 1960: 40). More recent Polish guidebooks are in agreement
that Auschwitz is ‘a must if you’re in striking distance’, ‘the real thing, with
railway track, selection ramp and the whole crazy nightmare of the camp.
Not to be missed’ (Zamoyski, 2001: 27, 170) making it into the Rough Guide’s
‘28 things not to miss’ when in Poland, given that this place ‘offers the
profoundest of insights into the nature of human evil, and demands to be
visited – few who come here will be unchanged by the experience’ (Bousfield
and Salter, 2005: 21).
The Rough Guide is not alone in offering Auschwitz-Birkenau to the visitor
in not only unmissable, but potentially life-changing, terms. Others fol-
low suit, instructing would-be visitors that Auschwitz is ‘possibly Poland’s
most moving sight’ (Dydyński, 2002: frontpiece), that, ‘no visitor can
leave unmoved’ (Omilanowska et al., 2004: 160), and that, ‘if travel else-
where broadens the mind, struggling around the emotional minefield of
Auschwitz must deepen it’ (Ward, 1988: 50). The guidebook consensus is
not only that Auschwitz-Birkenau is a site/sight worth visiting, but also a
site/sight of transformative potential. It is those who stay away who are
seen to be the problem, with Marc Heine musing that ‘one can only regret
that the fanatics and racists of this world never seem to make the journey’
(Heine, 1980: 137).
Holocaust Tourism 95
In many ways, therefore, we have moved dramatically from a story of

soldiers on their day off, going off the beaten track of the guidebook (albeit
following the track beaten by fellow soldiers) to visit Jewish ghettos, to one
of tourists following the contemporary guidebooks’ ringing endorsement of
(certain) Holocaust sites/sights in Poland as essential tourist destinations to
be visited with a sense of moral purpose. In the intervening years between
1940 and the present lies a story of the post-war emergence of the Holocaust
as a central narrative in Israel, Europe and the United States for a host of
reasons (Segev, 1993; Cole, 1999; Novick, 1999). That the Holocaust should
be remembered rather than forgotten, and that we can and should learn
lessons from the Holocaust, have emerged as something of a common-sense
dictum, and these assumptions underlie much of the moral compulsion of
Holocaust tourism so redolent in the contemporary guidebooks. Occupied
Poland in 1940 was, of course, a world away from this. But are there nev-
ertheless some continuities between these very different Holocaust tourists,
70 years apart?
Ghetto Tourists in Occupied Poland: Searching for the

Strange yet Familiar
The tourist practices that Czerniakow noted down in his diary reflected a
more widespread fascination with the Ostjuden – or Eastern Jews – who the
occupying Germans now came face to face with. Descriptions of Jews crop
up in letters home and, as Judith Levin and Daniel Uziel point out, there was
an ‘obsession’ with ‘photographing typical Jews’ among ‘German policemen
and soldiers in the ghettos of Poland’. Whether visual or textual depictions,
the tendency was that these portrayals followed the renderings of Jews that
had been reproduced in anti-Semitic propaganda in Germany. It seems that
in the occupied east, German policemen and soldiers sought out and pho-
tographed the stereotypical Jews of anti-Semitic caricatures whenever they
found them (Levin and Uziel, 1998; Michman, 2011: 74). Ghetto tourism
was not an experience that challenged a rethinking of anti-Semitic views of
the Jew. The camera was not a tool to capture the variety of Jewish experi-
ence, but rather a tool to bring the cartoon caricatures of anti-Semitic propa-
ganda to life. Encountering the Jew in the East was an experience that was
both strange and yet also familiar. In short, they came to see what they were
looking for – Eastern Jews in overcrowded ghettos – as a form of self-fulfilling
prophecy.
These were, however, not the only photographs being taken by German
soldiers and policemen in occupied Poland. Another set of photographs,
even more problematic, were those of the so-called ‘final solution of the
Jewish question’ being enacted in wartime Poland and the Soviet Union.
Although officially frowned upon, atrocity photographs were reproduced,
purchased or traded, stuck in albums, annotated and sent home. The
96 Tim Cole
company commander of Police Battalion 101 recalled photographs ‘laid

out hanging on the wall and anyone, as he pleased, could order copies of
them’ (Goldhagen, 1997: 246). Such photographs were less about the self-
fulfilling prophecy of bringing the caricatured Jew to life, as they were about
recording and celebrating the reducing of the caricatured Jew to death – a
pile of corpses shot into a ditch. These were voyeuristic photographs which
continue to raise ethical issues of adopting the perpetrator’s gaze (Crane,
2008; Sontag, 2003).
Holocaust Tourism in Contemporary Poland: Searching for the

Strange yet Familiar
It would be crass to draw a straight line between these practices and the
practices of contemporary visitors to Holocaust sites – of which Auschwitz
has emerged pre-eminent. The photographs taken by contemporary tourists
to Auschwitz are far removed from either the ghetto photographs or atroc-
ity photographs of German soldiers and policemen in occupied Poland in
1939–42. Jews, whether alive or dead, are after all absent in the contempo-
rary landscape of Auschwitz. Indeed, their absence is powerfully evoked and
materialized through the (much photographed) vast displays of the goods
seized, sorted and stockpiled – suitcases, shoes, glasses, hairbrushes, hair –
that form the centrepiece of the museum in former Auschwitz I.
Total absence and indeed complete erasure was intended for places like
Auschwitz itself. After the so-called Operation Reinhard camps had been
used to kill over one million Polish Jews, they were razed to the ground and
the buried corpses dug up and cremated. This never happened at Auschwitz.
The crematoria and gas chambers at Birkenau were hastily blown up, and
most of the prisoner population marched westwards, but the speed of the
Red Army advance meant that the total erasure of this killing site was never
achieved. Most of the infrastructure at Birkenau remained, in a way that sim-
ply was not the case for the other main killing centres at Belzec, Chelmno,
Sobibor and Treblinka. There is, in short, more to see at Auschwitz than
elsewhere (Majdanek aside) – a site full of rows on rows of empty barracks,
empty watchtowers, empty rails – and this is no doubt at least part of the
reason why it is this camp that has emerged as the focus of Holocaust tour-
ism, alongside the international nature of the prisoner population of this
camp and the relatively large number of survivors as a result of the multi-
functionality of this complex that was concentration and labour camp as
well as death camp (Charlesworth, 1994).
The empty rails stretching into Auschwitz-Birkenau form a focus for con-
temporary visitors, who after surveying the camp from the top of the watch-
tower at the main entrance, walk through the gateway, along the tracks and
down to the dynamited remains of the gas chambers and crematoria. Here
they pause to take the iconic photograph looking back up the tracks the way
they came, before making their return journey out through the entrance
gateway. Whenever I have been at Auschwitz – and a trawl of online pho-
tograph sharing sites suggests the same – there are two places above all else
that form the focus of the photographer’s gaze. In Auschwitz I it is the iconic
gateway with its ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ logo. In Auschwitz II – Birkenau – it
is from the end of the rail tracks looking all the way down the unloading
ramp to the similarly iconic gateway. The last few times that I have been in
Birkenau, tourists have quite literally been lined up there, cameras in hand,
patiently waiting for their turn to get that shot.
That the gateways at Auschwitz I and II form the photographic epicentre
of these camps is perhaps not surprising, given their symbolic power not
just as thresholds into another world – the world of the Lager or ‘kingdom
of night’ (Wiesel, 2006) – but also their symbolic power as markers of what
Griselda Pollock calls, ‘the one-way travel that we must confront in the site
and the term Auschwitz’ (Pollock, 2003: 187). The stock photograph taken
looking back along the rail spur into Birkenau places the end of the tracks
in the foreground and looks beyond that to the gateway into a world of
no-return. It is a photograph that conjures up the overwhelming absence
at this place: the absence of an estimated more than one million Jews who
came into this site and never left again, except as smoke from the crematoria
chimneys or mass burning pits. It is a photograph that stands in for what is
not there: Auschwitz as a place visited both because it is somewhere where
there is something to see (these entrances, these rails) and somewhere where
there is something that cannot be seen (victims who were brought here and
have no grave marker). Holocaust tourism is about a simultaneous encoun-
ter with the visible and the invisible. These rail tracks make visible the
invisible: all those who made a ‘one way’ journey here. And those deaths –
the invisible – transform these rails from simply another stretch of the rail
network of continental Europe into quite literally the end of the line.
But there is more to these rails than simply the symbolic marker of the
end of over a million men, women and children. It is also a symbolic
marker of the end of the line for modernity, with its arrogant assumption
of human progress. Here Holocaust tourism, as critical encounter with a
failed modernist project, fits within the wider phenomenon of ‘dark tour-
ism’, which John Lennon and Malcolm Foley see as an ‘intimation of
post-modernity’, situating it within a broader context of emerging global
communication technologies and commodification as well as a more specific
sense of sites – like Auschwitz – that ‘appear to introduce anxiety and doubt
about the project of modernity’ (Lennon and Foley, 2000: 11).
The symbolism of train tracks running up to the very edge of gas cham-
bers and crematoria is one that needs historicizing, given that it fits within a
particular rendering of the Holocaust as the most modern of state-sponsored
crimes (Bauman, 1989). Within this version of the events that we know as
the Holocaust, which was historiographically and culturally dominant in
98 Tim Cole
America and Western Europe roughly from the 1960s through to the early
1990s, Auschwitz assumed a central place as an assembly-line factory of
death lying at the epicentre of the European rail network. While Auschwitz
emerged in the west as symbolic of the Holocaust as a primarily Jewish
event during this period, the camp meant something rather different in the
east, where it became a central site in a shared eastern bloc memory of the
threat of Fascism, where the Jewish specificity of the majority of victims was
marginalized. At the State Museum, national pavilions were set up in the
1960s, where the ‘Pavilion of Martyrology of Jews’ was only one amongst
the national pavilions of the Hungarian People’s Republic, the Federation
of the Yugoslav People’s Republics, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic,
the USSR, the GDR, Belgium and Denmark. In these national pavilions,
victims – largely Jewish – were remembered first and foremost as citizens of
what were now largely socialist nations. Over in the less commonly visited
Birkenau, where the majority of Jewish victims had died, the monument
erected in 1967 was to generic ‘people [who] suffered and died here at the
hands of the Nazi murderers between the years 1940 and 1945’. As the
state published series of Polish travel guides for English-speaking visitors in
the early 1960s emphasized, Auschwitz was a site where ‘citizens of scores
of European countries were murdered here without regard to their race,
religion or political views’ (Uszynska, 1960: 40). However, despite this dif-
ferent emphasis on who the victims were, there was a shared discourse of
Auschwitz as ‘extermination factory’ ‘from which there was no other exit
except through the crematorium chimney’ (Smolen, 1981: 27, 42).
What is striking about contemporary tourist practices is the persistence of
that discourse in framing the way this site is visualized and experienced. In
photographing the rails at Auschwitz-Birkenau, contemporary visitors freeze
frame one particular moment among many that make up the event we dub
the Holocaust. This rail spur into Birkenau was only constructed in 1944 and
used for the arrival of the mass deportation of Hungarian Jews in the late
spring and early summer. Between May and July 1944, over 400,000 Jews
from the wartime borders of Hungary arrived in Auschwitz, the majority
being gassed and cremated shortly after arrival. While this rail spur is a critical
site – in many cases literally the end of the line – for thousands of Hungarian
Jews it is a late addition to the earlier story of the mass murder of European
Jews initially in mass shootings in the forests and ravines in occupied Soviet
territories and then in mass gassings in the so-called Operation Reinhard
Camps in Poland. As Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt point out,
in 1941, the Germans had killed some 1.1 million Jews; none was killed
in Auschwitz. In 1942, approximately 2.7 million Jews were annihilated,
of whom some 200,000 were gassed in bunkers 1 and 2 … The years the
crematoria of Auschwitz came into operation, the number of victims
dropped to 500,000, half of whom were killed in Auschwitz … In terms
of mortality, at the end of 1943 Auschwitz ranked behind Treblinka and

Belzec. (Dwork and van Pelt, 1996: 326; 336–7)
All that changed in 1944. This year was the culmination of a shift in where
the mass killings were taking place in the war, largely because, as Sybille
Steinbacher points out, of ‘pragmatic reasons’ related to the changing for-
tunes in the war (Steinbacher, 2005: 106). In many ways the shifting of mass
killings to Auschwitz represented the last gasp of a system threatened from
both east, and by mid-1944, west.
Increasingly, and especially in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall
and the opening up of archives in former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact
countries, new images of the Holocaust have emerged and the geographical
imagination has stretched east of Auschwitz. Important books like Timothy
Snyder’s Bloodlands and Jan Gross’s Neighbors have repositioned the histori-
ography, something begun in Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men (Snyder,
2011; Gross, 2002; Browning, 1992). All focus not so much on the Holocaust
as the epitome of modernity and Auschwitz as centralized killing site, but on
another Holocaust – one that is more dispersed, framed around face-to-face
killings much closer to home rather than at the end of the continental rail
network. This more dispersed, localized killing is one where there is not
much to see – no lines of barracks enclosed in barbed wire, but the faintest
hint of a rise in the ground where an unmarked mass grave is, whose location
is passed on in folk memory (Baer, 2000; Desbois, 2008).
Now this is not to say that Auschwitz is the ‘wrong’ place to go and the
‘right’ place to go is further east. But it is to say that Holocaust tourism
centred on this site, and specifically on a view of the Holocaust as the most
modern of crimes symbolized by the trope of the literal end of the tracks
a short distance from the assembly-line killing factory of the gas chambers
and the crematoria needs to be historicized. Auschwitz is a place approached
with a dominant discourse of the Holocaust that was articulated around
the time that the Holocaust emerged as an iconic event. In a sense, then,
Auschwitz is approached as somewhere both strange and yet also strangely
familiar given the tropes circulating in global media in an era of Holocaust
consciousness. Visiting Auschwitz is less an act of discovery, and more a
reinforcing of a certain way of seeing and thinking about this event. And
here are in fact some parallels between tourists visiting ghettos in occupied
Poland and contemporary Auschwitz. Both visit what Rob Shields dubs
‘place-myths’ (Shields, 1991: 61), places associated with stereotypical images
circulating in the contemporary mass media, ‘the Jew in the ghetto’ or ‘the
Holocaust in the death camp’. Contemporary visitors to Auschwitz engage
in acts of self-fulfilling prophecy to see and photograph what Baer describes
as ‘the oversaturated referents of ruins’ (Baer, 2000: 42).
Of course the more problematic question is whether there is any link
between viewing the atrocity photographs being taken by German soldiers
100 Tim Cole
and policemen as they implemented the first wave of killings in occupied

Poland and the practices of contemporary Holocaust tourists. Certainly
some have hinted at a voyeurism in Holocaust tourism. One critic, Griselda
Pollock, expressed her concern that, ‘tourism … involves the spectaculariza-
tion of the work, or experience of the other. Holocaust tourism takes this to
a newly terrifying level; what is made into spectacle is the death and torture
of others, no longer present’ (Pollock, 2003: 181). For Ian Buruma,
to visit the site of suffering, any description of which cannot adequately

express the horror, is upsetting, not because one gets closer to knowing
what it was actually like to be a victim, but because such visits stir up emo-
tions one cannot trust. It is tempting to take on the warm moral glow of
identification – so easily done and so presumptuous – with the victims …
Places of horror hold a fascination which can all too early slip into a maso-
chistic pleasure. (Buruma, 1994: 72)
It would be naïve in the extreme to assume that by visiting Auschwitz we

can approach knowledge of ‘what it was actually like to be a victim’ and
I am not arguing that Holocaust tourism is quite so naïve. But underlying
the moral imperative of Holocaust tourism that is central to the guidebooks’
admonitions to visit Auschwitz is an assumption of the authenticity of place
that suggests at least some form of continuity between then and now. This
assumption runs counter to the experiences of most survivors who when
they return to this place are overwhelmingly struck by difference. What may
appear at first glance to be a familiar place is experienced as disconcertingly,
and yet simultaneously reassuringly, strange.
Survivor Return Visits to Auschwitz: Encountering the Familiar

yet Strange
Although there are examples of Jewish survivors returning to Auschwitz in

the immediate post-war period (Beran, 1997), the number of survivor return-
ees increased dramatically after the fall of the Berlin Wall opened up former
communist Europe to tourists. This also came with a coming of age of the
survivors, many of whom returned to Poland on the bidding of their children
who wanted them to guide them round former homes and sites of wartime
incarceration (Cole, 2013a). For many survivors, returning to Auschwitz was
a jarring experience and they found walking around Birkenau decades after
their imprisonment there disorienting (Morley, 1979). As one later recalled,
returning to Auschwitz felt like ‘walking around like a zombie … I don’t know
where I am, I don’t know what I’m seeing … I had no ideas, I was in a fog’
(Grant, 1998). In part, this disorientation resulted from the physical changes
to the site where wooden barracks were torn down to provide housing
in post-war Poland (Heimlich, 1995). It also resulted from the realities of
wartime experiences of being confined to clearly demarcated and closely

guarded zones within the camp rather than having the free reign (of the con-
temporary visitor) to wander at will. But feelings of disorientation ultimately
emerged from a deeper sense of how much this place had (been) changed.
Although a fraction of survivors retell their post-war visits to a place where
‘everything’s untouched. Just like it was in 1944’ (Zucker, 2000), the vast
majority recall being struck by the marked differences between the camp
they were incarcerated in, and the museum and memorial they guided their
children around half a century later. In part, survivors were struck by the
transformation of camp into museum with its ‘nice gate, flowers and trees’
(Seidenfeld, 1998; Cole, 2013a: 114–15). But more profoundly, it seemed as
if the very ground under their feet had shifted, in this place now so radi-
cally different as to be almost another place entirely. For Kitty Hart, it was
the grass she walked on at Birkenau that became something of an obsession
in her documentary and memoir of return – unusually dating from the late
1970s and early 1980s respectively. Making her way around Auschwitz, Hart
could not get over the fact that she walked,
on grass which was once interminable mud. Beneath the green surface
the ground is still muddy. My feet sink in. It’s not so much spongy as just
that little bit wetter so that it squelches and threatens to suck you down
and trap you there, so that you breathe faster and want to drag your feet
out and escape before it’s too late.
Imagine it (I can’t imagine it any other way) with 100,000 people trudg-
ing through that mud, hear the plopping sound of wrenching your clog
out of the mess until maybe you no longer had the strength to wrench it
out… (Hart, 1983: 221)
For Hart and other survivors, it was the ‘big emptiness’ of Birkenau that
struck those who remembered this now ‘empty place’ crowded with ‘thou-
sands and thousands of people’ (Ebert, 1996; Hoffman, 1998; Biederman,
1998). Such was the disconnect between then and now (there and here) that
Arnold Friedman, a survivor who returned with his family, recalled how he,
took them away from the central tourist area. I went to an extreme end
of the camps and I asked them to close their eyes and listen to my voice.
I wanted them to see the train station, not just the rails, but imagine a
train on there with confused people being disgorged from these trains,
the periodic shouting, the constant dog barking, the various cries for help
either by confused children or by elderly people who knew or had a sense
of … their doom. (Friedman, 1995)
It was only with their eyes closed, listening to him – a survivor – that
Friedman asserted that they could really hear – and therefore truly see – this
102 Tim Cole
place. The much photographed rails were, he suggested, potentially deceiving

or at the very best only a half truth. Auschwitz was not a site/sight to be con-
sumed visually through the gaze, but a lost-auditory landscape that could
only be evoked through the voice of the survivor.
That Auschwitz now is not Auschwitz then, is precisely why survivors
are willing to, or actively want to, return. It is the strangeness of the place
now that means that going here is, for at least some, prized as ending
their experience of the Holocaust rather than continuing it. Perhaps the
clearest case of this emerges in an oral history interview undertaken with
Erwin Baum, a Polish-Jewish survivor. In the main the interview covered
the usual ground of Baum’s wartime experiences. However, when describ-
ing his return to Poland for the 75th anniversary celebrations of Janusz
Korczak’s Jewish orphanage in Warsaw where he and his brother had lived
in the late 1930s, Baum explained how this visit had also offered a chance
to return to Auschwitz. As he explained, he and his brother had decided to
hire ‘a private chauffeur with a car’ and go to Auschwitz. Once there, he
recalled that, ‘I walk in because I want to walk in. And I know on the other
side is a guy waiting with a Mercedes for me, and I walk out. I’m liberated’
(Baum, 1994). Whereas his first ‘liberation’ by American troops who cap-
tured the Dachau sub-camp of Allach was experienced passively as a change
of management, subjected to the photographing gaze of new owners, his
second ‘liberation’ as he walked out of Auschwitz in 1998 was an active
choice. For Baum, the price of a taxi fare – in a prestigious German car no
less – from Warsaw to Oświȩcim was worth it to show not only that he had
made it in this life but also to undertake this symbolic act that lasted only
a few minutes of walking into Auschwitz again with the express purpose of
walking out again.
Baum is far from alone in seeing in the gateway at Birkenau a symbol-
ism rather different from that which drives the photographic practices of
contemporary tourists. Survivor Michael Zylberberg expressed his long-
standing desire, ‘before I die to return to those horrible places where I was
dragged in as a prisoner. I wanted to walk in there as a free man and walk
out as a free man’. Such was the symbolic importance attached to exiting
Auschwitz that Zylberberg had a photograph taken when ‘we walked out
from Auschwitz … because this was very important for me’. Showing the
photograph to the camera at the end of his Shoah Foundation interview,
he explained that, ‘the picture shows how I was walking out as a free man
of the concentration camp. This was a pilgrimage I always wanted to do and
I did it this year’ (Zylberberg, 1997). Rather than Auschwitz being seen as a
site of no-return, with tracks running through the gateway to the end of the
line, here is another image of Auschwitz as a place of temporary return, where
the gateway is both entrance but more importantly an exit, and in walking
out of that gateway – when they choose rather than being marched out of
under the watchful eye of camp guards during work details or the hasty mass
evacuation of Auschwitz in mid-January 1945 – lies a promise of freedom or

even a salvation of sorts.
This turning on its head of the symbolic elements of the architecture of
Auschwitz can be repeated with other features of the contemporary camp
landscape. For example, rather than the barbed wire fence, another much
photographed space, being a persisting symbol of incarceration and the
concentration camp universe, it is the very fact that it can be approached
without fear of being shot, and grasped without fear of being electrocuted
that is significant for survivors returning to this place. At the end of her
interview for the Shoah Foundation, Judith Perlaki showed a series of
post-war photographs including one of ‘my sister and me holding electric
wire – no electricity’, taken when they visited the camp in 1991, as Perlaki
explained, ‘because we wanted to go back as free people’ (Perlaki, 1996).
As Baum experienced ‘liberation’ walking out of the gateway at Birkenau,
Perlaki interpreted the act of holding the barbed wire fence in the camp as
similarly liberating.
Conclusion: The Strange and the Familiar/the Familiar

and the Strange
Listening to interviews with survivors, the sheer disconnect between this

place then and this place now is striking. It seems, as Kitty Hart so eloquently
articulated, that even the very earth underneath their feet has radically
changed. Returning to Auschwitz post-1989, survivors report how the archi-
tectural infrastructure of the camp has changed as a result of attempts to
destroy the evidence of mass killings by the retreating guards, the necessities
of temporary housing in the immediate post-war period or the decades of
decay, repair, memorialization and museumification. ‘When I went back to
Auschwitz a good few years later,’ explained Olga Lengyel, and ‘I saw trees,
flowers, birds singing, I didn’t know where I am, it looked like a summer
resort’ (Lengyel, 1998). The perceived beautification of the site as part of
the turning of a death camp into a memorial and museum site is critiqued
by some as creating a ‘tidy pretence’ (Frankel, 1994). But more significantly
survivors see this place as fundamentally changed from the place where they
were imprisoned in the first half of the 1940s. Auschwitz today is another
place entirely that looks different, sounds different and feels different.
That insistence on a radical disjuncture between this place then and now
that dominates survivors’ accounts is lacking from the underpinning assump-
tions of Holocaust tourism that insist on the moral imperative of visiting this
place. The perceived contemporary power of the site is based on the view that
Auschwitz is not simply a place where something happened, but a site where
that something is still, in some way, visible and accessible. I was particularly
struck by the slippage from Holocaust tourism to Holocaust witnessing when
accompanying a group of British school children who visited Auschwitz as part
104 Tim Cole
of the Holocaust Educational Trust ‘Lessons from Auschwitz’ course. Standing

around the ruins of the gas chambers and crematoria at Birkenau, our educa-
tor read us the words of Sonderkommando member Zalman Gradowski – ‘we
will bury our notebooks and diaries deep under the ashes. We have done as
much as we could. And you, searching for the truth, you who have lived to
see justice and liberty, what will you do?’ – and explained that Gradowski
‘is talking to us’ who came ‘here to bear witness’ (Cole, 2013b: 243). Such
ideas of the transformative potential of visiting this site lie at the heart of
the many educational programmes such as this one that bring teenagers to
‘witness’ Birkenau, but also can be felt, as I have suggested, in the pages of
the guidebooks. These extravagant claims for the power of visiting this place
need questioning both because the photographic practices of tourists have a
well-trodden feeling to them of a gaze that can be historicized in the broader
context of the emergence of a western (or global) Holocaust consciousness,
and because as the survivors quoted here make so clear, this place – visually –
is now almost another place entirely.
But does that mean that we are better off not visiting places like Auschwitz
given that Holocaust tourism falls too easily into predictable tropes and
misplaced assumptions about authenticity and continuity? Explaining why
she ‘will never go to Auschwitz’, Griselda Pollock notes alongside broader
concerns that Holocaust tourism reduces ‘the death and torture of others,
no longer present’ into a ‘spectacle’, a more specific unease ‘at the ethics
of going to, visiting, touring a place whose all too real and still powerfully
symbolic function was to be a horrific terminus, the end of a line, the fac-
tory of death, a place from which none was intended to return.’ For Pollock,
‘to go, to tour and to leave, is to defy that demonic logic, to put “Auschwitz”
back in a place with an entrance and an exit’ (Pollock, 2003: 175, 181, 176).
However, contra Pollock (and the stock image of the end of the rails which
portrays Auschwitz as the end of the track), it is the act of leaving this
place which is, for a number of survivors, the very reason they visit in the
first place. In his Travelscapes guide to Poland published in the 1980s, Tim
Sharman warned readers not to visit Auschwitz or the other death camps
‘lightly’, crammed in ‘between a pilgrimage to the Pope’s birthplace at
nearby Wadowice and a trip into the lovely hills to the south’, as you would
any other site/sight on a busy tourist itinerary. Having created the time and
space for an unhurried visit, Sharman suggested to his readers that the act
of walking away from Auschwitz offered a moment for self-reflection: ‘Look
quietly around and retreat, grateful that you can, to read the guide-books
and ponder the fragility of civilization’ (Sharman, 1988: 159).
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8
To Go or Not to Go? Reflections on
the Iconic Status of Auschwitz, its
Increasing Distance and Prevailing
Urgency
Tanja Schult
‘It’ll be fun to go to Auschwitz’ is the very first caption in a series of draw-

ings by Swedish artist Patrick Nilsson. In his Sensmoral or Death (Figure 8.1),
Patrick, the artist’s alter ego, is struggling to express his excitement before a
planned visit to Auschwitz. Unable to find the right words, he feels a grow-
ing reluctance. In the end, he is unable to find a good reason to go or a
possible excuse not to.1
In this article, Nilsson’s work from 2001 enters a dialogue with a series of
drawings by Aleksandra Kucharska, called Auschwitz through a train window
(2008) and Mikołaj Grynberg’s photographic work Auschwitz – what am
I doing here? (2009). All three works are comprehensive as they consist of
several pieces. Additionally, they all deal with the question of why one
should visit Auschwitz, thereby conveying a sense of struggling with it as
a place and as a symbol. Very much in line with many post-memory gene-
ration artists, these three assert the need to remember while at the same
time revealing a peculiar distance and a feeling of impotence in the face
of the crimes committed – which nevertheless form the foundations of
current European memory culture. As I myself belong to this post-memory
generation, I admit up front that by letting these three art works enter a
conversation, I hope to find explanations for my own preoccupation and
growing reluctance to study the Holocaust and its memory. During this
process, Kucharska’s drawings and my accompanying texts serve as a struc-
tural element of the article as a whole. Moreover, they offer a time-out from
the traditional scholarly approach, a chance for more personal reflection,
thereby inviting the readers to step outside themselves and ask critically:
What are we doing with the memory of the murdered Jews of Europe? All in
all, this article aims to raise crucial issues, as these works apparently mirror
the ongoing struggle each generation has to face anew: the deep mistrust in
humanity and the notion of insecurity the genocide of the European Jews
has left behind.
107
108 Tanja Schult
Figure 8.1 Patrick Nilsson, Sensmoral or Death, 2001. © Patrick Nilsson.
Patrick Nilsson’s collection of drawings entitled Sensmoral or Death consists

of 12 sections. The drawings are in black crayon on paper, in different sizes,
most of them between 50 centimetres by 70 centimetres, so relatively large in
size. The work was completed in 2001 and acquired by the Museum of Art in
Uppsala where it was displayed in an exhibition during the autumn of 2009.2
The subject of the exhibition was, according to the official programme, ‘mem-
ory, history and narratives after human trauma and their effects on us today’.
Because it was displayed in the White Cube and was purchased by a public
institution, Nilsson’s work automatically gained recognition as a bonafide
work of art, a part of the official memory culture – despite the content of the
work and the unusual wordings as quoted initially. The series was regarded,
and I agree with this interpretation, as a work of art that evokes critical
questioning, thereby fulfilling a vital function within a democratic society.
Let us take a closer look at the drawings which predominately consist of
words that I, given the language barrier, will render in a summarized interpre-
tation. Sensmoral or Death can be seen as an expression of an inner dialogue
the artist’s alter ego conducted with himself. ‘Patrick’ was presumably offered
a journey to Auschwitz, which he accepted. At the beginning, he appears
to react positively to the idea, and we sense his excitement. But his almost
juvenile attempt at putting his enthusiasm into words immediately proves to
be futile. Certainly, words such as fun, exciting and interesting would seem
inappropriate in this particular context, would they not? Such commonplace
words, which one might associate with the unreflected and carefree attitude
of youth, are scratched out, encircled and repeated. Patrick becomes increas-
ingly entangled in a maze of weighing proper word choice with an adequate
mode of behaviour when he is to arrive at his destination. It is difficult for
him to justify, purely through means of language, why he would like to travel
to Auschwitz. But, as the uneasiness in him grows, he is also unable to come
up with a reason for not going. What could possibly serve as a reasonable
justification for not visiting Auschwitz, especially since we have been taught
about the importance of remembering the past, this past in particular? So,
does that not mean that we should all go there? But for what reason?
Patrick fears that his refusal to take a trip to Auschwitz might be misinter-
preted as blatant disregard. The Holocaust has been recognized as a
To Go or Not to Go? 109
benchmark in history, which one is expected to take seriously and handle

delicately (Biber, 2009: 228). There is much weight placed on finding the right
words when it comes to this particular subject. Patrick realizes that he has
difficulty finding adequate words to express how he feels, and this difficulty
is probably the reason he did not receive the scholarship he had previously
applied for in order to travel to Auschwitz. His reasoning continues until he
passes up the trip: ‘Jag vill inte åka dit för det verkar så krånglikt.’ – ‘I don’t
want to go there ‘cause it seems so complicated.’
Nilsson’s series continues with featuring the work’s title, Sensmoral or Death,
a combination of Swedish and English words. Already this choice makes it evi-
dent: the whole issue is loaded, delicate and demanding. Patrick seems under
pressure and tries to find arguments for and against going to Auschwitz. One
can interpret the three white panels occupying the space under the title as a
table, which the author had possibly intended to fill in with arguments for or
against making the trip. These panels, however, remain empty. A spiral laby-
rinth without exits covers a portion of the words contained on the following
page. It is difficult to read everything Patrick has written, but the words – utan
tvivel, without doubt – written at the centre of the page are clearly legible
(see Figure 8.4). And indeed, Patrick seems, without a doubt, confused and
despondent as a result of his own uncertainty with regard to how he is to deal
Figure 8.2 Patrick Nilsson, Sensmoral or Death, 2001. © Patrick Nilsson.

110
Figures 8.3 and 8.4 Aleksandra Kucharska, Untitled, from the series Auschwitz through
a train window, 2008. © Aleksandra Kucharska.
A young woman confronted with darkness – the undepictable, still real in the here and now. Auschwitz,
the iconic place of Holocaust history, en passant, seen from the window of a train, the same kind of vehicle
which transported the victims. Wooden barracks as part of the landscape – but no idyllic scenery. Is it the
rain that claps against the windowpane or is it marked by scratches?
with the situation. It is not only the overarching question of what we do with
this particular past, but when in the spot: How does one behave there? What
would happen if he, so Patrick resonates, were to break a leg in Auschwitz?
Would he be allowed to express his physical pain? Would his pain be seen
as a trivialization of the suffering endured by the victims of the Holocaust?
Language’s Incapacity
Obviously, Nilsson’s Sensmoral or Death touches on issues discussed ever

since: the speechlessness of the survivors, their feeling of impotence when
expressing what they had gone through in terms that anyone who has not
been there could understand, the general opinion that the crimes commit-
ted were so terrible that they cannot be represented adequately, either in
words or in images (cf. Welzer’s analysis of Imre Kertész’s novel Fateless, in
Welzer, 1997: 137). Nilsson’s work does not concern the actual experiences
during the historic events, but rather how later-born generations deal with
it. Nevertheless, his work proves that even with a growing distance in time,
many problems remain the same: the impossibility of dialogue between
those who have first-hand experience and those who do not, the lack of
comprehension of what happened. These aspects were frequently addressed
in the last decades, as, for instance, in Peter Weiss’s short essay “Meine
Ortschaft” (My Place) written in 1964 and published in the volume Rapporte
as the rather demure title reads in German.3 In this text, the essay will
serve as a recurrent point of reference. According to Nazi racial legislation,
Weiss was intended for deportation to Auschwitz, but in contrast to most
of his contemporaries, he never arrived. What he shares with Nilsson is
that they both did not experience any personal suffering in this place, and
therefore even Weiss has ‘no other relationship to this place, other than that
my name was on the list of those who were meant to be relocated here for-
ever’ (Weiss, 1968: 114). So the crucial question is not to which generation
one belongs, but if one has experienced these crimes in person. Dialogue
between those who actually were there during the war and those who were
not seems impossible – the spheres of experience are so radically different.
The pain of a broken leg which ‘Patrick’ fears in our familiar world has no
counterpart in the universe of Auschwitz; a similar distance resonates from
Weiss’s essay, although he belongs to the very generation who was affected.
Nilsson’s work is in no way a form of trivialization of the suffering of the
victims but rather an attempt to translate this insight of the impossibility of
mutual understanding when it comes to the Holocaust. As in Imre Kertesz’s
novel Fateless, communication dissolves in Nilsson’s work in confused
words and incomplete gestures – everything is in abeyance. The protagonist
in Kertesz’s novel realizes that if he wants to live in the ordinary world,
which still exists despite the Holocaust, he has to accept its conditions and
to decide if his story has its place in that world. Just like Kertesz, Nilsson
112 Tanja Schult
‘succeeds to at least communicate the rupture in the world that is tellable

and the one that is not’ (Welzer, 1997: 139–40).
During the course of the series of drawings, Patrick’s frustration grows.
Everything is so emotionally charged, so sensitive. No matter how you act,
there might always be someone who takes offence at something you do,
as Patrick resonates. So why should anyone care at all, or even go there?
Confront oneself with all the misery and pain, to what end? Opposition
grows. Patrick decides not to go. He has a cold. But what is a mere cold
in comparison to the suffering experienced by the victims, he wonders.
The hardly convincing excuse, a pretext of course, is followed by confused
scribbling, a manifestation of despair. Still, the more rational attempt at an
explanation that follows the climax of inner turmoil does not suffice. And
once again, Patrick finds himself confined within the limits of language in
his attempt to justify whether or not to make the trip.
The last three drawings in Nilsson’s series are not accompanied by any
captions. In one drawing there is a flame. Then the search for words seems
to have been pasted over by small scraps. Is there a figure hiding behind the
pasted trails, barricaded behind white lies? Finally, all excuses run out in a
scrawl. Wordlessness prevails. A well-known reaction, both for those who
experienced the camps and many of them dealing with it since. Obviously,
Nilsson’s series of drawings are about the inability of language to deal with
the Holocaust. This has been discussed since Adorno’s well-known but often
misunderstood dictum (cf. Krankenhagen, 2001: 21–81). As George Steiner
so rightly pointed out, the misuse of language led to the loss of innocence
of the German language: when the words became ‘conveyors of terror and
falsehood. Something will happen to the words. Something of the lies and
sadism will settle in the marrow of the language’ (Steiner, 1967: 124). In
addition, in Kitsch and Death Saul Friedländer invokes language’s inability to
address events such as the Holocaust adequately and states that this inabil-
ity started presumably as early as with World War I, but reached its climax
with Auschwitz. In Nilsson’s work, we are confronted with several issues:
the difficulty of finding the adequate language, a stirring speechlessness,
and finally, a certain feeling of emptiness, of resignation, or the strong sense
that it is better to just remain silent (Friedländer, 2007: 99 based on George
Steiner). Just like the architectural void, one of the most often used symbols
in Holocaust iconography, so too does the dissolution of language or faculty
of speech (Friedländer, 2007: 96) resemble an emptiness that represents an
admission of inaptitude functioning as an often-accepted metaphor for the
unspeakable. This part of history can only enter our world as ‘counter to our
basic beliefs’ (Welzer, 1997: 129).
As a consequence to the insight of language’s incapability, it seems as if
refusal – both regarding the work’s content expressed by words as well as
by its aesthetics – is in fact an adequate answer. If the Holocaust is beyond
representation, is out of this world as often stated, then refusing to find
formalistic or linguistic ways of dealing with that event is only a logical con-
sequence, and it becomes a necessity if one wants to remain sane – an aspect
we will explore further on in this chapter. Nilsson is an explicitly gifted art-
ist and his choice to present careless and confused scrabbling can only be
seen as a conscious choice. So the series’ aesthetics is in fact an intentional
refusal of ‘Unwanted Beauty’, as Brett Ashley Kaplan expressed the problem
of beauty in Holocaust-related art works (Kaplan, 2007).
However, given that silence was indeed, besides skilful rhetoric, another
one of Hitler’s successful tools (Friedländer, 2007: 83–5) in achieving the
murder of millions, it seems that a second silence has a right to exist as a
metaphor in art and literature for the loss – but only as a loud silence, a dis-
turbing, manifest silence. Despite the prevailing wordlessness, Sensmoral or
Death is indeed a disturbing and thought-provoking work. The series appear
as an answer to the following description by Friedländer:
The language probably tried to hold on to the event, which step by step,
disposed of all subjectivity and emotion and thereby also absorbing the
subject of everything into itself … Since Auschwitz, the distance between
the two appears unbridgeable. And this distance is perhaps what protects
us from the unbearable feeling of the past. (Friedländer, 2007: 94)
While we know of the Nazis’ misuse of language and their will to disguise
the crimes, thereby making them endurable for the perpetrators, still it seems
to me that this aspect of language’s capacity of distancing oneself from the
crimes can also have a positive effect. Here I refer not to the fact that it
helped the perpetrators, but rather argue that what appears as incapacity
only, namely the impossibility of retelling what happened, can create a nec-
essary distance from events that we, later-born generations who deal with the
crimes, are otherwise unable to endure. In this way, language can act to some
degree as a protection or shield that prevents us from inserting ourselves into
the real and terrible suffering inflicted, as Friedländer pointed out.
The Black Hole of Auschwitz
Still, I would argue that Nilsson’s silence is not only about language’s inca-
pacity, but just as much a reaction towards western civilization’s complete
failure to prevent Auschwitz from happening. That Auschwitz happened
leaves later generations helpless and insecure – even those without a per-
sonal relationship to the Holocaust and those who live far away from the
places where the crimes were committed. When learning about the atroci-
ties almost anyone is overrun by the feeling of impotence, not only because
one becomes aware of that many events in fact cannot be told because those
who experienced them, as the death in the gas chambers, died and with
them the possibility to retell these experiences. What remains is a feeling of
Figures 8.5 and 8.6 Aleksandra Kucharska, Untitled from the series Auschwitz through
a train window, 2008. © Aleksandra Kucharska.
The young woman has turned around. Now she confronts us, vis-à-vis. She suddenly appears much
younger. Light and undressed as an innocent child, her index finger, about to spin the wisp of her hair as
an insecure or tired kid may do, points up to the massive darkness. The girl’s eyes empty as if filled with
tears, intensively trying to hold them back. Unbearable; what she just saw, realized. The felt need to turn
away. Affected, but what to do with it? Behind the barbered wire, barracks with illuminated windows.
Somehow these houses look angry. And we are, still today. How could it happen?
foreignness in the world (Jean Améry, as referred to in Welzer, 1997: 126) –

and without wanting to be disrespectful to the survivors, I would argue
that this is a feeling that not only the survivors felt, but to some degree
everyone who deals with the Holocaust. Auschwitz reveals ‘the knowledge
of the destruction of the integrity of reality’, making it impossible to ever
‘be at home in the ordinary world again’ (Welzer, 1997: 134, referring to
Jean Améry). To me, it is exactly this feeling that resonates from Nilsson’s
work. The murder of the European Jews means the fundamental rupture of
Western civilization; no certainty about human behaviour or any form of
progress of humanity can exist ever after. It is this kind of foreignness in
the world that resonates from Nilsson’s and also Kucharska’s work, a sense
they have in common with many earlier works of art and literature dealing
with the subject, such as Peter Weiss’s essay, for example. It is not a new
form of felt-foreignness due to a growing distance in time or generational
change. In fact, it is much reminiscent of the continually discussed col-
lapse of faith in the world, a categorical impotence that disarms each and
every person who deals seriously with the Holocaust. Distance in time and
space does not minimize the fundamental rupture these crimes have left
behind because incomprehensibility and impotence have their foundation
in the very nature and dimensions of the crimes themselves (cf. Welzer,
1997: 136).
This notion becomes characteristic for most forms of Holocaust representa-
tion, but in Nilsson’s drawings there is even more: the Holocaust is, as Sidra
DeKoven Ezrahi described it, ‘imagined as a black hole, re-(entered) only at
peril to the communicability of the act and the sanity of the actor’ (DeKoven
Ezrahi, 2003: 318). The obligation to ‘Never forget’ has ignored the burden
this memory implies, with many, sometimes severe consequences for all
who work daily with the subject, including guides in former concentrations
camps, therapists who work with survivors or perpetrators and their chil-
dren, as well as researchers and teachers. Primo Levi also considers this idea,
stating ‘it requires an enormous effort not be swallowed up by the black
hole when one is so close’ (quoted by DeKoven Ezrahi, 2003: 320). To be
confronted with the abyss of human evil on a daily basis is not an easy task,
and it is only now that researchers have drawn attention to the necessary
support these people require.4
Nevertheless, what psychologists and psychiatrists already understood
during the 1960s, was that unbearability was an adequate emotional reaction
towards what happened (Welzer, 1997: 127, referring to K. R. Eissler).
Unbearability is somehow a natural reaction to the Holocaust as it reveals
the abyss of human behaviour. Consequently, some form of distance seems
necessary to preserve one’s own sanity, and it is certainly more difficult to
preserve this distance when one is in the actual place, as Patrick resonates,
and therefore refuses to go. But what happens when visitors, in the here and
now, are in the historic place?
116 Tanja Schult
On the Spot
Auschwitz is not only a symbolic, but also a physical place, a place of history
while also of the contemporary world. And it is here that Mikołaj Grynberg,
born in 1966, a Polish Jewish psychologist who for over 20 years worked as
a photographer, kept returning to, regularly for about a year, in contrast to
Patrick Nilsson and his alter ego. One day Grynberg decided to pick visitors
by random, photograph them and ask why they had come to Auschwitz.
The result, Auschwitz – what am I doing here?, consists of a video loop, an
exhibition, a trilingual publication (in Polish, English and German, from
2009) and a website.5 The work explores the reasons why people – just as
much as the artist himself – visit the place and how this visit affects them.
Let me first present the loop which is 8 minutes long and runs soundlessly.
It consists of a series of black and white photographs of individual standing
on the grounds of Auschwitz, in between additional photographs showing
different spots and items from the camp. The latter images are in colour
against a black background. The black and white images are presented in a
black frame against a white background, additionally framed by black lines
both on top and underneath, reminiscent of the black ribbons in death
notices. Underneath the images one finds different statements, answers to
the posed question: What are you doing here? Other texts underneath the
colour images are statements by the artist.
Figure 8.7 Mikołaj Grynberg, Auschwitz – what am I doing here? 2009. © Mikołaj
Grynberg.
Grynberg’s colour images offer glimpses of Auschwitz as a universe of its

own as described by Primo Levi (Levi, 1988). They show spots and items
which people easily associate with this infamous camp, such as the watch
towers or the barracks. However, Grynberg’s views are to some extent alien-
ated; for example only a part of the entrance gate with the well-known
wording is visible, with only the infamous ‘frei’ appearing, but mirror-
inverted (Figure 8.7). Such an image acts as a quotation of the gate, and as
pars pro toto for the camp system as well as for the ideological framework
behind the camps. The gate as such is a well-known view which is part of
the collective memory and as its underlying text states, the gate as a whole
is presumably reproduced on every visitors’ own taken pictures; circulating
in this way after the visit as part of the communicative memory reaffirming
the established collective memory with its pool of emblematic images.
The colour images are sharper than those in black-and-white but even they
are somehow blurred as if taken in sharp spring light on a cold but sunny day.
They are carefully crafted and astonishingly and painfully beautiful given
their content. So it is no wonder that Grynberg’s book was awarded an hon-
ourable mention in the 2009 Most Beautiful Book Contest by the Polish Book
Publishers Association in the Album Category. Interestingly their beauty
appears not to be, having already referred to Kaplan, problematic, most
Grynberg.
118 Tanja Schult
likely because they deal with the memory of it, and not the historical event
as such. Even when it comes to the image with the beautifully arranged baby
clothes and a comforter, the items of this composition arouse tenderness,
empathy and longing – feelings that seemingly stand in contrast to the most
likely assumption that the child was murdered in the gas immediately after
arrival; still the image seems not inappropriate. I do not feel betrayed, nor
do I regard the image as kitsch (Figure 8.8). I simply give in to the feeling of
wistfulness and sorrow. It is the sweetness of the image and the simple state-
ment underneath saying that these clothes could be worn even by children
today that reminds of the normality of these peoples’ existence before being
stigmatized and sent away, suddenly ripped off any right to exist.
Is it the beauty of the image that hinders me from sharing Patrick’s
despair? An emotion that should be felt realizing that this implicit normality
no longer exists, and can never exist again after Auschwitz. As it character-
ized the German memory debate for decades, the commemoration of the
Holocaust cannot be comfortable, but needs to be painful (Reichel, 2001:
Figure 8.9 Aleksandra Kucharska, Untitled, from the series Auschwitz through a train
window, 2008. © Aleksandra Kucharska.
Massive darkness. The girl’s hand in a handle. The drowned and the saved; and the later-
born generations having to deal with that past, from a safe and distant place, yet resigned,
knowing what human beings are capable of doing to other human beings. How to deal with
the truth of Auschwitz, how to go on living?
618) because ‘Auschwitz has strongly shaken the confidence ... of [the world].
The name stands for the radical questioning of the basic principles of human
life and cohabitation’ (Reichel, 2001: 619). What I sense in Grynberg’s work,
however, is a feeling of mourning, somehow silent and melancholic. It is
Grynberg – the one among the three artists who is most personally affected
by the crimes committed as he has lost many of his family members and
who, without doubt, belongs to what Marianne Hirsch described as the
‘generation of postmemory’ (Hirsch, 2012: 5) – it is he who succeeds in
leading me, the grandchild of perpetrators, into the place where the crimes
were committed, once again devoted to comprehension. As a result of the
photograph’s aesthetics, I feel gently taken care of. Grynberg’s images pave
a way for me that he himself had undertaken before with pain and sorrow.
There is no will to shock, no reproaches, instead a longing which I share: the
need to comprehend, to make sense. I am overwhelmed by this kindness,
his capacity to guide me along, to break my growing scepticism of whether
confronting these horrific crimes all over again and again makes any sense;
once more I am committed. But when in place, where does it lead me?
What Would I Do in Auschwitz?
The majority of Grynberg’s photographs are in black and white showing a

single visitor at a time. These images appear hazy, thereby the technique
of alienation reaches different levels; however, some images are sharper
than others. Those which are very blurred remind me, with their torso-
like reductions and their granular coarseness, of the amorphous corpses of
Jean Fautrier’s Hostage series from 1942–45; the less blurred ones are more
reminiscent of Gerhard Richter’s photographs in Onkel Rudi from 1965, or
Christian Boltanski’s Le Lycée Chases: Classe terminale du Lycée Chases en
1931: Castelgasse, Vienne from 1987. That the images of the visitors are not
sharp is a conscious choice, due to more than copyright issues. The blurred
images conceal the people’s identity, even if the viewer has an idea of gender
and age and sometimes can even distinguish a person’s characteristics such
as being an orthodox Jew, for example. This method of alienation gives the
work a more general and universal character. The individuals’ identities are
mostly indiscernible, and neither is it certain who uttered the statements you
find under the images. While one first assumes that image and text build
an entity, one realizes when the first image is replaced by the next – while
the first statement remains – that this is not the case. This is a logical conse-
quence of the method of alienation that Grynberg has chosen. By not being
able to classify the visitors’ statements in accordance to age, name, profession
or dress, the viewer realizes his or her own unconscious desire to do exactly
that. All too often we wish to categorize people after being given some gen-
eral information, and then wishing to explain their answers by their national
or social backgrounds. Grynberg hinders us from doing exactly that. If the
120 Tanja Schult
Grynberg.
images had been sharp it could all too easily happen that one automatically
becomes preoccupied looking at physiognomy, clothes, or other markers of
national or group identity, and through that trying to explain why the peo-
ple gave the answers they did. It is his technique that hinders us from making
snap conclusions about the identities of the represented (Figure 8.10).
Instead our curiosity arouses into a thinking process. We wonder: What
was the visitor’s family background, what relationship does he or she have
to that place, the committed murders, the perpetrators and the victims?
As it has become obvious, Grynberg’s work gives to some degree similar
insights one would obtain from a survey or a sociological study; neverthe-
less, it has a very poetic aura which invites further reflection. What happens
when reading the statements, watching the photographs and contemplat-
ing who says what for what reasons, is that it leads the viewer to actually
react and somehow fill in; associate further and almost put oneself in place:
What answer would I have given had I been there? And: Should I go? The
blurred faces leave space for the visitors to project back their own dilemma
in dealing with Auschwitz.
In the book, the artist gathered 100 images, 70 in black and white and 30
in colour, and added additional statements (statements from the book are
reproduced without any references within this text, as Grynberg’s photo
book lacks pagination). In contrast to the loop, the black and white and the
colour images are separated; in the book one is first confronted with the
visitors and later meets the artist’s impressions from the camp. Furthermore,
there is a foreword by one of the museum guides and an interview with
Mikołaj Grynberg which conveys additional information about the project.
We learn that Grynberg avoided arranging group journeys or bigger gather-
ings, but was instead interested in individual experiences. His interviews
were indeed much longer than the short selections in the loop suggest.
Grynberg selected what he regarded as the core element of the answers he
received to the question: What am I doing here?
Reasons to Go, and Let Be
Among the reasons the visitors mention for why they visit Auschwitz are
somewhat expectedly, the following: the obligation to remember, to learn
from the past and to prevent similar crimes. The visitors take up a variety
of topics, some of them previously discussed in (scholarly) literature: the
expropriation of the murdered victims, or bystander mentality when reali-
zing the closeness of the town nearby, the aura or authenticity of historic
places such as Auschwitz, a place of ruin destined to fall apart and disappear
but conserved because of its historical importance and symbolic relevance.
All these aspects have frequently been discussed and questioned ever since.
Still, as it becomes obvious from the given answers, it seems that the visit
to this particular spot is often experienced as a chance to bridge the dis-
tance, not only in time. The visit on the spot seems to serve as a copying
strategy, a possibility to deal with the emotional distress the knowledge of
the mass murder causes. A visit seems one way to process the overwhelm-
ing factuality based on sheer numbers and offers an opportunity to have
a personal relationship to that past. And given that the victims are dead,
the place serves as a connection – to family history or human history as
such. So at least some of the visitors would be able to tell ‘Patrick’ that a
visit to Auschwitz is in this way meaningful and less angst-inducing than
he assumes.
But not all experience their visit as rewarding. Some regard it exactly as
Patrick had feared, as only confusing. These visitors understood less than
before or did not know how to deal with the actual experience. And although
many seemed to have been well informed before their visits, we learn from
these visitors’ statements that reading preparation did not necessarily help:
‘Nobody is prepared for it, it is impossible to be prepared.’ As discussed when
122 Tanja Schult
analysing Nilsson’s and Grynberg’s work, the aspect of reaching the limits of
comprehensibility appears; the felt need to turn away for one’s own sanity
emerges. One guide gave Grynberg the following answer to his question:
– Have you been working here as a guide for many years?

– Yes. And the longer I am here, the worse I cope with it.
Sooner or later, the felt need to remember leads to a feeling of meaninglessness

and even felt insanity as the following conversations illustrate:
– Where did the respect for other human beings go?

– Where do you think it went?
– I will never figure it out, but if I ever do, it would mean I went crazy.
or
– I’m trying to bear it and I sag under it. And it’s like this every day.
(Director of the museum: Piotr M. A. Cywiński, the only name given of
all interview partners)
And likewise the artist responded: ‘You can read thousands of accounts
and academic studies, but such knowledge cannot be packed to the head.
When, at one point, I thought I began to understand what had happened
there, I felt I was going insane.’
Apparently there are some similarities between the fictitious Patrick’s
thoughts and what actual visitors uttered when on the spot. Also in
Grynberg’s work, words are again somehow insufficient to describe what
people expect from their visit or what they experience while being there.
What becomes clear is that many visitors are looking for an emotional
confrontation with this part of history – a history that still affects us today,
in many parts of the world. Despite these expectations, many, as much as
the artist himself, are astonished how much the visit to the actual loca-
tion affected them emotionally. Some even uttered fear about how to cope
with the experience when back home. Sometimes the experience leads to a
re-evaluation of preconceived assumptions such as a growing understand-
ing and respect for the victims whose passive behaviour they formerly
condemned, for example. In that way the visit clearly provides historical
insights, and through the given answers it seems as if history books had
not previously offered the same kind of insights. Still, some also expressed
uncertainty and doubt that visiting the place where the crimes were com-
mitted really leads to an in-depth understanding of the historical event or
prevents similar crimes from being committed again. Yet, others sense that
they could easily be overwhelmed by emotions if they dared to feel them,
and therefore consciously block them out to be able to be in the place at all.
When Peter Weiss visited Auschwitz during the 1960s he realized that
each and every person can only grasp what he actually has experienced
personally. So it is reasonable that Grynberg is first and foremost interested
in what the visitor experiences when there, as the artist described it: ‘In
Auschwitz, everyone, whom I spoke with talked about themselves, because
who else should they speak of? I think it results from the way a man is con-
structed, this experience is so strong that people can only make references
to themselves.’
Some visitors reveal a good deal of knowledge of the history before
the visit; in fact the majority demonstrates being quite familiar with the
Holocaust. Statements like the following represent the reflected, well-
informed visitor:
– I come here regularly.

– Why?
– Because it is the largest cemetery in the world. Without even a single
tombstone.
The topic of Auschwitz as the largest cemetery in the world without a single
tombstone is a recurring topic in literature and popular culture. However,
this answer reveals that Grynberg’s posted question of ‘What are you doing
here?’ demands a follow-up question. For the initial, somehow standard-
ized answer, that question would be: ‘Why would anyone want to visit the
largest cemetery on earth?’ Out of curiosity or sensation, out of a feeling
of plight? For what reason exactly? And more importantly: Which impact
does this visit really have on the visitor? So far, there is very little research
done on what the actual visit to the location does with visitors, especially in
the long run (cf. Schult, 2012b, and references given in footnote 226). And
even if the authenticity of the place helped some of the visitors, Grynberg
has talked to, in comprehending the scale of the crimes committed, it also
becomes clear that many experience the insights foremost as painful, even
unbearable:
– I can’t think in here. I can’t do anything here.

– Why?
– I’m crying all the time. I’m afraid it will be like this for the rest of my
life, that I will never forget.
After their visit some even felt ashamed that they were alive at all. Others
expressed that they value life more after their visit, and promise never to
complain again about their own living conditions. But this reaction seems
somehow inadequate as one wonders if only a confrontation with the worst
crime in human history should lead to a re-appreciation of life. However,
the feelings of despair and hopelessness seem predominant among most
124 Tanja Schult
visitors. This majority’s reaction leads me once more to the question: Why
visit then?
Distanced Presence – Present Distance
Works such as those presented in this chapter do not depict how things
were, but rather what effect the Holocaust has on subsequent generations.
They deal with how we handle and relate to the memory of the memory
of the Holocaust. All three works are created from a temporal distance to
the historical events, ‘performed in the aftermath, at a “safe” distance’
(DeKoven Ezrahi, 2003: 319), though the distances differ.
Patrick Nilsson, a native Swede born in 1966, has no familial ties to the
genocide of the European Jews. His work provokes a reflection on the stand-
ardized and regulated remembrance of the Holocaust, as he created his work
at a time when the Holocaust had become an important topic on the politi-
cal agenda in Sweden. After decades during which most Swedish research-
ers avoided this subject, much due to the engagement of Göran Persson,
Swedish prime minister between 1996 and 2006, the commemoration of the
Holocaust became relevant, even to the general Swedish public. The Living
History Forum began its work in 1997 and became a public authority on the
subject in 2003. The Holocaust was its point of departure. Its purpose was,
and still is, to work towards promoting tolerance, human rights and build-
ing a stronger democracy. Scholars and journalists had already established a
debate on the question of guilt on Sweden’s part during the 1990s, and now
commemoration of the Holocaust has become institutionalized (cf. Schult,
2013a, 2013b and 2015 and further references therein).
So it is hardly a coincidence that Nilsson’s piece appeared at the very
beginning of the 21st century. His reflections must, however, to some
extent, be understood as having gone against the established conditions:
Holocaust commemoration is carried out as a strongly integrated part of
the Swedish collective memory and self-understanding, anchored by public
institutions such as the Living History Forum. But how should we relate to
that past, from a physical, emotional and temporal distance? More so, how
can we find an authentic, personal approach given the dominating, iconic
status of the Holocaust as part of the established and (state) institutionalized
memory culture?
Aleksandra Kucharska lives in Sweden, too, but she was born in Poland
in 1981. She moved to Sweden as a child but, though much younger than
Nilsson, she seems to have closer ties to the historical events due to much
of the genocide having taken place in her native country. Kucharska’s seem-
ingly naïve drawings (about the size of an A3 in graphite on paper) came
about in 2008 when she went on a long study trip through Eastern Europe.
The series can be understood as a diary in images. During her trip she visited
the memorial site at Auschwitz. As with Peter Weiss, Kucharska also came
voluntarily and without being exposed to any danger. There is also contrast
with Weiss, as we recall that he was originally meant to be killed here. But
similar to him and what some people had told Grynberg, Kucharska felt
great discomfort when there, and wanted to leave the place as soon as possi-
ble. She did as Weiss did, and only stayed for one day – as presumably most
of the visitors to the memorial site do.
While leaving Poland on a train, southbound to Budapest – the direction
many of the victims murdered in Auschwitz came from – she realized
that one day she would have to come back. Just as with Nilsson, both as
‘Patrick’ and in reality, Kucharska too, afterwards applied for a grant to visit
Auschwitz again, though both she and Nilsson did not receive it. During
the 2008 trip, she then, after her visit at the site, saw the camp at a distance
through the window and took the photographs which later became the
starting point for her work. It is interesting that she only uses photographs
as a point of departure for her seemingly simple drawings; as if this medium
offers a better possibility to present a private narrative than the photograph,
which is often assumed to be objective and able to display historicity,
though somehow now seemingly overused within Holocaust memory. Also
of interest is that the sights Kucharska presents are taken through a train
window. Within the contaminated vehicle, the wagon functions as a media-
ting space for images of the past, a space in constant movement on its way
to another destination, being in that way ‘strangely weightless in terms of
responsibility since it suggests movement and the possibility of escape at the
same time as being weighed down by its association with the trains going to
the camps’ (Isabelle Hesse).6 The girl in Kucharska’s drawings is both there
and not; just as with Patrick in Nilsson’s work, this protagonist is also some-
how in abeyance, although Kucharska, in contrast to Patrick, indeed visited
the place itself, if only for a day.
For Grynberg who lives and works in Poland, it is again different, as it was
almost an obsession for him to visit Auschwitz during a certain period in his
life. Many of Grynberg’s relatives had been murdered in the Holocaust. His
grandmother survived and her accounts were the reason for the grandson
to start visiting the memorial site later on. With his exploration of the camp
and the visitors’ attitudes, he tried to find an answer to why he constantly
came back to this place which holds such painful memories: ‘The photo-
graphs are a pretext for me’; Grynberg stated, ‘I went to Auschwitz to talk to
people. I told them that I am a photographer and that I am taking pictures.
This time, in contrast to all my other projects, the photography isn’t really
important. The experience is the main thing’ (Artist’s homepage/also in
the book although not verbatim). His work is an attempt to comprehend
why this past still has its grip on him and on many of us as well. Grynberg
regarded the whole project as an attempt to rescue himself and to cope
with his obsession with this place and its memories: ‘One cannot live like
this all the time, looking back, wallowing in it. It is wise to transform this
126 Tanja Schult
experience into something that will give you a chance to step forward.’ So it
seems to Grynberg then, that distance is a necessity to some extent, in order
to be able to go on living in the here and now.
The works reveal different and complex distances to Auschwitz, not only
due to factors such as Kuckarska’s background, for example, with her being
born in Poland but having grown up in Sweden. The name Auschwitz, which
is especially difficult for Swedes to pronounce, reveals distance at first glance.
As Peter Reichel has described it ‘Auschwitz – that is a peculiar placeless place’
(Reichel, 2001: 600). The mass murders were not committed in the country
the perpetrators came from, Germany. Consequently it is another country,
mainly Poland, which suffered so tremendously under Nazi occupation that
must preserve this site of memory, even if the German government shares a
big financial responsibility. This is a reality that is relatively new to European
memory culture; formerly, each nation commemorated its own victories and
its own sufferings. But in Oświe˛cim, Poland, the Nazi murder of millions of
Jews from many parts of Europe is commemorated by visitors from all over
the world. So Auschwitz is indeed a German memorial site as well as relevant
for all human kind; it has become synonymous with ‘humanity’s catastrophe
in modern times’, implying ‘a break, a turning point of sorts … a concept of
time’ (Reichel, 2001: 607, 618). Auschwitz has become a symbol that ‘stands
as an example for the inhuman Nazi system of forced labour and genocide,
medical experiments and the exploitation of possessions as well as the physi-
cal remains of the murdered … Auschwitz is the name of the industrially
organized murder of five to six million Jews’ (Reichel, 2001: 600).
The Holocaust as Benchmark in History and as a Moral Icon
When Peter Weiss, destined to die in Auschwitz, visited the memorial site
20 years after the war, he initially experienced distance. As the visitors we
met in Grynberg’s work, Weiss had heard and read a lot about the place
before his visit, but once on site he remains insecure about what he can
expect from the visit, as the place itself does not help him to visualize his-
tory. The physical place seems not to explain anything: everything is cold
and dead; nothing remains other than the total futility of the inmates’
death. Still, this visit leaves a lasting impression, the place becoming what
it has for many of us, having visited the place or not, some decades later:
a solid point in our life’s topography (based on Weiss, 1968: 121, 123,
114). All three works discussed here testify to the Holocaust being widely
acknowledged as a benchmark in history functioning as a moral icon in
many contemporary societies, particularly because they were created by
artists who do not otherwise work with the Holocaust or related subjects.
The fact that the artists nevertheless take up the topic seems relevant: the
Holocaust has become a premise of European memory culture which we all,
in one way or another, sooner or later and to some degree, have to deal with.
Obviously the remembrance of the Holocaust has undergone a paradigm

shift. As memory expert Aleida Assmann points out, historians have lost
monopoly over this territory; it is no longer they who, in the first place,
reconstruct, represent and interpret this historical occurrence (Assmann,
2006: 205). But it is not only about who mediates knowledge about the
Holocaust. With the growing temporal distance and the diminishing number
of survivors and first-hand witnesses, the need grows to educate the greater
public about why we need to remember the Holocaust today, 70 years after the
end of the War, especially in countries such as Sweden in which the majority
of the population did not experience the war or the genocide at first hand.
According to my reading, Nilsson’s drawings do not dispute that the mem-
ory of the genocide on the European Jews matters, but instead express insecu-
rity how to deal with that past in a meaningful way. I interpret his work first
and foremost as a reaction towards the institutionalized politics of memory
which is now an integrated part of Western memory culture: How does one
act toward this officially enacted (and here I do not only mean the state but
also mainstream culture) and publicly accepted memory culture which seems,
nevertheless, to fail to present convincing arguments for why we should
remember? Nilsson’s work appears as a protest against what historian Volkhard
Knigge calls the ‘imperative of remembering’, which has become a part of the
institutionalized code of practice, a prescribed remembrance, which is ritual-
ized, cliché and consists of rhetorical codes (Knigge, 2002: 248). Currently, it
seems this helpless rhetoric will fail to hit home with future generations; it will
not have any lasting power. But did we not commit ourselves to never forget-
ting just as the official memory culture in many European countries prescribes?
As it becomes obvious in Grynberg’s work, many people agree today that
one should remember the Holocaust, but they often lack arguments for why
this memory is of such great importance. In Grynberg’s work it becomes
clear that the visitors consider that the memory not only does not help
them to prevent similar crimes, but they sense that they lack the tools to
preserve the memory in a meaningful way or to handle this burdening past.
This notion is met by the uncertainty of the fictitious character Patrick in
formulating convincing arguments for or against travelling to Auschwitz.
We are confronted with a dilemma: the powerful and prolonged feeling
that it is indeed of great importance to remember versus subscribing to the
prevailing canon of what memory tells us. But where does this memory
lead? As Grynberg stated, it is not as simple as some people expect: some
came to Auschwitz ‘to prevent something similar from happening again.
It was surprising. Banal and naïve, because going to Auschwitz will not
make the world a better place.’ As in Weiss’s report, these later-born artists
remain insecure about what their (fictitious) visit can possibly lead to; this
implies their prior knowledge about Auschwitz. While previous generations
including Weiss have had to reconstruct what actually happened during
World War II and by doing so also hope to possibly find answers to why it
128 Tanja Schult
happened, the later-born generations have access to comprehensive knowl-

edge about the historic events, and yet remain bewildered. Each generation
anew, they realize that even if Auschwitz belongs to the past that remains
closed to the living, the absence of the event still does not dissolve its
presence (cf. Köppen, 1993: 67). It is this paradoxical situation which still
confronts all of us. Consequently, all three works addressing the Holocaust
resonate with the obligation to remember these crimes as well as insecurity
as to why one does it.
Despite the obvious distance to and depression resulting from remember-
ing the crimes committed in Auschwitz, there remains a prevailing urgency
to continue to reflect and represent this historical event. These artworks no
longer deal with the question of the unspeakable as a dogma; it resonates in
them, but has lost its urgency. Rather, we are confronted with works deal-
ing with the question why, or for what reason one should visit Auschwitz,
or learn about the Holocaust at all. Artists such as Grynberg, Nilsson and
Kucharska explore the ongoing need to address this historic event, no mat-
ter how insecure and unsettled the search seems to be. As different from
each other as the works are, they all reveal a great deal of insecurity regard-
ing the legacy of the memory. This insecurity stands in contrast to the
implicitness of the official memory culture established in the Western world
where the Holocaust is a predominant point of reference.
Concluding, I would like to come back to George Steiner’s statement,
formulated in the late 1950s about the contamination of the German
language. As the Holocaust memory today is universalized and no longer
just a matter of the German language or German nation, I would like to
paraphrase his words in the following way: Can human civilization (instead
of the German language) ever recover from Auschwitz (cf. Steiner, 1967:
118)? In my disturbing and unsatisfying journey to Auschwitz and back,
I met three artists with different family backgrounds. Their work proves that
even the later-born generations are still deeply affected by the Holocaust:
learning about the committed crimes implies the will not to forget, and a
persistent helplessness in the face of the inhumane atrocities. In my own
frustration, I return to Primo Levi who, as other survivors such as Elie Wiesel
and Ruth Klüger, has stressed the obligation to speak, even if one fails:
[One] can and must communicate … because silence, the absence of

signals, is itself a signal, but an ambiguous one, and ambiguity generates
anxiety and suspicion. To say that it is impossible to communicate is
false; one always can. To refuse to communicate is failing. (Levi, 1988: 89)
The three art works presented here may not give answers to my search for
the why, but rather testify that all who learn about the Holocaust, regardless
of personal background, have a strong need to come to terms with it. It is
apparent that these crimes demand constant reflection and confrontation,

despite the generational shifts and uncertainty of where this path leads us.
So far what Peter Weiss wrote in his report still holds true (Weiss, 1968: 124)
and British author Edmund de Waal said some 40 years later in The Hare with
Amber Eyes: It is not over yet, we are still the wrong generation to let go.
Notes
1. Parts of this chapter are based on my paper ‘It’ll be fun to visit Auschwitz’,
presented at the conference Holocaust Studies Today: The Research and Pedagogic
Challenges of a Developing Field, organized by the European Association for
Holocaust Studies (EAHS), at Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Auschwitz-Birkenau
State Museum, Oświe˛cim, Poland, June 2011, and my article in Upsala Nya Tidning
in 2012. All translations from Swedish and German are my own.
2. The series can be found on the artist’s homepage www.patricknilsson.se (accessed
25 June 2013). It was shown again as part of a Patrick Nilsson’s solo show at the
Uppsala Konstmuseum during autumn 2013, which also served as a starting point
for the exhibition Att återvända till Auschwitz (To Return to Auschwitz), an exhibi-
tion which came about by my initiative, and was realized in close cooperation
with the curator, Rebecka Wigh Abrahamsson.
3. Strictly speaking Peter Weiss, as by the Nazis categorized half Jew without practising
Judaism, would most likely not have been deported to Auschwitz but forced to work
in the Operation Todt and most likely died in slave labour. However, Weiss became
aware of his Jewish heritage first through Nazi persecution and, as the writers’ Ruth
Klüger or Cordelia Edvardsson, made after the war the decision to regard himself as
Jewish. Weiss’s text may lack some historical accuracy but nevertheless shows his
solidarity with the victims he was made part of due to Nazi ideology. In his text,
Auschwitz functions as the symbol for the genocide against the Jews of Europe,
regardless of the fact that Weiss maybe was never scheduled precisely for this des-
tination; he nevertheless was listed by the Nazi racial policies and thereby defined
to ultimately die during this process. I thank Professor emeritus Helmut Müssener,
Uppsala University, for his observations concerning this topic.
4. Here I only want to mention the research network Trauma and Secondary
Traumatization (TRAST), founded in 2008 at the Uppsala Programme for
Holocaust and Genocide Studies (now the Hugo Valentin Centre), Uppsala
University. The network focuses on the cultural, social and psychological conse-
quences of genocide and mass political violence, and aims to understand major
traumas and their long-term effects, as well as their own reactions to these
subjects as researchers. In May 2012, the network organized the conference
‘Trauma and Secondary Traumatization in Studies of Genocide and Political Mass
Violence’. The results of the conference will be published shortly in a volume
titled Engaging Violence: Trauma, Memory and Representation in the Routledge
Series on Cultural Dynamics and Social Representation. But of course, not only
scientific researchers deal with this issue. See the documentary KZ (UK, 2006),
which shows how the guides in the former camp Mauthausen are affected by
their profession.
5. The exhibition was on display for the first time in Cracow in 2010, accompanied
by a sound recording from the interviews conducted on location. The homepage is
130 Tanja Schult
available under: http://www.auschwitz.grynberg.pl/ (accessed 16 February 2013).

Furthermore, an educational programme was created in connection with the
exhibition.
6. I want to thank Isabelle Hesse, Department of English and Related Literature at the
Derwent College at the University of York for this interesting observation. Personal
correspondence between Hesse and the author, on 2 April 2013. Furthermore,
I thank Diana Popescu for her valuable comments on this text.
References
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Geschichtspolitik, Munich: C.H. Beck.
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able at: http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1136&context=ltc (accessed
16 June 2013).
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dem Holocaust, Tübingen: edition discord.
9
Holocaust Zombies: Mourning
and Memory in Polish
Contemporary Culture
Jan Borowicz
A thing which has not been understood inevitably reappears;

like an unlaid ghost, it cannot rest until the mystery has been
solved and the spell broken (Freud, 1909: 122)
The Return of the Dead
Something quite peculiar has happened recently with Holocaust memory

in Polish culture. Art and popular culture have witnessed a literal return
from the dead of the murdered Jews to contemporary Poland. Ghosts,
phantoms and zombies come to haunt peaceful Polish citizens in such
novels as Pensjonat (The Guest-house) by Piotr Paziński from 2012, thea-
tre plays including Muranooo directed by Lilach Dekel-Avneri from 2012,
photography titled Duchy (Ghosts), a special issue of the journal Krytyka
Polityczna edited by Yael Bartana from 2011, and movies such as Pokłosie
(The Aftermath) by Władysław Pasikowski from 2012. In this chapter, I will
explore this recent phenomenon by focusing on the most literal and radi-
cal uses of the motive of this comeback in Igor Ostachowicz’s 2012 novel
Noc żywych Żydów (Night of the Living Jews) and locate it within a broader
context of Polish contemporary culture.
Ostachowicz’s novel, rather surprisingly, given the subject and in my
opinion rather low literary quality, became popular and well received and
was even nominated for the most prestigious Polish literary prize Nike in
2013. The presence of the dead Holocaust victims in Polish literature may
appear quite natural since historically the region situated between central
Poland and western parts of Russia, where during World War II over 14 mil-
lion murders occurred, may with justice be called ‘the bloodlands’ (Snyder,
2010). The author of Night of the Living Jews seems to agree with this diagno-
sis, stating himself that ‘this whole land, on each level, is soaked with pain
and fear … All these moans and groans, these tears and blood, some people
have gone, some wander without direction, here each particle is tainted
with evil’ (Ostachowicz, 2012: 205). However, it is worth analyzing what
132
Holocaust Zombies 133
the ‘living dead’ could actually mean in the context of Holocaust memory
in Poland.
In this article I will address the character of the zombie and ask: what does
it say about contemporary Polish memory? Dominick LaCapra argues that
after the Holocaust ‘the imagination may be overwhelmed by hallucina-
tions, flashbacks, and the other traumatic residues that resist the potentially
healing role of memory-work’ (LaCapra, 1998: 181). The work of imagina-
tion may start to slowly obscure the fragile memories and create nightmares
which are hard to expel once they decide to haunt us. Without certainty
about his or her memories the subject will continue to move back and forth
between melancholy and mania, never to be reconciled. After all, as we
know from Freud, what is repressed ‘proliferates in the dark, as it were, and
takes on extreme forms of expression’ (Freud, 1915: 148). LaCapra describes
them as ‘ghosts of the past’ that ‘roam the post-traumatic world and [that]
are not entirely “owned” or made “one’s own” by any individual or group.
If they haunt a house (a nation, a group), they come to disturb all who live
[in] – and perhaps even pass through – that house’ (LaCapra, 2001: 215).
There are some obvious risks in living in a haunted house; or, better yet, in
a house surrounded by endless masses of zombies.
Holocaust Zombies: Why Here? Why Now?
Night of the Living Jews can be most accurately described as a controlled scan-
dal. In the atmosphere of recurring, more or less heated, public discussions
about the difficult history of Polish-Jewish relationship, publishing a book
in which the Jews killed during the Holocaust come back as zombies seems
to be a fairly surprising move. The tabloids were particularly eager to criti-
cize the book, especially since its author is a political advisor to the central-
conservative prime minister, and deemed it outrageous that Ostachowicz
could win a literary prize for his ‘necrophillic story about cadavers’ (Fakt,
2013). Yet, the reception of the novel among literary critics proved to be
very positive. The reviewers praised its style and, acknowledging the pres-
ence of Jewish zombies in the novel, stated that it was about ‘something
else’, namely – a new chapter in the Polish-Jewish relationship defined by
solidarity (cf. Szczuka, 2012).
Let me summarize Ostachowicz’s rather complicated story briefly. He tells
the story of an invasion of Jewish dead rising from the basements where
they were buried and flooding contemporary Warsaw. The unnamed main
character, a ‘worker with a university diploma’ who had previously never
had any ties to Jewish culture except of being the son of an anti-Semitic
father, incidentally goes down to the basement of his house situated in the
Muranów district, in the former Warsaw Ghetto area, and literally stumbles
upon Jewish zombies. Initially, he flees as he is certain that the zombies
want to kill him; then he realizes that they actually need him. He decides to
134 Jan Borowicz
help them to find their rest, even though he oscillates between his sympa-
thy for the innocent victims and his wish to lead a quiet middle-class life.
The zombies go out of the basements after several decades of concealment
and try to fit in within Polish society. This, however, leads to a social crisis
when Polish neo-fascists rise against them, seeking to destroy everything
that is Jewish and dead within the Polish social body. The story ends in an
epic battle – the main character dies while commanding the Jewish-zombie
forces. The results of his actions remain uncertain, as we do not get to know
if the Holocaust zombies got saved.
The story is a variation on canonical motives of Hollywood horror
films about zombies of which the author seems to be very much aware.
Ostachowicz plays with a whole set of clichés, motives and figures bor-
rowed from popular American horror pictures. Throughout the novel, irony
is clearly its most important device, such as when characters talk about
Michael Jackson’s music video Thriller or through jokey allusions to con-
temporary Polish politics. The zombies are not horrifying either, or at least,
not all the time. They are able to speak and even have their own needs and
feelings, however automated or rigid. It is also a rather surprising twist on
the original zombie narratives as readers actually sympathize with the zom-
bies, who are seen as the victims. It is as if they are almost-like-us whilst the
horror throughout the novel is carefully kept under control. It is this rather
different construction of the zombie-figure and what it reveals about the
particularity of Polish memory of the Holocaust that I will address in the
following.
Why would the Holocaust zombies appear in contemporary Poland? The
explicit justification for their appearance given by Night of the Living Jews is
simple: Jewish victims of the Holocaust and World War II have been forgot-
ten. Polish victims of the war are ‘stuffed with snitches, flowers, prayers,
and reminiscing’ – while the Jews, Ostachowicz argues, are barely as lucky:
Only those who are forgotten crawl out of their basements, those who
don’t have any families, nobody will contemplate their grave. People
need a little warmth or interest after their death, especially after a vio-
lent one. And when the whole family, with mom and distant cousins
included, is six feet under, all your friends likewise, well, you can’t lie
like that … you get up, brush yourself up and look around. (Ostachowicz,
2012: 203)1
This certainly recalls the dilemma of Holocaust survivors: how to make

sense of one’s survival after the loss of the close ones and their entire per-
sonal universe. It also tells more about a very specific social construction in
which not only do some people not count as living, but they also do not
count as dead (cf. Schneider, 2012: 151). Thus, they require nothing; not
even remembrance.
Where Are the Jewish Graves?
Ostachowicz is not alone in diagnosing the lack of Jewish presence in Polish

memory. It was addressed as well by the I Miss You, Jew! project officially
launched in 2010 and still being run by Rafał Betlejewski, artist and co-
founder of an advertising agency. Initially, this project consisted mainly of
street art, murals and their photographic documentation. Betlejewski and
his co-operators wrote down on different city walls a simple phrase: ‘I miss
you, Jew!’ and waited for the public’s response. The media quickly noticed
the project and provided it with broad coverage. It developed, especially
via Facebook and other social media, and gradually included other actions
such as taking photos with the title slogan, sending in private memories or
simple statements. Betlejewski was himself very active in promoting his cam-
paign and frequently described his intentions and plans in interviews and
manifestos:
The I Miss You, Jew! project was conceived as a process for Poles who do
not identify themselves within the Jewish tradition, such as myself, to
have a chance to confront and contend with their Jewish phobias … I want
to reclaim the word ‘Jew’, for myself and for many others, by rescuing it
from anti-Semitism. The project is to be a platform, and perhaps the first of
such, from which to launch campaigns of positive emotions towards those
we call ‘Jews’ – a foundation that hopes to support the reconstruction of
Polish Jewry. We Poles need to recover the Jewish heritage that has long
been part and parcel of our very own Polish identity and culture, and
in so doing, reclaim these Jews to Poland (official website of the project
www.tesknie.com).
Without doubt, when the word ‘Jew’ is being written down on a city wall
in Poland, it rarely appears in a positive context. Semantically, ‘Jew’ in
the Polish language may be loaded with pejorative connotations, espe-
cially since in Polish, unlike other Slavic languages, there is no distinction
between polite and impolite versions of this word (Janion, 2000). What
is striking, however, is that Betlejewski attempts to rescue the word ‘Jew’
from the anti-Semites and confront himself and other non-Jewish Poles
with their Jewish phobias – but without involving any Jews as he treats
the Jewish culture in Poland as completely obliterated (cf. Bilewicz, 2010).
I Miss You, Jew! is supposed to be both an intimate and communal call to
the Other – yet, the Jews are to be found nowhere. Michał Bilewicz states
that this project perpetuates a patronizing gesture which ultimately leads to
objectifying those who are supposed to be ‘saved’, since ‘an imagined Jew is
desired only as an element of yet another klezmer culture festival’ (Bilewicz,
2010: 173). As it seems, this performative act was not directed towards the
Other and created no community acknowledging and mourning the loss of
136 Jan Borowicz
Polish Jews. In fact, the only response to the photographs of people holding
a ‘I Miss You, Jew!’ sign came from the photographed people themselves – as
if nothing of Jewish culture was left in contemporary Poland. The loss funda-
mentally challenges the identity of the mourner, since grief means ‘not being
at one with oneself’ (Butler, 2004: 28). Quite to the contrary, Betlejewski’s
project seems to freeze memory in a series of nostalgic gestures that re-create
safe distance between modern Polish society and the past and, therefore,
offers no actual change.
This is even more obvious in Betlejewski’s subsequent project, The Burning
Barn (2010), in which he decided to set a barn on fire, and burn with it
pieces of paper on which people wrote why they feel guilty about Polish
crimes against Jews during World War II. This was meant of course to be an
allusion to the Jedwabne massacre; in fact it was its re-enactment – as close
to the historical event itself as possible – including the performers being
dressed as peasants. It is the same patronizing gesture, especially since it is
another spectacle played above the heads of Jedwabne citizens who, instead
of education and coming to terms with the past, witness yet another event
made by people coming from big cities to the countryside to seek ‘moral
purification’ (Bilewicz, 2010). Therefore, The Burning Barn appears quite
literally to be an ‘acting-out’ instead of ‘working-through’ the trauma of
the Jedwabne massacre (LaCapra, 2001). Instead of putting to rest Polish
guilt and start mourning over the loss, this re-enactment became in my
opinion a spectacle of once-more opening the Jewish grave in a manner
that Freud called ‘compulsion to repeat’, by which ‘the repressed seeks to
“return” in the present, whether in form of dreams, symptoms or acting-
out’ (Laplanche and Pontalis, 2006: 78). The burning of Jedwabne’s barn
seems a thanatic gesture, as nothing new and positive can be constructed
while the past recreates itself over and over again. Therefore, I am inclined
to read Betlejewski’s projects, despite his efforts to convince otherwise, as a
symptom of inability to mourn the loss of Jewish lives.
In contrast, the topic of the presence of Jews in Polish memory is
explored with much pessimism by Elżbieta Janicka, whose photography
projects address an issue especially relevant to the analysis of Night of the
Living Jews, namely the problematic presence of Jewish graves. Her project
Miejsce nieparzyste (The Odd Place) has never entered mainstream popular
culture, despite heated attacks on her works in conservative journals (e.g.
Dopartowa, 2013). Janicka is best known as an author of an extensive
essay Festung Warschau, a deep analysis of Polish and Polish-Jewish cultural
memory embodied by Warsaw’s architecture. Her main argument reads
that the Polish memory about World War II has overshadowed Jewish
memory to such an extent that even places strongly attached to Jewish
history are dominated by remembrance of Polish heroism and war victims
(Janicka, 2011). Paradoxically, Festung Warschau and Janicka herself received
broad public interest only after she revealed in an Internet interview her
analysis of homoerotic relations between two main characters in Aleksander

Kamiński’s canonical novel about the Warsaw Uprising, Kamienie na szaniec
(Stones for the Rampart). Public discussion focused on the possible erotic
relations among Polish war heroes, whilst missing her point about the absence
of remembrance of Jewish presence in war history obscured by the actions of
Polish resistance and national suffering. In fact, the main intention of The
Odd Place was to address Polish memory of Jews and the Holocaust.
The Odd Place is a series of square white photographs exhibited in 2003–
2004 at Atlas Sztuki Gallery in Łódź. Janicka’s photographs seemingly rep-
resent nothing and at first glance are nothing but black frames hanging on
the walls of the gallery. Janicka explained how during her visits in different
camps she could not decide where to aim her camera: how could she pos-
sibly take a photo that was not previously taken and how could she escape
the most banal forms of representation of the Holocaust (Janicka, 2006)?
She decided to aim the camera up into the air, crouching and lying down
on the ground, exposing the camera lenses to the sun. Her images depict
the air above the former concentration camps in Majdanek, Belzec, Sobibor,
Treblinka, Auschwitz and Kulmhof; additionally, information is provided
on where the photographs were taken and how many Jewish victims were
killed in that extermination camp.
The frames of the photographs form pieces of a photo film bearing the
name of its manufacturer, AGFA, one of the companies under IG Farben
which were heavily involved in the Nazi regime. IG Farben’s factory estab-
lished working areas in a sub-camp of Auschwitz, Auschwitz-Manowice,
and its other companies produced the substance Zyklon B used in the gas
chambers; still-existing AGFA produced photographic films quite popular in
times of the Third Reich.
It could be argued that Janicka’s photographs deal merely with the inabil-
ity to represent the Holocaust (cf. Dopartowa, 2013). This, consequently,
would mean that she did not succeed in escaping from the most banal forms
of representation. However, Janicka takes up the topic of Jewish graves not
only because of her attentive reading of Derrida’s well-known concepts of
‘parergon’ and ‘crypt’ (Derrida, 1977, 1987).
In his The Truth in Painting (1987), Derrida mentions the opposition
between ergon, the proper work, and parergon, supplement, addition, seem-
ingly insignificant, yet central in analyzing a painting. Parergon ‘comes
against, beside, and in addition to the ergon, the work done [fait], the fact
[le fait], the work, but it does not fall to one side, it touches and cooperates
within the operation, from a certain outside. Neither simply outside nor
simply inside. Like an accessory that one is obliged to welcome on the bor-
der, on board [au bord, à bord]. It is first of all the on (the) bo(a)rd(er) [Il est
d’abord l’à-bord]’ (Derrida, 1987: 54). Parergon creates a piece of art, because
it cuts out a surface from its surroundings and establishes it as an object of
aesthetic experience, just as the black frames of Janicka’s work cut white
138 Jan Borowicz
photographs out of the white walls of the gallery. This creates an object with
a very unclear ontological status. For Derrida it is just as connected with
life as with death. A work of art means the suspension of the cycle of life
and death – being able to enjoy the beauty of art means at the same time
experiencing death (Derrida, 1987).
In order to further describe parergon, Derrida uses the term ‘crypt’, arguing
against the Freudian opposition of mourning and melancholy which he sees
as falsely based on either total incorporation, absorption of the deceased in
oneself, or total exclusion of the deceased, outside of the self. In either case,
the deceased loses its sovereignty. Derrida speaks of incorporation but not so
much of the dead, as its representation, an image. This creates a significant
difference, because it does not allow the complete identification – a picture
of the deceased is a foreign body inside the self, and does not belong in the
deceased object (Derrida, 1977). It is unwanted and homeless, and can never
find its own grave. Instead, the crypt which does not open and one cannot
ever get rid of, remains an excluded space included in the heart of the self
(Derrida, 1977). For Derrida, the crypt and the ghosts inside of it remains
sealed forever. However, I am inclined to follow a psychoanalytical approach
and ask how is it possible to retrieve the ghost from the crypt and put the
dead in their proper graves (cf. Davis, 2007: 11)?
The Odd Place refers to the disappearance of victims of the Holocaust and
to the vanishing traces of that past. The crematoria were meant to hide the
evidence of the Nazi atrocities, as Didi-Huberman puts it in his Images in Spite
of All, ‘to murder was not nearly enough, because the dead were never suf-
ficiently “obliterated” in the eyes of the “Final Solution”’ (Didi-Huberman,
2008: 21). Didi-Huberman further describes four photographs ‘snatched from
Hell’ – taken regardless of grave danger and afterwards used by the resistance
movement – and calls for their phenomenological examination; claiming
that hanging on to the concept of the Holocaust as unrepresentable while
possessing these images may become intellectual laziness (Didi-Huberman,
2008: 39). The fourth picture may seem to be reminiscent of Janicka’s series
as it is ‘practically abstract: we can just make out the top of the birch trees.
Facing south, the photographer has the light in his eyes. The image is dazzled
by the sun, its rays cutting through the boughs’ (Didi-Huberman, 2008: 16).
Its abstractness, however, does not mean being unrepresentable. Janicka’s
blank images of the sky evoke the burnt corpses whose ashes floated and
dissolved in the air. The Odd Place argues that the Jewish dead have disap-
peared into thin air and are no longer present – there is no longer even
suffocating, sweetish smoke hovering over the crematoria – and yet still they
are present, albeit in a different way. There are no proper graves for the Jews
who were murdered in the former camps, mass graves at best but no grave
stones commemorating the single individual. Janicka lifts her head up into
the air above, thereby referring to the most famous of all Holocaust poems,
The Deathsfugue, by Paul Celan: ‘your ashen hair Shulamith we shovel a grave
in the air there you / won’t lie too cramped’ (Celan, 1992 [1944–1945]: 257).
These lines, and especially the term ‘grave in the air’, were a frequently recur-
ring metaphor in both fictional and testimonial accounts of the Holocaust,
as in works by Primo Levi or Dan Pagis (DeKoven Ezrahi, 1992: 272). Janicka
alludes to this aberration of a grave, where victims were thrust, with the
title of her work, The Odd Place, which alludes to a law implemented at the
University of Warsaw by pre-war fascist student movements that not only
limited access to the universities for Jewish students but also assigned them
odd-numbered sitting places (Janicka, 2006). This process, in Poland also
called ‘desk ghetto’, aimed to irreversibly separate Polish and Jewish students,
pushing Jews into their own excluded space. Janicka follows here the ‘logic of
extermination’ reconstructed by Agamben who points out that what began
in social exclusion resulted in anthropological exclusion – when at the end,
the victims were even denied proper burial rites (Agamben, 1999: 85).
The Odd Place and the concept of the ‘grave in the air’ can be viewed as
the photographic negative of Muranów’s basements crawling with Jewish
zombies. Both opposite and complementary, high above and underground,
addressing the lack of presence and the abundance of presence, thereby they
frame the Polish memory of victims of the Holocaust and invoke its vital
importance for Polish post-Holocaust identity.
The Jewish graves in Poland seem to remain invisible. Yet, in fact they
are everywhere – or at least if you know where to look for them. This exer-
cise in seeing is proposed by another photographic project, Łukasz Baksik’s
photographic album, firstly displayed as an exhibition in the Centre for
Contemporary Art in Warsaw, Macewy codziennego użytku/Matzevot for
Everyday Use (2012). Baksik has collected photos of Jewish tombstones that
had been reused as building material for barns, pavements, walls or even
sandboxes for children. They show that Poles, often unconsciously, are
surrounded (or: surrounded themselves) by Jewish graves which were built
into both public and private architecture, in big cities and small villages
alike and which fulfil diverse purposes: ranging from elements of museum
exhibits to grindstones. They are inventively ‘recycled’ when forming
Catholic tombstones or monuments for Polish army heroes and thus serv-
ing a different memory. Baksik’s project seems to be a practice of what
W. J. T. Mitchell called ‘showing seeing’ (Mitchell, 2002: 170) – or more pre-
cisely, in this case, showing the ‘not-seeing’, as the everyday gaze just slides
over the surface of an ordinary wall in the city and does not notice that it
is built out of matzevot. Asked how he finds the tombstones, Baksik states
that ‘after all those experiences … when I see a piece of sandstone that has
certain dimensions, I can say with a high degree of certainty if it was once
a matzeva. Yes, it was like detective work’ (Baksik, 2012: 39). According to
Baksik, Polish memory did not get rid of Jewish history – in contrary, it is
full of it; although not always visible at first glance. Ostachowicz’s Night of
the Living Jews present the similar movement in Polish memory: the Jewish
140 Jan Borowicz
zombies stayed long in a state of potential invisibility, repressed and hidden

in Muranów’s basements, then become abruptly visible and flooded the
streets of Warsaw.
As we know, the proper burial rites were not kept by the Nazis and the
Jewish graves most often were not taken care of by the Polish people after
the war. It seems then that the emergence of the motive of the Holocaust
zombie coincides with the gradual popularization of historical knowledge
about the Holocaust in Poland and the social debates on it. The question
then is: does the author of Night of the Living Jews construct a vision of rec-
onciliation with nightmares haunting Polish memory? Or is it rather a proof
of a Polish collective consciousness befuddled by what has really happened?
Slavoy Žižek speaks about the importance of the figure of the living dead
for the social memory in Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan
through Popular Culture (1991) in which he suggests its captivating prefigure
in Antigone from Sophocles’s tragedy. He follows the famous analysis of this
play formulated by Jacques Lacan in his The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1992),
in which the latter situates Antigone in a peculiar state between two deaths
(she is both non-existing socially because of the law implemented by Creon
and buried alive in a grave) and represents ‘a life that is about to turn into
certain death, a death lived by anticipation, a death that crosses over into
the sphere of life, a life that moves into the realm of death’ (Lacan, 1992:
248). Antigone is thus formally dead, although she acts on-stage as if she
did not know it; her punishment is to be ‘suspended in the zone between
life and death’ (Lacan, 1992: 280). In this sense Žižek predicts Ostachowicz’s
novel when he states that:
the two great traumatic events of the Holocaust and the Gulag are, of
course, exemplary cases of the return of the dead in the twentieth century.
The shadows of their victims will continue to chase us as ‘living dead’
until we give them a decent burial, until we integrate the trauma of their
death into our historical memory. (Žižek, 1991: 23; my emphasis)
Zombie Afterlife and the Holocaust
The zombie has become a very powerful metaphor in academic discourses,

partially because ‘ghosts, dead, and undead walk among us now as much as
ever’ (Davis, 2007: 1). Sarah Juliet Lauro and Karen Embry (2008) in their
A Zombie Manifesto which clearly alludes in its title and rhetoric to Donna
Haraway’s well-known text A Cyborg Manifesto (1991), link the figure of the
zombie with several concepts of political philosophy diagnosing the biopo-
litical conditions of life under late capitalism – especially the concept of
‘nude life’ by Giorgio Agamben which may prove to be particularly useful
to further elaborate on the concept of a Holocaust zombie.
The figure of a zombie may indeed share what Jacques Lacan has charac-
terized in Antigone as her ‘unbearable splendor’, a ‘quality that both attracts
us and startles us’ (Lacan, 1992: 247). A zombie is an odd entity, caught
between a subject and an object: on the one hand, he/she/it is endowed with
some agency, on the other merely is an animated cadaver (Lauro and Embry,
2008). Zombies exist in-between, in an odd void between life and death;
after the first, social and symbolic, death, and before a potential second
one which will put a stop to the automatic, unconscious movements of an
animated corpse.
The zombie is thus an ambivalent, liminal figure which comes into
being as a result ‘of a traumatic incident or injury – typically a confron-
tation with massive rupture or collapse of the social order’ (Muntean,
2011: 82). The first tales on these creatures come from Haiti where they
may mean both slaves (used by magicians to work in the field) and the
slave revolution during the anti-colonial revolts (Lauro and Embry, 2008).
However, their presence in popular culture has truly begun with George
Romero’s Night of the Living Dead in 1968; other directors have quickly
followed its success and later even Romero himself has returned to this
motive in remakes (Land of the Dead, USA, 2005, Diary of the Dead, USA,
2008). Night of the Living Dead actually established a new cinema genre,
in which zombie invasions work as an aftermath of historical traumas (cf.
Lowenstein, 2010).
The invasion of the dead in the space of the living structurally may resem-
ble the carnival understood by anthropologists. For example, Åsa Boholm
analyzes the annual carnival in Venice as a collective celebration of the
dead and the living alike, dancing indistinguishable behind their masks, as
well as an indispensable ritual reaffirming the fragile border between the two
spheres (Boholm, 1994). When the border is uncontrollably breached, the
attack is unstoppable, since, as the tradition of apocalyptical zombie movies
teaches us, the dead possess greater strength than the living. The sphere of
the dead wants to close itself with the living inside of them (cf. Boon, 2011);
as in the beginning scenes of the novel Night of the Living Jews in which
the main character comes down to the basement and barely escapes Jewish
zombies chasing him. Once he has entered their dead sphere, which is as
well his neighbourhood’s past, he becomes contaminated and no longer
fully belongs to the world of the living. It is a classic motive of horror stories
reiterated in works of Edgar Allan Poe (e.g. The Premature Burial), through
Howard P. Lovecraft (e.g. In the Vault), to Stephen King (e.g. The Shining).
However, it may not merely be an experience known from literature or fea-
ture film. Jacek Leociak in his historical work Doświadczenia graniczne (Limit
Experiences) describes an experience of crawling out of the pile of corpses
after a mass execution. Closely studying testimonies of Jewish victims,
Leociak explains that initially corpses conceal the survivors from the gaze
142 Jan Borowicz
of executioners; later, however, the corpses pose a problem for the survivors
struggling to get out:
Survivors with great effort and struggle crawl out of the grave. They have to
face not only the vigilance of their perpetrators and their own weakness, as
they are indeed wounded and shocked, but also the resistance of the grave
and corpses lying there. It seems that in order to go out of the grave, they
have to fight with the dead … [The dead] cause difficulties now, they stand
in the way, as if not wanting to let go of the living. (Leociak, 2009: 348–9)
Much has been written about camp survivors and their later struggles in life.
Leociak describes only what happened ‘on the borders of the Holocaust’,
in the countryside, in the forests and other forgotten places where mass
murder occurred (cf. Leociak, 2009). He mentions that the survivors of mass
executions, who escaped and ran to the nearest settlement, were met by a
curious reaction by people living nearby: villagers treated them as a sign of
black magic, and then tried to repel them with crosses and curses (Leociak,
2009: 352–3). The Jews were contaminated by death and the accidental
survivors became suspended between life and death. As in Night of the Living
Jews, the non-Jewish main character escapes from the zombies, but becomes
irreversibly contaminated and then struggles to help them even at the price
of his own life.
Furthermore, it is noteworthy to mention that a zombie is characterized,
contrary to other supernatural monsters such as ghosts, by the problematic
issue of materiality: a zombie is a stubborn cadaver not wishing to rest in a
grave and resistant to being locked up in a basement. It is particularly rele-
vant that in Ostachowicz’s novel the zombies appear in the area of the former
ghetto where nowadays not much of this past is left. Only after descending
into the basement – which forms an unusual space both, included and
excluded from the house – it is possible to confront with the past.
Leociak collects metaphors used in journals and testimonies where the
ghetto was seen as a ‘dead city’ in which death is no longer exceptional as
the dead mix with the living. He points out to the experience of stumbling
over dead bodies on the streets, seeing everyday carts packed with corpses
and then unloaded to mass graves (Leociak, 2009: 318–19). These were the
horrifying, yet then ordinary, circumstances that could create zombies in
the novel. The Warsaw ghetto was nearly entirely destroyed by the Germans
after the Ghetto Uprising. Shortly after the war the communist government
built on its ruins the Muranów district. Leociak now calls it a ‘place-after-
ghetto’, a very curious place as if covering its own past (Leociak, 2009:
32). Didi-Huberman in his essay The Site, Despite Everything dedicated to
Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985), also talks about a ‘terrible power’ of what
was left of the camps and points out the dialectic between ‘everything is
destroyed’ and ‘nothing has changed’ (Didi-Huberman, 2007: 121). The site
is unbearable because it seems that everything is normal and yet, something

feels not right. In Muranów actually ‘everything has changed’, but despite
the fact that it is a normal Warsaw district – with buildings, people, and
nature, it retains ‘a terrible power’ (Didi-Huberman, 2007: 115). Hence, the
zombies originate from Muranów exactly because of what happened in the
Warsaw ghetto.
It may not be a surprise then that Muranów district became depicted in
one of the episodes of the television programme, Przekle˛ te rewiry (Cursed
Neighbourhoods), presented in the biggest commercial TV network in
Poland during late, nightly hours. The TV show visits places where appar-
ently paranormal phenomena occur and Muranów seems especially predes-
tined to the presence of ghosts as it ‘was built using human remains’. As the
narrator tells the viewers:
Tonight we will visit Muranów, just in the heart of Warsaw, where for the
last fifty years [sic] so many terrible things happened that some people
are even moving out to different districts. (Przekle˛ te rewiry, episode 4,
aired on December 2011)
Shot in a genre of horror by using sepia or black and white photography, the
episode tells a few stories of houses haunted by previous Jewish residents –
either by unidentified spectres or by a particularly persistent rabbi – and offers
tips on how to get rid of unwanted visitors. The invited expert suggests pray-
ing and conversing with the ghosts, asking them if they need something.
Otherwise, it is advisable to ‘purify your living space’ by explaining to them
that ‘this neighborhood ceased to be their own’ and politely ask them to
wander off. Then, the exorcist hopes that the ghosts may be calmed down
when the Jewish history of this district will symbolically end with the emer-
gence of the Museum of History of Polish Jews opened in October 2014. The
subtle anti-Semitism of this discourse is fuelled from a variety of sources:
one of them is certainly the fact that Muranów never ceased to be an open
Jewish grave. It is noteworthy that indeed Muranów was the only district of
Warsaw in which there was no exhumation of the dead (Grudzińska-Gross,
2012). With the unresolved issue of the mass deaths that occurred in a close
proximity of Polish Warsaw during the wartime, we are confronted with
the main question: is it possible to grieve and mourn the murdered Jews in
Poland?
Holocaust Zombies and the Floods of Memory
Night of the Living Jews’ camp style crumbles in a very specific moment when
the long-term controlled ironic defence mechanisms disintegrate and the
horror opens. In one scene the Devil, one of the characters of the story, tries
to share the horror of the Auschwitz camp with the main character, and
144 Jan Borowicz
this fantasy quite obviously resembles a sadomasochistic spectacle. In the

concentration camp Jewish prisoners, as well as the main character who is
not Jewish, are forced to engage in group orgies; the lustful female prisoners
locked in cages are approached by hundreds of prisoners who stand in lines
dripping with all possible human fluids. The horror is achieved by a perverse
pornographization of the camp experience. Jews are suspended in ever-con-
tinuing, self-perpetuating entanglement of sex and death – it is difficult not
to think about a very peculiar 1970s’ cinema genre of Nazisploitation which
depicted highly sexualized, sadomasochistic relations between the perpetra-
tors and the victims in concentration camps (cf. Ingrid Lewis’s chapter in
this volume). This scene is truly unsettling, making the reader, or at least
this one, feel rather uncomfortable since it resembles an anti-Semitic fantasy
of forbidden and demonic Jewish sexuality.
It seems, however, that this is nevertheless a central scene for the novel,
especially since it is preceded by another fantasy granted to the main char-
acter by the Devil. The main character is being tortured by the Gestapo in
Auschwitz and then suddenly drawn into an abyss that opens on the floor
of the interrogation room. The context suggests that the ‘absolute nothing’
felt then by the main character is supposed to represent the unrepresent-
able ‘mystery of the Holocaust’, as if it lay in this entanglement of torture
and sexual violence. It seems to eradicate both the temporal and spatial
dimension – Jewish bodies will never break free from this trap, even after
death. The physical pain may have passed, but the state of torture for the
victims did not:
underneath Warsaw stay only those with whom something is wrong,

the majority is shocked. They can’t pick themselves up, some are upset
with God and don’t want to take a step forward; some fear they will,
the horror, understand everything or, even worse, they will have to
forgive. There are also the ones who worked in the police and in the
Sonderkommando, those have some other reasons, the fact is that all are
stuck. They wait for some time to pass and after death the time goes very
differently. (Ostachowicz, 2012: 87)
While Žižek postulates a burial for ‘a living dead’, I argue that there can-
not be such a possibility as a zombie will forever resist resting in a grave.
Consequently, the novel offers no definite ending – the main character dies
in a final battle and we are not certain what happens with the world that
he left, although it is fairly sure that there can be no full reconciliation with
zombie cadavers. In this sense, the zombie suggests the same split between
bare life and political life, the absence of identity, self and personhood as
illustrated by the figure of Muselmann in Agamben’s Remnants of Auschwitz
(1999). In order to highlight some of the key points in this extensively com-
mented and criticized work, I would like to begin with Agamben’s reading
of Martin Heidegger’s famous ‘Bremen lecture’ from 1949 in which he talks

about the specificity of death in extermination camps:
hundreds of thousands die in mass. Do they die? They perish. They are
put down. Do they die? They become pieces of inventory of a standing
reserve for the fabrication of corpses. Do they die? They are unobtrusively
liquidated in annihilation camps. (Heidegger, 2012: 53; my emphasis)
Heidegger, as Agamben understands him, states that the process of fabrica-

tion of corpses in extermination camps grants the prisoners death that is
only a ‘horrific undying death’ (Heidegger, 2012: 54) and prevents them
from their authentic relation to death, being-toward-death. Agamben starts
from this point, undead death, and claims that the camp’s state of exception
suspends the questions of different modes of death:
where the thought of death has been materially realized, where death is
‘trivial, bureaucratic, and an everyday affair’, both death and dying, both
dying and its ways, both death and the fabrication of corpses, become
indistinguishable. (Agamben, 1999: 76)
This condition is embodied by Agamben’s figure of the Muselmann, a perfect

illustration of undead death, defined by contradictory features: ‘walking
corpses’ (Améry and Bettelheim), ‘living dead’ or ‘mummy-men’ (Carpi),
‘one hesitates to call them living’ (Levi) (cited in Agamben, 1999: 54). The
Muselmann, the perfect witness, exists in the ambivalence between two deaths,
he or she is neither dead nor living, they are what is left (Agamben, 1999:
163–4). Like a zombie, the Muselmann exists on the biological level, outside
of the symbolic order, possessing only a body lacking identity, conscious self
or feeling of personhood (Boon, 2011; Webb and Burnand, 2008).
This suspended state which has produced Holocaust zombies is most dis-
tinctly experienced by the main character of Night of the Living Jews when
he starts to engage in organized help for the poor zombies to go into heaven
(although why the Jewish zombies would want to lead a Christian afterlife is
not entirely clear). The main character apparently forgot that fulfilling the
wishes of the dead coming back from the realm of death is rarely simple and
idyllic, and certainly always bloody. In this context a much more convinc-
ing, as well as interesting, zombie in the novel is the doctor, a Polish surgeon
who, during World War II, had a Jewish fiancé. An envious fellow surgeon
from his hospital wanted to eliminate him from his job, consequently, he
reported the whereabouts of the doctor’s Jewish fiancé to the Gestapo. After
her death, following months of physical torture, he made a promise: in
return he will forever torture Nazis and their supporters, starting obviously
with his colleague. He died during the Warsaw Uprising but was kept beyond
death by his hatred and sadistic desire for revenge. The doctor constitutes a
146 Jan Borowicz
boundary figure, he is marginal to the whole story, being mentioned in its

beginning and near the end; and he is the only non-Jewish zombie, who will
forever torture his victims, the former perpetrators, with harsh automatism
by circumcising them and leaving them to bleed. Out of pure habit he has
even nearly tortured the main character, ignoring all of his good deeds for
the Holocaust zombies. The doctor is thus a perfect illustration of the death
drive (as is Antigone in Lacan’s analysis): its stiffness, repetitiveness, preserv-
ing status quo without the possibility of change. Zombies seek revenge on
the living: just because it is in their nature.
Why then are there so few Polish zombies in the novel? Polish history
certainly abounds with events that could produce a restless dead demand-
ing their rights from the living. Night of the Living Jews diagnoses several
problems: mainly, the character of the burial and of the mourning. Dead
Poles cannot transform into zombies as ‘even when there are some who
lack something, who are upset, they escape the cemeteries and the endless
roll calls, spectacular masses, speeches, ceremonies, salvos’ (Ostachowicz,
2012: 203), because Poles live in an unbroken contact with their dead who
are tamed and domesticated and therefore do not feel the need to flood
cities to remind them of their existence. Maria Janion, researcher of Polish
romantic attitudes towards the war, stated that ‘from time to time we
[Poles] pay attention to innocent victims, at least on the Day of the Dead’
(Janion, 2000: 7). It concerns, however, lives of Polish Catholic victims,
not Jewish who are ‘neither alive nor dead, but interminably spectral’
(Butler, 2004: 33–4) and for whom ‘there will be no public act of grieving
([as] Creon said in Antigone)’ (Butler, 2004: 36). Deaths of Polish people,
however tragic, can be mourned unlike the deaths of Jewish victims of the
Holocaust. Jewish dead will forever remain zombies – until their irrevers-
ible losses will be mourned and the dead will be finally put in their proper
graves.
This chapter has reconstructed the logic of Night of the Living Jews by
following two main issues concerning the figure of the zombie: firstly, the
zombie invasion as a ‘return of the repressed’ in the Polish memory, explo-
sion or flooding of the memory. This concerns the question of how to trans-
form the uncanny space of murder into a graveyard where victims of the
Holocaust could be mourned by Jews and Poles alike. Secondly, the presence
of the zombie, as pointing to the lack of capacity among Poles to mourn the
Jewish victims. As there is scarcely any hope in common zombie narratives,
we turn to Judith Butler who in her Precarious Life advocates for the process
of mourning as a political and ethical demand:
the obituary [or in this case – a grave] functions as the instrument by

which grievability is publicly distributed. It is the means by which a life
becomes, or fails to become, a publicly grievable life … the means, by
which a life becomes noteworthy. (Butler, 2004: 34)
Night of the Living Jews is somewhat juvenile and attempts to be humorous;

however, I cannot help wondering, that its diagnosis of Polish culture’s lack
of capacity to mourn Jewish lives is far from being optimistic.
Note
1. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from Polish are mine.
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10
‘A Picnic Underpinned with Unease’:
Spring in Warsaw and New Genre
Polish-Jewish Memory Work1
Erica Lehrer and Magdalena Waligórska
Poland, whose pre-war Jewish population of 3.5 million was decimated

during World War II and further reduced by anti-Semitic incidents in the
post-war Polish republic, has only a small Jewish presence today, but over
the last two decades has come to recognize and work through the pain-
ful Jewish past with an increasing intensity. After Communism fell and
this past was released from state censorship, there was a flood of publicly
suppressed information – accompanied by public expressions of collec-
tive memory – regarding the 1000-year history and violent destruction of
Poland’s Jews. Spurred by new scholarly and journalistic writings, as well
as the visits of foreign Jews (many with Polish roots), the 1990s and early
2000s saw public spaces reassigned some of their former Jewish meanings
through official memorial forms like ceremonies, signage, renovation of
historic sites and monuments (Kapralski, 2001; Meng, 2011; Murzyn-Kupisz
and Purchla, 2009). A flagship project representing such official memorial
efforts is the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which opened in Warsaw
in 2014. Other, more grassroots forms of remembering were also growing up
in response to and alongside these, in the realms of tourism and heritage
brokering (Gruber, 2002; Lehrer, 2013; Waligórska, 2013). But in parallel
fashion – and picking up speed in the mid-2000s – another kind of memory
work was beginning to claim public attention. Social and cultural ‘interven-
tions’ undertaken by artists, academics, youth groups and other culture
brokers, began to create provocative spaces of dialogue and self-reflection,
in staged installations or happenings in which individuals were asked to
participate in active, social, critical forms of remembering.
In this article we offer a preliminary analysis of the motives, forms, feel-
ings and consequences of these newly visible memorial forms by focusing
on one case study: the participatory performance Spring in Warsaw, a
‘counter-march’ led by the Israeli group Public Movement in Warsaw’s for-
mer wartime Jewish ghetto in April 2009, conceived in response to Israeli
youth Holocaust pilgrimage season. The Public Movement performance is
particularly interesting to consider as it took place in a highly symbolic
149
150 Erica Lehrer and Magdalena Waligórska
space of both Jewish suffering and resistance, and it was designed expressly
in response to and in dialogue with officially sanctioned commemorative
practices, both Jewish and Polish. The performance also raises the intrigu-
ing question of the special function of the ‘returning Jew’ as inhabiting a
privileged role in attempts to catalyze critical Polish memory work on the
country’s difficult past and possible pluralistic futures.
Re-Mixing History
The defining characteristic of this new genre of memorial interventions is

their recombinative quality. Different from simple ‘re-enactments’, this new
approach may be thought of as a ‘subjunctive’ politics of history – a ‘what if’
proposition that plays with reimagining and recombining a range of Jewish
and Polish memories, present-day realities, and future aspirations.2
If the first wave of remembering emphasized a basic need for ‘re-collecting’
an elided narrative, diagnosing an unacknowledged illness infecting the
national body and exposing (and perhaps thereby exacerbating) a painful
wound, it also set in motion a vortex of revelation and denial that has come
to characterize much Polish debate about the Jewish past. A second wave of
memory work, in the form of a new genre of artistic intervention we iden-
tify here, has grown up in response to the problems unleashed by the first
wave. It can be characterized by their attempts to transcend the terms of the
historical debate and to acknowledge the various toxins released by it. Artists
have thus emerged as key players, administering ‘therapy’ in various forms,
in an attempt to treat a broad range of symptoms that have not responded
to the prescription of straightforward historical revelation.3
These new genre projects can be more accurately characterized as ‘memory
work’ due to their ‘collective groping, negotiation and contestation over the
proper meaning to be assigned to this memory, the proper locus of respon-
sibility and proper forms of commemoration’ (Törnquist-Plewa, 2011). They
attempt to render abstract ideas about the past concrete and personal, and
create spaces where individual experiences and emotions can be expressed
and channelled into new sensory collectivities.4 We thus approach these per-
formances not as representations, but rather as embodied experiences, staging
and inviting participation in ‘repertoires’ of historical and cultural memory.5
What concerns do such projects raise, and what desires do they fulfil? To
whom are they speaking? What do they ask participants or audience mem-
bers to do, feel or imagine? What new cultural, social, political or emotional
spaces might they open? What opposition do they trigger? In addressing
these questions, we aim to illuminate, capture and assess a pivotal historical
moment of alchemy and emergence around Polish national identity and
Holocaust memory. We discern a new moment in Polish memory culture,
in an era in which the forces shaping national memory in public have
become simultaneously more transnational and more local, intersecting
New Genre Polish-Jewish Memory Work 151
with new forms of media to result in these provocative, new genre projects.
Finally, we propose to recognize Poland – alongside the much better known
contributions to Germany – as an under-appreciated site of significant
Holocaust memorial innovation (Young, 1992; Musioł, 2012; Łuczewski and
Wiedmann, 2011).
Public Movement’s commemorative project in Warsaw, which culmi-
nated with the performance in the district of Muranów on 18 April 2009,
was created by the group’s leaders Dana Yahlomi and Omer Krieger in col-
laboration with Polish curator Joanna Warsza and related Warsaw arts and
cultural institutions including Nowy Teatr (New Theatre) and the Centre
for Contemporary Art (CCA) at Zamek Ujazdowski. The cooperation with
Polish artists and the support that the Public Movement received not only
from the CCA, but also the Israeli Embassy, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute,
the Progressive Jewish Congregation Beit Warsaw, and the Jewish Museum
Warsaw, both opened the project for the local creative impulses and secured
its public profile.
While due to German wartime destruction and Polish post-war urban plan-
ning policies this residential neighbourhood was almost entirely wiped clean
of original traces of its former life, since the late 1940s it accrued a layer of
Holocaust-related monuments, and since the late 1980s has been heavily
trafficked by Jewish groups from abroad engaged in Holocaust commemora-
tion. Each spring, keyed to the Israeli calendar of Holocaust commemoration
(with 19 April the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, marking Yom
Ha Shoah), thousands of Israeli and North American Jewish youth arrive
in Poland, marking an emotional high point of their journeys with a walk
through Warsaw’s circuit of Holocaust memorial sites. Their visits have the
quality of demonstrations – they are heavily guarded by Israeli security, and
have little interest in or opportunity to encounter the local population.
Spring in Warsaw cast a critical eye on such public manifestations of
memory in the present day, and seeks to intervene in their concrete, spatial,
embodied forms and practices. The project’s driving concerns were the
meaning and symbolic ownership of the contemporary neighbourhood
(and wartime Jewish ghetto) of Muranów, and ‘questioning the intouch-
ability [sic] of the Israeli and Jewish Youth Delegations to Poland’ that
traverse this terrain, ‘exploring the political and aesthetic meanings resid-
ing in their rituals’ (text accompanying video, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=OD6Uh5-DA-Q).
The event was described by its authors as ‘a march, a manifestation,
a new and alter-memorial ceremony, a guided tour, and an urban walk
along a route in a rare site of civil pilgrimage’ (text accompanying video,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OD6Uh5-DA-Q). The route began at
the Umschlagplatz, a monument marking the railway platform from which
Jews were taken during the ghetto’s liquidations to be shipped to Treblinka
and other extermination camps. Here, the curious members of the Warsaw
public who had gathered to participate in the event were met by Public
Movement’s ten Israeli members; dressed in white – suggesting at once
haunting and healing – and carrying self-made blue, black and white
striped flags, the artists led the crowd of hundreds of people (observer esti-
mates ranged from 200 to 1,300), young and old, through a series of stops
along Muranów’s memorial circuit. The group moved in the countervailing
direction to the official trajectory of the annual Polish ceremony organ-
ized by the Socio-Cultural Association of Jews in Poland (TSK Ż), the Jewish
Veterans’ Association, and the Warsaw Jewish Theatre, which takes place
the following day, 19 April. Participants in the official march, including the
mayor and other local and regional officials, traditionally leave a trail of
daffodils or other yellow flowers along the memorial route. Spring in Warsaw
followed a circuit more consonant with the traditional Israeli trajectory,
asserting a heroic narrative that begins with death (Umschlagplatz) and ends
with ‘heroic’ resistance (Ghetto Uprising memorial).
As the group moved along, the actors performed significant moments
of Jewish and ethnic Polish history. At one point the artists jumped over
a fence, recalling Lech Wałȩsa’s mythic scaling of the fence at the Lenin
Shipyard in Gdańsk during a 1980 strike that led to the foundation of the
Solidarity movement. At the site of the 18 Miła Street bunker, the headquar-
ters of the wartime Jewish Combat Organization that the Nazis attacked
(resulting in collective suicide involving organization leader Mordechaj
Anielewicz and many of his staff), the artists played guitar and sang ‘Janek
Wiśniewski padł’, a Polish ballad about an 18-year-old worker killed in the
Polish city of Gdynia during a standoff between the government militia and
striking workers in 1970. At number 5 Zamenhof Street, the former home
of Ludwig Zamenhof, Polish-Jewish creator of the ‘universal tongue’ of
Esperanto, the actors fixed their home-made flags on the building’s facade
and sang the popular 1967 Israeli song ‘Yerushalayim shel zahav’ (Jerusalem
of Gold) in Esperanto. At various places along the route the artists mimed
fighting, fleeing and carrying corpses.
Participants were also guided (by following the artists’ examples, or being
gently led by them by the hand) to enact a series of ambiguous choreographed
gestures. Participatory actions included instances of bowing, kneeling and
fully prostrating on the street facing East in a semblance of Muslim prayer
(to the tune of ‘Forever Young’ by the pop group Alphaville), and a moment
of silent kneeling, instigated by ringing a hand-held Catholic church bell,
in front of the memorial to German chancellor Willy Brandt’s famous,
Ostpolitik-enhancing 1970 ‘Kniefall’ (genuflection) at the Monument to the
Ghetto Heroes. Considering that Brandt, commenting on his own gesture,
said that ‘[u]nder the weight of recent history’ he did ‘what people do when
words fail them’, it seems worth noting the intense memorial palimpsest in
this moment of kneeling at his monument (Görtemaker, 1999: 544). Behind
the uprising monument itself, the artists called through megaphones pairs
of terms – capitalism/socialism; women/men; to the future/to the past;

Palestine/Israel; backwards/forwards; the Poles collaborated with the Nazis/
the Poles saved the Jews – and invited the crowd to choose a respective side
of the plaza, demarcated by plastic tape, to stand on.
A final choreography in front of the uprising monument itself began
with military-style marching, followed by a lyrical speech by one of Public
Movement’s directors, Omer Krieger. The entire event ended with a patterned
but frenzied dance that drew its poses from the frieze on the memorial’s
façade; its figures come alive – falling, dying, crawling and arising again – to
the tune of the electro-house band Justice vs Simian’s (2006) ‘We are your
friends (you will never be alone again)’.6 A party for all participants took
place afterwards at a local club, Chłodna 25, situated at the intersection
where a bridge connected the two halves of the Warsaw ghetto.
Public Movement showed that the discussion of Holocaust memory
increasingly is – and how it might usefully be – an international, intercultural
dialogue, interweaving the histories, concerns and sensibilities of both Poles
and Jews.7 For Warsaw residents, spring signals both the neighbourhood’s
annual resignification by way of the Polish state’s official Holocaust com-
memoration and the arrival of these Jewish groups. The latter phenomenon
amounts to the giving over of ownership of this already over-determined part
of the city’s public space to uniform-clad, Israeli-flag waving corps of young
Jews, whose hermetic, nationalistic, narrowly focused style of travel has
been the subject of sustained critique.8 Spring in Warsaw – the brainchild of
Israeli and Polish artists and cultural elites in conversation – was an attempt
to ‘speak back’ at the dominant forms of commemoration, and to expand
the memorial terrain to include a broader range of local (Polish), Jewish (i.e.
Middle Eastern), and universal concerns. In turn, the project’s title, Spring
in Warsaw, subtly suggested a reversal of the globally dominant Holocaust
memorial gaze, typically directed critically at Poland by foreign Jews (and
others), opening the field of view to include the Polish experience of these
Jewish rememberers. The word ‘spring’ also evoked an air of possibility and
the regeneration of life in a quarter of the city burdened by a horrific past.
While still somewhat ‘particularist’ in its scope – speaking to issues of
Jewish and Polish history and culture in a specific city and site – the event
gestured more and less subtly to broader, further-flung issues through its
inclusion, for example, of the postures of Muslim prayer, and the mention
of ‘checkpoints’. Yet there was an ambiguity to many of the scripted move-
ments (scrambling, chasing and grabbing) which blurred not only the line
between menace and play – suggesting that historical events and their par-
ticipants can have many meanings – but intimated the repetition of similar
forms of violence in many times/places.
Three intertwining modalities were discernible in the group’s work. First,
was their collaborative, inclusive, ecumenical, participatory approach, based
on an ethic of ‘consultation and collaboration with scholars, experts, and
ongoing group debates and discussions’ (Public Movement, 2012).9 Second

was their focus on the body as an instrument of politics, treating its postures
and movements through space as a trigger for accessing and liberating
memory and forging solidarity at the most intimate, physical level. The
artists’ therapeutic conduct vis-à-vis participants’ bodies (their nurturing
gestures, their white outfits) further suggested their recognition of history
and memory as capable both of collectively wounding and healing. Third
was their playful approach to the use of symbols, gestures, language and
music, their generosity of spirit, and the lightness and ‘breathing space’ they
infused into an otherwise psychologically freighted space.10
A keyword that arose during the interviews we carried out with organizers
and participants of Spring in Warsaw in 2011 was ‘odczarowanie’, best ren-
dered in English as ‘dispelling’, a notion referring to the freeing, cleansing,
spell-breaking ambiance that the Spring in Warsaw participants we spoke
to reported experiencing. A number of participants in the action spoke of
the way Muranów – and its Polish inhabitants – were burdened with or
haunted by the onerous residue of the quarter’s tragic history, and how the
artistic event lightened their load.11 Zuzanna Sikorska, a member of Nowy
Teatr, Public Movement’s key Polish partner organization, spoke of a sense
many Poles had of being trapped in a cramped, repetitive relation to the
Holocaust past, and the need Varsovians, in particular, felt to ‘throw off the
responsibility, the weight’ of the past, encoded in prescribed and presumed
emotions and forms of behaviour. In the 20-minute video documentary
produced for the project, the faces of individual participants seem to suggest
a kind of ‘flow’, deep engagement, communion or even reverence as they
performed some of the movements.12 Sikorska described feeling a sense of
‘relief’ through her participation.
But if odczarowanie was indeed both a desire and to some extent an out-
come of this action, of what loads, specifically, were Varsovians unburdened?
On one level, the event was a call to free participants of the shackles of their
very bodies, to unlearn the unthinking postures of being Polish in public,
to be broken free from the collective hex of both habit and habitus. Sikorska
expressed the need to make Warsaw’s Holocaust heritage visible anew – she
attended high school in Muranów, and noted that despite (because of?)
walking there each day, she couldn’t ‘see’ the memorials that surrounded
her. But vision is not the only physical function that has been diminished.
She compared the conventions of Polish collective behavior and carriage in
Muranów to those in the Catholic Church. She described that just as Poles
immediately bow their heads when the priest holds up the host (instead of
looking at it and meditating on it as prescribed), when they enter Muranów
they unthinkingly give in to their body’s presumptions, and any power the
site may have to create new knowledge is lost.
As Polish visual culture scholar and project consultant Iwona Kurz sug-
gested, a modicum of comfort is necessary for the creation of knowledge.
‘A certain type of gravity gags you’, she said. ‘If you are so serious that you
cannot speak through your tightened throat and clenched teeth, you cannot
ask anything, you cannot wonder about anything’ (Kurz, 2011). And yet
if habit can be a burden, Public Movement acknowledged that it can also
be a comfort whose ritual value may be respected, if recuperated to new
ends. One of the project’s co-curators, Marianna Dobkowska, spoke of how
moved her mother, who accompanied her the day of the event, felt when
the church bell was rung during the event, and the crowd was led to kneel
in silence (Dobkowska, 2011). Dobkowska said that many Poles feel guilty
about the past, but have never been given an invitation to participate, to
contribute to the work of Jewish memory in ways meaningful to them, in
a domain that seems rightfully Jewish. The habits of Polishness, and spe-
cifically Polish Catholicism, may seem alien, awkward, even besmirched
through Jewish eyes trained on Holocaust commemoration.13 Their inclu-
sion in the event’s choreography was a gesture of ‘permission’ on the part
of Jews for Catholics to remember the Holocaust within their own sacred
idiom. Moreover, by the end of the event, everyone had partaken in some-
one else’s body language (Jews shared in the Catholic modes, and both
groups undertook the Muslim postures), offering an intimate approach to
empathy from multiple perspectives.14
An additional burden is that of the simple proximity to Holocaust death
sites that Poles have inherited, and the tarnishing effect that this history has
had on perceptions of Poland’s very ground and, by extension, those who
live on it. Warsaw social psychologist Michał Bilewicz noted the legitimiz-
ing quality of Public Movement’s visit for both ethnic Poles and local Jews.
In stark distinction to the standard refrain of foreign Jewish groups who
perceive contemporary liveliness in Poland – whose very terrain symbolizes
the Holocaust, let alone particular Holocaust and ruined Jewish sites – as
morally repugnant and evidence of indifference, Bilewicz understood Public
Movement’s message to be saying, ‘we perceive you [Poles] ... your existence
here as legitimate. It’s not like “oh guys, [how can] you live on this cemetery”’.
The idea of odczarowanie raises clear questions about the ethics of mem-
ory and the conditions appropriate to fulfilling a desire to be ‘freed’ of the
burdensome past. As Gazeta Wyborcza journalist Paweł Goźlinski put it, ‘we
[Poles] still need to carry this burden for a while ... the ghosts haven’t left
Muranów yet ... they haven’t [really even] emerged ... they haven’t even
begun to haunt the inhabitants ... let them haunt [them] a bit before we try
any kind of exorcism’ (Goźlinski, 2011).15 The event, though, was far from
uniformly relieving, its lightness not carefree; while the event may have
been in some way embracing and soothing, the unusually broad and unex-
pected mix of themes it invoked still pushed the boundaries of comfort,
expectation and discourse.16
Iwona Kurz noted the way Spring in Warsaw served as a ‘reminde[r] that con-
flict is real’. The game that involved taking positions on polarized topics – in
essence voting with one’s feet – was a particularly ‘active’ aspect of the event,
in which participants themselves became performers, forced to display pub-
licly deep differences that divide the largely ethnically homogeneous Polish
society. Yet participants also used it as an opportunity to enact resistance to
schematic binaries, and to practise creativity. Rather than simply submitting
to the terms laid out by Public Movement, Sikorska noted that while some
participants ‘took sides, a couple of times they even tore the plastic tape to
show that there’s no division, that they are in between. There was even a
couple who started to kiss from across the two sides.’ ‘Despite the giggling and
confusion’, another critic observed, ‘the questions remained, lingering in the
air’ (Kazimierowska, 2009).
Some differences were challenging for participants to integrate, highlighting
the clash of memorial frames – progressive Polish and progressive Israeli Jewish –
brought to bear in this activist action. Issues that are part and parcel of Israeli
national memory discourse and related problems with present-day ‘otherness’,
persecution and exclusion seemed somewhat occult when imported into the
East European context, where the struggle to construct a basic acknowledge-
ment of Holocaust crimes and incorporate their legacy into national memory
is itself still perceived as the task for progressive cultural elites.
The final speech, like the rest of the event, was overloaded with a thicket
of potent historical references. But sewing together the dense, sometimes
troubling allusions to abjection was a sense of abundance, a weightless,
lyrical tenor saturated with humanity, vibrancy, eros and joy: ‘Human
flesh is revealed: hungry arms, skirted legs, bare breasts, torn cloths. It is
springtime; white faces blush in Warsaw’, Krieger intoned, a beatific smile
on his face. His words were aspirational as he told the crowds, ‘this is the
time to make new friends, to make love, to raise high hopes’, in a seeming
attempt to infuse the meaning of spring in Warsaw with nature’s persistence
against history, when ‘green buds rise from hills of rubble’. The text was
explicitly universal, calling out to ‘humanity’, to ‘Poles, Jews, Christians,
Muslims, Europeans, Africans, Asians, Americans, Australians, Israelis and
Palestinians’, stressing that ‘our stories are different, but all of our lives are
sacred’. It asked the audience to ‘remember the Jewish fighters of the ghetto,
fighting in Warsaw not for Judaism but for life ... not for a state but for
human dignity, for survival’. And yet there remained a specificity, however
multivalent, of the burdens of this memory. ‘We live in their houses’, he
said, referring perhaps to Jewish houses, or Palestinian; he referenced ‘check-
points’, suggesting both postwar Europe and present-day Israel. The speech
ended with the question, ‘What is to be done?’
The implicit answer to that question seemed to recommend that relief
isn’t necessarily pacifying and that people need not only to be unsettled, but
also enabled, because change demands creation along with deconstruction.
The performance suggested that we need new subject positions, new ground
to stand on, in order to act differently. Joanna Warsza, the event’s main
Polish co-curator and local resident, spoke of her own desire to bring more
pluralism in the space, to take it back from the foreign Jewish stage it has
become, and return it to the ‘real Warsaw’. Yet she noted that ‘each side’ –
the locals and foreign Jews – ‘needed the other’ to speak effectively to the
issues of memory in the space; thus both she and the Israeli artists were the
‘authentic’ voices necessary to seed the conversation.
But if the attempt to fuse together ethnic Polish and Jewish traumas was
conceived in a collaboration between Israeli and Polish elites, if a Polish-
Jewish dialogue seemed essential for an authentic discussion of Holocaust
memory, it was the Jews who were the event’s public hosts and facilitators.
And despite the mix of issues and messages embedded in the event, Poles
were its main audience. Minimal outreach was done in Warsaw’s Jewish
community, with only tepid response. The event functioned somewhat
more as a performance for unsuspecting – and by some accounts rather
surprised – official Israeli groups whose paths they occasionally crossed.17
But it was mostly Polish people who participated, including some locals
who became accidental audience members, ‘peeking from behind their
curtains and watching the event surreptitiously, probably noticing that it
was slightly different than [the marches] they were used to’ (Kurz, 2011).18
It is worth pondering, then, the kind of catalyzing, permission-giving role
Jews may play in working through the morally fraught landscape in which
Holocaust memory practices take shape. Zuzanna Sikorska suggested that
‘if it hadn’t been an Israeli group leading the march but rather a Polish one
that had taken up the theme, it would have had maybe only a tenth of the
power’. The necessity of a Jewish voice, ‘that it was their issue as much as
ours’, made the event seem right to her. That it was an Israeli group was
important because they validated certain behaviour when they said, ‘Friends,
we’re doing it, you can [too]. It doesn’t offend us.’ Katarzyna Wiegla, another
co-organizer of the project, put it more starkly: ‘No one in Poland would dare
to do that.’19 Further, for Poles, the mere experience of being confronted with
a different kind of Jew, one who cares about Polish issues, who isn’t here to
blame, who isn’t looking for an apology or performing their superior victim-
hood, is significant. Sikorska said that for her personally, seeing the Israelis
singing in Polish was one of the strongest moments of the event.
Indeed, perhaps Jews are being cast even as healers or confessors.20 These
visiting, white-clad Jewish aides invited a burdened, ossified Polish public to
engage in a collective cure that the artists would administer. The Poles were
offered an opportunity to let down their guard, divest themselves of their
habituated gaits and inculcated relations to place, past and otherness. The
Jews had the power to dispel, and it was their guidance and gentle touch that
healed. They extended their hands to the unsure audience; they urged them
to follow, to step closer, to bow, to kneel. They held people’s babies. The hope
seemed to be that the Polish participants would walk away from the ritual
renewed, refreshed and reborn.
Spring in Warsaw’s Israeli Jewish facilitators attempted to expand the

‘discussion’ of the Holocaust in Poland, illustrating the ways that both
Jewish and Polish bodies and public spaces are embedded with powerful,
politicized, publicly enshrined forms of Holocaust memory, and suggesting
that it is possible to criticize and perhaps change these – a stance that Polish
artists and activists would have a hard time inhabiting, for fear of offend-
ing the victims. The artists performed the essential need for partnerships
in opening respectful spaces to breathe and to move and to discuss each
side’s own contemporary struggles and ‘blocked’ psyches. In doing so, they
spoke to the need Varsovians – and other Poles and Jews – have for sites and
modes of ‘memory work’ that enable the revitalization of energies and the
generation of hope to tackle the difficult tasks of facing history and building
better futures.
This terrain is, of course, fraught with danger. Any invocation of Warsaw’s
spring charms in this place inevitably echoes Czesław Miłosz’s damning
description of Varsovians riding a carousel on ‘a beautiful Warsaw Sunday’
while the last Jews were being burned alive in the ghetto (Miłosz, 2006).21
The wounds of the Holocaust generation and the moral challenges flow-
ing from them will – and should – be in eternal tension with the desires
of young people to change the world. ‘It’s necessary to breathe’, Paweł
Goźlinski said of his experience with the Spring in Warsaw event. ‘But one
has to breathe in a responsible way’ (Goźlinski, 2011).
Conclusion
The character of these recent public expressions of Jewish memory in Poland

may be understood – in part – as an effect of the rise of what Daniel Levy
and Natan Sznaider call ‘cosmopolitan memory’ of the Holocaust, as the
‘[c]ontainer of the Nation-State … in the process of being slowly cracked’
(Levy and Sznaider, 2002: 88). Certainly the presence of the German Nazi
camps that remain lacerations on Polish soil, and the international Jewish
(and other) tourism that helps keep these wounds fresh, point to inexora-
bly global vectors in Polish Holocaust memory. Moreover, similar kinds of
creative, politicized, cultural intervention in the domains of cultural politics
and heritage can be seen elsewhere in both the region and the world: from
Belarussian protests and Bosnian street theatre to the Palestine Biennale,
grassroots activists disillusioned by the state are engaging in creative alter-
natives to traditional political processes.22 Yet the explosion of artistic
interventions related to the Jewish past here speak not only to a particu-
lar admixture of history, trauma and globally intersected space, but to an
attempt to translate and domesticate memory for incorporation by a specific
local audience, resulting in a uniquely ‘Polish’ cultural product.
Germany has been the touchstone and lauded as a world leader in
Holocaust Vergangenheitsbewältigung since the 1980s, with major contributions
to education, historiography and new ‘counter-monumental’ forms (Young,

1992). Further, in Germany, Holocaust memory is woven into the very
fabric of the state, and moral authority is ceded to the local and world
Jewish community. One word from a Jewish museum visitor can shut down
an avant-garde project.23 In Poland, not only is there no such consensus,
but the intelligentsia and moral arbiters simply cannot keep up with the
enormous proliferation of projects. After the long period of silence around
the Holocaust, its memory is resurging in the Polish public realm with such
impetus that it has overflown the capacity of the state’s official frameworks
of commemoration. The present, boundary-pushing range of forms speaks
to a ‘Wild West’ quality of Holocaust memory as a Polish field of endeavour:
grassroots, pioneering, widely democratic, speculative and risky. While there
is enormous unevenness in projects of this genre, the domain itself thus
represents a site of great critical and creative possibility.
This new genre of memory work offers innovative modes of probing, ques-
tioning and critiquing official forms of commemorating Poland’s Jewish past.
Its creators attempt to ignite a process of remembering beyond a backward
looking, blank-spot-filling reinsertion of Poland’s lost Jewish other. Crucial as
such historical work is, taken alone it risks framing Jews as essentially distant,
different and separate – and perhaps even ‘past’. These new commemora-
tions work not with restorative imagination, but creative reconfiguration.
They seek unique pathways to introduce reworked notions of Jewishness into
Polish landscapes – landscapes that are material, psychological, somatic – to
aid Poles in identifying and embracing (Jewish) alterity as part of their collec-
tive identity, just as they offer Jews new relationships with Poland. Applying
a playful approach (and an aura of safe experimentation due to their status as
art), they circumvent deeply ingrained and habituated sociologically and his-
torically produced responses to one of Poland’s key memorial burdens. Most
importantly, these performative projects open spaces for introspection and
healing unavailable within entrenched national commemorative ceremo-
nies. There is a need for intimate public spaces for shared vulnerability, where
people can explore their own dark places, their desires and their aspirations
going forward. The issue is how to heal responsibly, in the fullness of time,
while allowing pain and shame to also serve their purposes.
Notes
1. This chapter is excerpted from a longer article comparing recent memory projects
by Public Movement, Rafał Betlejewski and Yael Bartana (Lehrer and Waligórska,
2013). ‘A picnic underpinned with unease’ was the characterization of the event
by the Polish visual culture scholar Iwona Kurz.
2. Chiara De Cesari uses the term ‘preemptive representation’ to describe ‘the per-
formance of an institution that does not yet exist’ but may sow ‘the seeds of new
institutional [and social] arrangements’ in relation to the aesthetics of recent
Palestinian art Biennals (De Cesari, 2010: 632–3).
3. See, for instance, installation by Mirosław Bałka (2011) ‘Wege zur Behandlung
von Schmerzen’ (Zielińska, 2012).
4. For a discussion of the significance of the sensory in Polish national mythology,
see Zubrzycki (2011).
5. Performance studies scholar Diana Taylor describes how performance, understood
broadly as expressive behaviour, ‘transmits memories, makes political claims,
and manifests a group’s sense of identity’ through a ‘repertoire’, or non-textual
mechanism of knowledge transfer (Taylor, 2003: xvii).
6 Aside from the openness implied by the song’s title, the tune itself has previously
been the anthem of Le Madame, a hip, gay-friendly club in Warsaw’s old town
that had been closed for ‘political reasons’ in 2006, in what amounted to a gen-
eration-defining event for the young left wing. Thanks to Michał Bilewicz for this
observation.
7. Their broader work explores mostly non-Holocaust and non-Jewish issues. Their
current program is called ‘Re-branding European Muslims’ (Public Movement,
2012).
8. While criticisms have been voiced in the Polish and Israeli press, the most
in-depth scholarly treatment is Feldman (2008).
9. Like Yael Bartana’s Trilogy, Spring in Warsaw grew out of conversations seeded by
Warsaw’s Adam Mickiewicz Institute leading up to and during the ‘Polish Year
in Israel’ in 2008–2009. The event was developed during a 3-month residency in
Warsaw, which combined research seminars on Polish visual culture and dialogue
with Polish artists, scholars and others.
10. One journalist called the atmosphere at the event ‘imprezowa’ or ‘like a party’
(Kazimierowska, 2009).
11. Recent interest in Muranów as a Jewishly haunted space in need of exorcism is evi-
dent in the new novel by Igor Ostachowicz (2012) Noc Żywych Żydów (Night of the
Living Jews), Warsaw: Wydawnictwo WAB, and the play Muranooo (with the extra ‘o’
suggesting the haunted sound ‘ooo’) by Sylwia Hutnik, which premiered at Foyer
Dużej Sceny in Warsaw on 12 May 2012. The unease among Muranów inhabitants
about living in a space saturated with Jewish death was also reported by journalist
Beata Choma˛towska (2012). See also Jan Borowicz’s chapter in this volume.
12. A journalist observing the event also described the crowd as ‘surrendering to the
magic of participation’ (Kazimierowska, 2009).
13. The importance of revising and expanding the body’s deep repertoires seems
like a crucial intervention into embodied cultural scripts in light of Czaplinski’s
chilling suggestion that the citizens of Jedwabne who perpetrated the infamous
pogrom ‘knew how to act’ because of a particular, anti-Semitic Catholic habitus
that facilitated their (reversed) re-enactment of the suffering of Christ on the
town’s Jews (cited in Goss, 2012).
14. Not only does the person ‘trying on’ a foreign bodily posture gain new intersub-
jective understanding, but seeing another inhabit one’s ‘own’ cultural postures
can be moving or feel conciliatory, if done respectfully. Steve Weintraub, an
American Jew who teaches Chasidic dance at Cracow’s annual Jewish Cultural
Festival, spoke of his joy at seeing non-Jewish Poles enact these characteristi-
cally Jewish gestures and postures: ‘Their movement, their carriage ... they were
walking in our shoes’ (Rowden, 2008).
15. The term ‘exorcism’ is problematic in this context, as it suggests that the Jews or
Holocaust memory haunting Poles are equivalent to an evil spirit, a characteri-
zation not in keeping with the event’s stated intentions or the other uses of the
term ‘odczarowanie’ in related discussions.
16. Henrietta Riegel discusses the power of humour as a gentle subversion in which
one can simultaneously engage in an act and critique or problematize (Riegel,
1996: 98).
17. Seeing these ‘foreign’ flags, the Israeli youth seemed to wonder who else was
commemorating them (Kazimierowska, 2009).
18. The obligatory Warsaw police escorts, who also often accompany the official
Israeli groups, agreed to be in plain clothes and hang back, and afterward
approached Zuzanna Sikorska and said they thought the action was nice, differ-
ent and positive.
19. Stanisław Krajewski, prominent Jewish community member, had a somewhat dif-
ferent perspective, noting that no Pole would dare to play with Catholic symbols,
but the Israelis felt free to.
20. On the Jew as ‘absolver’ (albeit with a focus on the necessarily absent one), see
Underhill (2011).
21. ‘That same hot wind/Blew open the skirts of the girls/And the crowds were laugh-
ing/On that beautiful Warsaw Sunday’ (‘Campo dei Fiori’, Warsaw, 1943).
22. In 2011, in Belarus, where avant-garde theatre has become a medium for voicing
critique towards the Lukashenko regime, activists used absurdist-tinged, perfor-
mative tactics also in street protests; in Bosnia, activists have been addressing
the public through street performances, puppetry, fake media campaigns, and
creative use of commercial billboards; on Palestine, see note 8; street theatre and
public actions are also a longer-standing Polish form, drawing on popular sen-
sibilities and the need for creative tools to criticize the socio-political status quo
(e.g. Pomarańczowa Alternatywa).
23. Polish artist Artur Żmijewski’s video ‘Berek/Tag’ (1999), which depicts a group of
nude people playing tag inside a gas chamber, was removed from a 2011 exhi-
bition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau museum in Berlin due to a letter of protest by
Hermann Simon, director of the city’s Centrum Judaicum.
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De Cesari, Chiara (2010) ‘Creative Heritage: Palestinian Heritage NGOs and Defiant
Arts of Government’, American Anthropologist, 112.4, pp. 625–37.
Dobkowska, Marianna (2011) Interview with the authors, Warsaw, 20 July.
Feldman, Jackie (2008) Above the Death Pits, Beneath the Flag: Youth Voyages to Poland
and the Performance of Israeli National Identity, Oxford and New York: Berghahn Books.
Görtemaker, Manfred (1999) Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Munich: Beck
Publishers.
Goss, Jan (2012) Golden Harvest: Events at the Periphery of the Holocaust, New York:
Oxford University Press, pp. 109–10.
Goźlinski, Paweł (2011) Interview with the authors, Warsaw, 24 July.
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w Warszawie’, Kultura Liberalna, 20 April, available at: http://kulturaliberalna.
pl/2009/04/20/zostan-moim-przyjacielem-public-movement-w-warszawie/
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pp. 507–40.
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the Formation of Cosmopolitan Memory’, European Journal of Social Theory, 5.1,
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and Poland, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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deutschen und polnischen Vergangenheitsdebatten, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag.
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11
The Limits of Forgiveness and
Postmodern Art
Ceri Eldin
Since the Holocaust the concept of forgiveness has gained new understand-
ings. In response to the atrocities of the 20th century, post-structuralist
philosopher Jacques Derrida recognized that ‘the call to forgiveness finds
itself ... reactivated, remotivated, accelerated’ (Derrida, 2001: 33). But when
confronted with the Holocaust, an event repeatedly deemed beyond com-
prehensibility, how do we even begin to consider reaching a level of peace
or resolution that forgiveness seems to demand?
As a relative and abstract term with religious connotations, forgive-
ness remains an instrumental concept in the secular Western world. From
infancy we are taught to aspire towards it when we are done wrong, in
the belief that it will bring about peace or adequate closure. Forgiveness
demands from its actor a cognitive, emotional and behavioural release from
ill-feelings such as resentment and guilt – negative emotions directed at the
person or persons who has/have caused harm (Hantman, 2010: 510), and
consequently the concept implies some level of closure to past events. As
the moral philosopher Eve Garrard realizes, forgiveness may not be consid-
ered the first or most important subject that comes to mind when reflecting
upon the Holocaust (Garrard, 2002: 147), or more specifically, its legacy in
the contemporary world. To discuss forgiveness may even seem impious in
light of the irreparable damage the Nazis have caused. Yet, Garrard argues
that to go on exploring forgiveness is significant, for it may provide us with
just a little more insight into our human nature and the ongoing effects of
the Holocaust (Garrard, 2002: 147).
In his three-part video installation Limits of Forgiveness (2007–), Swedish
artist Felice Hapetzeder1 addresses both the moral and practical dilemma of
forgiveness in the context of Holocaust remembrance. Through an analysis
of Hapetzeder’s work, this article will consider the place of forgiveness in
post-Holocaust Western society. Paying particular attention to the works
of two very different but equally influential contributors to post-Holocaust
thought, Jacques Derrida and Hannah Arendt, I will ask why forgiveness
163
164 Ceri Eldin
in regard to the Holocaust is an unachievable aspiration, yet an important

touchstone for considering the duty of current and future generations to
remember and continue to learn from it.2
Felice Hapetzeder’s Limits of Forgiveness
Felice Hapetzeder was born in Sweden to parents from Austria and Italy.
Since graduating with an MFA from Konstfack (The University College of
Arts, Crafts and Design) in 2002, he has exhibited internationally and made a
move from sculpture towards the production of artistic film in the late 1990s
(Shoah Film Collective, 2013)3 as he thought that in the near future ‘the
most touching, popular and most widely spread ways to mediate history will
probably be by moving images’ (Shoah Film Collective, 2013). Hapetzeder
has participated in several international residency programmes, including
Iaspis (The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for
Visual Artists) with a stay in Istanbul in 2007 where part one of the Limits of
Forgiveness series was created (Shoah Film Collective, 2013).
Limits of Forgiveness is one of Hapetzeder’s early successes and has been
recorded by the Shoah Film Collection (SFC), a worldwide unique media
art and peace initiative founded by Wilfried Agricola de Cologne in 2010
(Shoah Film Collective, 2013). So far, there are no scholarly writings about
the series and limited references to the artwork have been made in exhibi-
tion catalogues or online reviews.4 The series adopts a documentary format
and focuses upon the experiences of second- and third-generation Holocaust
perpetrators, survivors and witnesses – including the artist himself – all
attempting to come to terms with their families’ pasts. Prompted by his
urge to investigate his own mental ties to his Fascist godfather Kurti from
Austria, Hapetzeder provides a socio-psychological study of individuals like
himself, who continue to be affected by their grandparents’ traumatic past
experiences (Hapetzeder, 2008).5
The proliferation of second-generation literature and art since the end of
the 1970s confirms that younger generations continue to be affected by the
Holocaust (Grimwood, 2007: 42). For those with ethnic, religious or familial
links, who are typically more exposed to and affected by this past because
of their family history, and imminently more so for individuals without
this personal motivation – there is a moral demand to take responsibility
for what Eva Hoffman aptly termed ‘the guardianship of the Holocaust’
(Hoffman, 2005: xv). Hapetzeder considers that ‘art has an important role in
keeping the memory vivid’ (Shoah Film Collective, 2013). His works make
explicit that for Hapetzeder, like so many others, the demands to continue
living with the Holocaust is often overpowering. As philosopher Theodor
Adorno asserts ‘the abundance of real suffering tolerates no forgetting’
(Adorno, 2007 [1962]: 188); therefore, one cannot turn to forms of resolu-
tion which allow one to move forward. Even though ‘forgiveness does not
The Limits of Forgiveness and Postmodern Art 165
amount to forgetting or ignoring or denying or excusing what was done

by the perpetrators’ (Garrard, 2002: 155), the sense of finality that is often
associated with the act of forgiving means that it is necessary not only to
explore whether forgiveness is possible to obtain, but what forgiving the
Holocaust would mean.
Limits of Forgiveness is made up of three parts: part one – a film called
Onkel Kurti (23´ HDV, 2008) and part two containing the films Origin On,
Grandmother and Origin On, re-cut trailer (54´ HDV, 2009). At the time of writ-
ing the final instalment is in progress and like the other two parts, it will
take a loose documentary format consisting of footage taken of Kurti on a
visit to Stockholm, Hapetzeder’s hometown.
First exhibited in Stockholm in spring 2008, part one, Onkel Kurti (23′
HDV 2008), was produced during the artist’s residency in Istanbul, what
is often thought to be Turkey’s historic and cultural heart. It offers an
oral discussion, with episodes of speech in Swedish, German, Turkish and
English, supported by English subtitles, of Hapetzeder’s familial relationship
to the Holocaust. The visuals and the content of the work are fragmented;
displays of Turkish national symbolism, such as mosques and flags, juxta-
pose Hapetzeder’s monologue about memories of his Fascist godfather. He
describes his internal struggles of having been exposed from an early age to
the anti-Semitic attitude of Kurti (Hapetzeder, 2015), who was for the artist
a figure of authority in his youth.
Text appears in white letters across the screen at carefully selected
moments. The writing shows casually prejudiced statements recorded by the
artist after being overheard by tourists in Istanbul, such as: ‘the omnipres-
ent call to prayer in Islamic countries is like a never-ending egotistic sound
check!’ (Onkel Kurti, 2008) Via this method Hapetzeder produces a powerful
yet purposely humorous encounter with Turkish culture (Hapetzeder, 2008).
The fierce juxtaposition of nationalist symbols, xenophobic comments
and discussion about the Holocaust, contributes towards the chaotic com-
position. The dialogue is mainly between the artist and his cousin Emilie,
who speaks from the position of a young Austrian. Their speech overlays
short scenes of life in the city, including a parade and panning cityscapes.
Through speech and text, the work presents multiple voices: the biographi-
cal (through the verbal telling of the individual stories of Hapetzeder and
his cousin Emilie) factual (through the display of Wikipedia quotations) and
prejudicial (Hapetzeder, 2008), overlaying footage of a nationalist parade (by
using statements such as, ‘they are making their children parade for war –
isn’t that the lowest!’ (Onkel Kurti, 2008) This aesthetic strategy appears to
comment on the inability to definitively separate strands of thought, and
has the intention to provoke a clash of opinions among the viewers, similar
to the artist’s experience as he ‘investigat[ed] the darker parts of his own
mental map’ (Hapetzeder, 2008). Hapetzeder uses the phrase ‘anonymous citi-
zens of Istanbul’ (Onkel Kurti, 2008) to both critique nationalism and emphasize
166 Ceri Eldin
the ease with which prejudiced views can emerge when people are confronted
with something they see as different, in this case Western tourists visiting
an Islamic state. The artist attempts to create a familiar environment for the
audience; one through which the viewers are able to recognize and reflect
upon their own prejudice and prejudicial views around them, particularly
those that may have become normalized.
The second part contains footage taken from interviews with three
Swedish residents who each have familial links to World War II. The inter-
views are carried out in Swedish, and English subtitles are provided. When
shown for the first time at the Museum of Art in Uppsala in 2009, Origin
On – the core work of the series – consisted of a three-channel digital display,
each channel switching on and off in turn and each focusing upon one
participant at a time. The stories are separated to encourage the viewers to
consider them individually, yet the sharp pause between channels, signified
by a black screen, draws them into a dialogue. In contrast to the fast-paced
Onkel Kurti, Origin On is slower, calmer and more focused. Already the film’s
length (50:42 minutes in contrast to the 23-minute length of Onkel Kurti)
emphasizes the time needed by the participants to process and tell their
story.
Origin On is predominantly formed of dialogue with almost no attention
paid to aesthetics. In contrast to Onkel Kurti, a camera remains fixed on what
one can only assume is each participant’s living room. No contextualizing
imagery or historic photography is used. It seems that Hapetzeder avoids it
not only in a bid to keep focus on the experiences of his participants but also
because it seems unnecessary. Overwhelmed by the multitude of documen-
taries and other representations of the Holocaust, as Anatka6 – one of the
three participants of Origin On – herself describes it in the video, a broader
contextualization of the interviewers’ statements is assumed automatically.
As Robert, another participant confirms, ‘if you say you are German the
first images that appear in people’s heads are glimpses of war images’ (Origin
On, 2009). Holocaust imagery is ingrained in collective memory culture and
Hapetzeder sees no need to repeat it, but he does recognize the value of
adding to it.
Through the series Hapetzeder makes a stand for the renewed artistic
representation of the Holocaust. This recalls Adorno’s famously misunder-
stood dictum, ‘to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric’ (Adorno, 1997
[1967]: 34) through which he nevertheless confirmed the necessity of artis-
tic expression (cf. the chapter by Hampus Östh Gustafsson in this volume).
Without artistic expression remembrance is endangered and we also deny
ourselves the possibility of further understanding what took place, and
reflect upon how the effects of the Holocaust continue into the present.
Hence, in light of changing experiences and new subjects affected by this
past, continued representation not only renews memories but allows us to
revisit and scrutinize moral values of the post-Holocaust world.
At a time when the world sees the last witnesses to the Holocaust passing
away, memory risks further dilution. We will soon rely solely on represen-
tation and recorded testimony to ensure the Holocaust remains a living
history. Limits of Forgiveness illuminates a new stage of Holocaust represen-
tation, one that deals with both post-generational experience and which
addresses the continued relevance of the subject in our contemporary lives.
In particular, it asks how can we live together given our different family
experiences which influence our lives?
Jacques Derrida’s examination of post-Holocaust forgiveness becomes rel-
evant. In his essay ‘On Forgiveness’ (2001), Derrida quotes Russian-Jewish
philosopher Vladimir Jankelevitch: ‘“Forgiveness died in the death camps” ...
Yes. Unless it only becomes possible from the moment that it appears impos-
sible. Its history would begin, on the contrary, with the unforgivable’ (Derrida,
2001: 37). Derrida’s discussion comes in response to what to him is an
abuse of the concept’s pure form. Adopting the deconstructionist’s point
of view, Derrida does not make definite statements, neither confirming
nor denying the possibility of forgiveness. For Derrida, if forgiveness exists,
in its pure and unconditional form, it does so because of the unforgivable
events of the Holocaust (Derrida, 2001: 33). For, only when that which is
truly unforgivable occurs does the pure essence of what it means to forgive
come forth. According to this paradox, by the very meaning of forgiveness,
the Holocaust is unforgivable. Hapetzeder’s work complements Derrida’s
reflections by carrying out an investigation into its limitations and helps
us to explore the question: Is the Holocaust this unforgivable event which
demands us to revisit the concept of forgiveness and develop our under-
standing of it?
Authority, Identity and Memory
Direct references to forgiveness are minimal in Hapetzeder’s films. Alongside

the series’ title it is most prominently reflected upon in the musings of
Anatka, a third-generation Holocaust survivor, who states: ‘Forgiving is a
bit strong. To live a normal life and not be bitter is perhaps the best I can
do’ (Origin On, 2009).7 Her dismissal on the grounds that forgiveness is too
strong a concept implies that it is some form of absolute and all-encompass-
ing end, a high ideal that goes further than ridding oneself of resentment
towards the guilty. Furthermore, she explains ‘it is not the place of the third
person to forgive if the first person does something to the second’ (Origin
On, 2009). Distinguishable from the concept, in practice forgiveness requires
ownership. It cannot exist in isolation and cannot be separated from the
one who has authority, the one who was done wrong by.
Hence, the first issue to address is who has the authority to forgive
on behalf of the millions murdered during the Holocaust? And further-
more, who would this act be directed towards? With a relatively small
168 Ceri Eldin
proportion of testimony and an absence of survivors, post-generations face

this dilemma. Anatka, a grandchild of a Holocaust survivor, admits that she
cannot forgive on behalf of her grandmother. She can never respond in this
personal manner for cruelty inflicted upon another. Hence, in matters of
forgiveness there is no substitution, it ‘must engage two singularities – the
guilty and the victim. The involvement of a third party signifies amnesty
and reconciliation’ (Derrida, 2001: 42). Anatka realizes this, and suggests
that perhaps the best she can do is to try and live a normal life and not
be bitter. As Anatka’s statement suggests, forgiveness is personal. Derrida
describes it as a ‘secret experience’ (Derrida, 2001: 55), which appears to
correspond to its very individual nature.
As Jankelevitch’s claim implies, the attempted systematic extermination
of European Jews has cast an irreversible doubt upon the human faculty of
forgiveness. Also, the Holocaust, as a collective historical atrocity, cannot be
forgiven. Simply put, this possibility died along with those six million who
reside in the figurative and literal graveyard of Europe, and by that rationale
murder is unforgivable. A third party can also be a victim, but is only able
to respond to their own suffering and loss.
Third-party forgiveness is not possible on an individual level, and nei-
ther does the authority belong to a state or institution. As scholar Robert
Eaglestone explains, for Derrida – if forgiveness is used as part of the politics
of memory for socio-political exchange, by representatives of states or insti-
tutions then it is not truly forgiveness, but an attempt to provide restitution
(Eaglestone, 2004: 297). Derrida emphasizes that, not only is it not a trans-
ferable phenomenon but that, if it is pure and unconditional, it can never be
part of a negotiation in order to achieve another end (Derrida, 2001: 31–2).
It needs to exist outside of the sovereignty of power as well as the system
of exchanges (Derrida, 2001: 37) since sovereign power does not authorize
forgiveness nor motivate it. Disguised as graceful absolution, this would
instead be an act of mediation.
With no authority to overcome the harm caused, post-generations bear
the burden of living with the continuing presence of the Holocaust. It
becomes evident in Hapetzeder’s film that Anatka and her former partner
Robert share similar limitations when considering recovery from intergen-
erational trauma and vicarious shame. Anatka – whose grandmother spent
World War II in Russia searching for her husband, and on her lone return ‘to
Poland after the war ... discovered that the whole family had vanished’ (Origin
On, 2009) – evidently suffers from these past events. Anatka explains how
she ‘grew up with these documentaries about the Second World War’, with
her ‘mother’s memories’ (Origin On, 2009). She has been ‘through a many
years’ long process’ (Origin On, 2009) to come to terms with the Holocaust.
Piecing together a family history passed down through her mother and
uncle, and fabricating possibilities from a broader collective memory cul-
ture, Anatka – like others with familial links – lives with Holocaust memory
in her most intimate personal environment. She certainly has a strong sense
of identification with the Holocaust, despite her temporal distance to the
actual events. Viewing herself as Jewish, Anatka makes a point to disregard
her Polish surname. This does not mean that those with familial ties have
more right to forgive collective crimes, but rather that those who suffer to
a greater extent have increased motivation and more to forgive for, if only
it would be possible.
Hapetzeder is also focusing upon the experiences of those who have an
affiliation with perpetrator identity, not surprising given the artist’s Italian
and Austrian ancestry. Anatka’s former boyfriend Robert – who possesses
little knowledge of his ancestors’ participation in the war but envisages
them as having been ‘little more than ordinary Germans or Poles’ –
expresses a discomfort with the nationalities of his parents. He associates
his German and Polish ancestry with the perpetrators of the Holocaust, and
views his identity as ‘not [something] that you have to be ashamed [of] all
the time, but [that...] it doesn’t generate any positive feedback to mention
it’ (Origin On, 2009). It becomes evident throughout recurrent phrases such
as ‘what the Germans did’ (Origin On, 2009) that nationality is customarily
key to the positioning of guilt and responsibility, particularly for crimes of
the state.
Like Robert, the artist feels discomfort at being associated with the perpe-
trators. It is clear that Hapetzeder’s relationship with his Austrian lineage,
personified and heightened through his godfather, causes a great deal of
inner tension. Hapetzeder felt that Kurti – who we are told would shout at
the TV: ‘That’s a Jew! That’s a real Jew!’ (Onkel Kurti, 2008) if he thought
somebody looked Jewish – was not an anomaly in Austria, explaining that
he ‘felt that the whole society was like him ... [That] the whole country was
infected’ (Onkel Kurti, 2008). In a similar way, Hapetzeder’s cousin Emilie
thinks that Austrians ‘can’t go around saying I am Austrian – everyone
would think we were Nazis’ (Onkel Kurti, 2008). Confirming the signifi-
cance of national context, Emilie exemplifies a memory culture that views
‘the Austrians of our generation [as] carry[ing] this collective guilt’ (Onkel
Kurti, 2008). She argues that this ‘is not found in Sweden, because there
nobody feels guilty of anything ...’ (Onkel Kurti, 2008). But, as Anatka real-
izes, ‘actually the whole of Europe was involved in the Holocaust’ and that
no European state can be free from the burden of responsibility (Origin On,
2009).
Reflecting upon the notion of inherited guilt, Emilie expresses her con-
cern ‘that you somehow have to beg forgiveness – for something which
doesn’t really concern you’ (Onkel Kurti, 2008). This is problematic given
that Holocaust education teaches ethical responsibility and opposition
towards the ‘silencing of morality’ (Bauman, 2000: 29). Yet, Emilie embodies
the difficulty of directing forgiveness towards those who although they may
suffer from guilt are in truth not guilty.
170 Ceri Eldin
In the second film of part two, called Grandmother, Hapetzeder continues

to explore the transfer of memory from one family member to another.
Scholar Marianne Hirsch describes this as postmemory, or ‘the relationship
that the “generation after” bears to the personal, collective, and cultural
trauma of those who came before’ (Hirsch, 2012: 5). As a comment on for-
giveness in response to post-traumatic healing, Grandmother addresses how
the coping abilities of a Holocaust survivor can affect their approach to deal-
ing with the past. We know that psychological mechanisms vary among sur-
vivors (Hantman, 2010: 507) but the story Anatka tells of her grandmother
as an angry and unpleasant old woman suggests that the trauma she has
experienced has prevented her from achieving a sense of coherence and
wholeness about her life in old age. It may be that for some survivors forgiv-
ing allows them to have a feeling of integrity (Hantman, 2010: 520) and also
a sense of regaining control of oneself. However, many are unable to expel
such traumatic memory and hence unable to dispel resentment.
Grandmother also documents Anatka’s fear that her family history will ‘fall
into oblivion’ (Grandmother, 2009). On a visit to see her grandmother in the
USA, Anatka witnesses one rare moment when her grandmother was happy
and lucid. Even though Anatka wanted to ask her grandmother about her
war experiences and about her family that perished in the Holocaust, she
changed her mind, as she was ‘moved to pity’ by her grandmother’s happi-
ness (Grandmother, 2009). Anatka tried to capture this moment on camera
in order to store it as a rare positive family memory. But it was over too fast,
and she failed to take the photograph. The desire to take a picture of her
grandmother appears to be a desperate attempt to preserve some aspect of
her grandmother’s life before the Holocaust.
Anatka’s story exemplifies the insufficiency of knowledge that comes with
transferred memory and traumatization, a point which writer and Holocaust
survivor Primo Levi further problematized in The Drowned and the Saved
(1986). Levi held the conviction that ‘we, the survivors, are not the true wit-
nesses’, are not in full possession of the terrible truth (Levi, 1988: ix). Levi
felt a disconnection with those who were ‘submerged’ and felt that survivor
testimony, like his, was in some way inadequate. Levi’s view makes appar-
ent that even survivors can see themselves as a third person witnessing the
Holocaust. With the memory of being a visual witness to such extraordinary
murder, survivors themselves may not feel they have the authority to forgive.
What remains clear is that each individual’s experiences and suffering
are immeasurable and that an extremely large proportion of the victims’
testimonies will forever remain untold. We have inherited vivid accounts in
which survivors make brave attempts to depict their torturous experiences
to others, who – unless they have also been victims of similar atrocities –
cannot relate to the victims’ suffering.
Holocaust memory remains fragmented and incomplete and the post-
generations cannot fully understand the plight of the murdered European
Jews. This incomprehensibility of the Holocaust contributes towards the

inability to forgive the Holocaust, not only because ‘there is something
difficult to understand in all wrong-doing’ (Garrard, 2002: 151), there is
also fear that forgiving may lead to forgetting. Furthermore, we will never
know the full extent of the actions carried out during the Holocaust; we do
not even have the precise number of the perished. Thrust into a biological
association with this event, post-generations are linked to something they
did not experience, only have indirect knowledge of, and have difficulty
comprehending. Despite these difficulties, the absence of authority, the lack
of memory, the incomprehensibility of events – all of which Hapetzeder’s
series reflects upon, to varying degrees, as limitations of forgiveness – one
needs to maintain an obligation towards preserving humanity. As Levi’s for-
mer contemplation implies, and fellow survivor Simon Wiesenthal asserts:
‘Survival is a privilege which entails obligations. I am forever asking myself
what I can do for those who have not survived’ (Wiesenthal, 1989: 351).
The creation of ‘deep wounds’ (Wiesenthal, 1989: 351) in individuals and
societies means we are unable to reach a level of acceptance of events. The
suffering inflicted during the Holocaust both destroyed our faith in human-
ity and demands its return. The Holocaust is unforgivable but in its after-
math one cannot condemn humanity to hopelessness. For, from these dark
days of European history we have not only learnt about the severe cruelty
of man but also humanity’s unwavering struggle to combat these human-
made evils.
Forgiveness: A Touchstone for New Generations
Limits of Forgiveness borrows the subtitle of Simon Wiesenthal’s book The

Sunflower (Die Sonnenblume, 1998 [1976]). It is worth exploring the associa-
tion between Hapetzeder’s series and this text which poses the question:
What would you do when asked to forgive the Holocaust? After being asked
for forgiveness by a dying Nazi soldier whilst still imprisoned in a concen-
tration camp, Wiesenthal walked away without any response. Ever since, he
has questioned his decision to deny the man absolution (Wiesenthal, 1998)
which accentuates the continued power the perpetrator can hold over their
victim through this moral demand.
The book The Sunflower presents multiple perspectives on Wiesenthal’s
personal experience and frames it in a broader examination of forgive-
ness of both historic and contemporary occurrences of extraordinary evil.
Hapetzeder’s works can be seen as his personal response to the book; for he
too considers his relationship with a dying Nazi, his godfather Kurti, which
illuminates the link between death and forgiveness by an urge to tie things
up and make things right before it is too late. Hapetzeder, like Wiesenthal,
makes his experience applicable to a wider audience and treats forgiveness as
a touchstone for accessing a traumatic past and an uncertain future.
172 Ceri Eldin
In Onkel Kurti, Hapetzeder’s focus on nationalism and politics in Turkey

speaks of the relevance of the Holocaust to contemporary societies. Whilst
listening to personal reflections about the difficult position of post-gen-
eration perpetrators and bystanders, such as Hapetzeder’s realization that
because of his ancestors he has an identity tied to this atrocious past, the
audience is also confronted with the image of Turkish flags aggressively
fluttering in the wind and the patriotic chanting of children as they parade
the streets of Istanbul. The proximity of these two topics is uneasy and led
the film to be scrutinized after its second screening at Gallery Koh-i-Noor
in Copenhagen in May 2008. The film was criticized for drawing what were
viewed as ambiguous parallels between the perpetration of the Holocaust
and Turkey as a nation (Winther, 2008). This heightened sensitivity towards
Onkel Kurti in Denmark – which, without a critical eye and contextualiza-
tion, could be interpreted as a mocking of Muslim culture – corresponds
to feelings of embarrassment after the worldwide demonstrations against
the controversial Muhammad caricatures published by Danish newspaper
Jyllands-Posten in September 2005 (BBC, 2006). Hapetzeder defends his work
responding that ‘the film is an artwork and as such it will not be screened
in a mosque or a church but in the art-scene, where there is more of a criti-
cal approach’ (Hapetzeder, 2008). It is not, as the documentary format may
have one believe, attempting to depict a truth, but instead is a comment
on society which requires engagement and assessment from its audience.
Hapetzeder confidently adds: ‘it is so easy to criticise a Nazi Fascist state
or even the George Bush administration but apparently taboo to criticise
any other regime, which is accepting killings of transvestites, suppression
of minorities and torture’ (Hapetzeder, 2008). Human rights in Turkey
have repeatedly been called into question (Smith, 2004), and human rights
abuse, as Hapetzeder argues, should be confronted. Furthermore, Turkey is
not innocent in its treatment towards Jews and, less we forget that Turkey
(formerly the Ottoman Empire) is responsible for perpetrating the Armenian
genocide, and as historian Donald Bloxham explains, is a state yet to
acknowledge these crimes (Bloxham, 2003: 142).
This is relevant; not to accuse Turkey of mirroring Nazi Germany, but
rather to recognize that Hapetzeder’s use of Turkish culture is not unfounded.
Hapetzeder is drawing attention to the universal responsibility triggered by
the Holocaust; we all need to remain vigilant and not become blind to the
evils of some governments (Hapetzeder, 2008). By using the Holocaust as a
touchstone for commentary on contemporary issues, Hapetzeder is empha-
sizing that the Holocaust is a human affair – a view philosopher Hannah
Arendt held through her central work The Human Condition (1958), an
account of human existence from the ancient to modern world.
Through this work Arendt recognized what James Waller so perfectly phrased:
‘we are all students in the slow business of understanding what it means to
be human’ (Waller, 2002: 10). Arendt strives to explore the development of
humanity, and in one small but valuable section she speaks of forgiveness
which takes its position in the space between humanity’s past and future.
For Arendt, ‘the possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility
– of being unable to undo what one has done though one did not, and could
not, have known what he was doing – is the faculty of forgiving’ (Arendt,
1958: 237). She views it as a necessary act for humanity’s continuation, as
an action that ‘serves to undo deeds of the past’, and spare new generations
of sins that they may never recover from if it is not granted (Arendt, 1958:
237). In her view, the inability to forgive consequently affects new genera-
tion’s capacity to act. She sees it not simply as a reaction to past deeds but as
an unpredictable new action which retains an element of the original deed,
yet frees ‘from its consequences both the one who forgives and the one who
is forgiven’ (Arendt, 1958: 241).
What is striking about Arendt’s discussion is her insistence that forgive-
ness is essential for us to live untainted by the past.Yyet she quite explicitly
assigns events of radical evil as unforgivable; they transcend the realm of
human affairs and take away our very power to forgive and in doing so
define themselves as unforgivable (Arendt, 1958: 241).As Hapetzeder’s work
demonstrates, one cannot recover from events of radical evil. There is no
way to counteract the events with a gesture of good will nor should we want
to. We cannot forgive, because of the very nature of the crimes. But still, it
is necessary, to go on.
Despite the obviously important use of subjects with familial links to
World War II, Hapetzeder’s series also expresses what Hirsch deems affiliative
postmemory – a horizontal generational transfer of memory from those with
familial links to those without (Hirsch, 2012: 36). Hapetzeder’s cousin Emilie
cannot understand why an Australian she once met would want to ‘concern
himself’ with the Holocaust when he is not obliged to through his identity
(Onkel Kurti, 2008). But the effects of the Holocaust are not confined by the
borders of countries. As illustrated by Arendt and Derrida, when we think
of the Holocaust it is necessary to think of it in terms of humanity, despite
the term’s shortcomings. This is not to displace responsibility, as Arendt
has previously been accused, but to acknowledge the responsibility of all to
remember, learn and prevent. Many of the characteristics of genocide still
reside in the world and we should not isolate the Holocaust to the extent
that we cannot transfer elements of our learning.
International laws have categorized the Holocaust as ‘crimes against
humanity’, a collective of crimes committed by itself, against itself. We have
to think then that if we were to forgive we would be forgiving ourselves for
crimes that we as humans are heir to (Derrida, 2001: 29), there would be no
innocent person to grant forgiveness, and the guilty certainly do not have
the authority to do so. Derrida sees the compulsion today to seek forgive-
ness as a consequence of the obscure limits of terms such as crimes against
humanity (Derrida, 2001: 30). It must also be the reason why Derrida views
174 Ceri Eldin
it as ‘a madness of the impossible’ (Derrida, 2001: 45). This reduction to an

unintelligible madness may be interpreted as an attempt to render the con-
cept void. Instead, Derrida suggests that perhaps it is the only thing which
surprises the ordinary course of history, politics and law, and can change
our ordinary course of understanding (Derrida, 2001: 39). The radical evil of
the Holocaust fuelled much of Derrida’s consideration. It is its impossibil-
ity, brought about by the thing that we cannot fully fathom and cannot be
exhausted, that reawakens our interest in this concept and gives it meaning.
Hapetzeder uses forgiveness as a point of reference from which to investigate
the possibilities for moving forward after the Holocaust. This does not mean
leaving events in the past, but instead ensuring that we carefully and con-
siderately hold onto them as we seek new methods of understanding human
nature and as we explore human potential.
Towards the end of Onkel Kurti, Hapetzeder confesses that he feels like
a victim of the mentality of his godfather’s Nazi ideology. He reasons:
‘[there] is nothing I want to invest in or change by going back and meet-
ing him again’ (Onkel Kurti, 2008), and to want to have the final say is
ridiculous. Set on the beach where land is confronted with the ocean, its
permeable wall, this scene acts as the climax of the film. It is a display of
Hapetzeder reaching the boundaries of his rational thought. You see a ship
sailing out of the harbour, the camera records it for long enough to imply
its significance. Does the ship represent the ongoing journey Hapetzeder
will take exploring his relationship to the Holocaust? Or, perhaps it repre-
sents the ability to overcome barriers? As Eaglestone’s account of Derrida’s
‘On Forgiveness’ propounds, whether or not something is possible in prac-
tice or in principle it should not be dismissed for there is still the potential
to learn a great deal from an exploration into its possibility (Eaglestone,
2004: 298).
An Alternative to Forgiveness: Reconciliation
Unlike Derrida, who ‘unsparingly fractures all ... narratives’, Arendt seems
to ‘draw the Holocaust into one or other narrative of redemption’ (Cohen,
2004: 484). In response to the unforgivable nature of the crimes that make
up the Holocaust, Arendt turns to an alternative form of resolution: recon-
ciliation. Reconciliation for Arendt is interwoven with human understand-
ing – not understanding in terms of an achievement of knowledge, which
has an end, but rather an understanding that is particular to human nature,
our search for meaning and reconciliation with and within the world. ‘It
is an unending activity by which, in constant change and variation, we
come to terms with and reconcile ourselves to reality’ (McGowan, 1998:
128, based on Arendt). Faced with what is difficult to understand and what
we realize is a human-made evil, we have to try to find new ways to be ‘at
home’ in the world (Arendt quoted in McGowan, 1998: 128).
Arendt is not alone in considering reconciliation as an alternative to for-

giveness. Often it is argued to be a more rewarding method of coming to
terms and resolving events. Reconciliation allows for a continued state of
reconciling, it does not demand a sudden completion and can be directed
towards actions themselves, not only their perpetrators. Reconciliation is
generally favoured by psychoanalysts who often dismiss the usefulness of for-
giveness as ‘magical thinking’ (Böhm and Kaplan, 2011: 173). Reconciliation
requires an increased amount of psychological processing and exchanges by
both parties, which lends itself to their argument that a compulsory agent
for successful reconciliation, lying in opposition to Derrida’s interpretation
of unconditional forgiveness, is dialogue (Böhm and Kaplan, 2011: 171).
It is striking, then, that the films that make up part two of the series are
essentially forms of extended speech. Although you only hear the voice of
the interviewee, the audience is aware that an interview has taken place
and the situation is based on dialogue. The artist, like a therapist, provides
the platform and tools for a working-through. Throughout the work Anatka
appears uncomfortable, swallowing hard, often clearing her throat and tak-
ing pauses. She speaks to herself uttering ‘OK’ as if in preparation before she
answers the question we have not heard. Anatka does not cry, she giggles
nervously and uncomfortably, perhaps because humour ‘suggests an outlook
that tragedy is unequipped to convey’ (Viano, 1999: 29). We know she has
been tormented by the memory of the Holocaust since youth and that at one
point she attempted to distance herself from it (Origin On, 2009); highlight-
ing her struggle to cope. So, talking it through in the presence of the artist
and in future a wider public, suggests she has come a long way to reconciling
with her family’s past and, as Arendt suggests is necessary, with humanity.8
Arendt’s definition of reconciliation is relevant for Holocaust survivors
and their relatives who have to come to terms with their attempted extinc-
tion in Europe, and ongoing anti-Semitism. In the artworks this is most
recognizable through comments from Robert and Anatka about their former
relationship. Anatka says that she would never have thought it possible for
her to be in a relationship with a German or Pole – and Robert has both
German and Polish relatives. For Robert and Anatka, belonging to the third
generation, forgiveness is beyond their capabilities, even though warm and
intimate environments are apt for generating reasons to forgive (Garrard,
2002: 159). Their relationship, however, appears to have been instrumental
to Anatka’s coming to terms and it has subsequently transformed her judge-
ment of Poles. Admitting her prejudices against Polish people, she suggests
that this love has enabled her to treat them ‘like any other human being’
(Origin On, 2009). Yet, the extent to which Anatka is reconciled with what
she recognizes as the country that even after the war remained anti-Semitic,
is dubious given that she insists in the film that she will never visit Poland
and that she describes her relationship to this country as charged (Origin On,
2009).9
176 Ceri Eldin
Furthermore, Anatka suggests that she viewed her relationship with

Robert as morally forbidden, claiming that at times she ‘felt like a Nazi
whore’ and thinks Robert found it ‘a bit exciting to be together with a
Jewess’ (Origin On, 2009). Albeit a mild reference to an erotic betrayal of
her Jewish identity, Anatka’s account of their relationship suggests that she
is not yet able to distance herself from identification with the Holocaust,
and is likely to never fully disregard such associations. Despite Hapetzeder’s
concentration on those with familial or national links, the reconciliation
necessary for new generations to recover is not simply between the victims,
bystanders and perpetrators. It is, as Arendt appeals, for humanity to be able
to live at ease, seeking to regain a sense of understanding about humanity
that has been lost in the abyss the Holocaust created. Derrida accurately
considers that what it is to be human is an activity constantly in the mak-
ing, rather than a thing to be re-established. In light of the Holocaust it is
to be refocused (Eaglestone, 2004: 297), as the Holocaust makes clear that
our understanding of humanity may always be in error and that we should
be asking questions and exploring our limitations, and consequently, new
possibilities, even striving to find meaning in madness.
Reconciliation cannot be equated to forgiveness, it does not demand the
same level of release or closure; it does not ‘set one free’. Forgiveness should
not be set against other similar concepts, for it must not be used in a calcu-
lated fashion (Derrida, 2001: 29). However, it is a practical tool to help new
generations to continue reducing ill-feelings and prejudice. Hence, it seems
Limits of Forgiveness serves a double function. Through an analysis of forgive-
ness it attempts to reaffirm the potent standpoint of postmodernism, in this
article transpired through Derrida, in revealing societal, psychological and
ethical structures that are often reinforced by the mind-set of individuals
and in turn by society and humanity. But, in support of Arendt’s proposi-
tion, it is clearly Hapetzeder’s intention to encourage discussion through the
work; therefore, it also appears to act as a reconciliatory tool for Hapetzeder,
the participants and for the audience.
A Dream for Thought
Speaking within a Euro-centric context, the events of the Holocaust have

uncovered the limitations of human understanding. Instead of walking
unobservant down what appears to be an increasingly more beautiful cor-
ridor like a moth mesmerized by light, we have begun to peek through
the cracks in the tiles cemented to the walls. Although behind the tiles are
bricks and who knows what lies behind those, what is significant is that we
have become aware that there is an outside even if at present we cannot
get there. Through Limits of Forgiveness Hapetzeder picks at the tiles on the
wall, at concepts such as nationalism and prejudice, aspects of society that
were once and still are accepted and he does so in an attempt to uncover
our limitations. This awareness of limitations may lead us to change. There

is a general acceptance today that the linear path of human progression
is ideological propaganda, and considering the Holocaust as a touchstone
has largely contributed towards this reconsideration of what progress is. So,
standing against the wall, peaking through the cracks, the question we must
ask is: where do we go from here?
Hapetzeder does not claim to know. This is certainly not the purpose of
the series. As an artwork it can provide access to knowledge by position-
ing itself in the in-between spaces (cf. Saltzman, 1999: 2) – neither real nor
imagined, absent nor present – but it does not guarantee answers or even
further clarity. Through a contemplation of forgiveness, and its lacking
alternatives, it is the intention of Hapetzeder to ask more questions than
give answers, to leave the audience unsure and insecure about themselves
and the world they live in. Following in the footsteps of the philosopher
that his work most resonates, Hapetzeder, like Derrida, is an ‘insomniac ...
aiming to shake [his] audiences from slumber’ and in doing so provide the
‘grounding of a new form of hope and humanism’ (Eaglestone, 2004: 10).
It is in portraying the limitations and potential of humans as a whole that
Hapetzeder intends to inspire change. Of course, this is not an attempt to
remove the perpetrators of the Holocaust of blame, of responsibility, or even
deny the presence of human-made evil. This is about creating awareness. It
is, as Derrida deems forgiveness, ‘a dream for thought’ (Derrida, 2001: 60).
Throughout my reading of Hapetzeder’s series there has been a gentle nod
in the direction of Eaglestone, and I am inclined to agree with him once
again. He argues that to write that the Holocaust has changed humanity and
humanity’s perception of the world is a cliché, but ‘to think through what
this cliché might really mean, what world is revealed after the Holocaust,
is harder’ (Eaglestone, 2004: 340). The difficulty of Holocaust representa-
tion has been contemplated over and over again, particularly in response to
Adorno’s dictum, and much like all other representations the series is con-
sciously a work of negotiation (Zelizer, 2001: 11). It is reactionary, with each
instalment made as a consequence of further contemplation or experience;
what could be called an evolving representation. It is not perfect or compre-
hensive, there is nothing particularly pleasing or beautiful in the series, and
it is likely this is intentional. Instead, Hapetzeder’s observational prowess
supplies us with a truly postmodern aesthetic, a work that ‘denies itself the
solace of good forms’ and ‘searches for new presentations’ (Cazeaux, 2000:
368). Limits of Forgiveness does not veil our inability to completely move on.
Through a contemplation of the factors affecting our ability to forgive it
uncovers the structures at play in individual mind-sets, society, politics, and
in our conception of humanity. So, to end, I propose what historian Saul
Friedländer writes, that in ‘crossing boundaries usually left unquestioned
fresh insights and new spaces of dialogue can emerge’ (Friedländer, 1992: 8),
spaces that we hope will inevitably lead us to change.
178 Ceri Eldin
Notes
1. In email correspondence with Hapetzeder, he debates the use of the term ‘post-
modern’ in the title of this text on the grounds that he views it to be an outdated
term in the art world. Instead, he considers himself to be an artist working with
contemporary art (email correspondence between Hapetzeder and author in
September 2013).
2. This article builds on an essay written by the author on the course The Holocaust
in European Historiography studied at Uppsala University between 2012 and 2014.
I owe a debt of gratitude to my supervisor, Tanja Schult, who first introduced me
to the work of Hapetzeder and has since, with several others (including the artist
Felice Hapetzeder and participant Anatka Barczewska), given me support in the
writing of this text.
3. The works Sip on my Ocean by Pippilotti Rist and later Der Sandmann by Stan
Douglas and Queen of Mud by Swedish artist Ann-Sofie Sidén in particular inspired
Hapetzeder’s move towards the production of moving images.
4. Examples include the short extract in the book El Basilisco by Esteban Álvarez,
Cristina Schiavi and Tamara Stuby (2013) and the Retrospective Catalogue 2009 by
the Hordaland Art Centre in Norway (2010).
5. The Facebook page Limits of Forgiveness created by Hapetzeder (2007) has been
used to research and support some of the arguments made in this article. The
page can be accessed at m.facebook.com/groups/6405257049. Further details of
Hapetzeder’s artwork can be found at www.hapetzeder.com.
6. Anatka Barczewska is an artist herself who works with photography and painting.
She has an MD in Fine Arts from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm,
Sweden.
7. Limits of Forgiveness has English subtitles which contain some errors.
8. In email correspondence with Barczewska late in the writing of this text (December
2014) she disagrees with the view that participation in the interview with artist
Felice Hapetzeder was a theraputic experience. Instead, she says that her participa-
tion was motivated by her commitment to the project and the cause more gener-
ally. She admits to have felt very uncomfortable throughout the interview and
later regretted having been so self-revealing, largely because she thought that her
answers may have seemed odd to the audience of the artwork (email correspondence
between Barczewska and author on 25 December 2014).
9. Despite Barczewska’s opposition to visiting Poland, since footage for Origin On was
recorded and released in 2009, she has been to Poland twice; to attend a Jewish
festival and to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau. These experiences have further altered
her perception of the country and have aided her reconciliation with this place.
However, Germany remains still a place she will not visit and that when those
close to her express positive views towards Berlin, she feels disappointed, thinking
that this reinforces her view that Swedish collective memory is short. Furthermore,
she views that in light of the revival of Fascist movements and rising anti-Semi-
tism in Europe her reconciliation with events has stalled (email correspondence
between Barczewska and author, 25 December 2014).
Sources
Hapetzeder, Felice (2008) Onkel Kurti (23´ HDV). Istanbul, Turkey: IASPIS Platform
Garanti.
—— (2009) Grandmother (54´ HDV). Sweden: BAC Visby, Film på Gotland, Svensk-
Norska Samarbetsfonden and HKS Bergen.
—— (2009) Origin On (54´ HDV). Sweden: BAC Visby, Film på Gotland, Svensk-Norska
Samarbetsfonden and HKS Bergen.
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Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 280–1, pp. 19–34.
—— (2007 [1962]) ‘Commitment’, in Aesthetics and Politics, trans. Francis McDonagh,
New York: Verso, pp. 177–95.
Arendt, Hannah (1958) The Human Condition, Chicago/London: Chicago University
Press, pp. 236–243.
Bauman, Zygmunt (2000) Modernity and the Holocaust, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
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(accessed 6 December 2014).
Bloxham, Donald (2003) ‘The Armenian Genocide of 19151916: Cumulative
Radicalisation and the Development of a Destructive Policy’, Past and Present 181,
pp. 141–91.
Böhm, Tomas and Suzanne Kaplan (2011) Revenge: On the Dynamics of a Frightening
Urge and its Taming, London: Karnac Books.
Cazeaux, Clive (2000) The Continental Aesthetics Reader, London/New York: Routledge,
pp. 365–487.
Cohen, Josh (2004) ‘Post-Holocaust Philosophy’, The Historiography of the Holocaust,
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Derrida, Jacques (2001) On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness, trans. Mark Dooley and
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Eaglestone, Robert (2004) The Holocaust and the Postmodern, Oxford/New York: Oxford
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Friedländer, Saul (1992) ‘Introduction’, in Probing the Limits of Representation,
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ble/27504230 (accessed 14 September 2013).
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Holocaust: Conservations with Sons and Daughters of Survivors’, in Holocaust Literature
of the Second Generation, Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 42–57.
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Saltzman, Lisa (1999) Anselm Kiefer and Art after Auschwitz, Cambridge/New York/
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Part III
Rethinking Representation in
Literature and Popular Culture
12
Auschwitz, Adorno and the
Ambivalence of Representation:
The Holocaust as a Point of Reference
in Contemporary Literature
Hampus Östh Gustafsson
Among the terrible crimes committed during World War II, particular atten-
tion has been drawn to Auschwitz. The Nazi concentration camp occupies a
prominent symbolic position in post-war culture, where representations of
the Holocaust remain marked by ambivalences that are often not unprob-
lematic. In this context, the well-known dictum of Theodor W. Adorno,
formulated in 1949, ‘to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric’, has been
of central importance (Adorno, 1997 [1967]: 34). The dictum has – almost
like Auschwitz – been treated as a point of reference, debated and referred
to time and again. In spite of Adorno’s words, poetry as well as novels were
written in the aftermath of the Holocaust – in large quantities.
In fact, Adorno’s dictum has been regarded as misunderstood. Andrew
S. Gross and Klaus Hofmann claim that the dictum was taken out of its
context and that Adorno never meant art would be impossible after the
Holocaust (Gross, 2010: 206; Hofmann, 2005: 182, 192). The dictum should
be interpreted within a framework of wider cultural criticism since, for
Adorno, the traditional dialectical relationship between Western culture
and barbarism has collapsed in the aftermath of the Holocaust. In this new
reality he no longer finds an opposition between (cultural) poetry and bar-
barism. Auschwitz does not eliminate art, but demands of it to be radically
different than before (Adorno, 1997: 34; Gross, 2010: 207; Hofmann, 2005:
188). Elsewhere Adorno clarified that he primarily questioned the possibility
of deriving aesthetic pleasure from artistic representations after Auschwitz,
stressing the paradoxical character of such representations, whose continued
existence he still regarded as necessary (Adorno, 1965: 125–6). Later Adorno
stated that ‘[p]erennial suffering has as much right to expression as a tor-
tured man has to scream; hence it may have been wrong to say that after
Auschwitz you could no longer write poems’ (Adorno, 2000 [1966]: 362). If
not refuting his dictum, Adorno, here at least, does not deny the possibility
of conducting artistic representations after Auschwitz.
183
184 Hampus Östh Gustafsson
The misunderstandings of Adorno’s dictum should, however, not be

ignored since they raise questions of great relevance in their own respect.
One of the authors Gross accuses of having misinterpreted Adorno by
treating ‘barbaric’ and ‘impossible’ as synonyms is the American writer Siri
Hustvedt (Gross, 2010: 206). Her 2003 novel What I Loved contains several
explicit and implicit references to Auschwitz and Adorno’s dictum, without
focusing on the Holocaust in particular. That is also the case of Swedish
author Bodil Malmsten’s novel Sista boken från Finistère (The Last Book
from Finistère, 2008).1 My analysis of these seemingly peripheral references
to artistic representation of the Holocaust by two contemporary writers
belonging to the generation that grew up after World War II, aims to high-
light the general character of Holocaust memory today and the Holocaust
functioning as a point of reference. The fact that references to Auschwitz and
Adorno appear at all in contemporary literature is well worth investigating.
As Michael Rothberg pointed out, we live in an era preoccupied with
trauma, and therefore, we need to study how stories and images about trau-
mas and extreme historical events are circulated (Rothberg, 2000: 7). Both
Malmsten and Hustvedt deal with the haunting presence of an unfinished
past, albeit in different ways. While Hustvedt’s characters have more personal
relations to Auschwitz, Malmsten’s protagonist and narrator appears at first
sight to be distanced from it. My discussion of Hustvedt’s and Malmsten’s
novels will touch upon the question of the role played by the Holocaust in
contemporary art and literature, and in collective memory in general. In later
decades, the growing distance in time and the passing away of survivors have
posed new challenges to how the Holocaust can be memorized and repre-
sented. Discussions about the intergenerational transferability of trauma and
memory have been triggered by this new context as reflected in studies by
Marianne Hirsch (2012: 1–2). Scholars Susanne Rohr and Sophia Komor have
pointed out the dramatic changes that occurred especially since the 1990s, in
representational strategies in film, literature and art, suggesting that it would
be appropriate to talk about a paradigm shift since many earlier taboos of
representing trauma had been broken (Komor and Rohr, 2010: 9).
Hustvedt’s and Malmsten’s novels are preferably understood in the context
of an ongoing reconsideration of Holocaust representation in contemporary
memory culture. These novels are here discussed in relation to Adorno’s
dictum, in order to reflect upon how artistic representation itself has been
questioned. Special consideration will be given to the emerging tension
between an understanding of Auschwitz as the ultimate point of reference,
or as a universal metaphor of evil, and as a reminder of the obligation to
remember the actual history of this site and the atrocities conducted there.
Auschwitz at the Atlantic Ocean
In Bodil Malmsten’s autofictional novel Sista boken från Finistère the nar-
rator introduces us to her experiences and sentiments marked by sorrow,
Auschwitz, Adorno and the Ambivalence of Representation 185
apparently a person caught in a deep personal life crisis. This character

already appears in Malmsten’s earlier novel, Priset på vatten i Finistère (The
Price of Water in Finistère, 2001). There, disappointed with a Sweden that
broke the old ideals of the welfare state, she moves to Finistère on the
Atlantic coast, just like Malmsten herself did for a decade. Finistère is the
place ‘where the earth ends in Europe – fin des terres, finis terrae’ (Malmsten,
2011 [2001]: 7), and where she appears to live peacefully, working in her
garden and socializing with the neighbours.
In the sequel, however, the narrator is forced to sign the contract of sale
and move to a city close to Nantes. She goes through a seemingly traumatic
process and does not know how to deal with it. After losing her house,
‘the Atlantic is the only fixed point I have, this floating, shifting, always
alternately immutable Atlantic’ (Malmsten, 2009: 79). In her search for ori-
entation in an empty spiritual landscape, references to Auschwitz occur, if
only sporadically. For example, the narrator refers to Imre Kértesz’s novels
about surviving Auschwitz while reflecting upon the loss of her Finistère
(Malmsten, 2009: 105). The narrator claims she understands what Kértesz
went through, although his experiences are not comparable to her own:
‘Not that I compare the city close to Nantes where I have relegated myself
to a concentration camp, no way – it cannot be done, it is incomparable just
as everything basically is incomparable’ (Malmsten, 2009: 132).
Here Malmsten touches upon a fundamental problem regarding represen-
tations of the Holocaust. Through a historicizing perspective every event
becomes unique. But if every event is as unique as another, what happens
then to the unique status of the Holocaust? Is it perhaps still comparable
to other unique events in respect of its own uniqueness? A fundamental
uniqueness appears at least to be something that every event has in
common.
The unique character of the Holocaust has been debated repeatedly. Alan
Milchman and Alan Rosenberg describe it as ‘the one issue most likely to
generate partisan debate, and to provoke emotional heat in discussion’
(Milchman and Rosenberg, 2003: 444). The view of the Holocaust as a
unique event is to be understood in the context of the historical thinking
of the modern age based on the historicist fundament that every historical
event is unique (e.g. Iggers, 1973: 457–8). For Milchman and Rosenberg,
the Holocaust, of which they consider Auschwitz to be emblematic, can
be regarded as a unique event that stands out in history because of its
‘potential of transforming a culture’ or for opening ‘a door into a world
in which human-made mass-death can become constitutive of the socio-
cultural matrix’ (Milchman and Rosenberg, 2003: 446). For Malmsten too,
the Holocaust unlike other unique events is elevated to a higher level of
uniqueness and generality, from which it can function as a universal point
of reference around which Malmsten’s narrator can express her own emo-
tions. There is, however, a problematic tension in this elevation of the
Holocaust, since it can lead to a trivialization of the actual historical event.
Malmsten demonstrates an awareness of this problem when the protagonist

of her novel claims she does not compare her own situation to Auschwitz.
However, the comparison is already made, albeit in an indirect manner.
Why does Auschwitz appear as such an obvious point of reference with
which to compare other tragedies? In Malmsten’s novel, the protagonist is
struggling with highly personal problems at a completely different place,
in a different time, and in a novel that does not deal with the Holocaust.
Regardless of the repudiation of comparing the city close to Nantes with
Auschwitz, comparisons of the narrator’s experiences with events connected
with the Holocaust reappear in Sista boken från Finistère. One example is
when the narrator criticizes people who do not take responsibility. To not
do anything is also a kind of activity, she points out. History should have
taught us how fatal the banality of everyday situations can be. Here the nar-
rator alludes to Hannah Arendt’s thesis on the banality of evil through the
phrase: ‘Adolf Eichmann in all his banality of evil’ (Malmsten, 2009: 158).
What Malmsten’s narrator seems to point out as most troublesome is that
almost anyone can act in an irresponsible manner.
Already in Priset på vatten i Finistère, Malmsten highlights Sweden’s neutral-
ity during World War II (Malmsten, 2011: 46) as the narrator feels burdened
with ‘the great guilt from my former motherland that haunts me’ (Malmsten,
2011: 160). The indifferent bystander is the villain in Sista boken från Finistère,
where the Holocaust functions as a reminder of the importance of not falling
into that role. The narrator despises the passivity of the Swedish people and
compares their irresponsibility to Eichmann’s behaviour (Malmsten, 2009:
158). This appears as an exaggeration, but is part of a larger pattern, in which
the Holocaust as a historical event is elevated to a general level as a moral
point of reference. Dan Diner has pointed out that together with setting ‘the
principal stamp on our epoch’, the Holocaust and its ‘primeval existential
and epistemological meaning’ is related to ‘the founding myths of our civi-
lization itself’ (Diner, 2000: 4). The predominant position of the Holocaust
in contemporary discourse can be compared to the status of biblical events
(with the obvious difference that not all of the latter can be verified as real
historical events). Malmsten’s narrator compares her crisis to what Job went
through in the Old Testament. She reads about Job not because she recog-
nizes herself in his sufferings, but ‘in order to avoid recognizing myself’
(Malmsten, 2009: 204–5). In this case, the function of the biblical reference is
to create distance. The references to Auschwitz and Eichmann may function
in a similar way. The narrator claims she is going through ‘a grieving for
which I have no tools’ (Malmsten, 2009: 52). By comparing the personal
crisis to the distant and ultimate tragedy of the Holocaust, Malmsten’s nar-
rator attempts to get a different perspective in order to come to terms with
her own sorrows. Eichmann is thus treated as the ultimate symbol of irre-
sponsibility that Malmsten’s narrator can compare her own situation with
when she finds herself surrounded by irresponsible people (Malmsten, 2009:
157–8). Since the Holocaust seems to have reached such a predominant posi-
tion in collective memory, also in a Swedish context, it becomes natural for
Malmsten to refer to the Holocaust in order to explain her narrator’s chaotic
feelings of sorrow in Sista boken från Finistère; even though she is well aware
of the problems arising from comparing a personal crisis to a genocide.
Auschwitz Imprinted in Collective Memory
The influence of Holocaust memory extends far beyond Auschwitz to

the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Siri Hustvedt’s novel What I Loved is
primarily set in the vivacious art scene in the urban environment of New
York, with its large Jewish population, where references to the Holocaust are
not sensational (Rosenthal, 2011: 73). In this setting, the characters’ personal
relationships to Auschwitz appear to be more self-evident than in Malmsten’s
novel. Among the city’s large Jewish community we get acquainted with pro-
tagonist Leo Hertzberg, who was born in Berlin by Jewish parents. His wife’s
family also left Germany before World War II (Hustvedt, 2003: 7–8, 21–2). To
Hertzberg, ‘the Holocaust constitutes the quintessential discourse of absence,
an absence that signifies unspeakable horror’ and constantly looms behind
the text, as Caroline Rosenthal noted (2011: 83). References to what happened
in Europe during the war are part of this couple’s everyday life in New York.
The main characters’ daily occupations, painting, and writing poetry and
academic texts themselves, offer the space for recurring reflections on the
meaning of art and literature. An emphasis on literature as space for reflection
is also present in Malmsten’s works where in both books the narrator is strug-
gling to write a novel (e.g. Malmsten, 2011: 139 and Malmsten, 2009: 143–5).
Auschwitz is particularly present in What I Loved through Hertzberg’s
memories of his uncle David. While looking at artist Bill Wechsler’s painting
of skeletal children, Hertzberg thinks of ‘the numbers that were burned into
the arms of people after they arrived at the Nazi death camps’ (Hustvedt,
2003: 85). His uncle had been the only member of his family ‘who had lived
long enough to be branded with a number’ (Hustvedt, 2003: 85). His cousins
died in Auschwitz-Birkenau while David survived until the march out of
the camp (Hustvedt, 2003: 232). The memory of David and his family’s fate
is haunting Hertzberg and also his son, Matthew, whose paintings always
include an old man with the name of Dave (Hustvedt, 2003: 108–9). ‘Yes’,
Hertzberg concludes, ‘Dave is always there somewhere’ (Hustvedt, 2003:
140). The presence of Dave in Matthew’s paintings reflects how the mem-
ory of David is coming back once and again in Leo Hertzberg’s life. Later,
Hertzberg even identifies himself with Dave (Hustvedt, 2003: 366). The fact
that it is Hertzberg’s son who paints Dave is pointing to the generational
transmission of trauma. Just as Dave can be found in Matthew’s paintings
as a lone man, the Holocaust stands out as an event that continues to affect
family histories and collective memories alike.
Hertzberg’s life changes when he meets painter Bill Wechsler. They

become close family friends and spend their holidays together. Special
bonds are forged between Hertzberg’s son, Matthew, born only 15 days
before Mark, Wechsler’s son from his first marriage. The two boys go on
a summer camp, an event that radically changes the development of the
story. While the first part of the novel could be seen as a celebration of
life and artistic beauty, the second part comes as a shock as it begins with
the announcement of Matthew’s death. The boy has drowned in a canoe
accident during the camp. The accident changes Hertzberg’s life completely
(Hustvedt, 2003: 36–9, 150–1). Just like his father who could not make it
in the wake of the Holocaust, Hertzberg struggles to come to terms with
Matthew’s death. His grief is described as follows: ‘It’s hard to live with non-
sense – gruesome, unspeakable nonsense’ (Hustvedt, 2003: 366). Hertzberg
spends more and more time with Mark, whose teenage life is taking an
uncanny turn, not least through his friendship with the scandalous artist
Teddy Giles (Hustvedt, 2003: 209–12). Hertzberg’s vain attempts to get
Mark back on track force him to face dark sides of human life. His struggle
to deal with personal trauma remains the focus of part two and three of
the novel.
The problems faced by Hertzberg in What I Loved and by Malmsten’s nar-
rator in Sista boken från Finstère resemble a kind of rupture. Malmsten’s Priset
på vatten i Finistère is similar to the first part of What I Loved in its depiction
of how the narrator settles down in the peaceful Finistère. This is followed
by the sudden setback in Sista boken från Finistère, when she has to leave her
house. As the novel begins: ‘I was one who found my Finistère and now it
is lost’ (Malmsten, 2009: 9). Auschwitz is referred to in both novels in order
to find orientation in the traumatic wastelands that the characters move
through. Perhaps the ruptures in the novels could be interpreted as mirroring
the role of Auschwitz in post-war culture. For example, Hertzberg starts to
suffer from an incipient blindness, which can be seen as a metaphor of the
difficulties to enjoy many of the artistic representations he once loved, as
the art historian he is (Hustvedt, 2003: 356–7). This resonates with Adorno’s
opinion that Auschwitz obstructed the feeling of authentic aesthetic pleas-
ure (Adorno, 1965: 125–6). The disasters in Malmsten’s and Hustvedt’s
novels are consequently followed by investigations of what role art might
play in the wake of traumatic events together with the struggle of the pro-
tagonists to not succumb to the meaninglessness they feel overwhelmed by.
In both novels Auschwitz tends to work as a magnetic pole, attracting
the compass needles of people going through difficulties. Auschwitz as a
pars pro toto for the Holocaust was noted already by Adorno, who regarded
Auschwitz as a ‘new categorical imperative’, forcing mankind ‘to arrange
their thoughts and actions so that Auschwitz will not repeat itself’ (Adorno,
2000: 365). In a similar way, Gross notes that scholars have interpreted the
Holocaust as a global and ‘a common condemnation of a universal wrong’
(Gross, 2010: 223). Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi also underlines that ‘a new aes-
thetics and ethics of representation are being forged with Auschwitz as the
ultimate point of reference’, an ‘event whose interpretation controls the
meaning of the present and the future’ (DeKoven Ezrahi, 1995: 121, 144).
But can such general references to Auschwitz be made without eroding its
real historical content?
Berel Lang has noted that ‘what in fact becomes an increasingly pressing
concern as the passage of time provides space for additional reflection and
innovation, is the question of how such an event, that one in particular,
can or should be “represented”’ (Lang, 2000: 3–4). In his 2010 bestseller
novel, Beatrice and Virgil, Yann Martel also raises the question of how the
Holocaust can be revisited through artistic representation, as his main
character Henry, asks if it is not through diverse and often trivializing
representations that we understand historical events (Martel, 2010: 9–11).
Representations of the Holocaust are limited by the contours of the actual
historical event, but there is a risk that the historical atrocity and the vic-
tims will be disrespected if these contours are overlooked (Lang, 2000: 11,
14). Facing the problem of how to revisit the Holocaust today, attention has
been drawn to the very fundaments of artistic representation. Hustvedt’s
and Malmsten’s novels contribute to call those fundaments into question.
The Holocaust emerges as a much-needed point of reference in their nov-
els, but it also brings obstacles with it, which must be overcome. Malmsten
and Hustvedt cannot avoid commenting upon Adorno’s dictum explicitly.
And as Gross notes, the dictum calls art itself into question by addressing
‘the impossibility of either adequately representing or ignoring the horrible
event’ (Gross, 2010: 205).
Adorno – Misunderstood and Challenged
In one of Wechsler’s portraits of Violet Blom, who is to become Wechsler’s

second wife (Hustvedt, 2003: 67), Hertzberg notes several pairs of shoes
in the background. He asks Wechsler if the ‘portrait referred to the death
camps’. Wechsler answers yes and then they ‘talked about Adorno for
over an hour. The philosopher had said there could be no art after the
camps’ (Hustvedt, 2003: 23). Piles of shoes can be seen at Auschwitz and
have gained such a symbolic meaning that they, in combination with the
emaciated woman in the foreground of Wechsler’s painting, immediately
make Hertzberg think of Auschwitz. Once again, we face the Holocaust as
a universe of its own, as it is treated in Western culture today. On a sym-
bolic level, shoes make up a core element of this universe as they appear
in museal representations, memorials and feature films. As represented in
Hustvedt’s case, it appears as entirely natural that the novel’s characters
understand the shoe reference and that they then speak about Adorno for
more than an hour.
In Sista boken från Finistère Malmsten refers to Adorno’s dictum with the
following words: ‘I have always thought that it would be barbaric to not
write poetry after Auschwitz ... To not write poetry after Auschwitz would
be like giving the barbarians the last word’ (Malmsten, 2009: 133). Here,
Malmsten’s narrator opposes the dictum explicitly. She feels forced to deal
with matters that might seem barbaric to write about, since she understands
it as necessary to not let the ‘true’ barbarians get the last word. It might be
impossible to represent what happened in Auschwitz in a ‘civilized’ way.
Representations might be inaccurate or trivializing, but as a consequence
of how she interprets Adorno, Malmsten points out that such ‘barbarism’ is
better than no representation at all.
What Malmsten suggests is reminiscent of what Martel writes in Beatrice
and Virgil. We need to write poetry after Auschwitz to understand the
Holocaust better, but according to Malmsten’s narrator, poetry must also
be written in order to take a moral stand. A recurring theme in Sista
boken från Finistère is Malmsten’s aforementioned attacks on passivity
or irresponsibility. Her narrator regrets that she remained silent and did
not try to challenge her former admirer monsieur Le R’s racial prejudices
(Malmsten, 2009: 80–1). She connects this passivity to how German troops
were allowed to pass through Sweden during World War II and cannot rid
herself of feelings of guilt. She knows she was not involved personally, but
as a Swede she still feels responsible for the ones who were involved. She
carries a ‘feeling of guilt’ and elevates this feeling to an even higher level
of generality as she cannot deny being a member of homo sapiens: ‘Human
being I am and as such capable of the worst and even worse – to let the
worst pass and not speaking up’ (Malmsten, 2009: 80). Already in Priset på
vatten i Finistère Malmsten writes that to ‘remain silent is a crime which
is worse than all other crimes’ (Malmsten, 2011: 236). To Malmsten, not
only active murderers should be blamed, but also the silent bystanders. In
accordance with this theme, where passivity is denounced, she lets her nar-
rator challenge Adorno’s dictum. Irrespective of the problems that go along
with writing poetry about and after Auschwitz, it must be done. Only then,
suggests Malmsten’s narrator, can the fatal position of passivity be avoided.
Artistic creativity, or activity, gives a possibility of coming to terms with
the dark past. It is also through artistic creativity, by writing a novel, that
Malmsten’s narrator attempts to convince herself that she can get through
her own personal trauma, or at least alleviate it to a manageable extent
(Malmsten, 2009: 218).
Art appears as a kind of therapy in What I Loved as well. The characters
of the novel turn to artistic representations in order to make some meaning
out of the tragedies they go through, which would otherwise remain
unbearable and inexplicable. In addition, Hustvedt raises questions about
the degree to which art can be shocking and wallow itself in death and suf-
fering. Thereby, she complicates the issue more than Malmsten does, with
her view of writing poetry after Auschwitz as a moral question of taking a

stand between remaining passive or act against barbarism.
The Barbarian Invasion of Artistic Domains
In the second and third part of What I Loved, Wechsler’s son, Mark, stands
in the centre of the novel. At first glance, he appears to be a nice, young
boy, playing together with Hertzberg’s son, Matthew, before the latter’s
death. However, Mark’s life as a teenager takes an unexpected turn. Mark
gets involved in several dreadful incidents, especially since he has become
friend with the artist Teddy Giles, who eventually is a suspect for murder
and sentenced for manslaughter. Giles’ artworks, characterized by blood and
violence, had once been celebrated (Hustvedt, 2003: 299–300). Suddenly,
this perception is turned inside out. ‘What had been seen as a clever com-
mentary on the horror genre began to look like the sadistic fantasies of a
murderer’ (Hustvedt, 2003: 342). In this case, the border between art and
barbarism is thus depicted as subtle. Can they be combined or is it only
inappropriate to cross the border between them? Hustvedt develops the
problem further by highlighting an interesting point. Reflecting upon what
Mark and Giles have done, Hertzberg states:
I knew that by some definition both Teddy Giles and Mark Wechsler
were insane, examples of an indifference many regard as monstrous and
unnatural; but in fact they weren’t unique and their actions were recog-
nizably human. Equating horror with the inhuman has always struck me
as convenient but fallacious, if only because I was born into a century
that should have ended such talk for good. (Hustvedt, 2003: 346)
The historical experiences of what happened during the 20th century are
consequently determining the way Hertzberg regards Mark’s and Giles’
behaviour. In this context, it is likely that Hustvedt had the Holocaust in
mind as the culmination of those dark experiences. What the Holocaust
demonstrated in an unprecedented way was how barbaric human beings
could behave. This opens up for Hustvedt an opportunity to challenge
Adorno’s dictum. Art should not be interpreted as impossible after
Auschwitz, but has to include or deal with barbarism since it is a universal
human potential, argues Hustvedt. There are dark aspects of our exist-
ence which we can no longer ignore. Just as the numbers on the arm of
Hertzberg’s uncle, the experience of the Holocaust has been ingrained so
deeply into collective memory that it calls for attention time and again,
pointing out a fundamental experience of the modern world which we
have to come to terms with in one way or another. Malmsten’s remark that
her narrator is a human being ‘and as such capable of the worst and even
worse’ resembles strongly with Hustvedt’s take on the human potential of
being monstrous. Both of them focus on this potential and the Holocaust is
regarded as decisive proof of its existence.
Hertzberg’s inability to come to terms with what he has gone through
leads to a loss of his own identity (Gross, 2010: 220). How painful and
impossible it yet might seem for him to confront and construct meaning
out of his traumatic experiences, he does not give up his excursion into
the dark regions of human nature. Both Hustvedt and Malmsten stress
the negative aspects of human beings as something natural, which we
have to face. Could that be the reason why Hertzberg loses himself as a
subject when he confronts the inexplicable evil? Is he perhaps realizing
that, while exploring ‘repressed, darker aspects of the human mind’, as
Rosenthal describes it (2011: 88), through a process which is mirrored by
his beginning blindness, he is in fact exploring what could be a part of
himself?
Thus, the Holocaust seems to have opened up a new horizon of under-
standing regarding humankind, which is of course reflected in art following
the Holocaust. This partly explains why Auschwitz is treated as a point of
reference, and also why authors like Hustvedt and Malmsten feel a need
to confront Adorno’s dictum. The questions they are raising concern the
innermost character of human beings and the altered preconditions of what
art can or perhaps has to be. Important for these authors’ confrontations
with Adorno is their emphasis that art can no longer be what it once had
been – ironically, just as Adorno himself seems to have meant. It is, however,
one thing to conclude that art has to develop new perspectives and ways
of expression after Auschwitz, and another to demonstrate how this can be
done in a successful way. Are people always in possession of sufficient con-
ceptual and commemorative capacities in order to deal with the exceptional
difficulties they go through?
Limitations of Knowledge, Language and Memory
We shall now look closer at how Hustvedt and Malmsten deal with such
issues through their reflections on the nature of art and literature. Adorno
himself highlighted that after Auschwitz ‘art must turn against itself, in
opposition to its own concept’ (quoted by Cohen, 2005: 480). Art dealing
with the Holocaust tends to be self-reflexive (Krankenhagen, 2001: 79) as
it recognizes its own limitations and difficulties in adequately representing
the Holocaust. ‘Art must thus absorb into itself its own collapse as a form of
knowledge’, remarks Josh Cohen (2005: 480–1).
Malmsten’s narrator’s struggle to write a novel illustrates the difficulty of
representing experiences or feelings which seem to be impossible to reach
through ordinary language. ‘I know that I can but when it is time I can-
not access it’, she comments upon her own writing (Malmsten, 2009: 145).
Words do not seem enough, or at least she finds herself incapable of finding
the right words. As the narrator continues later on: ‘the worst is that the
written book never is more than a shadow of itself, of what it could have
been’ (Malmsten, 2009: 218). Still, Malmsten’s narrator continues with her
writing, even though her written words will trivialize what she feels. The
duty to not fall back into passivity overcomes the ambivalence between
respecting her overwhelming feelings as they are and representing them
through a kind of self-therapy.
In What I Loved, Hustvedt addresses another problematic side of the issue
of representation, in this case by focusing on troublesome pasts. She points
to the selective nature of memory, which makes representations inaccurate.
As Hertzberg says in the novel, to forget ‘is probably as much a part of life
as remembering’ (Hustvedt, 2003: 18). This does not mean his past is erased.
His Jewish origins and the fate of his relatives in Europe do not belong to a
closed past, but come back to him every so often and call for his attention.
The point is that these memories are not static, but revised by the aged
Hertzberg. He notes that:
Cicero’s speaker walked through spacious, well-lit rooms he remembered

and dropped words onto tables and chairs where they could be easily
retrieved. No doubt I have assigned a vocabulary to the architecture of
my first five years – one mediated through the mind of a man who knows
the horror that would arrive after the little boy was gone from the apart-
ment [in Berlin]. (Hustvedt, 2003: 21)
Hertzberg’s revisions of his childhood memories underline the challeng-

ing task of constructing a narrative of the past he can live with. How can
we remember and express our memories in an appropriate way when we
know that our memories are inaccurate, just as the representation of them?
Hertzberg reflects further on how we live with our memories:
We manufacture stories; after all, from the fleeting sensory material that
bombards us at every instant, a fragmented series of pictures, conversa-
tions, odors, and the touch of things and people. We delete most of it to
live with some semblance of order, and the reshuffling of memory goes
on until we die. (Hustvedt, 2003: 120)
This description of an individual process of ordering the world can be seen

as a parallel to the more collective tradition of representing the Holocaust.
Often it has appeared as a too vast and incomprehensible event to give a
fixed meaning through textual or artistic representation. However, ‘most
people aren’t comfortable with ambiguity’, as Hertzberg notes (Hustvedt,
2003: 255). And since some parts of the past will not go away, we find
many examples of attempts to give it meaning, although such narrative
constructions might be renegotiated later on. The past is also discussed in
Sista boken från Finistère where Malmsten makes an interesting reference to

Marcel Proust:
The past does not move itself, writes Marcel Proust ... The past is solid and
lasting, unmovable, but the one whose past it is, the one harboring a certain
past, the one providing space within oneself to a specific past, a personal
then, that one is in motion, that one is moving. (Malmsten, 2009: 63)
Malmsten’s narrator moves in relation to a past, whose significance will be

conditioned by the narrator’s movements. What has happened cannot be
undone or ignored, but at the same time she does not have the strength
to face it. ‘If I allowed myself to feel what I feel I would not be able to con-
tinue my daily life’ (Malmsten, 2009: 24). Consequently, the reader neither
gets to know exactly what she feels, and neither the reason which caused
the life-changing decisions she apparently was forced to make. The pain
is to be found in the heart rather than the brain. The pain is there and is
overwhelming but cannot be understood in a rational way, she claims. Still,
the brain is eager to construct meaning out of this elusive pain: ‘it is the
brain that tells the heart how much it hurts ... The brain is gossiping and
the heart is bursting ... How banal it yet sounds in Swedish, pathetic and
banal’ (Malmsten, 2009: 25). Malmsten writes about banality in connection
to Eichmann. Her repeated characterization of different situations as banal is
perhaps no coincidence and is not unlikely to get the reader to contrast those
situations with events connected to the Holocaust. The narrator claims that
her personal experience is her only asset, but that this experience is useless
when random evil enters her life (Malmsten, 2009: 134). When she, at dif-
ferent occasions in the novel, turns to a collective memory, where the expe-
rience of the Holocaust has a prominent position, a wider, contextualizing
perspective is provided, which sheds new light on her individual situation.
The narrator is apparently aware of the problem that lies in relating her
own personal tragedy to the Holocaust, a reason for her feeling guilty, as
she knows she might be trivializing the Holocaust. This problem has already
been pointed out with regard to Sylvia Plath’s poems, not least in Daddy
(1962) where she depicted her personal suffering and dispute with her father
by using Holocaust imagery in a metaphorical way, for example, by writ-
ing that she is chuffed ‘off like a Jew /A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen’
(Plath, 1981: 223). Critics have found it inappropriate to compare her pater-
nal relationship to what happened to the European Jews, but her poetry has
also been defended as only reproducing and making private images which
were already part of the collective consciousness when she wrote the poem
(Gill, 2008: 61). Malmsten is thus not the first to use such imagery to discuss
personal trauma. However, there is clearly a concern that dealing with per-
sonal pain through representations containing references to a paradigmatic
tragedy in history might trivialize the historical event.
Leo Hertzberg also experiences difficulties in facing his painful existence.

As Hubert Zapf observed, he encounters ‘a world beyond good and evil,
a confusing and threateningly uncontrollable contemporary world which,
like the traumatic memories of the past, resist any coherent rational or
ethical interpretation’ (Zapf, 2008: 177). When his son dies, Hertzberg is
paralyzed, just like his father reacted when he found out about his family’s
fate in Auschwitz (Hustvedt, 2003: 145). Once again, we see an example of
how personal trauma is related to the Holocaust. Like Malmsten’s narra-
tor, Hertzberg struggles to articulate and communicate what he has gone
through (Rosenthal, 2011: 103). Matthew’s nanny tells him that it ‘can’t be
understood ... It’s outside our powers’ (Hustvedt, 2003: 141). In the after-
math of the tragedy, Hertzberg and his wife split up. They decide to com-
municate through letters since ‘[l]etters can’t scream’, as his wife points out
(Hustvedt, 2003: 151). The letters function as a medium where emotions
can be dealt with in a somewhat rational way. Still, such communicative
acts are frustrating since feelings cannot be accurately translated through
the limitations of language.
The problems above, which Malmsten and Hustvedt explore, can be
seen as corresponding to the more general difficulties faced in adequately
representing the Holocaust. Adorno and other post-Holocaust philosophers
regarded Auschwitz as ‘a horror that remains insuperably resistant to knowl-
edge’ (Cohen, 2005: 478). The Holocaust survivor and writer Eli Wiesel has
also underlined how limited traditional categories of explanation are when
confronting the Holocaust. Still he has produced several books and dedi-
cated his life to the attempt of understanding it (Waxman, 2005: 503). Such
paradoxes, or ambivalences of representation, seem to go hand in hand with
the Holocaust’s position in the collective memory of the Western world.
At the Centre of Collective Memory
The Holocaust stands out as a point of reference in contemporary culture.

It is being used as a tool for constructing meaning also out of personal
traumas. In one way, this reference to the Holocaust is a form of paying
respect to its historical magnitude. But ‘borrowing’ it as a general metaphor
to apply to other contexts may also lead to trivialization of its real historical
content. The latter situation seems to be unavoidable, just because of the
Holocaust’s dominant position in collective memory. This ambivalence is
visible in both What I Loved and Sista boken från Finistère.
In spite of the distance to the historical event – both geographically and
in time – references to different aspects of the genocide recur through key
words such as ‘Auschwitz’, and ‘Adorno’, whose dictum has been attached
to the Holocaust. The misreadings of the dictum should not be ignored
since they raise central questions about artistic representation in relation to
traumatic events. Malmsten and Hustvedt stress the importance of artistic
representations after traumatic events – representations which capture the

full range of human behaviour, even the dark sides – in order to acknowl-
edge a past that will not go away. It is difficult to live with the memory of
the Holocaust, but, as Malmsten and Hustvedt illustrate, it also seems dif-
ficult to live with other traumas whether or not relating them to what has
become such a dominant point of reference in the world we live in.
Notes
1. All translations of the original Swedish quotes into English are made by the author.
The chapter builds on an essay written on the course ‘The Holocaust in European
Historiography’ at the Hugo Valentin Centre, Uppsala University in the fall of
2012/13. I am grateful for the invaluable suggestions and critical comments I have
received on this text, in particular from Tanja Schult and Diana Popescu, but also
from Ceri Eldin.
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Hustvedt, Siri (2003) What I Loved, London: Sceptre.
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Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
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Rosenthal, Caroline (2011) ‘“The Inadequacy of Symbolic Surfaces”: Urban Space, Art,
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Gruyter, pp. 171–94.
13
Questions of (Re)Presentation in
Uwe Boll’s Auschwitz (2011)
Elizabeth M. Ward
In September 2010 an online trailer appeared for Uwe Boll’s latest film,
Auschwitz. Featuring a German SS (Schutzstaffel) officer dozing whilst
Jewish men, women and children suffocate to death in a gas chamber, the
49-second clip instantly provoked public and critical outrage from both
within Boll’s native Germany and around the world. Tom Goldman from
the online magazine The Escapist described the trailer as ‘disturbing and
gruesome’ and ‘likely to push moviegoers over the edge’ (Goldman, 2010),
whilst the critics Sophie Albers and Matthias Schmidt from the German
magazine Stern reflected that ‘the words Auschwitz and Uwe Boll in one
breath rightly leads one to fear the worst’ (Albers and Schmidt, 2010).
Writing for the online blog Slashfilm, David Chen possibly most accurately
summarized the reaction caused by the incongruity of subject matter and
director in his comment that, ‘The trailer itself is extremely disturbing
and I’d dare say effective. Judged on its own merits, the teaser conveys the
horrors of Auschwitz with some graphic imagery and quasi-decent editing.
But attach Boll’s name to it and the picture changes a bit’ (Chen, 2010).
As these comments reflect, the debate focused not only on the content
of the clip, but also on its creator. The director is certainly no stranger to
controversy. Best known for his video game adaptations, Boll has gained
widespread attention both in and beyond Germany for his exploitation
of a German tax loophole known in the boardroom of Hollywood movie
executives as ‘stupid German money’ to secure funding for his productions
(Cooke, 2012: 47–51).1 Certainly prior to Auschwitz, Boll’s treatment of
World War II appeared to affirm the image of a director rooted in exploi-
tation cinema who sought to provoke audiences and court attention. His
previous film Bloodrayne: The Third Reich (2010), for instance, featured a
sequence in which the attempted rape of a woman is turned into a clichéd
lesbian sex scene. Given these somewhat dubious credentials, news that Boll
wanted to ‘show a typical day in a death camp’ (Boll, 2010) was greeted with
a mixture of incredulity and anger, and regarded by many as little more than
the latest publicity vehicle by a director described as being ‘synonymous
198
Questions of Re(Presentation) in Uwe Boll’s Auschwitz 199
with bad cinema, thanks to his endless hamfisted videogame adaptations

and woefully advised genre excursions’ (Heritage, 2013).
Given popular and critical perceptions of Boll and his work to date, it is
right to ask whether Auschwitz should be included in a scholarly study of
Holocaust representation in the post-witness era, let alone be considered
symptomatic of wider developments in projections of the Holocaust on
screen. Without doubt, Boll is a filmmaker who courts controversy and it
would be easy to dismiss Auschwitz as a cynical attempt to solicit publicity
rather than engage in any meaningful critique of Holocaust memory.
However, in this article I argue that Boll’s 2011 film serves as an excellent
case study for the exploration of Holocaust memory on screen in the twenty-
first century through both its deliberate and, at times, unintentional ability
to highlight developments in contemporary cinema’s restaging of history on
film. First Auschwitz should be understood as a deliberate counter-reaction
to dominant international trends in filmmaking which embed Holocaust
narratives in familiar genres. By examining how Boll positions his film in
opposition to these contemporary trends, I will argue that the director is
successful in highlighting the extent to which films dealing with the crimes
of the Holocaust allow for evasive engagements with the past through his
deconstruction of narrative structures and editing techniques in mainstream
cinema.
However, as much as Auschwitz was clearly conceived as a recalibration of
the Holocaust on screen, the film should also be seen as symptomatic of a
specifically German trend in historical filmmaking, namely the German her-
itage film. As a style of filmmaking accused repeatedly of indulging in the
fetishization of authenticity and distorting the past through its purported
neutral viewpoint, such films raise important questions about the media-
tization of the past and the impact on memories in the future (cf. Cooke,
2012: 97–105; Haase, 2007: 197; Halle, 2008: 112–15; Nord, 2008). Whilst
Boll’s film undoubtedly lacks the hallmark of meticulous reconstruction
which epitomizes the German heritage film, I argue that Auschwitz should
also be understood within this contemporary style of filmmaking and in
particular how such films depict the past through their claim to objectivity.
By considering the film within this specific context, I argue that as much
as Auschwitz was conceived of as a move away from dominant filmmaking
styles, it conversely aligns itself to a growing trend in German cinema which
attempts to obfuscate the selective retelling of history on film. This in turn
raises questions as to the extent to which Holocaust memory in the twenty-
first century is not only being shaped for the present, but also distorted for
the future. Through an exploration of the visual and narrative strategies
employed in the film and an examination of contemporary cinematic shifts
in depicting the ‘Third Reich’, I will argue that the value of Auschwitz as a
case study for the exploration of the Holocaust on screen today lies not in
the answers it provides, but rather in the questions it raises.
200 Elizabeth M. Ward
Working against International Trends
Auschwitz opens with a directorial mission statement delivered to camera by

Boll. Attributing the lack of public outrage towards the atrocities committed
in Srebrenica and Darfur as evidence of a general failure to ‘learn from the
past’, Boll claims that ‘over fifty percent of the people on the earth doesn’t
[sic] know what [the Holocaust] was’. It is within this vacuum of ignorance,
Boll argues, that Holocaust denial finds fertile ground. To counter this pur-
ported indifference, the director states that he wants to ‘show Auschwitz as
it really was’. The film then cuts to a series of short, real life interviews with
secondary school pupils in which Boll asks a series of questions designed to
expose their ignorance about National Socialist racial persecution. One boy
places the total death count at ‘over one thousand’, while another dates the
crimes to ‘the 1800s … 1960 … the sixteenth century’. One girl shrugs indif-
ferently when asked her opinion about National Socialist crimes and a sec-
ond girl has little understanding of terms such as the SS. Having exposed the
lack of awareness about Germany’s recent past among these young people,
the film cuts to a fictionalized restaging of camp life in which prisoners are
gassed with uncompromising candour, a child is shot in the head, members
of the Sonderkommando are shown pulling teeth from dead Jews’ blood-
stained mouths and the corpse of a toddler is shown entering and burning
in a crematorium. The final third of the film returns to interviews with a
second group of school pupils. In contrast to the opening interviews, these
pupils are highly informed and articulate teenagers. One boy is able to trace
the roots of anti-Semitism back to the nineteenth century, and all the inter-
viewees are able to apply their knowledge to other examples of war crimes.
The film closes with Boll, who repeats the imperative of ‘remembering to
avoid repeating crimes of the past’.
From the outset, Boll stated his desire to position his film in opposition
to existing feature films, especially those presenting melodramatic and
action-driven narratives of the Holocaust. Such approaches, the director
argues, are detrimental to the transmission of Holocaust memory because
they instil the events of the Holocaust with a level of narrative coherence
that the victims’ actual persecution and suffering lacked. To this purpose,
Boll claimed after all the special stories of Schindler’s List (Spielberg, 1993)
or Life is Beautiful (Benigni, 1997), it was time to make a film that depicted
the ‘daily, truthful Auschwitz’ since the site of National Socialist persecution
should not, argued the director, be turned into an objet d’art, but rather be
shown as a site of mass murder (Lachmann, 2010).
Boll’s assessment of the state of Holocaust on film in the twenty-first
century certainly finds resonance in recent scholarship. In 2007 Bruno
de Wever reflected that ‘it is apparent that the Holocaust theme is slowly
but surely disconnecting from its purely historical content and is being
transformed into an archetypal meta-story about good and evil and the
human condition’ (de Wever, 2007: 8). Instead of considering how generic
conventions such as the action, romance or family melodrama film can
facilitate spectatorial identification with the Holocaust, the relationship
has – following this argument – become distorted so that the Holocaust has
increasingly become a vehicle for the exploration of universal themes rather
than for the event itself. For example, although set in a concentration camp,
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (Mark Herman, 2008) employs the iconography
of the Holocaust through the depiction of barbed-wire fences and prisoner
uniforms, yet elides any deeper exploration of anti-Semitism or the political
system and ideology that facilitated its institutional implementation and
societal acquiescence.
Film distributors have certainly been instrumental in the promotion of
such retellings of the Holocaust. The DVD cover of Life is Beautiful boasts
that the film is a ‘story about the power of love and the human spirit’ in
which the protagonist, Guido, must save his wife and son from ‘an unthink-
able fate’: the word Holocaust does not appear anywhere. Similarly, the DVD
cover for The Boy in the Striped Pajamas describes the film as ‘a timeless story
of innocence lost and humanity found’ which ‘helps recall the millions of
innocent victims of the Holocaust’. Such presentations of the past insist that
the victims’ death must be imbued with a universalist significance. It is pre-
cisely this attempt to embed the Holocaust within wider narrative models
that Boll attacks.
When promoting the film, Boll was clear to position Auschwitz in opposi-
tion to mainstream films dealing with the Holocaust. The director’s argu-
ment that feature films overwhelmingly foreground remarkable individuals
as in Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg, 1993) and The Pianist (Roman Polanski,
2002), or exceptional figures such as Sophie Scholl (Sophie Scholl: The Final
Days, Marc Rothermund, 2007) or Claus von Stauffenberg (Stauffenberg, Jo
Baier, 2004; Valkyrie, Bryan Singer, 2008) is certainly borne out in recent
film history. To Boll’s list one could quite easily add productions such as
Aimée and Jaguar (Max Färberböck, 1999), Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace (Eric
Till, 2000), Rosenstraße (Margarethe von Trotta, 2003), The Ninth Day (Volker
Schlöndorff, 2004), Black Book (Paul Verhoeven, 2006), Defiance (Edward
Zwick, 2008), and Sarah’s Key (Gilles Paquet-Brenner, 2010), and even the
more controversial ‘perpetrator films’ such as Downfall (Oliver Hirschbiegel,
2004) and The Reader (Stephen Daldry, 2008), all of which stress the impact
of individuals in the face of widespread persecution.
What is in contention here is not the focus on exceptional real, fictional or
fictionalized individuals per se, but rather the cumulative impact of filmmakers’
increased focus on an ever more narrowly defined group of people. As Robert
Rosenstone highlights, the insistence on ‘history as the story of individuals’
is a defining feature of the mainstream historical film (2006: 47). However, by
focusing on heroic individuals who in either actions or fate were very much
the exception to the rule, there is the very real danger that memories of the
Holocaust on film lose sight of the fate of six million Jews who are instead
reduced to extras in an action, romance or thriller film. Of course, key to
genre-driven explorations of the Holocaust is their ability to facilitate new
forms of identification with the past for generations with no direct experience
of the events at a point in time when the number of eye witnesses is ever
decreasing. To use Alison Landsberg’s notion of ‘prosthetic memory’, film can
indeed serve as an ‘artificial limb’ to allow audiences to experience the past
and in doing so can be ‘instrumental in generating empathy and articulating
an ethical relation to the other’ (2004: 149–50). Nevertheless, it is important
to question the compromises and sacrifices which are made to achieve such
emotional encounters. Critics of Auschwitz may have accused the director of
spreading ‘widespread revulsion’ through his controversial teaser (Connolly,
2010), but Boll’s film is certainly not the only production in recent years to
have drawn criticism vis-à-vis the presentation of the past: Life is Beautiful
was accused of propagating ‘one historical distortion after another’ (Teachout,
1999: 52) and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas was described as ‘a pretty bad way
to teach kids about the Holocaust’ (Zacharek, 2008).
From the outset, Boll insisted that he wanted to work against genre-driven
models of emotional identification. In an interview in 2010, he stated that
he believed that his role as a filmmaker was to compel audiences actively
to question the events shown on screen instead of providing them with
easy-to-consume answers about the past. In doing so, the director claimed
he wanted to recalibrate images of the Holocaust through a film which
depicted the everyday workings of a concentration camp as a ‘death fac-
tory’ rather than focusing on exceptional stories of heroism (Boll, 2010). In
demarcating his own approach, Boll uses the somewhat ambiguous phrase
of ‘showing it as it really was’. As I will argue in the second part of this arti-
cle, on a visual level Auschwitz may be shocking but Boll certainly falls short
of the realistic visual reconstruction of the past suggested in his statement.
However, within the context of exploring how Auschwitz can be understood
as a reaction against dominant international depictions of the Holocaust on
film, an examination of the narrative structures employed by the director
reveals that Boll is certainly far more successful in uncovering how such
films satisfy the spectator’s visual curiosity in the event whilst simultaneously
shielding the audience from the full consequences of that interest.
To illustrate this point, it is first useful to consider the impact of one of the
most iconic Holocaust scenes on film: the shower scene in Schindler’s List.
In this oft-cited scene, discordant music and loaded shots of shower heads
feature as naked women stand in fear in a shower room. Described by the
film historian Rainer Rother as the ‘supreme manipulation’ of the spectator,
the effect of the scene is dependent on the audience’s expectation that the
women will be gassed and the anxious thrill in anticipation of witnessing
a group murder (cited in Ball, 2008: 165). When water emerges from the
showers, the audience shares the women’s hysterical laughter: we have been
tricked, they have been spared. The strength of Auschwitz lies not in Boll’s
restaging of the persecution of the prisoners – which falls far short of the
realism indicated in the director’s desire to ‘show it as it really was’ – but
in his ability to highlight the narrative structures employed in mainstream
films such as the shower scene in Schindler’s List.
This can be seen in three sequences in Auschwitz in which we witness
young children being shot in the back of the head by a soldier. The decision
to include three almost identical sequences is evidently intended to convey
both the brutality of the camp guards and how they became increasingly
desensitized to such acts of violence. The first shooting comprises seven shots
as the camera cuts between the crying child and the soldier in the 16-second
sequence. This is followed by a second shooting, this time divided into two
segments. Here, the director separates the soldier’s reluctance to carry out
the shooting (26 seconds with six shots) with the speedy execution of the
child (three seconds, three shots). The final shooting unfolds in four seconds
with three camera shots, the speed of which leaves the audience shocked
by an unexpected action which paradoxically has become familiar through
repetition. At the same time, the length of the camera shot after the child is
shot halves each time (four seconds, two seconds and one second) implying
the murders are becoming increasingly habitual for the soldier.
Yet, while the repeated shootings are designed to indicate growing famil-
iarization by the soldier, a close analysis of the shooting of the young
child on a cinematographic level reveals how subtle shifts in camera angles
simultaneously fracture and expose the audience’s role as a passive onlooker.
To return to the example of Schindler’s List, the relief felt at the end of the
shower scene is dependent upon a combination of editing techniques and
carefully selected camera angles so that the spectator is allowed to experi-
ence the horror of the women from a distance without having to question
his or her own position as an onlooker or bystander. Boll, on the other hand,
draws attention to the apparent detached position of the spectator and in
doing so exposes his or her presence rather than attempting to seamlessly
suture the audience into the film. When the three short shooting sequences
are analysed together, it can be seen that Boll subtly modifies camera angles
to expose the role of the spectator as witness to the events. In the first
shooting, the soldier points the gun directly at the camera/audience. This
initially seems out of place with the hitherto detached narrative perspective
of the film: since we know that the soldier is aiming the gun at the back
of the child’s head, we are not seeing events from anyone else’s perspective
and it is unclear through whose eyes we are supposed to see the shot. In the
second shooting, the same shot is framed off-centre with the soldier aiming
to the left of the screen. The spectator is no longer under threat and instead
observes the action occurring to the side of him or her. The point-of-view
shot is entirely absent from the third shooting and instead the action is
depicted from a detached position (Figure 13.1).
Figure 13.1 The subtle repositioning of the camera in the shooting sequence exposes
the narrative models used and reused in the depiction of Holocaust crimes. Film stills
from Auschwitz (Boll, 2010). © Uwe Boll
With each repetition, the spectator’s presence becomes ever more tangen-
tial to the action. The look-to-camera of the first sequence creates an elision
between the spectator and the victim. This appears to replicate dominant
modes of filmmaking identified by Landsberg in which the audience is
encouraged to empathize directly with the victims’ fate (2004: 149–50). The
off-centre look of the second sequence implies that the spectator is still in an
inferior position as the camera is positioned at an upward angle to suggest a
master-servant relationship, but the spectator is now witness to the shooting
rather than the victim of it. By the final sequence, however, the camera is at
the same level as the soldier. The spectator is no longer a bystander aligned
to the victim but rather, through the elevated position of the camera, is now
a bystander aligned to the perpetrator.
To understand how the sequence critiques the spectator’s role as passive
witness to the Holocaust on screen, it is useful to consider Tom Gunning’s
concept of the ‘cinema of attractions’ (1994: 190). An application of
Gunning’s concept to this scene allows us to understand the triangulated rela-
tionship between the spectator, the camera and the victim when depicting the
Holocaust. Originally used to describe filmmaking styles in the early 1900s,
Gunning argues that the ‘cinema of attractions’ is an ‘exhibitionist cinema’
which ‘displays its visibility’ and is ‘willing to rupture a self-enclosed fic-
tional world for a chance to solicit the attention of the spectator’ (1990: 57;
2006: 382). Gunning stresses that in contrast to the models of narrative cin-
ema exemplified by classical Hollywood filmmaking, the ‘cinema of attrac-
tions’ resists exploring a character’s psychological state of being and instead
focuses on an action. This emphasis is key to understanding the function
of the thrice repeated sequence of the soldier’s shooting of the child in
Auschwitz. Contrary to the aims of narrative cinema, Boll does not seek to
explore the motivations underpinning the soldier’s actions. His aim is not
to encourage the spectator to consider why the soldier shoots the child,
but rather to stress the spectacle of the action and foreground the brutality
of the action instead of facilitating identification with the victim or per-
petrator. In doing so, the director resists the dominant modes of depiction
in which the audience is encouraged to direct its empathy ‘specifically at
historical suffering of Jewish victims’ above an engagement with ‘any inter-
rogation of historical and political conditions that helped pave the way for
the fascist regime and ensuing genocide’ (Winkle, 2011: 441).
Representing an Authentic Past?
I have argued in the first part of this article that the shooting of the children
in Auschwitz can be understood as an attempt to expose the relation-
ship between the audience and the victimization of prisoners, and as an
example of how the perpetrators became desensitized to their daily tasks.
Underpinning Boll’s staging of the shootings is the decision to focus on
the actions rather than the underlying motivations of the soldier. However,
the very fact that Boll does not seek to explore the perpetrator’s motiva-
tions opens up an alternative point of departure when analysing the film.
Although the film successfully highlights the narrative norms underpin-
ning the screening of Holocaust narratives and their facilitation of evasive
depictions of the past in mainstream cinema, it is nevertheless pertinent to
ask whether Auschwitz actually propagates a second trend in recent German
cinema: the heritage film.
On the surface, Auschwitz owes little to the German heritage genre.
Described by Lutz Koepnick as a type of filmmaking which produces
‘usable and consumable pasts’ by presenting ‘history as a site of comfort

and orientation’, the German heritage film ‘envisages history, including its
violent struggles and repressions, from a consensus-orientated perspective,
one that can gratify diverse audiences and offer something to everyone’
(2002: 51, 76). Auschwitz is certainly not intended to be an audience-friendly
film or, to use Eric Rentschler’s term, to exemplify the ‘cinema of consen-
sus’ (Rentschler, 2000). Indeed, the wider significance of German heritage
cinema as a reflection of a desire to normalize the past in unified Germany
appears to work against Boll’s very attempt to reopen old wounds.
Likewise, the heritage film’s visual hallmark – the ‘fetishization of
authenticity’ – is certainly missing in Auschwitz (Cooke, 2012: 97–105).
Characterized by filmmakers’ emphatic insistence on the veracity of their
faithful reconstruction of the past, the label of ‘German heritage film’ has
been used to describe a number of recent German historical films such as
Downfall, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, The Baader Meinhof Complex (Uli Edel,
2008) and John Rabe (Florian Gallenberger, 2009) to name but a few. As Paul
Cooke highlights, filmmakers’ drive towards authentic reconstructions of
the past is nothing new (Cooke, 2012: 97). For example, the advertising
campaigns for productions such as Ben-Hur (William Wyler, 1959) and
Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960) highlighted the filmmakers’ recreation of
authentic sites and historical details. What differentiates the German herit-
age film from these historical films, however, is the extent to which such
productins appear to revel in the filmmakers’ use of authentic props and
locations within the story itself. For instance, in Downfall the spectator is
purposefully shown Hitler’s final meal and children’s toys from the period
(Cooke, 2012: 100). In The Baader Meinhof Complex, the filmmakers meticu-
lously recreated the prisoners’ cells to the point that even the books on
the bookcase match those found in Ulrike Meinhof’s cell (Eichinger, 2008:
41–77). This fetishization can also be expressed in an extra-filmic manner:
Ulrich Tukur, the lead actor of John Rabe, arrived at the film’s press con-
ference at the Berlin Film Festival in 2009 carrying Rabe’s original diaries
which he displayed to journalists (Berlinale, 2009), while the director of
Sophie Scholl: The Final Days repeatedly stressed the importance of the incor-
poration of recently discovered archival material in the film’s screenplay
(Rothermund, 2005). Of course, the careful reconstruction of a film’s setting
could be welcomed for the filmmakers’ care in conveying an accurate image
of the past. However, the German heritage film attempts to obfuscate the
fact that the film is a reconstruction. By using authentic props and loca-
tions, filmmakers actively encourage both through their films and in inter-
views the interpretation that because the physical markers of the story are
real, their interpretation of the past must also be verifiably true.
In the case of Auschwitz, the director appears to undermine his claims to
authenticity through his decision to reuse the costumes and the set from his
previous film, BloodRayne: The Third Reich (2010), a fantasy adventure film
set during the same period. Indeed, Boll stated that ‘Auschwitz for me is the
Holocaust basically’ and that the camp in the film is ‘just a concentration
camp, a death camp’ because he did not want audiences or critics to argue
that ‘the barrack here is not like it was in Auschwitz’, which of course raises
the question as to why he called the film Auschwitz at all (Boll, 2010). Of
course, here again it would be easy to dismiss the film as little more than a
vehicle for a filmmaker in pursuit of publicity. However, I wish to argue that
the 2011 film provides an excellent example through which to consider the
role of film in shaping public perceptions of the past.
In her analysis of Downfall, German film scholar Sabine Hake highlights
the legacy of nineteenth-century historicism in the German heritage film
in its belief that history can, to quote a key figure of historicism, Leopold
von Ranke, be told ‘as it really was’, that is to say, without ‘judgement,
falsification or embellishment’ (Hake, 2012: 100). At the heart of both
historicism and the German heritage film is the ‘uncritical acceptance of
the world as given, inaccessible to critical reflection and political critique
but fully available to historical understanding through the lens of visual
spectacle and mimetic representation’. Whilst the shortcomings of the
historicists’ approach have long been argued, filmmakers of German herit-
age films continue to assert their role as objective purveyors of fact. The
director of Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiegel, insisted that his film was not an
‘interpretation’ of Hitler’s final days, but rather that he should be seen as an
‘agent’ who ‘attempts to truly get inside the material’ (Fitzner, 2004). Bernd
Eichinger, the producer of The Baader Meinhof Complex, argued that ‘what we
are trying to do, as far as possible, is to present the facts, tell the story, and
not to interpret the story’ (cited in Cooke, 2012: 101). Such statements aim
not only to strip the storytelling process of its subjectivity, but also the very
act of watching the film since such comments clearly aim to present the film
as fact and promote the unquestioning acceptance of it as such.
It is in this regard that Boll’s Auschwitz can be seen as symptomatic of
the German heritage film. Whilst lacking the realist aesthetic, both the pro-
filmic and extra-filmic apolitical frameworks of the film clearly align Boll’s
presentation of the Holocaust to contemporary German representations of
the past on film. Publicity for the film was clearly designed to obfuscate his
subjective retelling of the past. Boll argued:
If you put one hundred years of movies all together, you have feature
movies with people like Schindler, and you have documentaries where
you have very thin people behind fences when the Americans came in
and filmed the Auschwitz survivors or the dead people in the snow. But,
to be honest, no-one knows what happened in between. I think I close
this gap. With the movie we give the information of exactly what hap-
pened with the people that came in and they were ashes just a few hours
later. This is what the movie shows. (Boll, 2010)
It would be easy to dismiss Boll’s statement as fallacious in the face of the

compromises made in production values in Auschwitz and it is certainly a
gross simplification to categorize all cinematic explorations of the Holocaust
as such. Moreover, he is certainly not the first director to depict the murder
of Jews within gas chambers: Leszek Wosiewicz’s 1989 film Kornblumenblau
broke this taboo more than two decades earlier.2
Nevertheless, the director’s insistence on the fidelity to history as
expressed through a desire to ‘show it as it was’ finds strong echoes of
statements given by several other filmmakers of German historical films.
For example, Florian Henkel von Donnersmarck’s emphasized the realistic
presentation of his story of a Stasi spy in The Lives of Others (Henkel von
Donnersmarck, 2006) by claiming he could not have made it ‘look more
authentic’. Similarly, Bernd Eichinger insisted that when writing The Baader
Meinhof Komplex he ensured ‘there is no one with whom the viewer can
identify, because I did not want [to] hinge the film emotionally onto one
character. To side emotionally with one character would have automatically
implied a certain interpretation of the film – and that’s exactly what I wanted
to avoid’ (Edel and Eichinger, 2008). Yet, in line with the purported objec-
tivism of the historicist’s approach, such films frequently suggest that
the events depicted should be understood sui generis. In line with recent
German history films, Boll promotes a distinctly depoliticized (if not apo-
litical) telling of the past. To return to the example of the shooting of the
young children, Boll’s deconstruction of editing and narrative techniques
does raise important questions about the role of the spectator as passive
observer to the spectacle of persecution and how, through repeated expo-
sure to violence, individuals can become inured to violent acts. However, it
does so in a political vacuum. There is no indication in Auschwitz that the
Holocaust took place within a politico-ideological system and, in line with
historicism’s belief that history can be shown ‘as it really was’, without ref-
erence to events beyond those depicted, Boll’s restaging of a typical day in a
concentration camp is distinctly lacking in any contextual framework. Just
as Downfall was criticized for being a ‘film without a standpoint’ (Wenders,
2004), Auschwitz is a film which presents an outcome without a cause.
This is particularly problematic within the context of a film that attempts
to enlighten audiences about the Holocaust: Boll attempts to ‘give the
information of exactly what happened’ within the context of a 36-minute
segment in a 70-minute film (Boll, 2010).
Viewing the Past through a Restrictive Lens
Film scholar Ewa Mazierska has identified the perceived need of filmmakers
to revisit the past and stress the authenticity of their films as an attempt to
tell their stories before the ‘last witnesses’ die and ‘before communicative
memory becomes cultural memory’ (Mazierska, 2011: 87). However, by
insisting on the veracity of their interpretations, filmmakers arguably

obfuscate the subject further through their failure to acknowledge – or
worse, their complete disavowal of – the subjectivity of their own staging
of the past and the polyvalence of the events depicted. Instead of ‘history
in the frame of autobiographical memory’ (J. Assmann, 2008: 117), cultural
memory is composed of ‘messages that are intended for continuous repeti-
tion and re-use’ in order to ‘create a temporal framework that transcends
the individual life span relating past, present and future’ (A. Assmann,
2008: 97–9). Film can be seen to epitomize the drive to allow the past to be
‘repeatedly re-read, appreciated, staged, performed and commented’ on to
new generations (A. Assmann, 2011: 335). Since only a ‘small percentage
achieve canonisation’, forgetting is just as important as remembering in the
construction of the past.
The propagation of a fixed narrative of the past brings us to the third
issue raised by Auschwitz in regard to the depiction of the Holocaust on film,
namely, the manipulation of the spectator. In the first part of this article,
I argued that Boll does successfully deconstruct the narrative structures
which facilitate evasive treatments of the Holocaust. Nevertheless, the
director appears unaware of the extent to which he too is guilty of manipu-
lating the spectator. Of course, all film is manipulative. However, the fact
that Boll fails to acknowledge not only the inevitable manipulation of his
audience through his choice of medium in his claim to ‘show it as it really
was’, but that he also attempts to distort interpretations of the film by
manipulating both his young interviewees and the spectators’ understand-
ing of the situation, attests to the extent to which he too promotes a fixed
narrative of the past. Nowhere is this clearer than in the film’s opening
and closing interviews. The film opens with a group of ill-informed school
pupils who struggle to answer questions about National Socialism and
the Holocaust. The aim of these interviews was, according to Boll in the
Director’s Commentary, to show ‘the real situation in German schools’.
However, within these short interviews, the manipulation of not only the
interviewees, but also the audience becomes clear. The rapid questioning
by Boll gives the pupils little time to consider the questions or expand on
their answers. Meanwhile, one girl’s nervous silence is filled by the director
who interprets her inability to express an opinion on National Socialism
as indifference not only on her part, but also by her parents and grandpar-
ents. The film closes with a second group of interviews, this time with a
highly informed, articulate and mature group of pupils who are allowed to
expand on their answers and are in command of a far greater vocabulary
and knowledge base. They are also asked different types of questions which
invite discursive answers rather than short, factual responses. By placing his
retelling of Auschwitz in between the poorly informed and well-informed
pupils, the film – deliberately or not – implies that the insight gained comes
from having watched Auschwitz.
Moreover, there is no suggestion within the film that Boll is interviewing

pupils from not only two different schools, but also from two different
types of school. In the Director’s Commentary, Boll does acknowledge that
the first group of pupils are from a ‘very low end school’ whilst the second
group are from a ‘highest end school’. Yet even this acknowledgement fails
to convey the subtleties of the situation. The pupils in the opening inter-
views attend a Hauptschule, whereas the second group is from a Gymnasium.
This distinction is important. Pupils at a Hauptschule undergo a largely voca-
tional education which focuses on teaching them the skills for a workplace,
whereas pupils attending a Gymnasium undergo a highly academic educa-
tion designed to prepare them for a university degree. It should, therefore,
come as little surprise that one group of pupils, not only from a different
school but also from a different schooling model, should exhibit different
levels of knowledge.3 Given Boll’s attack on manipulative narrative strate-
gies, his manipulation of the ‘documentary’ segment of the film is certainly
surprising. Boll may attack filmmakers for their reliance on set-piece narra-
tives which use the past as a dramatic backdrop, yet his decision to include
two sets of interviews reveals the extent to which he too manipulates his
audience for a desired outcome.
Were Boll alone in his selective presentation of the past, we could con-
clude our study here. Auschwitz was not seen by a large audience and never
received a widespread cinematic release. However, Auschwitz does raise
important questions about the relationship between feature film and the
transmission of Holocaust memory with implications far beyond his own
production. The intrinsic danger of the increased mediatization of the
Holocaust is a central issue lying at the heart of film itself, that is to say,
the visualization of the past. Standard narratives struggle to accommodate
multiple perspectives, and the streamlining of complex events is central
to the historical film. In this regard, the danger of mediated images of the
Holocaust is that filmmakers can actually propagate the impression of a
fixed visual past which marginalizes or even excludes alternative depictions.
The cinematic medium’s ability to restage the past and instil colour, gesture
and movement to historical narratives certainly affords film a more immediate
and far wider appeal than speeches or written narratives are able to achieve.
Robert Rosenstone stresses that the power of feature film lies in its ability to
‘not simply provide an image of the past’, but also in its power to make its
audience ‘feel strongly about that image’ (2006: 16). At the same time, such
dramatic (re)constructions of the past come at a price. The demands of story-
telling and running-time necessitate a re-presentation of events which, to use
Robert Toplin’s phrase, can lead filmmakers to ‘rub out the greys of history’,
and to reposition the story’s narrative core to accommodate generic tastes and
needs (2002: 27). Yet whether a complex event like the Holocaust can ever be
told ‘as it really was’ is, at best, certainly questionable.
Conclusion
Auschwitz may seem like an unusual choice for an appraisal of the Holocaust
on film in the twenty-first century. Its unfavourable critical reception and
poor commercial performance suggest that audiences did not share Boll’s
vision of a new depiction of the past. However, I have argued in this article
that through the film’s successes and shortcomings, Auschwitz does serve as
an illuminating case study for the role of film in transmitting and shaping
memories of the Holocaust. By considering not only how Boll attempts to
position his film against international trends in historical films, but also
how Auschwitz is symptomatic of contemporary trends in German filmmak-
ers’ presentation of history, I have argued that Auschwitz reflects wider devel-
opments in international cinema and memory culture rather than simply
an anomalous example of an ill-conceived film. By understanding this
mediatization as indicative of a generational shift in which the parameters
of representation are becoming canonized through their repetition in the
public and cultural sphere, Auschwitz exemplifies the dangers of depicting
the past through a restrictive lens.
Notes
1. The scheme was so named because large amounts of private capital were invested
in specialized German media funds in order to avoid domestic tax only to be real-
located to Hollywood productions rather than the intended German recipients.
2. My thanks to Tanja Schult for highlighting the significance of this earlier film.
3. The director has nonetheless stressed that the pupils interviewed at the Gymnasium
exhibited comparable levels of ignorance about the Holocaust.
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14
‘Ordinary Women’ as Perpetrators
in European Holocaust Films
Ingrid Lewis
In nearly 70 years of existence, Holocaust cinema has constantly changed

and renewed its thematic, language and filmic strategies, in a permanent
process of reshaping the past in order to render it relevant for different
modern audiences across the world. The historian Lawrence Baron acknowl-
edges a shift in the preferences of the contemporary public, pointing out
that the generations born after the 1960s prefer ‘to learn why the Holocaust
is relevant today instead of why it was unique’ (Baron, 2005: ix). Filmmakers,
therefore, are challenged to adjust their cinematic narratives from ‘literal’
depictions of the Holocaust towards more ‘creative’ approaches and towards
broader perspectives that include the non-Jewish victims of the Nazi perse-
cution. According to Baron, while post-war films focus on displaced people,
war criminals and resistance heroes, more recent films focus predominantly
on second-generation narratives or themes like rescue activities and Neo-
Nazism (Baron, ibid.: 202).
The subject of perpetrators represents the most common thematic in
Holocaust feature films of the 1970s, and the second most encountered
in Holocaust biopics between 2000 and 2004 (Baron, 2005: 202, 244). In
assessing the focus on perpetrators in different decades of Holocaust cin-
ema, Baron does not differentiate between male and female perpetrators.
This monolithic approach is rather common in Holocaust Studies, since
the research on female perpetrators has been completely absent until two
decades ago. According to the historian Claus-Christian W. Szejnmann, it
is only with the 1990s that scholars started to acknowledge the significant
role played by women as guards, doctors, nurses and administrative person-
nel, in the process of mass murder set in place by the Nazis (Szejnmann,
2008: 41). Szejnmann further points out that Perpetrator Studies underwent
a shift in the 1990s not only in terms of the ‘discovery’ of female perpetra-
tors, but as well as a result of the ground-breaking research by Christopher
Browning that emphasized the ordinariness of most perpetrators. In his
research on the motivations of the Police Battalion 101 responsible for
the murder of at least 38,000 Jews in Poland, Browning claims that a great
214
‘Ordinary Women’ in Holocaust Films 215
majority of them were not anti-Semites and became perpetrators for a series
of petty reasons like spirit of obedience, career ambitions, indoctrination
and group conformity (Szejnmann, 2008: 37). Acknowledging that most
perpetrators were neither demons nor fanatical Nazis but often ‘ordinary
men’ caught in extraordinary circumstances, represented a significant
breakthrough in the research on perpetrators. For the first time in 1998,
adopting Browning’s expression ‘ordinary men’, Gisela Bock argued that
female perpetrators were ‘ordinary women’ too. She claims that ‘women
of all walks of life and all social classes, actively participated in racist and
genocidal policies; their beliefs, motives, and acts were similar to those of
comparable ordinary men’ (Bock, 1998: 91).
While the research on women’s contribution to the persecution set in
place by the Nazis witnessed a growing interest in the last decade with the
studies of Brown (2002), Benedict (2003), Joshi (2003), Harrison (2008), Sarti
(2012), Benedict and Shields (2014), their cinematic portrayal remains still
an understudied domain. As the media scientist Adam Brown claims ‘more
research needs to be undertaken on the issue of how female perpetrators are
judged and represented, in film and elsewhere’ (Brown, 2013: 85). Brown’s
study attempts to fill in this gap by addressing the representation of female
guards, highlighting the eroticized depictions of women guards generally
adopted in films, but also the existence of more complex portrayals that
eschew voyeurism as in the case of two American films for television, Playing
for Time (1980) and Out of Ashes (2002). According to Brown ‘patriarchal
perspectives on women’s participation in Nazi genocide, often reliant on the
simplistic concept(ion) of “evil”, only detract from attempts to comprehend
their behaviour’ (Brown, 2013: 85–6).
The present article is concerned with the representation of ‘ordinary
women’ as perpetrators in European Holocaust cinema. By ‘Holocaust cin-
ema’ I shall refer not only to films that portray directly the persecution set
in place by the Nazis, but also to films that endeavour to contextualize the
Holocaust and closely examine its roots, its perpetrators, victims and their
unique experiences. This article is part of a broader ongoing study on the
representation of women (both victims and perpetrators) in European
Holocaust films. The corpus of films includes only fictional feature films
for the big screen made on European soil (co-productions included). Due to
the high number of films and the limited availability in some cases, I have
applied ulterior selection-criteria: I am considering mostly films that gained
a considerable international success, having been distributed outside their
national borders and in several film festivals.
This article argues that the 2000s brought a significant novelty in the
representation of female perpetrators in European films: the portrayal of
‘ordinary women’. It shall be claimed that two European films adopted this
new perspective on Nazi women: Downfall (2004) by Oliver Hirschbiegel
and The Reader (2008) by Stephen Daldry. In particular I will examine
216 Ingrid Lewis
how Hirschbiegel and Daldry construct the characters of two women who
worked within the Nazi apparatus, Traudl Junge, Hitler’s last secretary, and
Hanna Schmitz, a fictional camp guard. Through filmic strategies and choice
of narrative structure, Downfall and The Reader portray these women as not
fundamentally evil, but as unable, or unwilling to see the bigger picture of
the persecution to which they were contributing. This portrayal of two ‘ordi-
nary women’ combined with the astute directorial choice of two lovable
actresses for the role of female perpetrators (Kate Winslet as Hanna Schmitz
and Alexandra Maria Lara as Traudl Junge) change the whole dynamic
between the audience and the cinematic perpetrator. In the films that por-
tray female perpetrators as despicable, monstrous women, the distancing
process is almost immediate and helps one to condemn without any further
involvement. On the other hand, Hirschbiegel and Daldry create a space for
exploring the personal circumstances of the two women and the mecha-
nisms of the society they lived in. Without diminishing the seriousness of
their crimes or the heavy guilt that weighs on Hanna Schmitz and Traudl
Junge, The Reader and Downfall point out how apparently insignificant
choices, made by common people similar to any of us, can lead to unim-
aginable atrocities. It is precisely on this crucial point that the two films
create a bridge between the past and the present: the Holocaust is not only
a remote event in history, but becomes a lesson for the generations of today,
an invitation to reflect, compare and learn from the mistakes of the past.
Between Stereotypes and Absence: The Representation of

Female Perpetrators in Holocaust Films before
Downfall and The Reader
According to the investigative journalist Peter Vronsky, the concept of ‘per-

petrators’ has been universally associated with men and the male sphere.
Consequently, the crimes committed by women, seen as the kind and
weaker sex, have been explained as ‘involuntary, defensive, or the result
of mental illness or hormonal imbalance inherent with female physiology:
postpartum depression, premenstrual syndrome, and menopause’ (Vronsky,
2007: 6). Vronsky further points out that since the actions of women per-
petrators are considered a break with the ‘gender roles and identity’, they
challenge our understanding of good and evil and, more generally, our
‘understanding of humanity’ (2007: 29).
The gendered perception that tends to identify women with victims and
men with perpetrators has been reinforced by the fact that, in almost its
entire history, genocide has been perpetrated by men. As Roger W. Smith
(1994) acknowledges, there are only two exceptions to this unwritten rule:
National Socialism in Germany and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Along
with the exceptions mentioned by Smith, one needs to add a more recent
case of women’s involvement in the genocide: Rwanda (Sharlach, 1999).
Smith further claims that, despite its unique features that allowed women to
take part in the genocide, the Nazi regime remained a patriarchal structure.
The women employed within the Nazi system were statistically fewer than
men and rarely in positions of top leadership.
Taking into consideration these aspects, the long dearth of studies on
women who took an active part in the persecution set in place by the
Nazis is understandable to a point. This seemingly disinterest in women
perpetrators was paralleled by the enormous success of hyper-sexualized,
often pornographic images of Nazi women present in fictional literature
and popular films. This tendency peaked in the 1970s when, almost with-
out exception, all women involved with the Nazis were depicted as brutal,
sexually deviant, perverted and sadistic. The films that paved the way for
an eroticized representation of Nazi women, to quote just a few, include
She-Devils of the SS (1973), Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS (1975), Deported Women
of the SS Special Section (1976), and The Beast in Heat (1977). It is important
to highlight that such depictions, although rare in mainstream cinema,
formed a new underground trend known as Nazisploitation cinema.1 The
name itself formed by the union of two words ‘Nazis’ and ‘exploitation’
denotes the practice of ‘exploiting’ for commercial reasons the figure of the
Nazis in a formula that blends pornography with violence. This trend in
lowbrow cinema and culture is significant since it allows us to acknowledge
a two-way phenomenon. On the one hand, the lack of scholarly research on
women’s participation in the genocide during the Nazi regime allowed and
even fostered the creation of fictionalized images centred on sexual fantasies
about Nazi women. On the other hand, the erotic depictions of Nazi women
perpetuated by Nazisploitation cinema, inhibited historical research on
women as perpetrators and discouraged alternative representations of Nazi
women in Holocaust feature films. In the same vein, Brown makes useful
reference to Przyrembel’s (2001) claim regarding the hesitation of historians
to study female perpetrators due to the ‘demonized image’ of Ilse Koch
known as ‘The Bitch of Buchenwald’ which inspired the most well-known
Nazisploitation film Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS. According to Brown:
Alexandra Przyrembel posits that the ideological hold on the popular

imagination of the demonized image of Koch may be ‘responsible for
the tendency, even within women’s history, to view female perpetrators
in the concentration camps as at most a “remarkably brutal and power-
obsessed” minority among women, and for the reluctance, until recently,
to address the specifics of these women’s “exercise” of power, let alone to
address the history of its reception after 1945’. (Brown, 2013: 77)
Illustrative is the fact that, among the few hundreds of European fiction
films made between 1945 and 2004 there is only one to have a female
overseer in the main role (The Passenger) and a handful of other films that
218 Ingrid Lewis
employ Nazi women in roles that engage with the protagonist (or one of the
leading characters). The most noteworthy films are: The Last Stage (1948),
The Passenger (1963), Seven Beauties (1976), Europa, Europa (1991), Look to the
Sky (1993), Life is Beautiful (1997), Gloomy Sunday (1999) and Spring of Life
(2000). It is significant that even within this extremely small number of
films, the portrayal of Nazi women is trapped within stereotypes of violent,
sexually perverted or ridiculous behaviours.
Among the women working within the Nazi apparatus depicted in
Holocaust cinema, the most encountered and stereotyped category tends to
be represented by the female guards and head-overseers. In the immediate
post-war period, with the intention of denouncing the horrific dimensions
of the Holocaust, some filmmakers staged their stories in concentration
camps and featured women as camp personnel. Whether women inhabit
the screen for a few seconds – as in the case of Distant Journey (1949) and
Kapò (1960), or they play a major role as in The Last Stage (1948) and The
Passenger (1963), they all have one feature in common: an evil nature. Some
of the scenes are illustrative of the monstrosity of their character, the inhu-
manity of their behaviour and the excesses of their brutality: female guards
slap defenceless people on the face, they take pleasure punishing unjustly,
beat inmates with the leaded whips or incite dogs to attack them.
It is not a surprise that the image of cruel camp guards was present at
such an early stage in Holocaust feature films. Ulrike Weckel claims that the
‘strategies of dehumanizing and demonizing’ the perpetrators used by the
Allied forces in the film footages made at the liberation of the camps ‘seem
to have appeared even more convincing when the films presented pictures
of a relatively large group of female SS personnel arrested in Bergen-Belsen’.
As Weckel further acknowledges ‘the women, in fact, appear in almost
all early documentaries’ (2005: 557). The recurrence of these images has
certainly influenced the depictions of women perpetrators in feature films
too. Similarly Anthony Rowland argues that ‘there is a wider cultural fasci-
nation with the figure of female perpetrators in western countries’ which
originated from the way the Allied media framed the women perpetrators
brought to the trials. He explains how, contrary to the trials that took
place in the German Federal Republic which ‘played down the guilt’ of
these women, the Allied trials emphasized the ‘masculinity’ of female per-
petrators while they were ‘prosecuted and demonized as atavistic beasts’
(Rowland, 2013: 129–30).
The first post-war feature film set in a concentration camp (The Last Stage)
was directed by Wanda Jakubowska and co-scripted with Gerda Schneider,
two ex-inmates of the female section of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Despite
the fact that the female guards portrayed in The Last Stage are different in age
and physical appearance, their representation borders stereotype. The plain-
looking, hard-featured guards stand out for the brutality of their behaviour,
meanwhile one young, attractive guard draws the attention for her frivolous
character (she flirts with the camp commander; she aspires to become a
head-overseer, claiming that she deserves the position because she is young
and pretty). Fourteen years later the actress who plays the head-overseer in
The Last Stage (Aleksandra Slaska) interprets the role of another camp guard,
Liza, in The Passenger by Andrzej Munk, only this time as the main protago-
nist of the film. To my knowledge, this is the only European fiction film that
has a female Nazi overseer as the central character. Despite its unique value
in depicting the Holocaust and its daring choice to present the story from
an overseer’s perspective, The Passenger does not engage in exploring the
reasons for which Liza joined the Nazis, nor does it attempt to bring further
knowledge by contextualizing her camp experiences.
Another cinematic woman performing a relevant role in a Holocaust film
is Hilde, the camp commander in Seven Beauties. Every detail in her por-
trayal combines to highlight her masculinity: her hulking body with broad
shoulders, the aggressive language and intimidating attitude, the menacing
whip in her hand, her manly appearance while standing with the legs
apart in her masculine-like underwear and the black leathered boots that
she keeps on even during the intercourse scene with Pasqualino, the main
character in the film.
Other fictional characters of women working within the Nazi system
include the nasty warden who whips Jonah’s hands in punishment for having
dropped his working tool on the floor in Look to the Sky; a Nazi woman who
takes sexual advantage of the young protagonist in Europa, Europa; a female
overseer who sentences Guido to death by whistling and pointing him out
while he was trying to pass unnoticed in Life is Beautiful; and, in the same
film, another camp woman who mistakes Joshua for one of the German
boys playing in the courtyard and scolds him for not obeying the orders.
As the film Spring of Life illustrates, the framing of Nazi women as mascu-
line, deviant or evil monsters transcends the category of camp guards and
is extended to medical personnel. This film portrays two Nazi women: the
chief doctor Waage, framed as a lesbian who is shown touching herself while
looking at the X-ray of one of the girls, and the masculine Klára, director of
the Race Commission. Their portrayal is even more outstanding if one con-
siders that the few female nurses and doctors depicted so far in Holocaust
films were mostly silent and distant presences, without any meaningful
roles in the film plot. Significant about Spring of Life is not only the framing
of the two Nazi women as deviant or masculine, but the reiteration of such
a highly clichéd representation from the immediate post-war period until
55 years after the end of World War II.
Secretaries, another category of Nazi women representing those who were
part of the bureaucratic apparatus, supporting the work of desk murderers,
have not received much visibility in films. They are represented by short-
lived characters, performed mostly in un-credited roles. The mechanical
sounds of the typing machine seem to make up for their silence, since rarely
220 Ingrid Lewis
would a Nazi secretary be seen speaking in films. Frau Häberle from the
film Gloomy Sunday steps out from this anonymous mass not only because
the audience gets to know her name, but also because she has a few lines
in the film narrative. However, the filmmaker allows her to speak only to
make her look ridiculous and rigidly rooted in black and white thinking, by
concluding her relatively small role with a totally inappropriate reaction.
When challenged by her boss she bursts out in hysterical laughter, unable to
organize her work without strict guidance and well-established rules.
This survey highlights both the absence and the confinement to stereo-
typed roles of the few female figures that embody women working for the
Nazi system. If the image we have about Nazi women would be strictly a
cinematographic one, we could be led to think that the women working
within the Nazi apparatus were nothing more than obedient brain-washed
secretaries, bloodlust overseers and silent nurses carrying out orders from
above.
Downfall and The Reader: Synopsis and Critics
Downfall and The Reader depart from the above-mentioned films as they
avoid representations of Nazi women as monsters. Instead, I shall argue,
these films explore their involvement as ‘ordinary women’, an expression
used by Bock in reference to Browning’s study. Through the characters of
Traudl Junge, Hitler’s personal secretary in Downfall and Hanna Schmitz,
a camp guard in The Reader, Hirschbiegel and Daldry explore the issue of
guilt, the possible motivations for joining the Nazis and the subsequent
impact of such choice on their lives. Moving away from simplistic and
sketchy portrayals that characterized the representation of Nazi women in
previous European films, Downfall and The Reader challenge the assumption
that all women who assumed an active role in the persecution were mainly
evil, violent or perverted, or played only marginal roles which hardly
demanded any further reflection.
Both films achieved global success, winning awards in several film festi-
vals around the world and reaching record box-office receipts. Despite their
important awards and recognition around the world, the critical reception
was mixed, divided between those who praised the films for their cinematic
achievements and acting performances and those who emphasized the
problematic approach to perpetrators. David Bathrick and Johannes von
Moltke questioned the right of the filmmakers to display a humanized
portrayal of Hitler in Downfall, the ‘politics of emotion’ intended to create
sympathy towards characters that were perpetrators (von Moltke, 2007: 38)
and the ‘ahistorical representation of historical figures’ (Bathrick, 2007: 14).
The most recent study on Downfall by Matthew Boswell (2013) highlights
the ‘myopic perpetrator view on events’ that conceals relevant historical
elements that would provide a more complete and accurate image of the
events. As for The Reader, the film attracted similar criticism especially
regarding the portrayal of perpetrators as victims. To contrast the nega-
tive criticism received by the film, the thorough research on the topic by
William Collins Donahue’s study (2010) established a fruitful dialogue
between Stephen Daldry’s film and Berhnard Schlink’s book on which it
is based. Donahue claims that ‘Daldry’s film is not only a cleaner, more
streamlined version of the original story but also a work of considerable
beauty in its own right’ (2010: 155).
While the above-mentioned studies bring significant knowledge on both
films, they fail to place the portrayal of Traudl Junge and Hanna Schmitz in
relation to the previous representations of female perpetrators. Neither do
they acknowledge that, despite the limitations and questionable approach
to the subject of perpetrators, Downfall and The Reader attempt for the first
time to depart from stereotyped depictions of women as perpetrators pre-
vailing in earlier films. Why is this novel approach to the portrayal of female
perpetrators in Downfall and The Reader so important? On the one hand,
more elaborate depictions of female perpetrators can provide a better under-
standing of the complexities of the Holocaust, moving away from black and
white situations based on simplistic representations of good and evil. On the
other hand, the cinematic portrayal of ‘ordinary women’ allows the audi-
ence to draw parallels between the persecution during Nazism and issues of
contemporary relevance for today’s societies such as discrimination, racism,
prejudice and xenophobia.
In response to the negative criticism received by both films, especially
Downfall, for encouraging empathy with the perpetrators, I endorse Jenni
Adams’ view that, to some extent, these films disrupt ‘the conventional
pattern of identification in Holocaust discourse’ with the victim’s per-
spective. Adams further claims that ‘while such identification cultivates
compassion and regard for persecuted others, it also shades into an appro-
priative position that facilitates an evasion of ethical self-examination’
(Adams, 2013: 31). I also share Browning’s claim, quoted by Adams, that ‘not
trying to understand the perpetrators in human terms would make impos-
sible … any history of Holocaust perpetrators that sought to go beyond
one-dimensional caricature’ (Adams, 2013: 28). It is exactly the ‘one dimen-
sional caricature’ exhibited by European Holocaust cinema prior to Downfall
and The Reader that is questioned and chosen as a point of departure for
this article. Hence, my argument aligns with Browning’s and Adams’ view
that exploring perspectives and representations of perpetrators ‘can play a
powerful role as a catalyst to ethical thought’ (Adams, 2013: 28).
Before taking a closer look at how these films depart from their forerunners
and how they achieve the portrayal of ‘ordinary women’, I shall present a
brief synopsis. Downfall by Oliver Hirschbiegel, set in April 1945, depicts
the final days of the Third Reich in Hitler’s bunker situated beneath the
Reich Chancellery in Nazi Berlin. It is very significant that the film script is
222 Ingrid Lewis
inspired both by the bestseller book Inside Hitler’s Bunker: The Last Days of the
Third Reich by Joachim Fest and the memoir Until the Final Hour, written in
old age by Traudl Junge. That the film narrative is intended to be partially
Traudl’s perspective on the events is emphasized by the two fragments of
interview part of the documentary Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary (directed by
André Heller and Othmar Schmiderer, released in 2002) that mark the begin-
ning and the ending of Downfall. The emphatic transference between the
film character and the audience is fostered by the attribution of the role to
the beautiful actress Alexandra Maria Lara, relatively unknown on the inter-
national arena, who was doubly awarded for her performance in the film.
Her exemplary interpretation contributes towards filling with realism the
portrayal of Hitler’s secretary as a young and inexperienced woman entirely
unaware of what ‘she was getting into’ as the aged Traudl Junge claims at
the beginning of the film.
Stephen Daldry’s film inspired by Bernhard Schlink’s best-selling book
Der Vorleser, narrates a complex story that has as a starting point the meet-
ing between Michael Berg, a teenage boy ill from scarlet fever and Hanna
Schmitz, a woman twice his age who helps him when the latter feels suddenly
sick on the street. Their meeting will later result in a tumultuous summer
affair in which Michael spends his afternoons reading to Hanna who initiates
him in the sexual life. Their affair ends abruptly when Hanna moves away
without notice, leaving young Michael heartbroken. Nearly a decade later,
Michael who is now a law student, attends the trial of six female guards in
Auschwitz concentration camp during Nazism and is stunned to discover
Hanna among the defendants. His former lover is accused of letting 300
inmates die in a burning church where the prisoners were sheltered over-
night during a death march. During the trial Michael becomes aware of
Hanna’s illiteracy and of the fact that disclosing this information would
change her sentence into a more lenient one. Nevertheless, he chooses to
remain silent, but he will accompany Hanna on the road towards literacy
by recording books he reads aloud and by sending her tapes in prison. After
spending two decades in prison Hanna commits suicide on the eve of being
released and leaves her life savings to one of the victims that survived the
church fire as a child. Kate Winslet, who won an Oscar and twelve other
international awards for her interpretation in the film, admirably plays the
role of the camp guard Hanna Schmitz. The attribution of the perpetrator
role to an actress so much beloved by the worldwide public had a signifi-
cant role in creating sympathy towards a character that otherwise should be
despicable due to her odd behaviour towards Michael and to her war crimes.
Profiling Women Perpetrators in Downfall and The Reader
A careful analysis of Downfall and The Reader highlights several important

points of departure from the portrayal of female perpetrators in previous
films. Both films are structured within multiple time frames, sliding in and
out between present and past in an attempt to contextualize the behav-
iour of the two women, to explain without excusing their active involve-
ment as perpetrators. With the exception of The Passenger which narration
unfolds, similarly, between present and past recollections, the portrayals
of Nazi women have been fixed in a single temporal dimension. Whether
the Nazi women appear on the screen for a few seconds like the female
guards chasing and beating inmates in Look to the Sky and in The Last Stage
or whether they play more complex roles like the commandant in Seven
Beauties or the head doctor in Spring of Life, the characters are limited
to their involvement as perpetrators. There is no ‘before’ or ‘after’ the
Holocaust in their depiction. There are no elements that could allow the
spectator to contextualize their life, or to understand the circumstances
that determined their involvement with the Nazis and thus construct a
more complex picture of female perpetrators. They are merely anonymous
figures lost in an indistinct mass of perpetrators.
By portraying Traudl Junge and Hanna Schmitz as ‘ordinary women’, the
films of Hirschbiegel and Daldry invite us towards a closer approach to the
issue of perpetratorship. If the two perpetrators are not deviant, evil-women,
but stand out for their ordinariness, how did they come to work for the
Nazis? The filmmakers do not try to excuse Traudl’s and Hanna’s deeds; in
fact their guilt is fully assumed in both cases. Instead, they raise important
questions: What makes ordinary people side with evil? What mechanisms
are activated when one chooses what is morally wrong? The rounded por-
trayals of the two perpetrators, achieved by contextualizing their involvement
with the Nazis, are crucial in this process of understanding.
Traudl Junge is portrayed as a beautiful and modern young girl, caring
and compassionate, always trying to help and comfort others. She is very
emotional and impulsive, when she tells the Führer that she is not going to
abandon him, but later confesses that she does not know why she had said
that. The film focuses on the last days in Hitler’s bunker and points out why,
as a young woman, Traudl was so blinded and charmed by Hitler’s figure. It
clearly highlights the discrepancy between Hitler’s behaviour in his private
life and as Führer, the gap between his caring attitude towards Traudl and
his outbursts of fury in the presence of his generals. The emphasis on his
paternal side – most of the times Hitler addresses Traudl as ‘my child’ – has
an explanatory role in the film dynamics showing how it was possible for
his young secretary to be so blinded.
In one of the scenes in the secretaries’ private room, Traudl confesses that
her family and friends opposed her decision to join the Nazis. Despite the
brief duration of the scene, this confession is very important since it offers
information about Traudl’s life before joining Hitler and points out again
her immaturity translated into a rebellious character and unwise judgement
as she will do exactly what the parents advised her not to do. The intimate
224 Ingrid Lewis
atmosphere, the subjective shots from the perspective of her colleagues and
the use of dramatic music amplifying the emotional charge of this moment,
emphasize Traudl’s inner turmoil and the feeling that she cannot undo her
choice.
In order to stress Traudl’s normality, the filmmaker contrasts her figure
with that of Magda Goebbels, the wife of the Propaganda Minister Joseph
Goebbels. While Traudl declares in the opening sequence that she was never
‘a fanatical Nazi’, Mrs Goebbels is portrayed as diametrically opposed. Two
moments highlight her extremism: when she throws herself at Hitler’s feet
pleading with him not to commit suicide and when she poisons her six
children with cyanide capsules. While the first scene can be interpreted
as the hysterical outburst of a desperate woman, the second one seems
beyond comprehension. The decision to poison her children is motivated,
as she claims, by the fact that they ‘cannot grow up in a world without
National Socialism’. Just minutes after the terrifying scene, she starts to
play cards on her own, as a cold-blooded murderer. At the extreme edge of
fanaticism, Magda Goebbels considers that ‘there’s nothing left to live for’
without Hitler and his ideology. The antagonism between the two female
characters works very well, pointing out Traudl’s innocence although living
among such extreme perpetrators. Twice, Traudl’s opposition against the
Führer’s ideas is suggested: first during a meal when he argues in favour of
the ‘extermination of the weak’ and claims that ‘compassion for the weak
is a betrayal of nature’, and later, when Hitler refers to his anti-Jewish poli-
cies while dictating his will. Even though Traudl does not utter a word, her
facial expressions are very suggestive, pointing out that not only does she
disagree, but she is terrified by Hitler’s ideas, by his ‘horrible language’ as
she explains. Even in relation to the six children present in the bunker, the
film portrays Traudl showing a motherly attitude, more caring in fact than
Magda Goebbels. Just before Hitler’s death, Traudl finds the little ones sitting
on the stairs, hungry and forgotten by everybody and brings them upstairs
to offer them food.
The Reader uses similar strategies intended to contextualize the life of
female perpetrators and to explore their behaviour. The character of Hanna
Schmitz is constructed by bringing together elements that link her life
during the love affair with Michael, the trial of the six female guards and
events that happen after the trial. These elements contribute in achieving
a more rounded-up portrayal of Hanna and allow us to see that far from
being a monster she was an ordinary woman. The audience will get to know
Hanna progressively through Michael’s enamoured eyes. She is mysterious
and has an unpredictable behaviour, she has a special interest in books,
and her life revolves routinely between her job as tram conductor and the
house work. The film depicts her in a variety of situations: she is in tears
when the character of the novel that Michael is reading for her aloud dies, is
excited at the idea of going on a cycling trip with Michael, has an outburst
of anger when she notices Michael watching her from the other carriage
of the tram she works in, is upset and confused after receiving the news of
the work promotion. This palette of feelings displayed by Hanna and which
are puzzling for young Michael, contribute to creating a complex portrayal
of a human being. The scene that shows Hanna emotionally overwhelmed
while listening to a children’s choir in an old country church is one of the
most significant in the film. Hanna cries and laughs at the same time as she
listens to the choir’s angelic voices, while Michael, together with the audi-
ence, is pleasingly surprised to see how such a simple thing can touch her so
deeply. Only later in the film, during the trial of the female guards, does the
audience get to know that the church is a symbolic reminder of her crimes
during the Holocaust. In fact she is accused of refusing to open the doors
of the church in which 300 inmates were held and letting them die. The
powerful visual image of Hanna’s emotional reaction in the country church
during the cycling trip with Michael coupled with the innocence of the
children singing in the choir prevail over the terrific scene of the church fire
which is only described at the trial but not directly represented in the film.
Beside the humanized portrayal made ‘through the eyes of love’, the
camera’s gaze mercilessly shows Hanna as a simple woman living in a poor
neighbourhood, very lonely – she does not seem to have friends or family –
and having a life defined by hard work. The ‘heaviness’ of her life is metaphori-
cally illustrated by the heavy buckets of coal that she has to bring up the stair
every day. The well-kept secret that the audience learns only during the trial,
her illiteracy, weighs on all her decisions: from the very small one of reading
a menu during the trip with Michael to the life-changing choice of giving
up her job because she was promoted and was too ashamed to admit that
she could not perform the new office work that she has been offered. All
this information about Hanna’s life before the trial is provided not only to
present a complex character, but – as Donahue claims – is a way to explore
‘the intriguing question of criminal causality’. Donahue suggests that ‘this
studied attention to the working class provenance of the film’s chief perpe-
trator is not meant to excuse or expunge her guilt but rather to reflect upon
how she became an SS guard in the first place’ (Donahue, 2010: 166).
Not Monsters, but Repentant ‘Ordinary Women’
One of the new elements brought by the two films is an exploration of the
issue of guilt in relation to women perpetrators. All Nazi women portrayed
up until this point enjoy sadism and cruelty which they manifest with
zealous excess. In the previous cinematic depictions of Nazi women there
is no place for repentance or reflection on personal guilt. In fact while
their violent characters are often shown in the films, the spectator has no
information whether these women ever felt any guilt and how they dealt
with it. Not even The Passenger, which is narrated with the advantage of
226 Ingrid Lewis
hindsight and from the perspective of the perpetrator, engages with this
issue. In contrast, the two women perpetrators in Downfall and The Reader,
do not fit anymore the image of remorseless monsters that take pleasure
in persecuting. Their portrayal is full of humanness and display repent-
ance for the involvement with the Nazis. In relation to Hitler’s secretary
Traudl Junge from Downfall, the issue of guilt is explicit from the beginning
of the film. The filmmaker’s choice to open the film with a brief excerpt
from the documentary Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary impacts on the whole
perspective of the film. The introductory enunciation of old Traudl lends a
self-referential tone, as the film becomes her statement of guilt and request
for understanding. By mentioning her incapacity to forgive and understand
her actions as a young girl, she is implicitly asking the audience to consider
the possibility of forgiving and understanding her.
In Daldry’s film, the issue of repentance is more complicated because our
knowledge about Hanna is mediated by Michael Berg, her former teenage
lover. In the film Hanna does not express openly feelings of guilt for the
actions she committed while working as a guard in a Nazi concentration
camp. In the scenes that present the trial, the audience takes note of her
crimes: she is accused of taking part in the selection process within the
camp and of murdering 300 inmates by not opening the doors of the church
where they were held when a fire started. The judge gives her a life sentence.
After over 20 years in prison, when she is about to be released for good
behaviour, she receives the visit of Michael. This is one of the key moments
that open a possible discussion on how Hanna dealt with guilt:
Hanna: Before the trial, I never thought about the past. I never had to.
Michael: Now? What do you feel now?
Hanna: It doesn’t matter what I feel. It doesn’t matter what I think.
The dead are still dead.
Michael: I wasn’t sure what you’d learned.
Hanna: Well, I have learned, kid. I’ve learned to read.
If one isolates this dialogue from the rest of the film, it could appear that
Hanna refuses to reflect on her past crimes. The ironic reply and the refusal
to talk about the past could lead us to think that she feels no guilt. Instead,
this scene needs to be read in the light of two other key moments. In the first
one, the day before the final hearing of the trial, Michael meets Professor
Rohl, and asks him for advice regarding the information he knows about the
defendant – her illiteracy – and expresses his doubts whether to disclose the
information in court or not. One can notice how the line Michael gets from
his professor – ‘What we feel is not important. It is utterly unimportant.
The only question is what we do’ – is mirrored by the answer Michael gets
from Hanna 20 years later. She is pointing out that her feelings are ‘utterly
unimportant’ since her actions in the past cannot be undone. Hanna cannot
make up for the past, no matter how or what she feels. By linking the two
phrases that mirror each other, her answer allows a shadow of doubt and
opens the alternative that she might have felt guilt. Up to here, both cases
are possible. The second key moment will cast light on this dilemma. After
Hanna’s suicide before her release from prison, in the scene where her will is
read out loud by the prison officer, Michael finds out that her last thoughts
were of the Jewish girl who survived the fire. Even if Hanna is not able to
disclose her feelings towards the past during Michael’s brief visit in prison,
this key scene read in the light of the other two leads us to assume that she
probably thought a lot about her crimes in prison and felt the burden of
guilt. Offering all her savings to her former victim is Hanna’s way to repent
for the past.
Bridging the Past and the Present: ‘What Would I Have

Done in their Place?’
So far, I have argued that the depiction of Nazi women in Downfall and
The Reader departs from previous cinematic representations by exploring
the issue of repentance and by contextualizing the life of women perpetra-
tors within narratives that highlight the complexities of the human soul.
It is interesting to note that although the two film characters are portrayed
as ‘repentant’, this element is not meant to downplay their guilt. On the
contrary, in both cases the element of guilt is fully assumed.
According to Donahue, one of the ‘key corrections’ to the novel that Daldry
makes in his film, is that of leaving no doubt about Hanna’s guilt (Donahue,
2010: 159–61). As he claims, the novel on which the film is based raises a
series of questions regarding the possibility for the victims of the church fire
to have saved themselves. Also in the novel, on the night of the fire, the
female guards were not alone but accompanied by their armed male superiors
who could have intervened – which further exculpates Hanna. Daldry’s film,
on the contrary, does not mitigate the seriousness of Hanna’s crimes; in fact
she acknowledges ‘we all did it’. It may seem a scandalous paradox that the
filmmaker chooses to highlight Hanna’s guilt but at the same time portrays
her in a sympathetic light. The empathy with Hanna Schmitz is ensured by
the fact that her character is interpreted by the much-loved actress Kate
Winslet, but also because the audience gets to know her crimes only in the
second half of the film. To this image contributes also the fact that Hanna
accepts a heavier punishment than the other defendants because she is
ashamed of her illiteracy.
Similarly in Downfall, the filmmaker emphasizes Traudl’s guilt. In the
interview at the end of the film, old Traudl Junge claims that ‘youth is no
excuse’ and openly declares that even though for a long time she tried to
deny any feelings of culpability, nothing can justify her for siding with the
perpetrators. Just seconds before her confession, the epilogue of the film
228 Ingrid Lewis
states that Traudl Junge was pardoned by a post-war trial for collaborating
with Hitler on the grounds of her youthfulness. The two sequences have an
initial puzzling effect, as the audience might wonder why the filmmaker
insists on her confession of culpability after stating that she was officially
pardoned. The powerful images of Traudl’s confession placed strategically at
the very end of the film leave the filmgoer with the conviction that she is
indeed culpable, despite the lightness of her portrayal in the film.
It is significant that both Hirschbiegel and Daldry choose to portray the
two ‘ordinary women’ as clearly guilty but somehow in a sympathetic light.
They are blameworthy, but at the same time unable to realize the whole
picture of the persecution to which they actively took part. This strategy has
the role of shifting the focus from merely accusing the Nazi women towards
interrogating how it was possible. Most importantly they challenge the
audience into exploring a very inconvenient question: ‘What would I have
done in their place?’ While shifting the attention from the past, towards the
present, from the filmic character towards the audience, each viewer has to
answer this dilemma in its own way.
Conclusion
With the release of Downfall in 2004 and The Reader in 2008, European
Holocaust cinema marks a key transition in the representation of women
as perpetrators of the Nazi regime, from absent images or rigidly anchored
stereotypes of feminine evil to portrayals that explore the complexity
of ordinary women who actively contributed to the persecution. This
approach integrates a twofold development in historical research, on the
one hand, the increased interest in women and the Holocaust, beginning
with the 1980s, and on the other the gendered approach to perpetrators
developed in the last two decades. While historical research remains often
available to a limited audience, films break this barrier bringing to a global
public the awareness of new research findings and multi-faceted aspects of
the Holocaust. In this sense the internationally acclaimed films Downfall
and The Reader challenge viewers around the world to reflect upon and
interrogate the ordinariness of female perpetrators during the Nazi regime.
The notion of ‘ordinary men’ and ‘ordinary women’ as perpetrators
is not only ground-breaking for Holocaust scholars, but can challenge
filmgoers into understanding that such an unprecedented atrocity like
the Holocaust is not the fruit of a few diabolic minds but the work of
countless people like any of us. Women, as the kinder and gentler sex, are
no exception to this ruthless truth. Their ‘ordinariness’ can raise interest
into exploring who these women were, why they have sided with the
persecutors and how common people can turn into murderers. From a
cinematic point of view, reshaping female perpetrators from monster-like
characters into ‘ordinary women’ makes them appealing to scrutiny and
more susceptible to connections with the lives of today’s audiences. As

the popularity of Downfall and The Reader proved, modern audiences want
to be challenged with no easy-to-find answers, and no black and white
circumstances.
The nearly seven decades that have passed since the Holocaust have
shown that, unfortunately, the lessons of history are sometimes hard to
learn. The ‘never again’ often pronounced by Holocaust survivors have not
impeded that prejudice, discrimination on different levels, xenophobia and
racial hatred are still present in many of Europe’s modern societies. With
the rise of multiculturalism and increased immigration, societies in many
countries are shaken by conflicts and violence. The Bosnian genocide in
the 1990s, and the xenophobic attack in Norway that claimed the lives
of 77 people in 2011, are just two examples from recent times of ethical,
racial violence that continue to happen in the very heart of Europe. In
this context, the cinematic representation of perpetrators, both male and
female, can enhance our understanding of the complexities of this phe-
nomena and raise awareness of the fragile boundaries that separate what is
morally right and wrong. According to Boswell, provocative representations
of the Holocaust which revolve around ‘dynamics of perpetration’ are not
intended to desecrate the memory of the dead, but to challenge ‘those who
see no connection between historical atrocity and their own values, political
systems and day-to-day lives’ (Boswell, 2012: 4).
By interrogating the involvement with the Nazis of Hanna Schmitz and
Traudl Junge, by portraying them as two ordinary women and, moreover,
by insisting on their guilt while depicting them in a sympathetic light,
the films by Hirschbiegel and Daldry break what the filmmaker Claude
Lanzmann referred to as the ‘obscenity of understanding’. Nevertheless,
through their non-conformist approach, Downfall and The Reader open a
path towards alternative portrayals of female perpetrators, but most impor-
tantly, they transform the Holocaust into a lesson which transcends past
events and relates to our modern societies and to its everyday people.
Note
1. For further reading see Magilow et al. (2012).
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Jenni Adams and Sue Vice (eds.) Representing Perpetrators in Holocaust Literature and
Film, London: Vallentine Michell, pp. 25–46.
Baron, Lawrence (2005) Projecting the Holocaust into the Present: The Changing of Focus
of Contemporary Holocaust Cinema, New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
Bathrick, David (2007) ‘Whose Hi/story Is It? The U.S. Reception of Downfall’, New
German Critique 34.3, pp. 1–16.
230 Ingrid Lewis
Benedict, Susan (2003) ‘Caring While Killing: Nursing in the “Euthanasia” Centers’,
in Elisabeth R. Baer and Myrna Goldenberg (eds.), Experience and Expression: Women,
the Nazis, and the Holocaust, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, pp. 95–110.
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the Holocaust, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, pp. 85–100.
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Nazisploitation! The Nazi Image in Low-Brow Cinema and Culture, London and New York:
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Holocaust and Genocide Studies 8.3, pp. 315–34.
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in Olaf Jensen and Claus-Christian W. Szejnmann (eds.), Ordinary People as Mass
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pp. 25–54.
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Politics of Emotion’, New German Critique 34.3, pp. 17–43.
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15
Real Imagination? Holocaust
Comics in Europe
Christine Gundermann
The Holocaust is an essential part of Western historical culture, and the

question of how this history is supposed to be told, taught and depicted
remains open to debate. Since the late 1970s the Holocaust has become
one of the leading topics in popular culture. In this chapter, I will focus on
one particular realm of popular culture: comic books and graphic novels
about the Holocaust in Europe. As a contemporary historian I am particu-
larly interested in history comics (comics with historical contents), and the
comic market in Europe presents a broad variety of these comics regarding
World War II and the Holocaust. Although the term ‘graphic novel’ can be
misleading, history comics assert a certain kind of historical cogency; they
therefore range between pure fictional entertainment and different kinds of
historical authenticity, sometimes even in an academic way. Since the 1990s,
more and more artists have been creating graphic novels about the Holocaust.
Like stories about war, this topic not only sells well but artists use this medium
to come to terms with their own personal or national past or for producing
teaching material.
A defining moment in the history of comics was the publication of Art
Spiegelman’s Maus. When it was published in Western Europe in 1989,
Maus set off a chain reaction that changed the perception of history comics,
especially in Germany. In Maus Spiegelman tells the story of his father
Vladek, who survived the Holocaust, through a unique comic style depict-
ing Jews with masks of mice and German perpetrators with masks of cats
(Frahm, 2006). This alienation and reproducing of a racist stereotype of the
Nazis made Maus one of the most reviewed and scientifically investigated
comics (Frahm, 2006 but also Spiegelman, 2011). From this point in time,
comics were no longer considered as cheap entertainment for children
or adolescent men, but came to be regarded as a proficient way of telling
stories, and more importantly, of illustrating the history of World War II
and the Holocaust. In this context, the comic was discovered as effective
material for educational purposes and also became a medium of the poli-
tics of history. However, critics still question whether Holocaust comics are
231
232 Christine Gundermann
appropriate for depicting and telling the Holocaust. In academic discourse,

a general critique of popular cultural memory can be seen, where comics are
measured with scientific standards when reviewed by critics (Dittmar, 2011:
419). While other war comics are considered to be ‘only’ entertainment,
Holocaust comics are quite often perceived to be more, most of all to be
truthful and to have an educational message.
Since the Holocaust is part of our popular culture, popular media have
supplied us with an arrangement of a certain iconic symbolism in depicting
the Holocaust that formed our imagination of this genocide and therefore
our memory of it. It is composed of a various range of stereotypes and
symbols. At large, popular media about the Holocaust are highly infused by
a Hollywood standard of aesthetization (Rohr, 2010: 172) of the victims, the
perpetrators and the violence as well as the death camps. Many narrative
structures also deploy a sacralization (an aggrandisement of a person into
holy spheres) and hero worshipping, as well as a feminization of the victims
and therefore a (hyper)masculinization of the perpetrators (Hirsch, 2002:
206). Prominent movies such as George Stevens’ The Diary of Anne Frank
and most of all Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List have influenced almost
all media and most of all our ‘habitual conception’ (Rohr, 2010: 172) of
perpetrators, victims and bystanders alike (Kettner, 2011). In this regard,
Holocaust fiction is an innate part of our history culture. Sometimes, popu-
lar media also drift into so-called ‘Naziploitation’, as Florian Evers’ excellent
study shows (Evers, 2011). This genre emerged in the 1960s and mixed icons
of National Socialism with sexism and especially sadism.
I will show that these tendencies count for the comic medium as well.
While an empirical cogency of the stories is still a major attribute for pro-
ducing and evaluating these products of history culture, there is a clear
tendency to fiction as well. But almost always, popular standards define
the aesthetic frame of the comic. This should not be understood as simple
‘Americanization’. In European media and comic cultures these trends were
integrated, assimilated and enhanced as well. Ole Frahm therefore calls it a
general ‘pre-conditioning through popular culture’ (Frahm, 2011: 149). This
means that the habitual conception of Nazis is largely formed by popular aes-
thetic strategies of the movie industry including the appearance and sound
of the Nazis or the use of images of boots, leather coats and black uniforms.
Crime sites like ghettos and camps are often depicted with Christian symbols
representing hell. Florian Evers has proven that many of these arrangements
regarding colour, light and character portrayals show similarities to Dante’s
Inferno. Evers understands the use of these symbols as a kind of phantasm
protective shield that helps the reader to cope with the atrocities (Evers,
2011: 18). The representation of the Jewish victims is likewise influenced by
common icons of the Holocaust; they are most often symbolized by women
and children. Sometimes that brings forth a certain feminization of Jewish
victims in general. Many comic artists draw these figures bright, beautiful
Real Imagination? Holocaust Comics in Europe 233
and clean. Fabian Kettner has pointed out, that most of the comics avoid
the ‘excremental assault’ that was an innate part of the annihilation of the
Jews; the horrible hygienic conditions in the ghettos, trains and camps are
very rarely shown (Kettner, 2011: 392). While it is no longer a taboo to show
a gas chamber from inside or the work of the Sonderkommando, the dirt and
its consequences for the people that were forced to live and to die in it, are
suppressed.
Another stereotyped way of representing the Holocaust is through use
of ‘logic’. Graphic novels as well as all other storytelling media propose a
problem to be dealt with; they offer a narrative and a plot. They have to
make sense of history. Kettner has pointed out that due to the need to form
a rational plot many authors of graphic novels offer an explanation, where
rationality and effort dominate the survivors’ actions (Kettner, 2011: 389).
Ebbrecht demonstrates the same in films about the Holocaust. Therefore this
is a problem that not only comic artists have to deal with (Ebbrecht, 2011).
Most of the popular media offer a completed story (geschlossene Erzählung),
instead of presenting fragmented narratives that do not provide an answer,
a solution or redemption of this part of our history (Ebbrecht, 2011: 124).
This is a constitutional feature of the earlier mentioned aesthetic standard
used and developed by European comic artists and movie directors as well.
For most comic artists it seems to be very difficult to include a certain kind
of visible reflection of their storytelling within their products.
After sketching a short history of Holocaust comics I offer the reader
some insights about how this market niche developed in the last 20 years
and, by following four major lines of development I reflect upon what they
could mean for our perception and memory culture of the Holocaust. These
include biographical comics, comics as a medium of coping with the past,
comics as teaching material and comics as historical additives. Since the last
two points are most important for many kinds of knowledge transfer, I will
further elaborate on their function with a more detailed analysis of several
comic books.
A History of Holocaust Comics
As soon as the comic-book was established as a new medium in the early

twentieth century, war emerged as one of its main topics. Mostly, war comics
as well as the superhero comics that broached the issue of war were and are
until today a platform to present ideas about the soldier’s war. One example
can illustrate this: the Superhero Captain America was developed in 1941 to
fight explicitly against Hitler and Nazi Germany. Although the series was
later partially suspended, it became popular again in the US and in Europe
after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And so in 2011 the comic’s publisher, Marvel,
launched a film adaptation of the comic as the first of a movie series about
the Avengers. Although Captain America is fighting in this movie against
Germans in Europe, not one Swastika is shown. World War II itself is not
really part of the story but a setting to tell a timeless story of the fight of
good against evil. War comics as well as superhero comics therefore reflect
political crises of their time. After World War II was over, Nazi symbols
remained icons of evil but were, especially in the USA and Western Europe,
accompanied by symbols of communism, as the villain Red Scull of the
Captain America series shows.
Furthermore, in almost all occupied countries comics were drawn as an act
of resistance or as an expression of the great suffering during that time (e.g.
from the Netherlands see Gundermann, 2011). One of the most popular of
these comics was Victor Dancette’s and Edmond Calvo’s La bête est morte (The
beast is dead) from 1944/45 (Dekkers, 1977: 6). Dancette and Calvo depict
their history of World War II in a fictionalized animal world with figures in
Disney style: Hitler was transformed into a ‘big bad wolf’ and Stalin became
a ‘big (ice) bear’ while brave sweet animals as bunnies and squirrels fought
against them.
The first comic about the Holocaust was Ernie Krigstein’s Master Race,
published in 1955 in the US Comic Magazine Impact. In this short story, a
Jewish victim recognizes a former death camp commandant in a New York
subway and tries to confront him with their shared past. However, atroci-
ties against civilians or more specifically the annihilation of the European
Jews were seldom part of stories about World War II. One of the earliest
West German Holocaust comics was an underground comic drawn by
Gabriel Nemeth and titled Sklaven (Nemeth and Palandt, 2011) in the early
1980s. It was an ironic portrayal of the exploitation of Jewish forced labour
that the German industry benefited from.
Besides these first attempts to deal with the Holocaust, many comic artists
used Nazi icons to thrill and entertain their readers, because the World War,
like in many other media, sells (Ribbens, 2009: 123), as shown by Captain
America. A similar use of history is made in the Finnish-German-Australian
cross-media production Iron Sky from 2012. The movie was a crowd-funded
project and a web-comic was published in parallel. In this parody, the Nazis
have escaped to the dark side of the moon in 1945 to come back in the
present and invade planet earth. In this case, the director Timo Vuorensola
included a whole variety of Nazi symbols to create a mixture of science-fic-
tion and satire. The history of National Socialism and World War II became
a décor. In the comic culture and in many other media of popular culture,
National Socialism and eventually the Holocaust have provided us with a
clear setting of stereotypes and symbols that emblematize and therefore
evoke moral judgements. While, for example, elements such as SS uniforms,
combinations of uniforms and doctor’s overalls and medical tools represent
evil, the pure and good is often represented by women, children, feminized
men or the tall, strong (and heterosexual male) hero as the saviour of the
victims. Captain America and Iron Sky also show that popular comic-books
and comic-series should be analysed in connection with their animated and

film versions and merchandising products.
With the ongoing discussion of what comics can show and what should
be permitted to be drawn in comics, a new form of the comic emerged
in the 1990s: the graphic novel, a comic beyond the classic format of
comic books or comic albums, that enabled comic artists to tell complex
storylines, to present a complete story in one book and that no longer fol-
lowed the pre-set drawing style of a genre or series (Gundermann, 2007:
41). In Europe, the graphic novel complemented the niche of the comic-
album that already offered stories for adult readers in a larger format. Today,
there is a broad range of graphic novels that deal with World War II and
the Holocaust. Most of them are fictional stories that use World War II as a
background story to a greater or lesser extent. For example, in Tarek’s and
Vincent Pompetti’s French mini-series Sir Arthur Benton (2005–2013), we fol-
low the life of the British citizen Arthur Benton who becomes a German spy
in the late 1930s. The German comic artist, Isabel Kreitz, offered in 2008
a similar story with Die Sache mit Sorge (The Thing with Sorge). The novel
focuses on the historical figure Richard Sorge who worked as journalist and
spy for the USSR during the war in Japan. But not only European comic
styles and stories are popular today. Osamu Tezuka’s manga series Adolf
became a huge success in Germany after it was translated into German in
2005. Tezuka places his plot in Japan and Germany in the 1930s and 1940s
and tells the story of three different men named Adolf; one is the historical
figure Adolf Hitler, and the other two are a German and a German-Jewish
boy who live in Japan. Their friendship breaks under the anti-Semitic doc-
trines of National Socialism. While most of the comics about World War II
are adventure stories (Mounajed, 2009: 251), many modern graphic novels
can be understood as a kind of epic, which employs both history and fic-
tion. The main narrative and the background story are connected in these
comics, and the plot and historical time form a coherent unit. An example
for this kind of comic epic is Jason Lutes’ Berlin, City of Stones (2001), which
tells the story of the fictional Marthe Müller, who in the 1930s, is an art stu-
dent in Berlin, a city heavily shaken by political radicalization. Remarkable
is also Joe Kubert’s Yossel April 19, 1943 (2003), a ‘what-if’ story written
in a highly reflective drawing style, where Kubert speculates about what
would have happened to his family, if they had not escaped from Poland
into the USA before the war. Kubert as one of the great US comic artists of
superhero comics created a new style of using pencil sketches that indicate
the cogency of his work.
Only a few comics like Pascal Croci’s Auschwitz refer explicitly to the
Holocaust as murder and annihilation of life. Croci’s comic, published in
2002 in France and translated into German in 2005 (Figure 15.1), is one
of the most discussed Holocaust comics in recent years. Although highly
celebrated in France, it was heavily criticized in Germany, as Martin
Figure 15.1 Auschwitz, cover by Pascal Croci, 2005. © Ehapa Comic Collection
Frenzel summarizes in his essay about fictional and biographic memories

in Holocaust comics (Frenzel, 2011: 235). The main point of criticism con-
cerned the plot. Although the comic is advertised by Ehapa as the ‘first
realistic graphic novel’ (Croci, 2005: back cover), and reminds the reader
of the ‘duty to remember’, the comic does not refer to biographical sources
(e.g. ‘Hier wird nur getötet, nur gefoltert’ in Deutschlandradio Kultur,
20 June 2005).
Croci tells the story of Kazik and Cessia, a Jewish couple who survived
Auschwitz. The reader meets them as elderly people, while they are hiding in
a church somewhere in former Yugoslavia in 1993, and, after being discov-
ered, awaiting their immediate execution by mercenaries. The comparison
of both situations of ethnical cleansing is intended. While awaiting their
death, they remember their struggle for survival for the last time. We learn
about their daughter Ann who was separated from her father. The father
joined the Sonderkommando to see her once more. The daughter survives the
gassing, but dies of typhus shortly before the liberation of the camp. Croci
undertook research for the comic and interviewed many survivors, but the
characters are fictional.
Auschwitz is therefore one example of Susanne Rohr’s observation that
accurateness is no longer a leading thread in Holocaust stories (Rohr, 2010:
165). Croci decided to melt the most important stories into the characters to
fabricate a good plot. It becomes obvious what he considers worth remem-
bering: feminized victimhood and two kinds of male prisoners, the ones who
closed their eyes and denied their immediate annihilation and the resisting,
fighting heroes. It is noticeable that in this comic, as well as in the US X-Men:
Magneto Testament by Greg Pak and Carmine Di Giandomenico (2009), the
Sonderkommando plays an important role to explain the survival of the male
prisoners. While in both comics the male captives are secretly working on
a flight plan and engage in resistance, the women remain passive victims.
Generally, a comic artist is not required to work like an academic. What
irritates and justifies many critics, however, is Croci’s appearance as a quasi-
historian in an interview in the attic of the comic. The publisher mixes the
roles of artist and historian, which leads the reader to believe in the authen-
ticity of the drawn that points out a rather non-critical handling of history
by the publisher (German edition).
Regarding aesthetics, Croci combined familiar Hollywood standards with
his own style presented in black and white. The reader sees no nakedness
and filthiness in respect of the hygienic conditions. Especially the staging
of prisoners as victims responds to an aesthetical code: we see forced, but
not broken human beings; the leaders fight for the survival of the other
inmates, they resist the terror and look directly into the readers’ or their per-
petrators’ eyes. The prisoners, especially the women, are beautiful, slender
figures, with white taintless skin, full dark lips, big accented eyes and almost
coquette arranged hairs. Even after the child Ann survives the gas chamber
under the corpses of the dead, she still looks like a sacrosanct martyr with
perfect skin and arranged hair. A sacralization can clearly be recognized.
The ‘excremental assault’, the unbearable hygienic conditions the prisoners
were forced to live in, is a taboo in the comic (Kettner, 2011: 392). Similar
stereotypes were used to portray the perpetrators: they are caricatures of the
shouting and sadistic Nazis we are used to after Schindler’s List. Since Croci
was inspired not only by Steven Spielberg, whom he quotes several times in
the form of panel pictures, but also by the surrealistic German movies from
the 1920s, such as Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s Nosferatu. Eine Symphonie
des Grauens, he uses this inspiration very explicitly when transforming a
German into Nosferatu himself in a dream sequence. Many comic journalists
reviewed the comic as a realistic representation of the crimes (Frenzel,
2011: 235; Telaar, 2012: 57), although the comic style is very close to the
horror genre. The discussions around Auschwitz point out that nowadays
the remembrance of the Holocaust in graphic novels consists of an accu-
mulation of Hollywood icons and narrative fragments of the Holocaust;
many critics imagined the Holocaust as a horror story. Since Croci used
this particular style again a few years later in his graphic novel Dracula, the
Auschwitz album is again drawn closer to the horror genre.
‘Biographics’ on the Rise
Comic biographies or ‘biographics’ seem to have become more and more

important during the last ten years. They focus on prominent figures
such as Anne Frank (Anne Frank: The Anne Frank House Authorized Graphic
Biography by Ernie Colón and Sid Jacobson), Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Bonhoeffer
by Moritz Stetter, 2010), Adolf Hitler (Hitler by Friedemann Bedürftig and
Dieter Kalenbach, 1995) or, more humorously, Bernhard, Prince of the
Netherlands (Agent Orange by Erik Varekamp and Mick Peet, 2004–10). But
also lesser-known individuals are depicted in these biographics. In Irena’s Jar
of Secrets (2011) by Marcia Voughan, the reader gets to know the story of
Irena Sendler, a catholic Pole who rescued Jewish children. The title refers
to her strategy to hide the names of the saved children and their families in
jars she buried so that later the surviving Jewish families could track their
children down. Another example is Lily Renee, Escape Artist (2011) by the
famous Trina Robbins, Anne Timmons and Mo Oh. Lily Renée Wilheim was
saved by Kindertransport out of Vienna and became a famous comic book
writer in the US from 1944.
Often, biographics about the Holocaust tend to focus on the positive image
and heroic actions of the person. A good example is the already mentioned
biography Anne Frank by the US artists Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón, a com-
missioned work for the Anne Frank House in the Netherlands. In this work,
the reader learns that Otto Frank, served as a brave soldier in World War I and
even though he took two horses from a farmer in Pomerania, he came back to
return the horses after the war (Jacobson and Colón, 2010: 14). With choos-
ing this scene, Otto Frank is introduced as a noble man without fault and his
role of the (Über-)father he gained since the release of the first US theatre and
film versions of The Diary of Anne Frank is consolidated once more. But of
course, the trend to a certain sacralization of figures like Anne Frank and hero
worshipping is not peculiar to comics alone. Recent movies such as Walter
van Berg’s Süskind document this trend. This movie portrays the life of the
German Jew Walter Süskind who fled to the Netherlands in 1938. In German-
occupied Netherlands he became a member of the Dutch Jewish Council
(Joodsche Raad) and helped to rescue about 600 Jewish children.
From time to time, the comic artists concentrate also on the darker and
conflicting sides of their main characters, as Reinhard Kleist in Der Boxer.
Die wahre Geschichte des Hertzko Haft (The Boxer: The True Story of Hertzko
Haft) from 2012. The story is based on the book Harry Haft: Auschwitz
Survivor, Challenger of Rocky Marciano (2006) by Alan Scott Haft, Hertzko’s
son. Hertzko was a Jew who lived in Poland and survived the death camps
because he became the protégé of an SS officer and took part in boxing
matches in various concentration camps. In 1948 he emigrated to the USA
and became a successful boxer for a short time but then lost a fight against
Rocky Marciano. Only after more than 55 years did he tell his story to his
son Alan, who finally wrote it down. Alan Scott Haft describes his father as
a short-tempered man who was barely able to read and write, who could be
brutal (against his own child) but also kind. Alan Scott Haft and later the
German comic artist Reinhard Kleist avoided to tell the story of a hero, but
depicted primarily the memories of Hertzko Haft himself as he had told his
son only shortly before his death, as the following examples show: Hertzko
survives the death camps because he compromises; he loses his love Leah
in Poland and after he is already married to another woman in the US he
encounters her again, but she is dying of cancer. Reinhard Kleist put this
story into simple but impressive pictures by basing his style on the famous
US comic artist Will Eisner’s black-and-white short stories, such as A Contract
with God (1996). Finally, Kleist and the sports journalist Martin Krauß reflect
in an annex about the limits of Hertzko’s memories, the biographies of other
people mentioned in the comic and on boxing in concentration camps.
For a biography in comic style this is a quite reflective way of handling the
different sources that both author and artists used.
Coming to Terms with the Past through Comics
Comics have also become a medium of coping with the past for the second
and third generation, as recent works by Peter Pontiac or Jérémie Dres show.
Both comic artists deal with their family history. In Kraut (2000) the Dutch
artist Pontiac tells about his father’s work as a Dutch collaborator for the
Nazis and the aftermath for the family. Pontiac takes up a very important,
albeit marginal issue in the memory culture of the Dutch people. The French
artist Dres treads another path. In We Won’t See Auschwitz (2012) the reader
follows him and his brother to Poland after his grandmother’s death, where
he is looking for Jewish – and his own family’s – traces in the history and
present culture and finds himself positively surprised.
In these works and in travelogues such as CARGO, the authors discuss
their perception of history and remembrance, and what the Holocaust
means to them today. The autobiographic aspects of these works allow the
comic artists more space for reflection of their own position within their
countries’ remembrance cultures. These comic artists can much more easily
refrain from common ways of representing the Holocaust as they do not
have to show atrocities to tell their stories. They feel no need to represent
the atrocities but can, instead, present episodes and fragments. One example
of this fragmented storytelling is CARGO, from 2005. Three German and
three Israeli comic artists travelled to Israel and Germany, respectively, and
made a comic on the basis of their journeys. One objective of this collabora-
tive project was to give the comic artists the opportunity to encounter the
other country and its people. CARGO holds these experiences printed for the
reader as an often lightly contemplative but never unreflective encounter.
An examination of the meaning of the Holocaust was not the main issue
of the journeys, but rather a reflection of the artists’ identities. Each short
story has a different graphic style, but all artists use only a minimal colour
spectrum of mostly black and white or black, white and sepia brown. On
the one hand this suggests a kind of snap shot authenticity, on the other
hand the black-and-white sketches signalize the personal perception of each
artist, and a certain perspective that does not want to count as journalistic
objectivity. The stories themselves mirror this: They vary from comparisons
of city cultures to thoughts about memorial culture, as Guy Morad shows
in his story where he literally almost stumbles over one of the Stolpersteine
(stumbling stones) in Berlin after having been to the Berlin zoo. In another
short story the reader follows Tim Dinter to Tel Aviv. He writes and paints
about his impressions of the city, the people he meets and his research about
modern Jewish art. In his story, the Holocaust does not play an important
role. More important are the people he encounters, mostly young artists
from all over the world.
Comics as Teaching Material
More and more institutions of public history display comics in their book
shops. They use comics in their Holocaust education programmes, or offer
comic workshops like the one organized by the Sachsenhausen memorial
and museum (Wetzel, 2011). The Auschwitz museum has also provided
its own comic series called Episodes from Auschwitz (2009–12), but it has
not yet been integrated in the educational services in Poland. All these
attempts rest upon the (unproven) idea that young people are attracted to
comics. Today, German schools have the opportunity to teach their pupils
about World War II and the Holocaust using, for example, comics pro-
vided by the Anne Frank House. But also other comics find their way into
the classroom. Although they are not explicitly designed for educational
purposes, in France teachers use Pascal Croci’s Auschwitz (Frenzel, 2011:
206), and in the US, Greg Pak and Carmine Di Giandomenico’s X-Men:
Magneto Testament, a Holocaust comic based on a superhero comic figure
is employed as educational material (Christiansen and Plischke, 2010). In
all of these examples, fictional characters are used to teach young people
about the Holocaust. So the question arises, how much fiction is allowed
in teaching history?
Like in many popular media, ‘truth’ in history comics has many features,
and empirical cogency can be found in at least five different types. Firstly,
the comic is always a source itself irrespective of its content. The comic is
an authentic depiction of a certain time and space, and of the way a society
deals with a special topic. Secondly, a comic can be based upon biographic
or autobiographic memories – a form of authenticity we find in biograph-
ics and comic journalism. Thirdly, a comic can draw on historical facts, on
scientific historiographies and hence it becomes a historiography (or histo-
riographical) itself. As comic artists frequently invent stories or embellish
proven history to design an appealing plot, many comics tell stories with fic-
tional figures and events that correspond only as a type of person or incident
to historical sources. Sometimes only the main parts of the story are source
based and therefore representational, and at least the plot does not contra-
dict history. Comic adventure stories belong to the latter (Gundermann,
2007: 87). The problem with these categories is obvious. If used alone, they
do not help us to evaluate the aesthetic approach of the artist; since the style
is fundamental to the story in the comic. Colour, for example, can simulate
fiction or create a special emotion; the lack of colour can imply authenticity
because we are used to black-and-white films and photographs, especially
regarding World War II (McCloud, 1994). Furthermore, the style and the
drawing techniques can create an aura of fiction or faction (as decent his-
toriography) depending on the comic culture of a certain society, as Joe
Kubert’s Yossel demonstrates. What is more, an evaluation of the quality of a
history comic needs to take into account the inherent symbolism in a comic
(Eisner, 1995: 27). Symbolism and stereotypes are an innate component of
every comic. There is no comic without stereotypes; they are necessary to
introduce the reader in as little time and space as possible to a situation and
to the characters. Thus, the medium comic is never a realistic representa-
tion of history, but as teaching material or historiography it must fulfil some
academic requirements.
In the following, I analyse two educational comics, The Search by Eric
Heuvel and The Spider and its Web by Roman Kroke to expand and concre-
tize this topic. After the great success of Eric Heuvel’s comic De Ontdekking
(The Discovery) that narrated the history of World War II from a non-Jewish
Dutch perspective, the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam commissioned a
second volume, this time with a Jewish protagonist who, not unlike Anne
Frank, went into hiding but survived: De Zoektocht (The Search) was designed
as an educational comic by the same comic artist, Eric Heuvel, in 2007.
Initially the comic was meant to be used in Dutch schools but the Anne
Frank House decided to distribute it as educational material in Germany
(2008) and Poland (2012) and planned an edition for Hungary (Anne Frank
Zentrum, 2009). In The Search we learn about the Jewish girl Esther who
survives the Holocaust because she manages to go into hiding. Esther and
all the other characters are fictional. They are designed to combine as many
important facts as possible in the plot. The figure of Esther simulates the
eyewitness and survivor, but also the historian who tells all the true facts
of history. Since her friend Bob was deported to Auschwitz and survived,
the reader learns from Esther about the persecution and annihilation of the
Jews in Eastern Europe through her telling. This narration comes to its
limits when Esther reports historical facts neither she nor her relatives have
witnessed and survived, like the shooting massacres committed by the
Einsatzgruppen (Heuvel, 2007: 40).
Since the comic was designed to be used in Dutch schools, the story
introduces most of all the Dutch history of the persecution of the Jews.
But this historiography has its limits too, because it conceals the utterly
high numbers of deported and murdered Jews from the Netherlands from
a European perspective. In no other country in Western Europe were so
many Jews deported and murdered; from about 140,000, more than 107,000
were deported of whom only 4,500 survived, so more than 75 per cent of
the Jewish population died. In France this number was at 25 per cent, in
Belgium about 40 per cent (Blom, 1987; Moore, 2000). That Esther was able
to go into hiding was a very rare option for most Jews in the Netherlands.
The comic follows a multi-perspective approach, but supports the national
myth of the brave and unbroken nation under German occupation against
the scientific achievements of the last 20 years (Blom, 2007; Gundermann,
2011: 369). In this regard, The Search supports the myth around Anne Frank
and therefore the Anne Frank House.
Pertaining to the aesthetics, the Anne Frank House wanted to create a
medium to attract young people who would normally not read The Diary
of Anne Frank or scholarly literature about the persecution of the European
Jews. So the idea was to produce a comic, to attract youngsters who were
not bibliophiles (Schippers and Hartwig, 2009: 6). The Anne Frank House
and Eric Heuvel decided, therefore, to use the ligne claire style, well known
from Hergé’s Tintin to attract young readers. That style reduces perception
to ‘clear lines’, important things are easily recognizable and emphasized
through the use of strong colours. That was no problem in the Netherlands,
because of its close connection to the Franco-Belgian comic culture. But as
the comic was introduced as educational material in Germany it caused a
little riot in the newspapers (e.g. the Frankfurter Rundschau titled on 15 April
2010 ‘Tim und Struppi in Auschwitz’; Tim und Struppi is the German name
for Tintin). This style certainly seemed for many critics not adequate to teach
pupils about the Holocaust as in Germany it was only connected to pure
entertainment.
Beyond that, the discussion of the comic showed that there is an impor-
tant and unanswered question about how to deal with popular culture
and its depicting strategies of the Holocaust. The comic was designed for
young readers so many things that would have been necessary to show
in an authentic picture are missing, like the representation of atrocities,
dirt, hunger and sometimes the thoughts and emotions of the characters.
Problematic is also the suggestion of logic. Surviving is often consid-
ered as an achievement of the prisoners if they were only able to follow
rules of the SS and able to work (Kettner, 2011: 387). In protecting the
younger readers from the horrible atrocity pictures, Heuvel relies on clas-
sical depicting strategies when illustrating the history of Auschwitz. He
denotes the crimes but pictures them indirectly or defused. For instance,
the prisoners are shown with stable footwear, the pallets in the ‘infirmary’
are recognizable as dirty but real beds and the catastrophic hygienic
conditions are only adumbrated. Although the comic was designed for
educational purposes, the sources are not even listed in the additional
teaching material. Yet in the material the comic is introduced as a spe-
cial medium, and necessary questions of fiction and fact are asked; the
enclosed working sheets are extremely helpful for that. Since the Anne
Frank House successfully planned introducing the comic on the Dutch, as
well as the German, Polish, Hungarian and British market, we have to ask
for national perspectives as well. In the German version, an introduction
about the history of occupation of the Netherlands and the Holocaust in
Western Europe is missing. The students learn about the Holocaust from
a Dutch perspective and the teachers have to make sure to provide further
information about the German war of extermination in Eastern Europe.
So, the comic and its plot need to be classified in a European approach
of the history of World War II by the teacher. The working sheets are
not helpful in this regard. Nevertheless, The Search is used successfully in
many German classes.
German artist Roman Kroke on the other hand, chose a different
approach. His comic or rather his 2012 picture book (Figure 15.2) about Etty
Hillesum with the title Die Spinne und ihr Netz (The Spider and its Web) is based
on the diary of Etty Hillesum Das denkende Herz, in English Etty – a Diary (first
published in the Netherlands in 1981). Due to the fact that Etty Hillesum
wrote a rather introspected diary with only a few hints on political changes
and their consequences for the Jewish community she belonged to, Kroke
concentrated on these paragraphs and developed a pictured diary where he
contrasted these entries with one significant picture.
Kroke absorbed into his pictures not only Etty’s ideas and thoughts but also
present icons of the Holocaust, like the gate banner of the Auschwitz concen-
tration camp Arbeit macht frei. Etty did not report about this gate in her diary,
but Kroke used and alienated the image to evoke the picture of ‘Auschwitz’
while Etty was actually writing generally about inner freedom and the
Jewish people being forced into the Polizeiliches Durchgangslager Westerbork (a
German concentration camp on Dutch soil) (Kroke, 2012: 21). While pictures
of the gate in other media of popular culture often become ‘iconic stereo-
types’ (Ebbrecht, 2011: 88; Ebbrecht refers here to Nicole Wiedenmann), in
Kroke’s work they do not. Kroke’s pictures are black and white in pencil and
Figure 15.2 Cover of Roman Kroke’s The Spider and its Web, 2012. © Roman Kroke,
Mediel
charcoal. He paints bright red roses or rose petals to underline Etty’s longing
for love and life only scarcely. In this way, Kroke concentrates Etty’s story
on ten psychological and chronological key aspects he names: the spider
and her net, heaven, fear, flowers, god, direction east, freedom, the thinking
heart, freedom and future. So, he does not tell a closed story and his Spider
and its Web does not offer history in a common sense. His drawn episodes
from Etty Hillesum’s diary only come to live in workshops. There, they stim-
ulate young people to think about the Holocaust and its meaning for today.
The pictures and quotes then enable identification with the Jewish victims
and an emotional approach but do not offer historical facts in an academic
sense. The brochure Art Goes Education documents his efforts that are sup-
ported by the Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft (EVZ).
These two examples show that not only the medium and genre is given
more and more credibility but also that representation strategies of the
Holocaust from popular culture find their way into educational realms. This
does not entail a fictionalization of history in general but it requires trained
teachers to analyse the comic as a medium with all its potentials and limits.
This is necessary, because practical tests have proven that even comic read-
ing pupils do not know exactly how to analyse a comic or to interpret the
symbolism within (Mounajed, 2009; Anne Frank Zentrum, 2009).
Comics as Historical Additives or Historiographics
Only few comic artists engage in writing historiographics, history books

in comic form about the Holocaust. One of the late attempts is the British
Introducing the Holocaust: A Graphic Guide by Haim Bresheeth, Stuart
Hood and Litza Jansz, published in 2013. The book is part of the series
Introducing..., where other works over Capitalism, Feminism, Foucault or
Heidegger were released. The literature the book is based on is mostly from
the 1980s as it is actually a remake of The Holocaust for Beginners from 1994,
a first attempt to visualize important information about the Holocaust in
comic style. The book itself contains a mixture of comic panels, alienated
photographs and caricatures in comic style, descriptive texts above or under
the pictures and some speech balloons. It depends on portentous pictures
and stereotyped icons, and shows a conglomeration of all Holocaust icons
that the authors consider as important today. Learning history this way
means first and foremost to assure oneself of a common conception of a
history of the Holocaust.
But not all comic artists follow this path. Will Eisner, as one of the greatest
US-American comic artists of the twentieth century, has created with The
Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (2005) a comic-
historiography about the history of the anti-Semitic pamphlet, based on
research by the French historian Michail Lepechin. Eisner uses annotations
and in an annex he lists all literature on which the comic is based. He pre-
sents the story in a simple black and white graphic style without taking any
of the gravity of the story or decency of the figures he is painting. Eisner is
a master of using comic stereotypes and symbols to tell a story; this highly
recommendable work was received very positively in Europe.
In newspapers, magazines and television productions, comics are more
and more used if no authentic photograph or film material is available.
As eyewitnesses to the war begin to disappear, the comic and its ani-
mated version become a cheap(er) replacement of historical pictures or
re-enactment scenes. They are used to foreground a fact with an emo-
tional touch and an icon, most often to evoke certain images of the past.
One example can be found in the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin of 23 April
2010. Here, Reinhard Kleist (the artist of The Boxer), on the bidding of the
SZ-Magazin, illustrated the whole issue with stories about the Demjanjuk
trial, the Armenian genocide and the massacre of Rechnitz, where 180
Jewish people were murdered in 1945. For the story about Demjanjuk,
Kleist mixed photographs with comic panels and illustrated parts of the
story written by Christoph Cadenbach and Bastian Obermayer. Both
authors compared the Demjanjuk trial with the story of Erich Steidtmann,
a German member of the SS who was almost certainly involved in the
destruction of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw and other murders, but until
2010 not persecuted.
The first impression is that the panels and pictures work as a replace-
ment when no photograph was available or did not seem suitable. A few
examples can demonstrate this: a picture of railways in dark green and grey
colours with the name sign Sobibor work as a baleful icon; retraced maps
and ground plots in comic style simulate an aura of authenticity. Kleist
used the comic panels most of all to show atrocities against Jewish people:
how German soldiers and members of the SS drove women and children
out of the ghetto, shot them or put them in cattle wagons, beat them out
of the wagons with whips or how the Jews were finally forced into the gas
chambers. The pictures from Kleist show the annihilation of the Jews. They
do not show or illuminate the meaning of the trials for the German society
or the surviving family members of the murdered, nor the failing of the
German justice to prosecute these crimes. The comic panels in this and the
other stories of the SZ-Magazin issue are accessory parts to evoke historicity.
While the publisher mentioned on the first page of the issue a reference
to the ongoing German debate whether the Holocaust may be depicted in
comics, the SZ-Magazin did not trust the medium so far as to give it meaning
beyond illustration.
But not only in newspapers and television productions are comics used
that way. Since the Internet is becoming more and more important, web
comics of that kind are also produced. One example is the Disney web pro-
duction They Spoke Out: American Voices against the Holocaust. The website
http://dep.disney.go.com/theyspokeout/ offers a collection of stories of
Americans who ‘raised their voice’ against Hitler or helped Jewish people.
The design of the home page introduces the visitor to a ‘dark chapter’ of
history: in the background we see a sepia coloured dark sky heavy with
meaning, Hitler and three other men raising their arms in a ‘Heil’ salute and
looking into the future of their deeds symbolized by city ruins. In the centre
of the page, six stories over ‘American voices’ are offered, each represented
by one comic panel that overlaps the next (story). The comics themselves
are animated; the camera zooms in and out the pictures to simulate motion,
the speech balloons pop up and the text is spoken by different persons to re-
enact dialogues, and finally to dramatize the story. The historical sources of
the comics remain unclear, although the David S. Wyman centre is referred
to as scientific support. It is likely that in the digital age more and more of
this kind of comic will be produced.
Conclusion
Many of the presented examples show that our perception of the genocide
of the Jews is often fictionalized, and based on representational strategies
first introduced from Hollywood. This certainly is a change that occurred
during the past 20 years and which began in the early 1990s with Schindler’s
List and has now reached the educational fields in Western (European)
countries as examples like The Search show. The media of popular culture
seem to be just as appropriate as autobiographical sources to access this part
of history; it is no longer important to be as accurate and faithful as possible
to the facts as it was 30 years ago (Rohr, 2010: 165, 169).
Most often, Holocaust comics focus on people regarded as heroes or
heroines, as resistance fighters, or victims. These figures are depicted with
Christian iconic symbolisms of martyrs and saints to underline their cour-
age, innocence or victimhood. Thus, many Holocaust comics aestheticize
victims and perpetrators and rely on familiar aesthetic standards as most
other popular media. The pictures become, then, iconic stereotypes as a
cypher for the violation of human rights. This counts most of all for the
depiction of atrocities, where no pictorial document could be saved. But
while it is no longer a taboo to show a gas chamber from inside, the ‘excre-
mental assault’ of the annihilation of the Jews is rarely shown. It is likely
that these representational strategies will dominate our remembrance cul-
ture in the following years.
Comics
Bedürftig, Friedemann and Dieter Kalenbach (1995) Hitler, Hamburg: Carlsen.
Bresheeth, Haim, Hood Stuart and Litza Jansz (2013) Introducing the Holocaust: A
Graphic Guide, London: Icon Books.
Croci, Pascal (2005) Auschwitz, Cologne: Ehapa Comic Collection.
Dancette, Victor and Calvo (1977) Het Beest is Dood! De Wereldoorlog bij de Dieren,
Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert Bakker.
Dinter, Tim, Jan Feindt, Jens Harder, Rutu Modan, Guy Morad and Yirmi Pinkus
(2005) CARGO. Comicreportagen Israel – Deutschland, Berlin: avant-verlag.
Dres, Jérémie (2012) We Won’t See Auschwitz, London: SelfMadeHero.
Eisenstein, Bernice (2006) I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors, Toronto: McClelland &
Stewart Ltd.
Eisner, Will (1996) A Contract with God, New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
—— (2005) The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, New York:
W.W. Norton & Co.
Gałek, Michael and Marcin Nowakowski (2009) Episodes from Auschwitz: Episode 1:
Love in the Shadow of Death, Oświȩcim: K & L Press.
Heuvel, Eric, Ruud van der Rol and Lies Schippers (2007) The Search: A Graphic Novel
of Courage and Resistance Brought to You by the Anne Frank House, Basingstoke:
Macmillan Children’s Books.
Jacobson, Sid and Ernie Colón (2010) Het leven van Anne Frank. De grafische Biografie
geautoriseerd door het Anne Frank Huis, Amsterdam: Uitgeverij L.
Kissel, Gerry and Mikko Rautalathi (2011) Iron Sky, Episode 1: Bad Moon Rising, avail-
able at: http://www.ironsky.net/sneakpeek/issueone/ (accessed 12 August 2013).
Kleist, Reinhard (2012) Der Boxer: Die Überlebensgeschichte des Hertzko Haft, Hamburg:
Carlsen.
Kreitz, Isabel (2008) Die Sache mit Sorge, Hamburg: Carlsen.
Krigstein, Bernard (1955) ‘Master Race’, in Impact (a reprint can be found in Ralf
Palandt (ed.), Rechtsextremismus, Rassismus und Antisemitismus in Comics, Berlin:
Archiv der Jugendkulturen KG Verlag, pp. 274–5.
Kroke, Roman (2012) Die Spinne und ihr Netz, Wavre: Mediel.
Kubert, Joe (2003) Yossel, 19 April 1943, New York: ibooks.
Lutes, Jason (2003) Berlin, steinerne Stadt, Hamburg: Carlsen.
Pak, Greg and Carmine Di Giandomenico (2009) X-Men: Magneto Testament,
New York: Marvel.
Pontiac, Peter (2000) Kraut, Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Podium.
Robbins, Trina, Anne Timmons and Mo Oh (2011) Lily Renee, Escape Artists, New York:
Graphic Universe.
Spiegelman, Art (1992) Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, 2 vols., New York: Pantheon Books.
—— (2011) MetaMaus: A Look Inside a Modern Classic, Maus, New York: Pantheon.
Stetter, Moritz (2010) Bonhoeffer, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus.
Tarek, Stéphane Perger and Vincent Pompetti (2005–2013) Sir Arthur Benton, 6 vols.,
Paris: Emmanuel Proust éditions.
Tezuka, Osamu (2005–2007) Adolf, 5 vols., Hamburg: Carlsen.
They Spoke Out: American Voices against the Holocaust, available at: http://dep.disney.
go.com/theyspokeout/ (accessed 12 August 2013).
Varekamp, Erik and Mick Peet (2004–2010) Agent Orange, 4 vols., Amsterdam:
Uitgeverij van Praag.
Vaughan, Marcia and Ron Mazellan (2011) Irena’s Jar of Secrets, New York: Lee & Low
Books.
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Palandt (ed.), Rechtsextremismus, Rassismus und Antisemitismus im Comic, Berlin:
Archiv der Jugendkulturen Verlag KG, pp. 171–81.
Noltze, Holger and Andreas Platthaus (2005) Hier wird nur getötet, nur gefolt-
ert. Der französischen Comiczeichner Pascal Croci und sein Band Auschwitz in
Deutschlandradio Kultur, 20 June, available at: http://www.dradio.de/dlf/sendun-
gen/kulturheute/388128/ (accessed 12 August 2013).
Ribbens, Kees (2009) ‘Die Darstellung des Zweiten Weltkriegs in europäischen Comics:
Eine Fallstudie populärer Geschichtskultur’, in Barbara Korte and Sylvia Paletschek
(eds.), History Goes Pop. Zur Repräsentation von Geschichte in populären Medien und
Genres, Bielefeld: Transcript, pp. 121–46.
Rohr, Susanne (2010) ‘“Genocide Pop”: The Holocaust as Media Event’ in Sophia
Komor and Susanne Rohr (eds.), The Holocaust, Art, and Taboo, Heidelberg:
Universitätsverlag Winter, pp. 155–78.
Schippers, Lies and Janika Hartwig (2009) ‘Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der
Graphic Novel “Die Suche”’, in Anne Frank Zentrum (ed.), Holocaust im Comic –
Tabubruch oder Chance? Eine Fachtagung des Anne Frank Zentrums 10. Oktober 2008.
Tagungsdokumentation, Berlin: Anne Frank Zentrum, pp. 6–8.
Telaar, Silke (2012) Der Holocaust bei Spiegelman, Croci, Kubert und Heuvel, Hamburg:
Diplomica Verlag.
Wetzel, Mirko (2011) ‘“Schwere Aufgabe; aber lösbar”. Gedanken zu zwei
Comicworkshops in der Internationalen Jugendbegegnungsstätte/Gedenkstätte und
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ländischen Juden, Kollaboration und Widerstand, Munich: Carl Hanser.
Part IV
Memory Politics in Post-2000
(Trans)National Contexts
16
Austria’s Post-Holocaust Jewish
Community: A Subaltern
Counterpublic between the Ethics
and Morality of Memory
Christian Karner
At the 2013 Cannes Festival, Claude Lanzmann showed his most recent
work, a documentary about the controversial role played by the Viennese
rabbi Benjamin Murmelstein in relation to the deportations of Austrian Jews
during the Holocaust. The documentary is based on interviews Lanzmann
conducted with Murmelstein in Rome in 1975, nearly 40 years prior to
their eventual release. Austrian reception of Lanzmann’s documentary was
framed by an interview, published in the weekly news magazine Profil,
with Doron Rabinovici, an influential Austrian-Israeli historian, writer
and author of a seminal study of Jewish functionaries under the reign of
Nazism (Rabinovici, 2000a). Asked to comment on the extraordinary time-
lag between Lanzmann’s original interviews with Murmelstein and the
first public screening of the resulting documentary, Rabinovici argued that
although Murmelstein had tried to ‘buy time’ for Vienna’s Jews during the
Holocaust, his controversial role as a Jewish representative who had been
forced to negotiate with the Nazis had for a long time been a taboo subject
for Jews in Israel, Austria and elsewhere. Before now, Rabinovici postulated,
‘the time had not yet been right’ for the kind of cinematic representation
and resulting discussion Lanzmann’s new documentary would generate
(Zöchling, 2013).
This usefully sets the scene for this essay, as Rabinovici’s comments raise
two sets of more general issues. First, they pose questions about the resonance
of documentary, cinematic and other representations of the Holocaust with
a particular audience, and how the latter’s expectations and ‘interpretative
repertoires’ (Wetherell and Potter, 1992: 90) change over time. This further
asks how (cultural) representations of the Holocaust are embedded in –
and hence need to be read in relation to – their wider and changing social
contexts. Second, Lanzmann and Rabinovici inadvertently remind us of
the transnational dimensions to any discussion of the historiography and
memory of the Holocaust.
253
254 Christian Karner
This essay focuses on Austria’s small contemporary Jewish community and

explores the discursive features of select representations of the Holocaust
in various media, academic and literary genres and its rhetorical invoca-
tions in recent public debates. I thus discuss a national context where the
Holocaust resulted in the murder of more than 65,000 Austrian Jews, with
some 130,000 forced into exile, and where the post-war period saw until the
mid-1980s widespread amnesia of, or at least disinterest in, the Holocaust
amongst the non-Jewish majority. At the same time, this discussion confirms
the pitfalls of a ‘methodological nationalism’ (Wimmer and Glick Schiller,
2002), showing that voices from within Austria’s Jewish community, part of
the paradigmatic diaspora, can only be understood against the backdrop of
their transnational contexts, solidarities and self-understandings.
As a geographically delineated discussion with wider transnational dimen-
sions this essay thus engages with various materials related to and emanat-
ing from within Austria’s contemporary Jewish community. These materials,
I shall argue, provide insights into current debates about the relevance
of Holocaust memory to contemporary European societies. My analysis
addresses the important question as to what kinds of art and literature are
today capable of giving voice to the victims of the Holocaust and of thus
aiding the effective transmission of memory to future generations in spite
of the growing historical distance. This involves some reflections on the
inter-relationship between art and popular culture and on whether, and
how, the latter can aid this transmission of Holocaust memory. Moreover,
I also examine references to the Holocaust in everyday political debate, which
I here define as including forms of discursive engagement with power (i.e.
its structural distribution, possible future transformation and memories of
its past workings and abuses), to which a wide variety of social actors and
not only political elites contribute.
My analysis shall be informed by three main conceptual threads: Katherine
Biber’s critical reflections in ‘Bad Holocaust Art’ (2009); Nancy Fraser’s
notion of ‘subaltern counterpublics’ (1992); and Avishai Margalit’s distinc-
tion (2002) between the group-specific ‘ethics’ of memory and a universal
‘morality-of-memory’ respectively. Building on the latter, in particular, public
discussions about the universal relevance of Holocaust memory are shown
to frequently involve the detection of a lack of such memory, to which
contemporary anti-Semitism is attributed. Further, and for obvious histori-
cal reasons, a morality of Holocaust memory is particularly in the Austrian
context expected and rightly seen to be imperative. Discussions within
Austria’s Jewish community, meanwhile, show that the group-internal eth-
ics of memory are in turn contested and have the potential to divide as well
as unite a ‘community of memory’.
By way of a methodological note, this essay develops a qualitative read-
ing and thematic analysis of a specific ‘universe of meaning’ (Grady, 2001):
prominent statements, accounts and representations concerning and by
Austria’s Post-Holocaust Jewish Community 255
members of Austria’s contemporary Jewish community as they have been

articulated across a range of media outlets and other publications over recent
years. Focusing on the interface of memory, politics and the everyday, I pay
particular attention to representations and invocations of the Holocaust in
these materials. Given constraints of space, and a concomitant focus on a
select number of specific examples and representational contexts, the result
is of course not an all-including summary of everything that has been said
about the Holocaust and its commemoration within Austria’s Jewish com-
munity since the turn of the millennium. Instead, I offer an analysis of a
small number of discursive snapshots indicative of different frameworks of
interpretation and memory and the political positions they underpin.
Austrian Jewish Studies
The present analysis needs to be positioned in relation to the (longue durée)

histories of Austrian Jewish communities and relevant academic research,
much of which is conducted under the disciplinary heading of Jewish
Studies in the Austrian context. In their simplest possible retelling cover-
ing the period since the Middle Ages, Jewish histories in Austria have been
histories of exclusion, ‘marginalization, destruction and rapprochement’
(Lamprecht, 2004: 7; also see Tietze, 2007).
Centuries of deep religious anti-Semitic prejudice (e.g. Bukey, 2000: 22,
105) and pre-modern periods of persecution and territorial expulsion sub-
sequently crystallized in the nineteenth-century version of anti-Semitism
that would decisively shape the descent into the horrors of the Holocaust
(e.g. Pauley, 1998). The significance of the late 1800s to this development
is also captured in important literary sources, such as Arthur Schnitzler’s
autobiographical reflections on his Viennese youth. In the late heyday of
liberalism between 1875 and 1885, Schnitzler argues, anti-Semitism was
transformed from a widespread though often latent emotional predisposi-
tion into a major social and political force (Schnitzler, 2011: 77, 142). This
development was significantly driven by the most radical versions of a
pan-Germanic identity discourse – such as that articulated in Georg Ritter
von Schönerer’s synthesis of a Germanic self-definition with opposition to
the Habsburg monarchy (and the Catholic clergy) and rabid anti-Semitism
(e.g. Schiedel and Neugebauer, 2002) – that gathered pace and force in the
German speaking parts of the Habsburg empire during the latter’s final
decades. Recent literature in Austrian Jewish Studies has captured diverse
experiences and biographies in the period stretching from the late nine-
teenth century, to World War I, to the economically and politically tumul-
tuous years of the First Republic, Austria’s authoritarian Ständestaat and
subsequent annexation by Nazi Germany in 1938. Particularly noteworthy
here is Raggam-Blesch’s (2008) study of Jewish women’s autobiographical
reflections on their heterogeneous positions – inflected by the histories,
self-understandings and external perceptions of ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’

Judaism respectively – and their experiences of anti-Semitism and misogyny
in this period.
In the Austrian context, and as mentioned above, the Holocaust resulted
in the murder of more than 65,000 Austrian Jews, with some 130,000 forced
into exile. The post-war period saw, until the ‘Waldheim controversy’ of
1986, widespread societal amnesia of the Holocaust and Austrian contribu-
tions to it (e.g. Mitten, 1992; Uhl, 2006; Wodak and de Cillia, 2007). Today
8,000–15,000 Jews are estimated to live in Austria (e.g. IKG, 2012a), the vast
majority of whom are in Vienna, comprising a community that is politically
and religiously heterogeneous and shaped by diverse migratory histories,
significantly including those of relatively recent arrivals from the former
Soviet Union (Menasse, 2012: 13, 49).
The now large and continually growing literature within Austrian Jewish
Studies includes work on local/regional Jewish histories (e.g. Lamprecht,
2004; Habres, 2011; Riedl, 2012; Galler and Habres, 2013); autobiographical
(e.g. Klüger, 1994) and family history (e.g. Clare, 1980) writings by Austrian
Holocaust survivors and their descendants (e.g. Soyinka, 2012), much
of which reflects their authors’ transnational biographical routes and
lives; as well as seminal work on anti-Semitism in Austria since 1945 (e.g.
Wassermann, 2002; Gottschlich, 2012). Interest in Austria’s contemporary
Jewish community is not confined to the academic realm. This was reflected,
for instance, in a Profil cover story in 2006, which examined the simultane-
ously local and diasporic identifications of young Jews in Austria and the
significance of Judaism in their lives as part of a multicultural society more
than six decades after the Holocaust (Steinitz, 2006).
While the following discussion is embedded in these wider representa-
tional fields and the histories they illuminate, my focus is more specific.
I begin by examining debates about the (in)appropriateness of Holocaust
representations in various forms of art, literature or popular culture as
vehicles of memory transmission. This will also help pave the way towards
a subsequent discussion of how some such representations and historical
reflections can at times give rise to notable disagreements within Austria’s
Jewish community.
The Popular – between Commodification and the Subaltern
The materials examined here intersect with wider debates about the poten-
tial role for popular culture in the transmission of Holocaust memory. Two
contrasting argumentative strands can be discerned, which focus on the pur-
ported dangers of commodification and the writing of otherwise overlooked
histories respectively.
During his involvement in the civil society opposition to Austria’s then and
highly controversial coalition government involving the far-right Freedom
Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ) in 2000, the earlier-mentioned

Austrian-Israeli author and historian Doron Rabinovici described himself
as a ‘cultural hybrid’ living in a national context where an honest engage-
ment with the Nazi past was still alien to many and in a ‘schizoid situation’
created by a populism that is insistent on singular identities (Rabinovici,
2000b: 49–51, 54). In a more recent essay on literature, memory politics, his-
toriography and the Holocaust, Rabinovici (2010) returns to and elaborates
on these issues. In doing so, he argues for the need for a particular kind of art
capable of giving a voice to history’s otherwise silenced victims. Rabinovici
contrasts such a historically responsible art dedicated to ‘enabling the
individual to resist their annihilation’ with a purely market-driven mass
culture (Rabinovici, 2010: 9).1 His cross-referencing of Adorno seems hardly
coincidental to the argument, as ever since the latter’s criticisms of ‘mass’
or popular culture for its allegedly intrinsic commodification (Adorno, 2001
[1972]), prominent forms of Kulturpessimismus have defined ‘the popular’ as
synonymous with a market-driven ‘culture industry’.
As an illustration of the latter, Rabinovici mentions Thilo Thielke’s book
Eine Liebe in Auschwitz (Love in Auschwitz) from 2000. Sold as an ‘extra-
ordinary love-story’, this tells the story of two survivors who, having fallen
in love in Auschwitz and survived the Holocaust, presumed one another to
have perished, only to be briefly reunited decades later. Such representa-
tions, according to Rabinovici, ‘trivialize’ the Holocaust, as they are driven
by a market logic that seeks to cynically profit from the suffering of the
murdered, and reduces the Holocaust to the status of mere ‘location’ for a
love story. Persecution, torture and mass murder are not being meaning-
fully examined here, instead, the focus shifts to an account of romanticism
and the allegedly ‘heavenly force that is love in the midst of hell’, with
such publishers arguably hoping to increase profit margins through the
merging of a story of passion with Holocaust suffering (Rabinovici, 2010:
8). A similar contrast between responsible art and what he describes as
‘compassionate’ memory on one hand, and commodified (popular) culture
on the other informs an argument Maximilian Gottschlich proposes in his
recent book – Die große Abneigung (The Great Antipathy) – on contemporary
anti-Semitism:
The more time passes since Auschwitz and the more prominent the medi-
atized staging of the Holocaust as part of a global entertainment industry
becomes, the more urgently we need a culture of compassion; only this
can counter-act the unbearable trivialization of the past that deprives
memory of its purpose – to remain conscious of innocent suffering’.
(Gottschlich, 2012: 250)
Katherine Biber’s discussion of ‘Bad Holocaust Art’ is highly pertinent for

both Rabinovici’s and Gottschlich’s reflections. Biber traces competing
positions concerning the relationship between historiographical and artis-

tic representations of the Holocaust. While the former are governed by a
consensus that historiography has clear epistemological limits set by the
available evidence, with regard to the latter there is a view that art – in its
purported ‘autonomy from moral discourse’ – is given a licence to ‘tran-
scend all limits’ and that it speaks to its own, context-specific audiences
(Biber, 2009: 240–1, 245). Projecting this back onto Rabinovici, it is certainly
not the historically changing make-up of audiences and their interpretative
schemata that he objects to. On the contrary, as shown by his above-quoted
commentary on Lanzmann’s recent documentary, Rabinovici knows that
representational forms and contents change over time. Similarly, in his just-
quoted essay, Rabinovici concurs that artistic/literary representations offer
perspectives on the past that most historiography – in its single-minded
focus on ‘the facts of how things were’ as revealed by the available evidence –
is largely oblivious to. The objection, then, concerns the angle and focus of
some very particular types of representations of which Rabinovici considers
Thielke’s Eine Liebe in Auschwitz an exemplar (Rabinovici, 2010: 6, 12).
All this echoes long-standing arguments that, in relation to the Holocaust,
art and historiography share not only thematic but also ethical space. Susan
Sontag and Dan Stone, for example, argue that certain representations of
fascism can descend into irresponsible, decontextualized forms of por-
nography (Sontag, 1980: 139; Stone, 2001: 141). Similarly, in an objection
resembling Rabinovici’s and Gottschlich’s concerns about a culture industry
beyond all limits, Perry Anderson warns us that credible ‘narrative strate-
gies’ preclude a historical ‘plotting of the Final Solution ... in romance or
comedy genres’ (1992: 64; also Biber, 2009: 240, 250). Helpfully, Biber points
towards a possible measurement of ‘good Holocaust art’ inferred from the
‘expectation that we will shudder, and from this shudder will flow an act of
responsibility’ (Biber, 2009: 246).
What is at stake in these arguments, then, is the question as to how the
Holocaust is represented. Part of the debate is an issue considerably more
specific than the broader discussions about the relationship between art,
popular culture and historiography. Instead, we here encounter the question
as to what makes any given register of representation appropriate, meaningful
and responsible vis-à-vis the victims of the Holocaust.
In this context, it is worth returning to Andreas Huyssen’s more optimis-
tic take on the potential for certain forms of popular culture to transmit
memories of the Holocaust and to meaningfully articulate contemporary
experiences of survivors and their descendants. Huyssen famously makes
this argument with reference to Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Maus II, defining
it as an appropriation of the ‘mass cultural genre’ of the comic book and its
combination with ‘modernist techniques of self-reflexivity, self-irony [and]
ruptures in narrative time’ that invoke Kafka rather than Disney (Huyssen,
2003: 124). Demonstrating that popular cultural forms, in themselves,
need not preclude meaningful, resonant and relevant Holocaust memories,

Huyssen sees Spiegelman as part of ‘newer, “secondary” attempts to comme-
morate the Holocaust’ that productively respond to a possible crisis of
representation:
How to get past the official memory culture? How to avoid the trap-
pings of the culture industry while operating within it? How to represent
that which one knows only through representations and from an ever-
growing historical distance? All this requires new narrative and figurative
strategies, including irony, shock, black humor, even cynicism, much of
it present in Spiegelman’s work. (Huyssen, 2003: 136)
The ‘popular’ in popular culture, then, should certainly not be seen as intrin-
sically problematic for responsible or meaningful forms of representing and
remembering the Holocaust. However, there is conceptual scope here for
extending our understanding of power, resistance and their interface with
the past. Seminal literature within memory and subaltern studies offers
fruitful points of departure. For instance, the ‘popular memory approach’
with its emphasis on resistance through counter-memories cutting across
dominant representations of history (Jing, 1996: 16) can be developed
further:
[H]istoriography records that members of subordinated social groups –

women, workers, peoples of color, and gays and lesbians – have repeat-
edly found it advantageous to constitute alternative publics. I propose to
call these subaltern counterpublics in order to signal that they are parallel
discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups … circu-
late counterdiscourses to formulate oppositional interpretations of their
identities, interests and needs. (Fraser, 1992: 123)
Nancy Fraser’s highly suggestive notion of such ‘subaltern counterpublics’

further resonates in the concept of ‘subaltern memories’ (e.g. Bell, 2003:
75–6), the bottom-up, often continually side-lined memories, narratives and
(everyday) invocations of the past by members of historically subordinated,
oppressed and persecuted groups.
Returning to the Austrian context, the autobiographical writings of
Holocaust survivors can be viewed as examples of subaltern memories articu-
lated by the historically silenced, oppressed or, in this case, by those who
survived the genocidal machinery of Nazism that intended for nobody
to remember its crimes. Such subaltern memories emerge powerfully, for
example, from the late Leon Zelman’s life history. A survivor of the ghetto
in Lodz, of Auschwitz and Mauthausen, Zelman was a prominent figure in
Austria’s small, post-war Jewish community and hence of a quintessential
subaltern counterpublic. Zelman was co-founder and long-term editor of
the periodical Das Jüdische Echo (The Jewish Echo), and founded the Jewish
Welcome Service, an organization enabling Viennese Holocaust survivors to
visit the city of their birth decades after their forced exodus and disposses-
sion (Rath, 2012: 292–3). He begins his autobiography Ein Leben nach dem
Überleben (A Life after Survival) as follows:
I don’t want to write a Holocaust book. So much has already been

described, analysed and counted. I only want to tell my life story that
was shaped by the horrors of the Holocaust ... not a story about famous
people, but about the Jewish Mamme, about girls and boys in a shtetl at
a time when I and others began to dream. Before we could grow up and
lose our dreams, as people generally do, our community was destroyed
and the dreamers themselves were murdered ... I am one of the last
remaining survivors of a generation that did not survive ... I want to tell
the story of this generation ... Hitler set out to destroy us ... to dehuman-
ise us ... We were meant to become ‘sub-human’ at the hands of the SS
... I was a child in the camps, and I am one of those who escaped our
intended annihilation. (Zelman, 2005: 7–8)
Conceptually, this resonates with the attention to ‘ordinary’, rather than

politically prominent, historical actors and their experiences of sub-
ordination and disempowerment, or much worse, typically at the heart of
studies of popular culture and subaltern memory. Albeit in different ways,
Rabinovici, with his call for a responsible art that preserves the individual
from their annihilation, and Zelman both confirm that traditional histori-
ography and an exclusive focus on facts and ‘famous people’ do not suffice
as channels for capturing and transmitting the voices and memories of the
victims and survivors of the Holocaust.
I next turn to recent discursive materials revolving around and involv-
ing Austria’s contemporary Jewish community, which show how a range of
present circumstances have been interpreted through historical comparisons
and, in some cases, as indicative of a perceived lack of Holocaust memory.
When the ‘Morality of Memory’ Fails – or Is Needed
In The Ethics of Memory philosopher Avishai Margalit argues that memory

and ethics are largely defining features of the ‘thick relations’ that bind
‘families, clans, tribes, religious communities and nations’ internally
(Margalit, 2002: 8, 69). He contrasts this with the ‘thin relations’ connecting
humanity as a whole that have generally not been underpinned by universal
narratives of, and investments in, a shared past. There are exceptions, how-
ever: ‘[G]ross crimes against humanity’, such as genocide and, paradigmati-
cally, the Holocaust present a moral case for a universal memory. Margalit’s
‘ethics-versus-morality-of-memory distinction’ can help illuminate how
and in which contexts the Holocaust has recently been invoked, sometimes
rather contrastingly, by different members of Austria’s contemporary Jewish
community, and how such invocations define and occur in debates both
with powerful outsiders and within the community.
Parts of Doron Rabinovici’s recent novel Andernorts (Elsewhere), published
in 2012, critically explore what Deborah Lynn Steinberg describes as a
contemporary ‘revivification of racial science as a … site of human classifi-
cation’, the prominent tendency to explain and attempt to anchor identi-
ties genetically (Steinberg, 2009: 2). Andernorts offers such an exploration
through its two central characters, Israeli Ethan Rosen and Austrian Rudi
Klausinger, and their quest to establish if they are half-brothers. Kinship
and ancestry are further tied to questions of cultural memory and its tran-
scendence. In a relevant passage, Rudi Klausinger speaks of the ‘necessity to
remember across all boundaries and cultures’ (Rabinovici, 2012: 204). This
resembles Margalit’s definition of the ‘morality of memory’ as pertaining to
genocides calling for their universal remembrance.
Turning from literature to everyday political discussions next, we encoun-
ter another realm crucial to contemporary Holocaust memory. In discus-
sions variously centred on Austria’s Jewish community, we also find a
‘morality of memory’ at stake. The Holocaust is thus invoked in two dif-
ferent kinds of discursive realms: as an interpretative prism in the context
of contemporary debates of core aspects of Jewish identity or current anti-
Semitism; and in wider political struggles – often on behalf of non-Jewish
groups – against ethnic exclusion and the resurgent nationalisms currently
evident across Europe.
In the summer of 2012, the thus-named German circumcision debate
which was triggered by a court verdict in Cologne, and followed injuries
sustained by a four-year-old Muslim boy (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 2012), that
circumcision could be interpreted as contravening the child’s rights crossed
the Austrian-German border. There it led to representatives of Austria’s
Jewish, Muslim, Catholic and Protestant communities jointly calling on the
Austrian government to reconfirm the ‘judicial legitimacy’ of circumcision
and to thereby underline its commitment to religious freedom (Der Standard,
2012a). Alongside official confirmation of the Austrian status quo protecting
circumcision as an expression of religious identity, there were notable dis-
cursive counter-tendencies, including a survey suggesting that up to 46 per
cent of Austrians might favour a ban on circumcision, for a variety of cited
reasons (Profil 29, 16 July 2012: 13), or the chairman of an agnostic associa-
tion arguing for ‘the child’s right to decide’ in a discussion on Austria’s
public broadcasting network (ORF ZIB 2, 2012). Notwithstanding such often
problematic counter-discourses, the government reiterated that the ritual
was and would continue to be legal in Austria. Other contributions to what
became a public debate involving Jewish and non-Jewish voices emphasized
that some arguments against circumcision undoubtedly tapped into age-old
anti-Semitic sentiments and would further alienate Jews and Muslims alike
(e.g. Schmidinger, 2012; Eisenreich, 2012; Appel, 2012).
The Austrian Jewish community’s official responses to the controversy
included the formation of a transnational action group involving represent-
atives of German, Swiss and Austrian Jewry and led by Vienna’s Israelitische
Kultusgemeinde (IKG) aiming to draft a shared strategy (IKG, 2012b). In an
interview with Profil, Schlomo Hofmeister – Viennese rabbi and mohel,
against whom zealous ‘circumcision opponents’ would subsequently try to
bring a court case (ORF, 2012) – argued that a ban on circumcision would
make Jewish life in Austria impossible. He further stressed, in a noteworthy
historical comparison, that external encroachments on this core aspect of
Judaism were ‘historically not new’; but ‘neither ancient Rome’s imposition
of the death penalty on the religious practice nor Nazism had succeeded in
preventing us from circumcising our infant boys; a court in Cologne will
not manage this either’ (Profil 29, 16 July 2012: 76). More widely quoted
was the IKG’s former president Ariel Muzicant’s position who argued that
a potential ban on circumcision was, ‘as another attempted destruction –
this time by ideational means – of the Jewish people, comparable to the
Holocaust’ (quoted in Rohrhofer, 2012: 2). Current IKG president Oskar
Deutsch partly concurred in describing a potential ban as an ‘ideational
exiling’ (Der Standard, 2012a).
In such historical comparisons we detect local, context-specific versions
of what Jaspal and Yampolsky (2011) have revealed in relation to Israel –
the continuing centrality of World War II and the Holocaust as ‘anchors’
for interpretations of present circumstances. In appropriation of Margalit’s
terminology, some Austrian Jewish responses to the circumcision debate can
thus be said to have detected a perceived lack of a morality of memory argu-
ably evident amongst critics of the religious practice. In its coverage of the
circumcision debate, Austrian daily Der Standard thus quoted a member of
Vienna’s Jewish community who described ‘this sudden debate over Jewish
integration as scandalous, given the century-old Jewish history in Austria’
(in Herrnböck, 2012: 3).
Despite broad trends since the late 1980s towards a belated engagement
with the Holocaust and with the longer history of anti-Semitism in Austria,
recent years have seen several worrying anti-Semitic incidents and scandals
(see Karner, 2011: 64–5). Most recently, in the summer of 2012, this included
acts of vandalism committed against Jewish graves at Vienna’s central
cemetery (IKG, 2012c); and in September 2012, in the run-up to a ‘Europa
league’ game of football, a Viennese rabbi was verbally attacked by a football
fan, suspected of being Greek, shouting neo-Nazi abuse with police officers
standing idly by. Whilst Vienna’s police subsequently investigated the
incident and these officers’ inactivity, Oskar Deutsch, the aforementioned
IKG president, warned against any tolerance of anti-Semitism as a wrongly
accepted part of an assumed ‘football-fan culture’ (ORF Wien, 2012). In the
intersection of party politics and social media, another controversy in

August 2012 revolved around a temporary facebook posting of a cartoon
with anti-Semitic echoes by FPÖ-head Heinz-Christian Strache, who sub-
sequently replaced the cartoon and denied all anti-Semitic intentions (Die
Presse, 2012; IKG, 2012d). This happened only months after Strache – head
of a political party whose ideological and organizational roots can be traced
to Austria’s history of direct involvement with Nazism (e.g. Adunka, 2002:
15–18) – was allegedly heard describing far-right fraternities as ‘the new Jews’
(Der Standard, 2012b); Strache thereby seemingly likened civil society pro-
tests against the fraternities’ controversial annual prom, which in 2012 was
even more controversially held on the international day commemorating
the liberation of Auschwitz, to the November 1938 pogroms.
It is against this backdrop of a range of political debates and (more or
less) everyday discourse, in which various, ideologically heterogeneous,
Jewish and non-Jewish actors invoke the Holocaust for a variety of rhetorical
purposes, that concerns with a seeming absence of a morality of memory
in certain quarters need to be located. This emerges, for example, from Ari
Rath’s recent autobiography. The former editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post
was born in Vienna and managed, shortly after Austria’s annexation by
Hitler Germany, to escape to the Middle East as a teenager. In his memoirs,
Rath (2012) reflects on his work as a leading Israeli journalist as well as
on his decade-long and profound disappointment with post-war Austria’s
reluctance to confront its role in the Holocaust. This can plausibly be read,
in Margalit’s terminology and in contrast to the post-war West German
example, as a past manifestation of an institutionalized lack of a morality of
memory in one of the very national contexts in which such remembering
across boundaries was most called for. Importantly, Rath also emphasizes
Austria’s more recent history of a more open, honest and self-critical engage-
ment with its darkest historical chapter, a process that has taken place over
the last two-and-a-half decades and which led to Rath feeling ready to
resume his Austrian citizenship. He reports living in the city of his birth for
parts of the year now and on the new friendships formed there, the vibrancy
of Jewish culture in Vienna today, and on a genuine societal commitment
to confronting the Nazi past. However, Rath also points at ‘the continu-
ing presence of the shadows of the past’ in parts of Austrian society, citing
the far-right FPÖ and the country’s most widely read tabloid newspaper as
examples (Rath, 2012: 297, 320, 325–6).
Continuing with Margalit’s conceptual frame, whilst recent Austrian his-
tory can certainly be described as a gradual growing into a morality of mem-
ory premised on a critical engagement with Austria’s place in the Holocaust,
such a morality is still not embraced universally across the country’s political
spectrum. Lest it be assumed that only the far-right can display such a lack
of morality of Holocaust memory, it is worth citing Stephan Grigat’s report,
published in Wina (a Jewish Viennese magazine), of a local gathering by the
‘anti-imperialist left’ declaring their solidarity with Hamas in the context

of the recent re-escalation of the tensions in the Middle East. Worryingly,
a Trotzkyist speaker thereby called for a ‘Palestine stretching from the West
Bank to the Mediterranean’ and for Israel to be ‘annihilated [and] chopped
up’ (ausgelöscht [und] zerschlagen) (quoted in Grigat, 2012: 3). It is perhaps
particularly in discursive and rhetorical details and choice of words that a
worrying and continuing lack of morality of Holocaust memory thus mani-
fests at different ends of the ideological spectrum, whether articulated in
such far-left sentiments or by Strache describing, in the above-mentioned
incident, today’s far-right as ‘the new Jews’.
There are other, very different discursive-political contexts that can, in
part, also be read through Margalit’s concept of a morality of memory. More
accurately, there are particular argumentative positions, encountered in
parts of Austria’s contemporary Jewish community, that regard particular
current circumstances (e.g. forms of social exclusion and injustice) as calling
for a morality of memory. More specifically, some such positions argue for a
politics of multicultural inclusion in the here and now that is informed by
an engagement with the Holocaust and a mourning for its victims.
A prominent example of this position can be gleaned from the annual
periodical Das Jüdische Echo, formerly edited by the earlier-mentioned, late
Leon Zelman. Taking its 2009 issue, entitled Zuhause in Europa (At Home in
Europe), two mutually inter-related political projects emerge. First, a shared
project involving Jews and non-Jews in commemorating the Holocaust;
second, a contemporary politics of human rights and multicultural inclu-
sion, which is acutely conscious of the historical, structural and ideological
conditions that led to the Holocaust, from which, in part, it derives a clear
stance in opposition to contemporary racism, whoever its perpetrators and
targets. Zuhause in Europa contains a wide range of Jewish and non-Jewish
contributions, with national and pan-European foci, offering historical and
contemporary accounts by politicians, civil society actors, intellectuals and
journalists, eminent literary figures (e.g. Elias Canetti), and young Austrians
doing their national service in different museums and sites commemorating
the Holocaust (Gedenkstätten). Whilst some contributions focus on Jewish
themes, there is a recurring focus on contemporary xenophobia. Several
chapters examine contemporary anti-Roma violence in different parts of
Europe or reflect on the need for a successful multiculturalism. All along, the
Holocaust provides the inescapable backdrop through different narratives,
memories, and the bare, country-specific figures. Insightful reflections on
different European countries are thus accompanied by ‘hard’, quantitative
indicators of how the Jewish communities of the countries in question were
decimated during the Holocaust. We are reminded of the scale of the horror
and loss across national contexts through the juxtaposition of the respective
size of their Jewish communities before and after World War II (e.g. Austria –
a Jewish population of 200,000 before, 10,000 after; Lithuania – 250,000 and
5,000 respectively; Poland – 3.3 million and 10,000; Romania – 800,000 and
12,000; the Czech Republic – 120,000 and 4,000; Germany – 550,000 and
120,000; Greece – 70,000 and 4,000) (Das Jüdische Echo, 2009).
The Jewish Echo’s ethos premised on a morality of memory with other-
directed implications for the here and now emerges most succinctly from
one of the editor’s introductory remarks:
Especially as an Austrian one is delighted to see great thinkers confirm

what others … stubbornly deny: It is perfectly possible to be at home
both in a particular country and in all of Europe both at the same time; to
show solidarity and compassion across national boundaries; to respond
with emotion and activism when injustices are committed outside of
one’s own backyard, when minorities only a few kilometres beyond our
borders are threatened and persecuted. Many people now show such
activism routinely – and it’s no coincidence that they include many who
are grounded in the Jewish faith and tradition. (Widecki, 2009: 9)
Another discursive snapshot – provided by Gerard Sonnenschein, head of

the small Jewish community in Graz, Austria’s second city, in 2008 in the
context of the commemorations of the November 1938 pogroms – is simi-
larly noteworthy. It demonstrated that invocations of the Holocaust or the
immediate post-Holocaust era do not always paint a bleak picture of the pre-
sent by claiming to detect similarities between then and now. In this case,
Sonnenschein contrasted his painful memories of a then continuing local
anti-Semitism in the post-war decades with present circumstances, which he
depicted as an example of successful inter-faith dialogue, describing multi-
cultural engagement in contemporary Graz as exemplary (Bast, 2008). This
also serves as a useful bridge to the next and final section, in which we turn
to disagreements within the Jewish community over the (ir)relevance of the
Holocaust for understanding present contexts.
The Contested Ethics of Memory and Internal Divisions
The earlier mentioned comparison by Ariel Muzicant of the recent circum-

cision debate with the Holocaust provided an example of the latter being
invoked as an interpretative lens, through which particular contemporary
circumstances are made sense of. As such, this was an example of what
Jan-Werner Müller has described as ‘analogical thinking’ (Müller, 2002:
27). In this final section, I examine how such forms of analogical thinking
involving and invoking the Holocaust have at times been strongly contested
within (and beyond) Austria’s contemporary Jewish community. In doing
so, this section poses a challenge to Margalit’s second key concept, the ethics
of memory that are alleged to cement the thick relations binding an ethnic/
religious community internally.
In a recent interview with the Viennese Jewish magazine nu, when asked
to comment on the terrorist attacks in Toulouse and anti-Semitic tendencies
elsewhere, Parisian historian Diana Pinto rejects facile comparisons of the
1930s with the situation faced by Europe’s Jewry in the early twenty-first
century. What is more, she locates such historical analogies primarily in the
ultraorthodox community:
I don’t want to underestimate the danger. But today there is no European

state that is ideologically underpinned by anti-Semitism … not even
Hungary … Compared to the 1930s, we now live in paradise … [some]
ultraorthodox Jews are stuck in a defensive posture … they view the
world through the lens of the Warsaw ghetto. I find this lacks respect
for the victims of the horror … it gives [these groups] a strong sense of
identity. They don’t want to be loved … and they like living with a sense
of being threatened … Never before have European Jews known condi-
tions as open as today … I can’t accept the banalisation of anti-Semitism
and the Shoah. This would mock the victims … We’re not witnessing a
replay of the 1930s, that’s my conviction as a historian. (Pinto quoted in
Spera, 2012: 31–2)
Writing in the earlier-mentioned 2009 issue of Das Jüdische Echo, Steven

Beller concurs, detecting a fear amongst some high-ranking functionaries
in Jewish organizations that the ‘terrible times of the first half of the 20th
century … could return in 21st century Europe’; agreeing, of course, that
all anti-Semitic and racist violence and exclusion need to be condemned in
the strongest possible terms, Beller argues that seen from a broader histori-
cal perspective such catastrophizing of today’s circumstances is not justified
and that today’s Europe is ‘very good for Jews’ (Beller, 2009: 11–12).
These and similar arguments have recently been developed further by
Peter Menasse, editor-in-chief of the already mentioned magazine nu. In
late 2012, Menasse published a book entitled Rede an uns (Speech to Us),
in which he directs a number of bold theses at his own Austrian Jewish
community. First, and most centrally, Menasse insists that ‘today’s Jews are
not victims’ and should therefore not present themselves as such and in
opposition to today’s assumed perpetrators – in a process that stifles com-
munication (Menasse, 2012: 8; also see Dusini, 2012). Second, Menasse dis-
tinguishes between three successive post-Holocaust eras: an initial post-war
phase, in which most European countries, including Austria, were guilty of
a ‘complicity of silence’ and amnesia concerning the Holocaust; this was fol-
lowed by a second phase, starting in the late 1980s, of widespread commem-
oration; this in turn, Menasse concludes, is currently giving way to a third
phase in which ‘us Jews should be more and perhaps solely focused on the
present and future’ (2012: 6). Lest he be misunderstood, Menasse is certainly
not overlooking contemporary forms of xenophobia and anti-Semitism, but
he argues for a ‘presentist politics’ that avoids overly simplistic analogies

with the past. In this vein, he strongly criticizes some of the statements
by prominent members of Vienna’s IKG in the context of the circumci-
sion debate mentioned earlier for being ‘hair-raising’ (abenteuerlich) and an
‘offensive’ step towards trivializing the Holocaust (Menasse, 2012: 29, 105).
Here again we detect the relevance of some of the arguments reviewed by
Katherine Biber, albeit in this case they can be seen to also pertain to exam-
ples of everyday discourse and some of the historical comparisons drawn
therein. In detecting and opposing levelling analogies drawn between very
different contexts, Menasse seemingly invokes the ‘sense of responsibility
to [the] victims’ and the insistence that representations of fascism ‘must,
of necessity, commentate [sic] on the operation of power and terror in fas-
cist practices’ (Biber, 2009: 236, 248). The earlier-mentioned ‘shuddering
ability’, we are warned in Menasse’s speech, is in danger of being undercut
and diluted. What has been demanded of artistic representations is here also
expected – as a minimum standard – of how people remember and invoke
the Holocaust in the realm of political discourse:
It seems necessary to locate Holocaust representations within a dis-

course of disgust ... Passive reflection on atrocity has no function ... The
difference is in the pit of the stomach. (Biber, 2009: 252)
Parts of Menasse’s and Pinto’s arguments can plausibly be read as warn-

ings that all-too-easy comparisons between then and now come close to a
‘trivialisation’ and ‘banalisation’ of the Holocaust, for they privilege making
sense of present circumstances at the expense of the ‘disgust’ and ‘shudder-
ing’ that representations of the Holocaust, through whichever artistic or
discursive registers they are articulated, ought to invoke.
Wider xenophobia, Menasse goes on to elaborate, has once again become
endemic. But, he argues, it should no longer be primarily a Jewish respon-
sibility to provide the necessary warnings and democratic education; these
are, he insists, wider societal responsibilities (Menasse, 2012: 60). Finally,
Menasse postulates that current ways of transmitting the history of the
Holocaust have lost their relevance for understanding contemporary con-
texts. This is due, he argues, to ‘existing ways’ of transmitting this memory
often paying insufficient attention to ‘how injustice comes about’; and
without such a focus on the conditions of possibility underpinning racism
more generally, Menasse concludes, the young generation cannot learn
from what is being transmitted (Menasse, 2012: 72–5).
Parts of Menasse’s speech, particularly his strong criticism of leading figures
in Austria’s Jewish community (Menasse, 2012: 18), undoubtedly also need
to be seen against the backdrop of considerable internal schisms and power
struggles the community has experienced of late (Bauer, 2012). This includes
tensions between orthodox and conservative voices on one hand, and liberal
factions, such as the progressive organization Or Chadasch, on the other

(Profil 16, 16 April 2012: 19; Beig, 2012). At the same time, the arguments
summarized here illustrate very clearly that different sections and individuals
in Austria’s and other Jewish communities relate to the Holocaust, from their
perspectives and vantage points in the twenty-first century, rather differently.
As we have seen, it thus turns out, for instance, that within the nowadays
small Austrian Jewish community the invocation of the Holocaust as an
interpretative lens for contemporary circumstances has the potential to trig-
ger considerable disagreement and internal controversy. This should make us
more generally weary of reifications of memory as an assumed unifying force
within ethnic/religious groups. In our conceptual terms, it shows an ‘ethics
of memory’ to be considerably less binding than assumed by Margalit.
Concluding Remarks
In the tradition of popular culture studies (see Turner, 1990), more work
is needed on how any of the discourses examined above, formulated as
they largely are by public figures within Austria’s contemporary Jewish
community, are ‘decoded’ (see Hall, 1980) and appropriated by those less
prominent. The argumentative positions discussed here are undoubtedly
negotiated in different ways by different sections and individuals within
the numerically small but internally diverse and lively Jewish community in
Austria today. Much work therefore remains to be done on the ongoing and
unfolding reception of any of the positions examined above. Their examina-
tion in the present essay has been entirely thematically qualitative, thus also
leaving questions about the relative salience of these different positions and
interpretative frameworks within the Austrian Jewish community for future
quantitative research to address. What is distinctive about the approach out-
lined here is its deliberate and critical linking of theoretical work on popular
culture with conceptualizations of popular memory and the relationship
between memory, morality, ethics and the subaltern. Jointly, these theoreti-
cal strands open a perspective on how 70 years after the Holocaust members
of Austria’s contemporary Jewish community commemorate and make ref-
erence to it – in a variety of contexts, to different effects and audiences, and
how some such references can trigger considerable internal disagreement.
Particularly the latter, the potential for disagreement between mutually
contesting positions, highlights that popular memory – here referred to as
the articulation of memories of a deeply traumatic past by the historically
marginalized, oppressed and persecuted – need not be consensual. Such mem-
ories, subaltern in relation to a dominant national mythscape (Bell, 2003),
need not inevitably and permanently bond an ethnic/religious group inter-
nally. This counteracts the reifying undertones of parts of Margalit’s position.
As we have seen in Peter Menasse’s recent Speech to Us, even in the case of
a numerically small ethnic/religious community with a shared and painful
past, that past and its relevance to the present can give rise to considerable
internal debate and disagreement. It is through an analytical strategy partly
focused on the minutiae of everyday language and on representations of this
past that such internal fissures can be captured and a more nuanced, argu-
ably more sceptical understanding of the ‘ethics of memory’ and its ability
to bond a social group can be generated.
While within the nowadays small Austrian Jewish community the
relevance of the Holocaust for comprehending contemporary circumstances
is therefore not unanimously accepted, the second dimension to Margalit’s
distinction – the moral case for universally commemorating the Holocaust
and other crimes against humanity – retains all its timeliness and urgency.
There is indeed an obvious and continuing need for a morality of memory
that speaks to all of us, across all boundaries of culture, religion and
nationality, of the crimes committed and suffered 70 years ago.
Note
1. All translations from German are the author’s.
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17
Cosmopolitan Memory in a National
Context: The Case of the ‘Living
History Forum’
Kristin Wagrell
In a episode of the Swedish, weekly literary TV show, Babel, the panel

was asked to choose a piece of literature, which would invoke feelings of
empathy in the reader and make her/him more resilient to intolerant atti-
tudes. All panellists chose books describing experiences of, or related to the
Holocaust, such as Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Göran Rosenberg’s Ett kort
uppehåll på vägen från Auschwitz (A Brief Stop on the Way from Auschwitz),
(Babel, Sveriges Television, 2013). These choices demonstrate how the
Holocaust is used as the example for informing contemporary values and
emotional responses to intolerant attitudes and behaviour. This notion is
not only apparent in Swedish high-brow culture but can also be found in
an institutionalized form through the government agency Forum för Levande
Historia (the Living History Forum, LHF).
The LHF is a continuation of an informational project on the Holocaust,
entitled levande historia, initiated by the social democratic Prime Minister
Göran Persson (1996–2006) in 1997. Persson launched Levande Historia
on the basis of a survey of attitudes published by the Centre for Research
in International Migration and Ethnic Relations (CEIFO) at Stockholm
University. The results of the study seemed to show that a third of Swedish
youths were uncertain of whether or not the Holocaust had taken place with
a minority completely denying its existence (Wibaeus, 2012: 77–8). Although
these conclusions were later revised as a large section of the study’s partici-
pants had yet to learn about the Holocaust in school, the Persson adminis-
tration used these results as a stepping-stone for an informational campaign
aimed at educating the Swedish population (primarily young people) about
the Holocaust. This educational effort came to include the publication
and distribution of a book about the Holocaust given to all Swedish house-
holds (Bruchfeld and Levine, 1998), the commemoration of the liberation
of Auschwitz in the Swedish Riksdag (Parliament) as well as the founding
of a new research centre on genocide and Holocaust studies in Uppsala
(Selling, 2010: 268). In addition, Persson’s initiative came to establish Sweden
internationally in terms of its commitment to Holocaust remembrance and
272
Cosmopolitan Memory in a National Context 273
education. In 1998 Persson, together with President Bill Clinton and Prime
Minister Tony Blair, initiated the Task Force for International Cooperation on
Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research (the International Holocaust
Remembrance Alliance as of January 2013), an intergovernmental organiza-
tion committed to the improvement of Holocaust remembrance, educa-
tion and research world-wide (IHRA, 2013). Furthermore, four international
conferences were held in Stockholm between 2000 and 2004 as a way of
maintaining an ongoing international conversation on the importance of
Holocaust remembrance and education as well as intolerance and genocide
prevention (Regeringskansliet, 2013a).
Yet, in a domestic context, Levande Historia and later the LHF (estab-
lished in 2003) has been surrounded by heated political debates regarding
the politicization and instrumentalization of history. The international
acknowledgements and goodwill bestowed on Göran Persson because of
Levande Historia provoked the political opposition of intellectuals within
the country. In 2000, one of the leading Swedish Holocaust historians, Klas-
Göran Karlsson, wrote an article in Svenska Dagbladet, a major daily news-
paper, in which he contended that although ‘there is no reason to doubt the
good intentions behind Levande Historia, it is reasonable to say that this pro-
ject does not stand outside the realm of politics’ (Karlsson, 2000: 6). Karlsson
also noted that the long-standing project on Holocaust remembrance ‘has
given Sweden and its social-democratic government a new and improved
international image’ which is disproportional to its rather shallow com-
mitment to Holocaust remembrance (Karlsson, 2000: 6). Persson’s project
was thus viewed by some as mere window-dressing for a left-wing political
movement that had yet to come to terms with its own history of forced steri-
lizations and dealings with states committing mass-atrocities such as the
Soviet Union. This perception included a more immanent critique against
the narrow focus of Levande Historia which only included the Holocaust
whilst consciously ignoring atrocities committed by communist regimes
(Selling, 2010: 269–70). With the centre-right coalition coming to power in
2006, ‘Crimes against Humanity under Communist Regimes’ was included as
one of the focuses of the LHF. This shift resulted in a new wave of critique
directed at the LHF coming from the left of the political spectrum as well as
from a large group of academics who expressed the concern that ‘the open-
ness, critical perspective and tolerance which the Living History Forum was
meant to stimulate’ was now under threat (Historikeruppropet, 2008). Hence,
most debates regarding the activities of the LHF have revolved around the
perceived political instrumentalization of history and, therefore, focused on
what is remembered rather than how it is remembered.
The LHF’s work consists of the cultivation of tolerance and a pro-democratic
ethos through the ‘dislodging’ of memory from time and space and the
subsequent reattachment of these memories to a state-sponsored national
narrative. This process of ‘de-contextualizing’ memory has been explored
274 Kristin Wagrell
by the sociologists, Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider (2006) in their con-
ceptualization of a ‘cosmopolitan memory’. With this concept the authors
assert that collective memories of the Holocaust transcend national bor-
ders and thereby inform identity-formation in geographical spaces where no
genocidal activities actually took place. As neither the Holocaust nor crimes
against humanity committed in the name of communism occurred within
the borders of Sweden these are ‘deterritorialized’ memories taken from their
specific context in order to serve as a moral framework for contemporary
Swedish society (Levy and Sznaider, 2006: 132). Furthermore, the notion
that the Holocaust symbolizes ‘evil’ in its purest forms is also a vital part
of this ‘new culture of remembrance’ (Levy and Sznaider, 2006: 133). Thus,
within ‘cosmopolitan’ memory, ‘evil’ is universalized while ‘good’, repre-
sented by victim-survivors and rescuers, is particularized. This ‘individuali-
zation’ of memory ‘allows for abstract identification’ with the victims and
has made ‘identification with individual experience … a defining force in the
de-territorialization of Holocaust memories’ (Levy and Sznaider, 2006: 133).
Hence, how can we understand LHF’s activities through Levy and Sznaider’s
concept of a ‘cosmopolitan’ memory? How does the universalization vis-à-
vis particularization of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ express itself in this government
institution’s exhibitions and pedagogical material? In order to answer these
questions this article critically explores Levy and Sznaider’s conception
of ‘cosmopolitan memory’ in relation to LHF’s exhibition on intolerance
entitled P.K. – en utställning om intolerans (P.C. [Political Correctness] – an
Exhibition on Intolerance (Forum för Levande Historia, 2011) as well as histo-
rical material related to the exhibition Spelar Roll (‘It Matters’) (Forum för
Levande Historia, 2007).
Remembering the Past, Planning for the Future
Collective memory as an idea was first explored by the French philosopher

and sociologist Emile Durkheim who, in his studies of religious practice
and collective consciousness, contended that social forms of memory are
encoded in and transmitted through systems of symbols and societal ritu-
als (see Durkheim, 2001). As Janet Jacobs notes, Durkheim’s assertion that
‘ritual culture establishes the context through which collective identity
and a shared past is re-inscribed into social consciousness’ was a paradigm
within which the study of memory was transferred from the personal to the
social realm (Jacobs, 2010: xv).
These ideas were developed further by Maurice Halbwachs who, in contrast
to Sigmund Freud, argues that memory ‘operates according to a social rather
than a psychological dynamic’ (Hutton, 1994: 149). However, collective
memory, as defined by Halbwachs, is not an essentialist notion where all indi-
viduals within a group share the same autobiographical memories. Rather, it
refers to a ‘semantic memory’ which ‘is related to the learning and storing
capacity of the mind’ and ‘is acquired by collective instruction’ (Assmann,

2008: 51). Collective memory is therefore a construction communicated to
the group through what Halbwachs refers to as ‘social frames’ (Assmann,
2008: 51). A ‘social frame’ denotes an ‘implicit or explicit structure of shared
concerns, values, experiences, [and] narratives’ (Assmann, 2008: 51–2).
Levy’s and Sznaider’s concept of ‘global’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ memory,
defined as ‘the mutual interaction between global and local memories’
refers to such a ‘social frame’ with particular reference to the sharing of
specific concerns and values (Levy and Sznaider, 2006: 132). But in contrast
to Halbwachs’s notion of collective memory ‘being bound by tight social or
political groups like the “nation” or the “ethnos,”’ cosmopolitan memory
describes a memory culture which relates to ‘humanist and universalist iden-
tifications’ (Levy and Sznaider, 2002: 88–9). Within this cultural framework,
memories from a plurality of contexts can be adopted and used to define the
past, present and future within the boundaries of a specific nation-state. As
Levy and Sznaider contend, this process ‘involves a tension between national
memories and memories that emerge from a global context to permeate
the national framework without nullifying it’ (Levy and Sznaider, 2006:
131). Furthermore, according to the authors, this ‘de-territorialization’ of
memory implies both a process of ‘universalization’ as well as a particulari-
zation of Holocaust experience (Levy and Sznaider, 2006: 133). The more we
acknowledge individual suffering, the more lessons we can draw from such
experience. The proliferation of victim-survivor narratives in cultural forms
of representation and their inclusion in museums and educational material
should therefore be understood in relation to developments in the forma-
tion of a ‘cosmopolitan’ memory of the Holocaust.1 As such, the representa-
tion of the Holocaust as an event with which we can all identify, has been
an essential aspect in the development of a ‘cosmopolitan’ memory culture
relating to the Holocaust (cf. Alexander, 2002).
This development of a Holocaust consciousness can be observed in all
Nordic countries. Following Levy’s and Sznaider’s theory of the ‘four phases’
of Holocaust memory, Karin Kvist Geverts and Antero Holmila assert that
Swedish collective memory in particular has moved from a relative silence
on the subject of the Holocaust to a ‘master narrative of “the good Sweden”’
(Holmila and Kvist Geverts, 2011: 526). These first two phases were charac-
terized by a focus on Swedish ‘rescue’ of victims under the Nazi regime and
the idea that ‘Sweden was never “infected” by anti-Semitism, and, therefore,
no xenophobic or racist sentiments could exist in post-war Sweden’ (Holmila
and Kvist Geverts, 2011: 526). The third and fourth phases illustrate an
awakening in Holocaust awareness with the showing of Holocaust in 1979
and the Eizenstat report in 1997 which, through accusations of Swedish
involvement in receiving looted Jewish assets from Nazi Germany, funda-
mentally questioned the image of Sweden as a “rescuer nation” (Holmila
and Kvist Geverts, 2011: 525–6). Living History and consequently the LHF
276 Kristin Wagrell
is an essential part in this fourth phase which denotes the ‘cosmopolitani-

zation of Holocaust remembrance’ (Holmila and Kvist Geverts, 2011: 526).
However, this last phase in the development of Holocaust memory was not
merely the consequence of the Eizenstat report or international critique
of Swedish action but had begun at the end of the Cold War with a rising
journalistic and scholarly interest in Sweden’s relations to the Holocaust
(Östling, 2011: 136).2 Nonetheless, this historical focus on Sweden’s role in
the genocide of European Jewry did not come to significantly influence the
educational and commemorative work undertaken by the LHF. Instead, the
LHF has adopted a ‘cosmopolitan’ memory approach in order to learn from
the memory without having to deal with the complexities of Holocaust
history in general and its own national history in particular.
Consequently, the Holocaust as history becomes less important than the
Holocaust as symbol for all ‘evil’ in the past. Educating young individuals
on the importance of democratic values, tolerance and a politically correct
use of language therefore constitutes what Levy and Sznaider refer to as
a ‘future-oriented cosmopolitan memory’ where ‘the specifically Jewish
experience of the Holocaust’ is related to a universal mission of improving
society in the future (Levy and Sznaider, 2006: 197–8). To emphasize this
point further the authors quote the German Minister of Cultural Affairs
Michael Naumann, in his closing speech at the Stockholm conference in
2000. Naumann stated that:
Historical reflection cannot master the past; the past is over. Rather the
legacy of this genocide demands from the present an answer to the central
question: what constitutes the dignity of humanity if not that of life? How
can it be protected from future genocidal attempts? In the remembrance
of the Holocaust we must find the right answer for politics and society of
future history. (Naumann quoted in Levy and Sznaider, 2006: 198)
Naumann’s argument encapsulates the idea that the meaning of the past
as past has little relevance with regard to contemporary memory cultures
of the Holocaust. Remembering the Holocaust is then not about accurately
accounting for the past but about making up for its atrocities by improving
society for generations to come. This is also what governs the LHF’s com-
memoration and education on the Holocaust.
P.K.: ‘Cosmopolitan Memory’ Applied
The LHF project entitled P.K. – en utställning om intolerans (P.C.-an exhibi-

tion on intolerance) (cf. Forum för Levande Historia, 2013a) was initiated in
2011. It aimed to educate Swedish youth on different forms of intolerance in
today’s society through an exhibition which includes a computerized test of
your individual level of tolerance, two video installations, an interactive board
game and an art installation. The basis for this project was a survey issued by
the LHF in 2010 where 4,674 participants enrolled in the first and third year
of Swedish upper secondary school (Gymnasiet) answered questions on their
attitudes towards minorities such as Jews, Roma and Muslims (Löwander and
Lange, 2010: 25). The three artists responsible for creating the exhibition used
the report of this survey as a foundation for their creations.
The project included Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin’s video installation Det går
aldrig över (‘It Will Never Pass’), the only artist to adopt a historical perspec-
tive. Artist Jon Brunberg’s Tolerera (Tolerate) (film) explores psychological
approaches to one’s own and others’ intolerance and is aimed at a construc-
tive understanding of the present rather than at learning from and under-
standing the past. Brunberg also created a web-based tool where one can test
one’s own level of tolerance/intolerance. Andrea Hvistendahl’s contribution
Mänsklig kartläggning (Human Mapping) shares this aim in demonstrating
how societal structures either aid or hinder tolerance. Hvistendahl’s second
installation called Landskap av avtryck (Landscapes of Impressions), is also
an interactive piece but relates to the participant in a more abstract and
contemplative manner than Mänsklig kartläggning. In interviews that can be
accessed on the LHF’s website, the artists gave a brief introduction to their
work. Both Ohlson Wallin and Hvistendahl spoke of the victims of atrocities
and how important it is to acknowledge them and, in Olsson Wallin’s case,
to learn from them.
Ohlson Wallin’s film is a composition of intermingled moving images dis-
playing neo-Nazi rallies today and national-socialist mass rallies in Nazi
Germany. Also, the film includes clips of Holocaust victim-survivor testi-
monies of experiences in concentration and extermination camps. As the
images change, the voices of the victim stories continue and serve as narra-
tions to the images of national-socialist rallies. During the showing of the
film the spectator is immersed in ominous music, which further intensifies
the film’s emotional character (Ohlson Wallin, 2011). In her interview,
Ohlson Wallin explains that she wants to reclaim the word ‘politically cor-
rect’ in her video installation as it has been usurped by right-wing groups
who use it to legitimize their own rhetoric. This follows a long-standing
debate regarding political correctness in Sweden which has been character-
ized by heated arguments concerning racist, anti-Semitic and xenopho-
bic words/expressions which are (or have been) embedded in every-day
language use (cf. Hess and Urban, 2012: 50–74; Schult, 2012: 94–125).
Furthermore, Ohlson Wallin argues that people need to be reminded
of the Holocaust over and over again and that her film should shock the
viewer and make him/her think about how it must have felt to be a con-
centration camp prisoner (Forum för Levande Historia, 2013b). In addition,
Ohlson Wallin mentions how we need to be vigilant towards expressions
and arguments which attempt to minimize the importance and severity of
the Holocaust.
278 Kristin Wagrell
Ohlson Wallin’s film links the past to the present in terms of showing
what was intolerance then and what intolerance is now. The film plays on
the emotions of the viewer both through the frightening images of the ral-
lies, the menacing music and the horrific story told by the survivor witness.
It gives no explanation and has no informational depth yet it demonstrates,
through its choice of images and composition, that there is a clear connection
between what happened in the past and what could potentially happen
today. The Holocaust has been decontextualized and reattached onto a
national context within which Ohlson Wallin conveys the message that the
Holocaust could be repeated if we are not reminded of past atrocities and
cannot empathize with the victims. The threat is forgetting and the solution
is remembering and feeling with those who suffered.
Hvistendahl takes a similar approach to acknowledging the victims of
atrocities although not in the context of the Holocaust. In her interview she
states that by writing the names of the victims of the Norwegian right-wing
extremist Anders Behring Breivik on pieces of paper and including them in
Landskap av avtryck she wants to emphasize the importance of acknowledg-
ing the victims rather than just focusing on the perpetrators. In naming
them, Hvistendahl adds, the victims are not merely a number but are given
an identity of their own (Forum för Levande Historia, 2013b). This approach
follows a greater trend within Holocaust remembrance, which aims to give
the victims their individuality back. For example, it can be observed in
the structure of the permanent exhibition at the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum where every visitor receives a passport upon entry and
thereby gets to trace the journey of an individual victim of the Holocaust.
Although this aspect of Hvistendahl’s piece does not attach past to pre-
sent, the rest of Landskap av avtryck refers to our historical consciousness
and how we are all a part of history. Hvistendahl’s work consists of a ‘sand-
box’ of salt-crystals which contains shards of glass, where the participant
can leave his/her fingerprint (Hvistendahl, 2011a). The artist explains that
the work should be seen as an archaeological excavation site where ‘every
individual is a shard or building block in a shared history and a shared
future’ (Forum för Levande Historia, 2013b). Placed in the salt are also
small pieces of wood with years written on them. These are markers of mass
atrocities within the historical landscape. The fact that the participants’ fin-
gerprints are placed within this excavation site of a human history of vio-
lence sends the message that this is ‘our’ history which shapes ‘us’ and for
which we are responsible. Here, the ‘social frame’ is extended to all human
beings, which means that global memories and histories concern Swedes
just as much as they concern the specific groups who experienced the
violence. Thus, instead of decontextualizing one particular memory which
is later reattached to a national context, Hvistendahl erases all national
boundaries through a message of shared responsibility and community in
the face of mass atrocity.
Both Hvistendahl’s Mapping the Game and Brunberg’s film Tolerate include
psychological perspectives. Brunberg introduces his film as an ‘examination
of tolerance and, first and foremost, intolerance, from a psychological per-
spective’ (Forum för Levande Historia, 2013b). The work includes interviews
with three certified psychologists one of whom is specialized in cognitive
behavioural therapy (CBT). On the left-hand side of a split screen the psy-
chologists discuss individual thoughts and behaviours related to prejudice
and intolerance. On the right-hand side of the split screen, Brunberg has
created pictures which emphasize the psychologists’ explanations. The piece
is concrete in its approach to intolerance and how this is to be prevented
(Brunberg, 2011). As opposed to Hvistendahl’s salt landscape and Ohlson
Wallin’s emotional film, Brunberg’s work aims at identifying the problem
in the now and thereafter proceeds to finding a solution to that problem.
However, although Brunberg’s film is more ‘hands-on’ in its approach
towards intolerance it still follows the same individualistic narrative as the
other artists’ installations. Here, the narrative is stretched to encompass
individual self-improvement or self-actualization. The message of the film is
thus that the problem of intolerance in society today should be understood
from an individual perspective where the understanding of psychological
mechanisms will lead to a deeper understanding of the self and therefore
also a more profound idea of how we can improve ourselves and our own
behaviour. The notion of improving society through self-criticism presented
in Brunberg’s film is part of a larger normative shift in ‘Western’ culture
from an external critique of society to an internal critique of the self (Willig,
2009: 60; cf. Willig, 2013). In contrast to the 1968 generation for whom
societal critique constituted the core of the ethical code, today’s genera-
tions learn to criticize themselves and are subsequently taught that their
individual actions have a significant impact on a greater system made up of
other individuals such as themselves.
As such, Brunberg’s Tolerate web-based test is another way of getting the
participant to reflect upon his/her own attitudes and behaviour. The test
includes questions relating to the limits of tolerance, that is, when is it okay
to prevent someone from voicing their opinions? This is at the very core of
the exhibition as it stimulates thoughts on the nature of P.C. and how public
conversations are determined by moral and legal limits. Furthermore, some
questions pertain to the participants’ personal attitudes towards the concept
of tolerance itself. For example, it asks ‘how tolerant do you want society
to be?’ and ‘would you like to improve on your tolerance in the future’
(Brunberg, Tolerera web-based, 2011).
Hvistendahl’s Mapping the Game is much more abstract in comparison to
Brunberg’s work and is meant to emphasize the ways in which groups in
society can relate to each other and what structures might obstruct or enable
such relations. This installation is an interactive game where the participants
get to build their own scenario of societal relations. The game starts with
280 Kristin Wagrell
the participants agreeing on a category and choosing the societal groups

that belong to this category. This is done on a glass table with a drawing
of a tree; each branch representing a different opportunity. Small symbols
representing love, conflict or curiosity can then be placed within or between
the groups. There is also a symbol which signifies the ‘I’ in the given scenario
and should be placed somewhere within the category by the participants.
After this the participants are told to roll a dice and pick a so-called ‘scenario
card’ which states a change in the context, meaning that the participants
have to rearrange the symbolic pieces accordingly (Hvistendahl, 2011b).
This game encourages participants to think about both contextual hin-
drances and enablers of tolerance as well as of how they fit into this context.
The two installations discussed above do not use Holocaust memory at all
in their approaches to intolerance. However, all components are a part of
an experience in which historical, psychological and sociological perspec-
tives become interrelated. For instance, Brunberg’s film concludes with a
psychologist answering the question of why tolerance is desirable; stating
that it is important to empathize with others as this is what we also want
for ourselves (Brunberg, 2011). This message relates to what Ohlson Wallin
and Hvistendahl emphasize in their work with regards to the importance of
acknowledging and understanding the suffering of victims. This is a strategy for
building tolerance by deterring human beings from wanting to cause others
to suffer, as they can imagine themselves what such suffering would be like.
This message runs through the exhibition and is concretely explained from
a psychological perspective.
However, how different social contexts affect human decisions and
human behaviour is not clearly stated in this exhibition. The interactive
game has the purpose of making the participants think about these ques-
tions, yet, none of the three artists address the issue of context and structure
in a straightforward or instructive manner. The message throughout the
exhibition becomes one of individual agency. If you acknowledge pain in
the past, decide that you do not want to cause such pain, understand your
prejudiced thoughts and emotions and subsequently choose not to act on
these thoughts and emotions, you will be able to prevent intolerance, at
least in yourself. This pedagogical approach is understandable as the individ-
ual perspective is easier to grasp and comprehend for a young person dealing
with vast ethical questions such as the creation of a more tolerant society.
In this context the Holocaust is used as a frightening example of what
could happen if we do not endeavour to create a more tolerant society. In
addition, the Swedish historical context and culture have been supplanted
by universal discourses within which behaviour can only be addressed at an
individual level.3 As Levy and Sznaider argue, this is a part of a shift from a
contextual and structural debate, including Hannah Arendt’s concept of the
‘banality’ of evil (cf. Arendt, 1963) to a narrative which emphasizes indi-
vidual human agency and moral responsibility. Thus, while ‘Arendt sought
to depersonalize evil and situate it within a system of totalitarianism’, con-

temporary representations of the Holocaust such as Steven Spielberg’s film
Schindler’s List, ‘brought the issue back to the individual’ (Levy and Sznaider,
2006: 142).
The dilemma is that the participants approach intolerance from a psycho-
logical perspective without any historical contextualization. As such, prejudice,
the implied motivation of crimes against humanity, becomes a ‘normal-
ized’ concept today but a ‘universalized’ form of evil in the past. In Ohlson
Wallin’s use of the Holocaust, the perpetrators become an ‘island of scari-
ness’ (Hedén, 2012: 160) which cannot be approached or understood in a
contemporary context. Hence, the historical framework seems substantively
distant, unattainable and incomprehensible. The only individualized experi-
ence shown is that of the victim-survivor who can attest to the consequences
of the perpetrators’ actions. The perpetrators are represented as an uniden-
tifiable mass while the victims are shown as thinking, feeling individuals.
Although it is difficult to fully comprehend the experience of a Holocaust
victim it might still be an easier task than perceiving oneself as the victim-
izer. In ‘pure’ images of the victim there is no guilt, no responsibility or
shame. Pedagogically P.K. attempts to strike a difficult balance between hope
and fear. The historical perspective inflicts fear, yet it does not problema-
tize notions of evil, as this may imply identification with the perpetrators,
which would counteract the exhibition’s hopeful message of change. Put
more simply, it is easier for the participant to accept the idea that he or she
has intolerant thoughts than that he or she could have participated in mass
murder. Identification with intolerant behaviour is therefore only transmitted
through contemporary psychological perspectives whereas ‘decontextualized’
memories of evil are used as examples of an abstract threat.
A Pattern of Universalizing ‘Evil’ – Spelar Roll
The hopeful notion that individuals can make a difference permeates sev-
eral of the pedagogical materials related to the travelling exhibition Spelar
Roll (‘It Matters’). The exhibition deals with questions pertaining to the
‘bystander’ or ‘on-looker’ and the different contexts within which peo-
ple choose to remain passive or choose to act on behalf of those in need
(Forum för Levande Historia, 2013c). The pedagogical material examined
here is meant to be used by teachers for pupils aged 13 to 19 and serve as
a normative, psychological and historical framework for in-class discussion
on bystanderism. Two out of five historical ‘scenarios’ deal with individual
experiences in Austria after the Nazi annexation in 1938; thereby relating to
Holocaust memory (Forum för Levande Historia, 2013d, 2013e).
The first example describes the actions of two individuals in relation to
the Nazi concentration camp Mauthausen-Gusen. The text describing this
scenario problematizes the local population’s ability to speak out against the
282 Kristin Wagrell
camp, since they might become prisoners themselves if doing so. Also, it
mentions the fact that the surrounding area profited economically from the
camp, making the bystanders ‘profiteers’ of the ongoing genocide. The text
concludes, ‘it is clear, in this case, who is perpetrator and who is victim. But
the role of the bystander – profiteer, power-less, supporter, silent but distant,
ignorant – is still unclear’ (Forum för Levande Historia, 2013d).
The individuals investigated in relation to these discussions are a local
woman named Eleanor Gusenbauer and a local social politician named Alois
Brenner. The former wrote a letter to the local authorities complaining
about the scenes of brutality played out outside her window and asked that
such activities be stopped or at least removed from where they were curren-
tly taking place. This could be interpreted as a daring move of action as such
outspokenness was often punished. However, the letter can also be inter-
preted as a way for Gusenbauer to distance herself from what she witnessed
as she states in her letter that these activities have to cease, or be undertaken
at some other place where she does not have to witness them. Similarly,
Brenner’s relationship to the camp expresses different subject-positions
included in representations of the bystander. For instance, Brenner profits
economically from the camp as he helps train the camp prisoners in how
to quarry; yet, he himself becomes a prisoner after publicly stating that the
treatment of the prisoners in the camp was upsetting to the local population
(Forum för Levande Historia, 2013d).
One aspect that can be taken from this discussion is that people who lived
near concentration camps had very little room to manoeuvre in selfless acts
on behalf of camp prisoners. Nevertheless, the text ends with the question
written in bold, ‘But what would have happened if more people would have
acted like Alois Brenner and Eleonor Gusenbauer?’ (Forum för Levande
Historia, 2013d). This counterfactual question seems ill-fitting as the discus-
sion above clearly demonstrates that even those who attempted to speak out
or act against what was happening in the concentration camp were limited
by the very real threat of being killed or deported. It is also historically
problematic as the answer cannot be ascertained due to the fact that the
contextual circumstances have never been the same since.
The point this counterfactual positioning makes is that individually cou-
rageous acts can make a difference all together. This, in turn, also means
that the memory we attach ourselves to is that of an individual fate. In
doing so, the historical evidence, which shows that many looked on and
were complicit in the Holocaust, becomes more manageable and easier to
bear. Although the examples of Alois Brenner and Eleonor Gusenbauer are
accounted for in all their complexity, the lesson drawn from them is simple.
As the Holocaust historian Laurence Langer points out, ‘it appears that when
the Holocaust is the subject, misdirected popular enthusiasms form easily,
especially when they deflect us from the task of tackling the authenticity of
unbearable truth’ (Levine, 2010: 13).
With this statement Langer assumes that Holocaust memory and history
is approached for its own sake. When used in the context of instructing
human rights values, the Holocaust is a moral framework, used to foster a
pro-democratic, tolerant spirit. In the example of Alois Brenner and Eleonor
Gusenbauer the history itself is not changed or manipulated, yet, the manner
in which it is framed by the question at the end, gives the participant a feeling
of hope rather than despair at the fact that resistance was nearly impossible
and that many, in fact, chose to work with and benefit from the Nazi occupa-
tion in Austria. The answer to the counterfactual question seems simple and
clear; if we all choose ‘good’ then we can change what is ‘evil’. As such, the
example is not a historical exercise, but an exercise in connecting past, present
and future. This historical example does not offer any redemption or hope.
Rather, this message is extracted from the idea that we have acknowledged,
learned and will act in accordance with human rights values in the future.
Similarly, the second scenario which concerns post-Anschluss Austria is
taken from the witness account of the Austrian-born writer and journalist
Gitta Sereny. Sereny tells of a situation in which she and a friend witnessed
her paediatrician and his wife, both Jews, being forced to scrub the side-
walk with toothbrushes. Sereny does not just witness the humiliation but
walks up to one of the uniformed men and asks ‘what are you doing, are
you crazy?!’ One of the individuals in the group surrounding the paediatri-
cian and his wife retorts ‘how dare you!’ whereupon Sereny informs the
uniformed men and the surrounding mob that this man is a great doctor
who has saved many lives and Sereny’s friend adds; ‘is this what you call
“our liberation?”’ To the young girls’ great surprise the mob disperses and
the doctor and his wife no longer need to scrub the sidewalk (Forum för
Levande Historia, 2013e).
This example is followed by support-questions for the teacher to ask his/
her student after they have read/listened to Sereny’s story. The questions
concern how the students think Sereny felt, how the doctor and his wife
felt, how ideologies might affect the way people act and why some people
act whilst others stay passive. The exercise intends to stimulate the students’
empathy in terms of understanding the emotions of both the bystanders
and the victims. However, no such questions are asked with regards to the
feelings of the passive bystanders, the active bystanders and the perpetra-
tors. The question which pertains to these groups, namely ‘How do ideolo-
gies affect our thoughts?’ indicates that the message conveyed here is that
these individuals did not choose for themselves but were merely puppets of
a manipulative ideology (Forum för Levande Historia, 2013e). The victims
and so called ‘active bystanders’ become individuals with feelings and
agency, whereas the passive bystanders and perpetrators are depicted as one
mind, sharing the same motivation and aim.
Following Levy and Sznaider this must be seen as a consequence of
‘cosmopolitan memory’, as human rights discourses, superseding nationally
284 Kristin Wagrell
contextualized narratives of good and evil, ‘create a moral space in which

there is no longer any uncertainty’ (Levy and Sznaider, 2006: 193). This uni-
versalized moral space implies a ‘third role to that of victim and criminal;
namely, the witness’ (Levy and Sznaider, 2006: 155). Without having lived
through World War II, the participant can become part of history by being
transported back to scenarios of the past to which the participant has no real
connection. Furthermore, Levy and Sznaider state that ‘in this privileged
position, the witness or observer can choose either to identify with the vic-
tims or adopt the morally bankrupt role of the passive observer’ (Levy and
Sznaider, 2006: 155).
As the targeted group of observers/witnesses in the case of Spelar Roll are
young and take part in an educational experience, the identification with
victims and heroes is vital as the aim of the exhibition, and the aim of the
state authority LHF, is to foster a pro-democratic and tolerant ethos. The
victim is an example of how one does not wish to feel while the hero or
active bystander exemplifies how such victimization can be prevented. The
lack of representations with regards to the perpetrators can be interpreted as
a fear that normalizations of this category will lead to a general acceptance
of such phenomena and, as a result, work as a counter-force to democratic
and tolerant ideals within Swedish society.
Conclusion
The exclusion of complex historical contexts from the examples used in

Spelar Roll and the linear connection made between the Holocaust and neo-
Nazism in Ohlson Wallin’s film indicate a deterritorialization process where
Holocaust memory is dislocated from time and space in order to serve as
an ethical framework and a forum of discussion. The use of the Holocaust
to shape collective memory and to foster a democratic and tolerant ethos
in the LHF’s exhibition P.K. and the material used in Spelar Roll demon-
strates a willingness to learn from a ‘future-oriented cosmopolitan memory’
where the past is only significant as a moral symbol for future attitudes and
behaviour.
In this decontextualization of Holocaust memory, victim stories are used,
not as points of despair, but as sources of hope. In the LHF’s narrative, the
victims’ experiences are used to deter future generations from human rights
trespasses along with an understanding of how we can act as ‘rescuers’ of
those in need. From a historical perspective the perpetrators remain a grey
mass of undecipherable figures that is not understood in relation to the pre-
sent. In contrast, intolerant acts in a contemporary setting are framed in a
concrete manner where the main aim is to understand and be able to relate
to intolerant thoughts and behaviour.
Although pedagogical efficiency is pivotal in the process of communicating
human rights values, commemorative aspects such as remembering and
acknowledging the victims’ suffering and not negating perpetrator guilt

also have to be taken into consideration. Therefore, historical perpetration
becomes an example of pure ‘evil’ and thus much more difficult for the
student to relate to whilst contemporary intolerance is framed as a normal
and ubiquitous phenomenon.
Furthermore, the LHF’s use of both Holocaust memory and psychologi-
cal perspectives in contemporary society demonstrates how narratives of
individual responsibility/actions permeate the exhibitions and teaching
materials explored in this article. P.K. is an exhibition that traces intolerance
through the individual testimonies of victim-survivors of the Holocaust
through Ohlson Wallin’s film, the individual finger-prints of the partici-
pants in Hvistendahl’s salt-landscape and finally the psychological perspec-
tives presented in Brunberg’s works. In the exhibition Holocaust memory is
something which we need to relate to on an individual level and the future
depends upon individual self-knowledge and self-improvement.
The implicit message about history therefore becomes rather simplistic;
if people had only known to look within themselves, had only learned to
recognize their own intolerant thoughts and chosen not to act upon them,
history would look very different. This perspective overlooks many of the
structural reasons for atrocities committed in history and therefore grossly
misrepresents a highly complex reality both in the past and in the present.
In his speech at the LHF’s opening Prime Minister Göran Persson declared
that ‘we need to find a way to create a connection between our history – the
time we currently find ourselves in – here and now – and the future we
shape’ (Regeringskansliet, 2013b, my emphasis and translation). As Persson
states, the relationship between past and present is not evident but must be
constructed. How we define our history is closely related to this construc-
tion, as the ‘decontextualization’ and the ‘deterritorialization’ of memory
involves the acknowledgment of a history that confirms simplified moral
examples of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, and thereby conceals the complexities of
human experience.
Notes
1. See Schult (2013). In her analysis of the Holocaust survivor Anna Berglind’s art-
work and literature, Schult demonstrates how collective and individual memory
processes are closely intertwined. According to Schult, Berglind’s willingness and
ability to face and share her experiences in Auschwitz depended on collective
memory processes and the upsurge of public, scholarly and political interest in the
Holocaust in Sweden during the 1990s.
2. Beginning in 2000 two extensive state-funded research projects were launched
relating to the subject of Sweden and the Holocaust. The first project entitled
Sweden’s relations with Nazism, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust was headed by the
history professor Klas Åmark. It focused on Swedish attitudes and behaviour in
relation Nazi action and ideology. The second project, the Holocaust in the European
286 Kristin Wagrell
Historical Culture, led by Klas-Göran Karlsson, examines how the Holocaust has
evolved in a European historical consciousness.
3. This notion of individual self-knowledge and self-improvement is part of a longer
development in Sweden as well as in other ‘Western’ countries and has been
referred to by the sociologists Ulrich Beck and Zygmunt Bauman as a process of
‘individualization’.
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18
Holocaust Remembrance as ‘Civil
Religion’: The Case of the Stockholm
Declaration (2000)
Larissa Allwork
The Stockholm Declaration was the statement which summarized the main
aims of the Stockholm International Forum, which was organized to pro-
mote Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research globally (hereafter,
the SIF 2000; the forum was held on 26–28 January 2000). And despite
the presence of non-European states such as America, Israel, Russia and
Argentina, political scientist Jens Kroh (2008) has rightly stated that one
of the most significant symbolic elements of the liberal representation of
the Holocaust at this event was the idea that, ‘coming to terms with such a
negative past has almost turned into an informal criterion for accession to
the European Union’ (Kroh, 2010). Hence, the Stockholm Declaration dem-
onstrates that the recollection of Nazi-era crimes with a central emphasis on
the Holocaust has become a principal part of civic moral education in liberal
Western and Westernizing nation states, particularly in Europe since 2000.
These views are also echoed in sociologist Helmut Dubiel’s opinion that the
SIF 2000’s representation of the Holocaust as a ‘European foundation myth’
is an attempt to ‘release the moral potential of its remembrance’ (Dubiel,
2004: 216–17), as well as in Alon Confino’s view, following and taking
to extremes the ideas of Dan Diner, that the symbolism of contemporary
Holocaust remembrance as moral and historical rupture has replaced the
significance of the French Revolution as the ‘foundational past’ of human
values in the West (Diner, 2007: 9; Confino, 2012: 5–6).
This article will specifically employ Emilio Gentile’s paradigm of civil
religion to build on the work of scholars such as Lothar Probst, Daniel Levy,
Natan Sznaider and Dan Stone who have addressed the importance of civil
religion in understanding post-1989 Western European Holocaust memory
politics (Probst, 2003: 45–58; Levy and Sznaider, 2007: 167; Stone, 2013:
221–2). In interrogating the relevance of Gentile’s paradigm of civil religion
in relation to the discursive construction of the Stockholm Declaration and
its impact on various nation states, this article seeks to nuance our under-
standing of the historical dynamics and limits of contemporary liberal forms
of post-Communist sacralized politics, particularly but not exclusively in
288
Holocaust Remembrance as ‘Civil Religion’ 289
Europe. It also attempts to address the question as to whether international

documents such as the Stockholm Declaration can be integrated into a
canonical litany of rhetorical and symbolic motifs more often associated
with the cultural, historical and sociological study of national civil religions.
By exploring these themes and dynamics this article contributes towards
delineating the globally metamorphosing forms of sacralized religion at
the beginning of the third millennium. For as Amos Goldberg has noted in
relation to major sites of Holocaust remembrance across the world such as
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Berlin’s Jewish Museum, Yad Vashem and the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM): ‘they mark a shift in the
manner in which they relate to national territory, since they do not func-
tion merely as geographically delimited sites of a national civil religion but
are also taking their place as global shrines of memory that attract pilgrims
from a multitude of nations’ (Goldberg, 2016).
Civil Religion
Building on the intellectual legacies of Jean Jacques Rousseau and Emile

Durkheim, the twentieth-century study of political, institutional and social
forms of civil religion have become particularly synonymous with socio-
logist Robert Bellah’s path-breaking 1967 essay, ‘Civil Religion in America’.
In recent decades studies of civil religion have been reinvigorated by scholars
such as Marcela Cristi (2001) and Emilio Gentile (2006), the latter of whose
definition and historical analyses of civil religion will be unpacked in rela-
tion to contemporary forms of Holocaust remembrance. Gentile’s approach
which integrates both the politically constructed and organic elements of
understanding and applying civil religion will be especially important in this
analysis. This is because it opens up as opposed to narrowing the multiple
ways in which sacralized politics can be comprehended, a flexibility which
is particularly desirable when trying to understand the extent to which the
paradigm of civil religion can be applied to the liberal remembrance of the
Holocaust as implemented by various Western nation-states, primarily but
not exclusively in Europe, and as mediated through a document such as the
Stockholm Declaration.
Gentile categorizes civil religion as a sub-strand of what he calls secular
religion. According to Gentile, secular religion is the by-product of processes
of secularization and modernization, which nonetheless often mimic or
incorporate the symbols and structures of traditional religions. For Gentile,
there are two forms of secular religion, political religion and civil religion
(Gentile, 2006: 138–46). Political religion is a type of sacralized politics that
Gentile associates with states such as Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the USSR
and Maoist China and it is characterized by authoritarian, fundamentalist
and exclusionary elements. While states with civil religions are not immune
to forms of intolerance or bouts of communal violence towards perceived
290 Larissa Allwork
internal and external enemies, unlike states with political religions, they
normally permit ideological plurality, acknowledge the institutional distinc-
tion between church and state and operate alongside traditional organized
religions (Gentile, 2006: 140). Civil religions have included the nascent
eighteenth-century democracies of post-revolutionary America and France.
If the analytical frameworks of civil and political religions are applied to
different types of polity, Gentile also observes that there are certain com-
monalities which are typical of both civil and political religions. Gentile
thus contends that typical traits of societies that can be perceived as having
civil and political religions include the consecration of a ‘secular collective
entity’ in moralistic terms and the construction of an ‘ethical and social code
of commandments’ which formalizes the relationship between the individual
and the ‘sacralised entity’ (Gentile, 2006: 138–9). There is also the percep-
tion that the adherents of a civil or political religion are part of a ‘commu-
nity of the elect’ which is carrying out a mission for the good of humanity.
These religions of politics are also reinforced and transmitted to future
generations through a ‘political liturgy’ which can be communicated via a
leadership cult or a ‘sacred history’ which is ritually invoked and comme-
morated within the community (Gentile, 2006: 139). More specifically,
these features associated with forms of secular religions often include the
myth that a collective can be regenerated through politics; the representa-
tion of and desire to create a ‘new man’; as well as the sanctification of the
lives of citizen’s who have perished for the collective in inter-state conflicts
(Gentile, 2006: 29).
Civil Religion and the Holocaust at the Turn of the Millennium
Drawing on this theoretical context, the application of Gentile’s definition of

civil religion opens up a set of revealing, constructive and challenging lines
of enquiry in relation to the SIF 2000 and the way in which this international
event sought to reinforce and promote national forms of the commemora-
tion of the Holocaust through the liberal framework of the Stockholm
Declaration at the turn of the millennium. It will be argued that on the cusp
of the third millennium and within the context of twentieth-century liberal
political victories over the political religions of Italian Fascism, Nazism and
Soviet Communism, the liberal rhetoric of Holocaust remembrance invoked
through documents such as the Stockholm Declaration can be perceived as
exhibiting at the international inter-state level some of the representational
traits often previously associated with national civil religions. For example,
Charles S. Liebman and Eliezer Don-Yehiya have analysed Israel’s changing
forms of civil religion since 1948 and the role of collective manifestations of
Holocaust remembrance within it (1983). However, as Israel constructs itself
as an overtly Jewish state that integrates Judaic practices with liberal democ-
racy, this also means that Israel’s response to the Holocaust is likely to be
radically different to various European national responses. As a result, two

other interpretations will be important to this analysis, which although less
directly linked to the civil religion paradigm are arguably more pertinent to
understanding civil religion in the European context. The first is Rebecca
Clifford’s exploration of the French liberal framing of the remembrance of
the Holocaust within the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man’ discourse, parti-
cularly after Jacques Chirac’s 1995 Vel’D’Hiv speech (Clifford, 2013: 194–200).
Comparisons with Clifford’s findings could also be made in relation to the
discursive framing of the Holocaust in liberal ‘universalistic’ terms according
to the central tenets of American civil religion at the USHMM. The second
important interpretation is Dirk Moses’s proposal that the discursive con-
struction of the ‘stigma’ of the Holocaust and the Nazi past in the Federal
Republic of Germany often manifests itself in linguistic frameworks which
embody notions of trans-generational collective guilt and are sometimes
communicated in secular religious terms through biblical language and/or
notions of ‘inherited sin’ (Moses, 2007: 25). This means that this analysis
of the construction of the remembrance of the Holocaust as part of a civil
religion marks an innovative intervention in the pre-existing scholarship in
that a central focus of its analysis involves not applying the framework of
civil religion to one national polity, but rather unpacking the liberal secular
religious elements of an international discursive document, the Stockholm
Declaration, which has been adopted in different ways by countries which
wanted to be perceived as endorsing Western, liberal values. For as Göran
Persson, the Swedish Prime Minister and aspiring European politician
responsible for convening the SIF 2000, commented:
I remember Prime Minister Jospin saying, both to me personally and also

in his conference speech, that it was remarkable how we had devoted the
whole of the 1990s to international conferences about economics, and now
it was the new millennium and the first big conference was about ideology,
humanism and values. (Persson, 2000)
Viewed within the horizon line of Gentile’s sacralized politics, the represen-
tational form of the Stockholm Declaration can be seen as a ‘social and
ethical code of commandments’ (Gentile, 2006: 139), which although
different to many civil religions in its plurality of application to various
nation-states as opposed to just one, is typical of the political and social util-
ity ascribed to civil religions. This is because it reinforces and promotes the
transmission of liberal values to future generations through state-led forms
of education and ritualized performances such as Holocaust Memorial Days.
Admittedly, it might be objected that the global and ‘non-binding’ nature
of an international political document like the Stockholm Declaration fun-
damentally weakens its potential to be perceived within the framework of
civil religion. This is because of the relative weakness of forms of popular
292 Larissa Allwork
communal identification with global events such as the SIF 2000 as well
as the Stockholm Declaration’s inter-state and institutional as opposed to
national, communal and grassroots origins.
However, this does not necessarily negate the importance of viewing
the representation of the Holocaust and Nazi-era crimes in the Stockholm
Declaration as part of a ‘civil religion’, rather it opens up three inter-linked
challenges. The first is to understand the primary region to which the
Stockholm Declaration was applied and what this document was designed to
mean for the simultaneously plural and collective identities of this region. For
while non-European Western states such as the US and Israel were involved
in the convening of the SIF 2000 and while sociologists Levy and Sznaider
have seen the SIF 2000 as linked to the ‘Americanization’ of the Holocaust
(Levy and Sznaider, 2006: 183), it was also a project that was born in Europe,
in Sweden, and through its ‘Liaison Projects’ (these will be explained in the
following sections) was loosely linked to the Post-Communist reconstruc-
tion of Europe through the promotion of political and cultural Western,
liberal democratic norms. In this way the creation, dissemination and appli-
cation of the Stockholm Declaration can be seen as part of what historian
Mark Mazower has described as the contested, complex, ongoing and unre-
solved processes of identity formations within Europe after the collapse of
Communism (Mazower, 1999: xiv–xv). These identity formations for nation
states within the continent of Europe, simultaneously included the some-
times clashing and conflicting aims of negotiating pre-existing national
traditions of political sovereignty; mediating the impact of international
and transnational social, economic, political and cultural dynamics as well
as contributing to the often contentious economic and political project of
integration into the European Union in the 1990s and 2000s.
The second challenge in attempting to understand if a document such as
the Stockholm Declaration serves the function of promoting a form of ‘civil
religion’ is to reject a slavish application of Gentile’s theories and instead
to effectively delimit the extent to which a liberal sacralization of politics
in relation to the Holocaust and Nazi-era crimes has been encouraged since
the SIF 2000. This is so that a nuanced understanding of contemporary
forms and limits of ‘civil religion’ can be produced. In the case of Holocaust
commemoration this civil religion manifested itself in the liberal discourse
accompanying the growth of educational programmes, memorial days and
other types of state-led ritualized remembrance. The third challenge is to
begin to gesture towards the issues provoked by the institutional construc-
tion, reception and dissemination of sacralized forms of Holocaust memory
work between the interstices of the transnational, international, national
and local. It is hoped that by investigating these subjects this chapter will
contribute towards delineating the changing forms of sacralized religion
at the beginning of the third millennium, a period in which Gentile has
argued that aside from the political religions of states such as North Korea
as well as the Republican Right’s radicalization of America’s post-9/11 ‘God’s

Democracy’ (Gentile, 2008), ‘civil and political religions appear[ed] every-
where to be receding’ (Gentile, 2006: 136).
Civil Religion and the Stockholm International Forum (2000)
Against the backdrop of national concerns over far right activity and
Holocaust education in Sweden, Prime Minister Göran Persson’s SIF 2000
was in fact a global, if primarily Euro-centric event, with delegates from
46 nations present. The main components of the SIF 2000 consisted of
opening and plenary sessions in which national politicians such as Ehud
Barak (Israel), Bill Clinton (USA), Robin Cook (Britain), Václav Havel (Czech
Republic), Lionel Jospin (France), Aleksander Kwaśniewski (Poland) and
Gerhard Schröder (Germany) pledged their support to the recovery and
preservation of the evidence of the Holocaust and Nazi-era crimes. They were
also expected to articulate their allegiance to fighting contemporary forms
of anti-Semitism, racism, neo-fascism and genocide. The second part of
the conference focused on a series of panels, workshops and seminars by
Holocaust scholars and Genocide experts (such as Deborah Dwork, Ulrich
Herbert, Michael Marrus, Robert Melson and James E. Young) as well as pres-
entations by representatives of remembrance organizations such as Teresa
Świebocka (Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum) and Jan Munk (Terézin
Museum). A number of workshops also included speeches by Holocaust sur-
vivors such as Hédi Fried, Kitty Hart Moxon and Ben Helfgott (Fried, 2005).
The presence of these survivors was arguably symbolic not only of the SIF
2000’s deep respect for the victims but also of the social importance ascribed
to traumatic testimonies in what Annette Wieviorka has called, ‘the Era of
the Witness’ (Wieviorka, 2006).
In line with the main components structuring the SIF 2000, a key
element within the Stockholm agenda was to draw attention to the work
of the Task Force for International Co-operation on Holocaust Education,
Remembrance and Research (ITF). Established in 1998, the ITF was a
growing collective of member states and NGOs dedicated to promoting
research, remembrance and education about the Holocaust and the Nazi-
era past, whose members at the time of the SIF 2000 (Sweden, America,
Britain, Israel, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, France and Italy) were
also involved in the organization of the conference (Wallin and Newman,
2009). Important to the ITF’s early years would be the facilitation of ‘Liaison
Projects’ particularly between Holocaust NGOs in America, Israel and
Western Europe and Holocaust organizations in the post-Communist states
of Central, Eastern, South-Eastern Europe and the Baltic states. Moreover,
the summarizing statement of the SIF 2000, the Stockholm Declaration,
which also became the guiding document of the ITF, can be interpreted
as promoting the remembrance of the Holocaust, within the context of
294 Larissa Allwork
broader Nazi-era crimes, as part of a civil religion for the members of this
inter-state network.
The authors of the Stockholm Declaration included the Israeli Holocaust
historian, genocide prevention activist and critic of extreme forms of
Israeli religious nationalism, Yehuda Bauer; co-founder of the Beth Shalom
Holocaust Centre and Aegis Trust for Genocide Prevention, Stephen Smith;
the distinguished British Jewish and Holocaust Studies scholar, David Cesarani;
American embassy representative, Jonathan Cohen and Persson (Stephen
Smith and Yehuda Bauer cited in Allwork, 2015). While these authors did
not aim to construct a text with the overtones of a civil religion and primary
author Bauer certainly did not think that the document would have the
impact or longevity that it has in fact had (Bauer cited in Allwork, 2015), the
wording of the Stockholm Declaration nonetheless shares many characteristics
associated with Gentile’s definition of how democratic sacralized politics are
rhetorically and institutionally constituted from ‘above’. However, to interpret
the Stockholm Declaration as part of a civil religion, is also quite different
from Gentile’s previous applications of this framework, in that it attempts to
show how the Stockholm Declaration contributes to the definition of the lib-
eral beliefs which underpin the values of a collective of Western nation states
represented by the ITF rather than articulating the ideological beliefs which
underlie the secular religious social and cultural practices of a single polity.
Civil Religion and the Stockholm Declaration (2000)
In its eight point form the Stockholm Declaration can be interpreted as an

‘ethical and social code of commandments’, which represents the Holocaust
through a liberal discourse and in moralistic terms. For example, the acts
of ‘Righteous Gentiles’ and those who fought against the Nazis become,
‘touchstones in our understanding of the human capacity for evil and good’
(Bauer, 2000: 136). At the political level, there is also the sense in which the
Stockholm Declaration seeks to promote a shared feeling of transnational
liberal mission among its national adherents which is justified as being for
the good of humanity. This is evident in the way in which the Stockholm
Declaration encourages its affiliates to battle Holocaust denial as well as
encouraging the prevention of ‘genocide, ethnic cleansing, racism, anti-
Semitism and xenophobia’ (Bauer, 2000: 136). Finally, the Declaration ends
by connoting the optimistic mood that it would like to promote liberal
rebirth among its adherents who primarily came from America, Israel and
the countries of Europe: ‘It is appropriate that this, the first major interna-
tional conference of the new millennium, declares its commitment to plant
the seeds of a better future amidst the soil of a bitter past’ (Bauer, 2000: 137).
The Stockholm Declaration is also typical of a document which can be
interpreted within the framework of civil religion in that it utilizes language
associated with religion in political terms. In contrast to Israel’s civil reli-

gion and its assimilation of the Jewish religious tradition, the Stockholm
Declaration can be interpreted as transforming into secular religious form
language associated with the European Christian liturgy and its symbolism
of stigma, sacrifice and reconciliation. In a similar vein to Moses’s analysis of
German commemorative practices, the Stockholm Declaration can be per-
ceived as ‘stigmatic’ in its statement that the Holocaust and Nazi-era crimes
‘have left an indelible scar across Europe’ (Bauer, 2000: 136). It can also be
suggested that the document utilizes language with Christian overtones when
it notes that those who battled the Nazis made, ‘selfless sacrifices’ and that
reconciliation must be promoted by reaffirming ‘humanity’s common aspira-
tion for mutual understanding and justice’ (Bauer, 2000: 136). These argu-
ably ‘christianized’ elements of the Stockholm Declaration can be perceived
as pointing not only to its construction for a primarily European-Christian
audience, but also to the potential for controversy, particularly given Isabel
Wollaston’s analysis of the problematic elements of remembrance processes
related to the ‘Christianization’ of the Holocaust in Poland. She describes
these as attempts to ‘“rewrite” the history of the Holocaust by emphasising
the church’s role as co-victim, and/or to interpret it by reference to Christian
categories of meaning’, such as penance, sacrifice, reconciliation and the
cross (Wollaston, 1999–2000: 3).
The discourse structuring the Stockholm Declaration can also be seen
as promoting a civil religion through its support of liberal forms of inter-
generational education and social rituals and ceremonials to comme-
morate the collective remembrance of Nazi-era crimes, in particular the
Holocaust. For example, in relation to this fundamental educational
and ritualistic characteristic of civil religions, the Stockholm Declaration
sought to, ‘encourage the study of the Holocaust in all its dimensions’ as
well as to promote, ‘appropriate forms of Holocaust remembrance, includ-
ing an annual day of Holocaust Remembrance in our countries’ (Bauer,
2000). However, it was the advocacy of this type of ritualized activity,
which is such a central part of civil religions that has received some of the
most scathing criticism from academics such as Dan Stone. This promi-
nent scholar of Holocaust historiography has bemoaned Remembrance
Days because ‘as performances they are almost inevitably kitsch … they
potentially re-victimise genocide victims who are excluded … and they are
inherently part of a political process that provides cheap brownie points to
governments’ (Stone, 2005: 523).
Representing just one intellectual’s response to the phenomena of
Remembrance Days, Stone’s comments pithily highlight some of the most
problematic aspects of ritualized ceremonies of remembrance. For example,
his stinging assessments can be supported by the Armenian controversy in
relation to the launch of UK Holocaust Memorial Day. This began when it
296 Larissa Allwork
emerged from the UK Home Office that the Holocaust and more recent atroci-
ties would be focused on at the 2001 national ceremony, excluding earlier
genocides such as the Turkish genocide of Armenians during World War I.
Reference to this atrocity was eventually integrated into the 2001 ceremony,
following tough criticism from Armenian community groups and com-
mentators such as Robert Fisk, who had argued that Armenian exclusion
reflected British foreign policy interests: Turkey is a NATO ally and its gov-
ernment objected to and still objects to the recognition of the Armenian
genocide (Fisk, 2000; Ahmed, 2001). Stone’s views also strike a chord
with Mark Levene’s critique of the Western hypocrisies embedded in New
Labour’s efforts to ‘ritualize’ the Holocaust as a liberal ‘sacred event’ when
the national remembrance of this catastrophe coincided with the nexus
of liberal interventionist discourses acting as a ‘moral alibi’ for military
intervention in the Iraq War (Levene, 2006: 26). However, in counterbal-
ance to Stone’s views, it can be contended that national remembrance
days also potentially possess more diverse outcomes depending on their
eclectic interpretation in different local and communal contexts within
nation states. Equally, as Clifford has illustrated in relation to France and
Italy (Clifford, 2013: 256–7), the public controversies that remembrance
days often engender can also encourage social debates about diverse, com-
plex and difficult narratives of national pasts. In the process these debates
mitigate against Czech writer Milan Kundera’s observation that, ‘Before we
are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stop-over between
being and oblivion’ (Kundera, 1984/1995: 270).
The Limits of the Stockholm Declaration as Civil Religion
It must also be acknowledged that there are limitations placed on the extent
to which the Stockholm Declaration can be perceived as heralding a new
form of liberal sacralized politics for implementation in various Western
nation states, particularly in Europe. First, a non-binding international
document such as the Stockholm Declaration can promote and reinforce
liberal attitudes and Holocaust education and remembrance trends, but
it cannot enforce them nor directly establish them, as the nation with its
state bureaucracy, network of independent NGOs and plurality of local
organizations often remains the primary site of civic activity. Secondly,
if a function of civil religion is to promote social cohesion, a sacralized
remembrance culture of the Holocaust and the Nazi past remains a challeng-
ing prospect particularly given the hugely contentious debates that have
accompanied various efforts to publicly address the Third Reich’s troubling
legacies. Examples of these controversies are legion and have included: The
Kastner Affair in 1950s Israel (Segev, 1991: 255–310); the 1980s Reagan/
Kohl Bitburg scandal (Hartman, 1986); the Jan T. Gross Neighbors debate
in Poland in the early 2000s (Gross, 2001; Polonsky and Michlic, 2004) as
well as contemporary competing collective memories of oppression in rela-

tion to the Nazi and Communist pasts in post-Soviet states such as Estonia,
Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine (Zuroff, 2005).
Other potentially contentious issues in relation to the SIF 2000 and the
Stockholm Declaration specifically include the ongoing debates surround-
ing what scholars such as Stuart D. Stein have identified as the problematic
potential for the hierarchization of Nazi atrocities and genocides in Bauer
and the Stockholm Declaration’s discourse of Holocaust ‘unprecedented-
ness’ (Stein, 2005: 182). Equally, Maĺgorzata Pakier and Bo Stråth have cri-
tiqued the, ‘politically safe condemnation of the Holocaust in the Stockholm
Declaration’ (2010: 8) as well as the organizers of the SIF 2000’s failure to
more directly address Muslim victimization during the Srebrenica massacre,
commenting: ‘Solidarity becomes a zero sum game when the solidarity is with
the victims of yesterday instead of the victims of today’ (Pakier and Stråth,
2010: 8–9). From this perspective, there were also the hypocrisies embedded
in the rhetoric of the Stockholm Declaration (2000) given the international
community’s failures in regards to preventing atrocities in Chechnya and
the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) at the time of the conference,
as well as in countries such as Sudan in the years following the SIF 2000.
Finally, the Stockholm Declaration remains ambivalent in relation to the
paradigm of civil religion because although it can be perceived as recollect-
ing the Holocaust and Nazi-era crimes within a liberal, moralistic framework,
it is untypical of a civil religion in that it does not advocate a numinous
experience by mystifying the Holocaust or suggesting that there are ele-
ments of it that surpass comprehension. This is not unsurprising given the
nationally self-critical implications of European reflection on the history of
the Holocaust and the Third Reich. It also mirrors the fact that Bauer, the
primary author of the Stockholm Declaration, has distinguished himself
from other scholars in rejecting interpretations of the Jewish catastrophe
which suggest its ineffability. Instead, Bauer stresses that the Holocaust must
be understood historically as well as in relation to other genocides and con-
temporary manifestations of anti-Semitism, racism and the far right (Bauer,
2002: xi). Indeed for many of the Holocaust remembrance activists involved,
the SIF 2000 and the ITF were never about providing a ‘civil religion’, rather
they were a response to genuine problems: the need to rectify the after-effects
of distortive Communist discourses of the Jewish catastrophe; the demand
to commemorate unmarked sites of atrocity; the necessity of educating as to
why restitution processes were necessary in relation to the Nazi past as well as
acting as a historical corrective to the outrageous claims of Holocaust deniers.
This means that if in its liberal and moralistic rhetoric, advocacy of inter-
generational education and promotion of ritualized forms of remembrance,
the Stockholm Declaration can be perceived as advocating a type of civil reli-
gion, it also remains resolutely non-mystical in its anti-numinous stance as
well as in the reality of the public reception of its contentious subject matter.
298 Larissa Allwork
Civil Religion, the Holocaust and Processes of Europeanization,

Westernization and Democratization
Despite the limitations outlined above, it can still be contended that the
Stockholm Declaration can be seen as part of a civil religion. This is particu-
larly in political-institutional terms and when combined with broader trans-
national, international and national developments which have promoted
the establishment of liberal ritualized forms of Holocaust remembrance
since 2000, especially although not exclusively in Europe. The Stockholm
Declaration was followed by the Council of Europe’s 2002 decision to estab-
lish a ‘Day of Remembrance’ in member states as well as the UN General
Assembly’s November 2005 Resolution 60/7 which mandated 27 January
as ‘International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the
Holocaust’. The cumulative impact of these trends was that remembrance days
rapidly increased from a pre-SIF 2000 total of nine in Western style democ-
racies (Austria, France, Germany, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands,
Sweden, USA) to 34 across the world by 2010. States with newly estab-
lished memorial days included: Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, the
Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy,
Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, Norway, Poland, Romania, Portugal,
Serbia, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and the UK (OSCE/
ODIHR, 2010). Furthermore, many of these newly established remem-
brance days followed the precedent of Germany and Sweden in holding
their ceremonies on or near to the 27 January (Belgium, Croatia, the Czech
Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Liechenstein,
Luxembourg, Monaco Norway, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland
and the UK). Even Russia reported that Moscow and 30 other urban centres
marked the UN’s official ‘International Day of Commemoration’ between
2006 and 2010, although Russia has still to establish its own official
Holocaust Remembrance Day (OSCE/ODIHR, 2010: 72).
While the international recognition of 27 January suggests a degree of
uniformity, the official titling of these memorial days both conforms and
departs from the Holocaust centred tone of the Stockholm Declaration,
and instead reflects different national particularities, as well as showcas-
ing slightly different emphases in terms of the victim groups commemo-
rated. For example, while some states told the OSCE that the titles of
their remembrance days reflect the fact that the main focus of their com-
memorative activities are primarily but not always exclusively the victims
of the Holocaust (Canada, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Liechtenstein, Norway,
Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Sweden and the USA); other states such
as Croatia, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg, Monaco, Switzerland and
Spain, remember those who suffered during the Holocaust, while dedicating
their days more generally to preventing ‘Crimes against Humanity’ (OSCE/
ODIHR, 2010: 8–9).
Although a historian such as Tony Kushner (1994) might see this latter
trend as reflecting a degree of liberal ambivalence towards remembering
the Jewish catastrophe specifically; the undisputed growth in national
commemoration days in the first decade after 2000 can be interpreted as
attesting to the extent to which liberal forms of state-led remembrance of
the Holocaust, often within the context of broader Nazi-era atrocities and/
or other human rights transgressions, can be perceived as part of an institu-
tionalized civil religion. States that ascribe to this civil religion are normally
located on the European continent and are or aspire to be part of or allied to
the EU, OSCE or NATO’s sphere of influence. However, these developments
are not without a certain irony given the EU’s relatively small direct role
in the Holocaust restitution campaigns of the 1990s as well as its minimal
direct institutional involvement in the convening of the SIF 2000 (Eizenstat,
2004: 27; Allwork, 2015).
It is also an important observation that the increase in Holocaust memo-
rial days corresponds with the rapid growth of the ITF or the international
body that was supposed to implement what can be interpreted as the
Stockholm Declaration’s Holocaust centred civil religion of promoting
research, remembrance and education about the Jewish catastrophe and
Nazi-era crimes across the globe. In line with this, by 2008 its plenary
comprised 26 member states. This meant that following a period of time as
‘Liaison Partners’ to already established ITF member states such as America,
Britain, Germany, Israel, Sweden, the Netherlands, Poland, France and Italy;
the countries of Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, the Czech Republic,
Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg,
Norway, Romania, the Slovak Republic, Spain and Switzerland had been
made full members of the ITF by 2008 (Wallin and Newman, 2009: 24).
Since 2008, Canada (2009), Finland (2010), Ireland (2011), Serbia (2011) and
Slovenia (2011) have also joined. The ‘Liaison’ process, which was particularly
important during the ITF’s early years, has been described as involving the
completion of a number of joint Holocaust research, remembrance and educa-
tion initiatives followed by assessment of these projects by an international
expert group within the Task Force (Wallin and Newman, 2009: 76).
Moreover, while Donald Bloxham (2002) has noted the potential asym-
metries in cultural power inherent in these ITF ‘Liaison Projects’, the Task
Force has undoubtedly had some important successes in promoting research,
remembrance and education about the Holocaust and Nazi era crimes across
Europe and the wider world. This is particularly notable in relation to its co-
operation with the USHMM in order to open the Bad Arolsen archives and
preserve materials from the Jasenovac concentration camp. As evidenced by
the press releases section of the ITF, and now the International Holocaust
Remembrance Alliance’s website, the body has also spoken out against the
Holocaust denial of Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejab and the continued dis-
crimination faced by Europe’s Roma and Sinti.
300 Larissa Allwork
It should also be noted that the remembrance of the Jewish catastrophe

specifically continues to be invoked by national members of the ITF within
the framework of promoting liberal, secular values and religious tolerance.
One of the most recent examples of this was French President, Francois
Hollande’s 22 July 2012 speech to commemorate the 70th anniversary of
the Vel d’Hiv Round up. Hollande’s address acknowledged the crime, ‘com-
mitted in France, by France’ and occurred in the wake of fears over resurgent
anti-Semitism raised by the Toulouse shootings (March 2012) perpetrated by
Islamist extremist, Mohamed Merah. Although Hollande’s speech was rooted
in the specific experience of tragic events in France, the tone of his address
nonetheless shared some similarities with the desire to promote tolerance
and democracy which accompanied not only Chirac’s path-breaking 1995
address but also the creation of Göran Persson’s original ‘Levande Historia’
campaign and founding of Forum För Levande Historia (the Living History
Forum, LHF). The ‘Levande Historia’ campaign preceded the founding of the
ITF and was established in Sweden in 1997, before being institutionalized in
2003 as LHF a, ‘nationally financed public educational authority’ (Levine,
2005: 78). The ‘Levande Historia’ campaign was formulated in response to
the growth in activism by Sweden’s hard right minority as well as in reac-
tion to the publication of a Stockholm University Centre for Research in
International Migration and Ethnic Relations (CEIFO) report (May 1997), the
results of which seemed to suggest that approximately one-third of Swedish
youths were unsure that the Holocaust had happened, while a minority were
prepared to engage in Holocaust denial (Levine, 2005: 92). Thus, in a simi-
lar way to Persson, Hollande viewed the education of the next generation
about the Holocaust as crucial to constructing, promoting and sustaining a
democratic and tolerant polity: ‘Ignorance is the source of many abuses. We
cannot tolerate the fact that two out of three young French people do not
know what the Vel d’Hiv roundup was’ (Hollande, 2012).
Conclusion
Before decisively assessing the extent to which events such as the SIF 2000
and organizations like the ITF have contributed to the remembrance of the
Holocaust becoming part of a civil religion, there clearly needs to be more
research completed on the national and local impact of political-institutional
policies such as the promotion of memorial days and the implementation
of ‘Liaison Projects’. Research on the impact of memorial days including
their varying degrees and forms of national ritualization after 2000 has
been begun by Clifford in relation to France and Italy and Andy Pearce in
relation to the UK. Equally, my primary research conducted into the British/
Lithuanian ‘Liaison Project’ (2000–2003) has suggested that this initiative
contributed to British dialogues and activities with the Lithuanian govern-
ment and Lithuanian Holocaust organizations such as the Kaunas Ninth Fort
Museum. These activities included Suzanne Bardgett’s (Curator, Holocaust

exhibition, Imperial War Museum, London) visit to the Vilna Gaon State
Jewish Museum and the London Jewish Cultural Centre’s inter-cultural
teaching initiatives with Lithuanian and Polish educators (Allwork, 2013).
That said, the policies that the Task Force advocates can also provoke resent-
ment in relation to the collective remembrance of Communism in some
post-Soviet countries, including Lithuania, as well as populist backlash against
what is sometimes perceived as international interests meddling in national
affairs. For example, following US critiques of Estonia’s failures to prosecute
former Nazi war criminals, an opinion poll commissioned by the nation’s
popular newspaper, Eesti Paevaleht revealed that 93 per cent of Estonians
opposed the 2002 creation for 2003 inauguration of a ‘Day of the Holocaust’
to commemorate the Jewish catastrophe, genocides and other ‘Crimes
against Humanity’ (Ellick, 2004). Moreover, framing the remembrance of the
Holocaust within the context of liberal, democratic values is not without its
problems, providing as it does a highly visible multicultural icon for mate-
rial or online desecration by anti-Semitic political and/or religious radicals
(Prowe, 1998: 319). From a different perspective and in relation to the liberal
agenda of LHF, anxieties have also been articulated as to the overly bureau-
cratic character of the organization as well as questions asked as to whether
this public body has effectively battled Swedish anti-Semitism (Levine, 2005:
95). For example, despite LHF’s efforts, in 2012 a representative of the Obama
administration, Hannah Rosenthal (US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat
Anti-Semitism, 2009–2012) drew attention to and criticized continuing
anti-Semitism in Sweden, particularly in Malmö (Rosenthal, 2012). Kristin
Wagrell (2012) has also expressed concerns as to the extent to which LHF
truly encourages a self-critical confrontation with Sweden’s past (cf. Wagrell’s
chapter in this volume). Additionally, Tanja Schult has highlighted how the
drawings of Swedish artist Patrick Nilsson in Sensmoral or Death (2001) can be
read as an attempt to provoke a sustained critical, ‘reflection on the standard-
ised and regulated remembrance of the Holocaust’ promoted by the Swedish
government since the late 1990s (see Schult’s chapter in this volume).
However, with the aftershocks of the Eurozone crisis, slashes to public
spending and resurgent forms of far right and Islamist extremism, it is per-
haps the multiple social, political and bureaucratic-economic challenges
posed by the austerity era which pose the biggest questions to what can
be perceived as the current multi-faceted civil religion of the Holocaust
and Nazi-era crimes. This has been powerfully addressed by scholar of
the collective memory of World War II and the Holocaust in Greece, Anna
Maria Droumpouki (2013). Against the backdrop of the nation’s economic
crisis, Droumpouki has pointed to the desecration of a Jewish monument
in Thessaloniki with swastikas (17 June 2011) and the recent re-emergence
of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories among political extremists. Thus, what-
ever the shortcomings of the Stockholm Declaration’s representation of the
302 Larissa Allwork
Holocaust as part of a civil religion for European and Westernizing states,

the liberal values and issues of public history with which the ITF engages
continues to be both important and controversial. This is because the world
is now confronting post-9/11 and recession era challenges in relation to
excavating and exhibiting the traumatic and turbulent Nazi past. Working
as part of these changing times, the ITF moved from the temporary status
suggested by the name Task Force to a title which reflects a more perma-
nent body, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in
December 2012. Consisting of 31 states globally with Bulgaria, Portugal, the
former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Turkey and Uruguay as ‘Observer
Countries’ (IHRA, 2015), it will be interesting to see if this name change
signifies wider shifts in the Alliance’s membership and remit.
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Wagrell, Kristin (2012) ‘Cosmopolitan Memory in a National Context: The Case of
“Forum for Living History”’, MSc Comparative Politics Research Essay, London
School of Economics and Political Science. Made available courtesy of the author.
Wallin, Bitte and Michael Newman (eds.) (2009) The Task Force for International
Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research: Ten Year Anniversary
Book, Stockholm: Edita Västerås.
Wieviorka, Annette (2006) The Era of the Witness, New York: Cornell University Press.
Wollaston, Isabel (1999–2000) ‘Auschwitz and the Politics of Commemoration’,
Holocaust Education Trust Research Papers 1.5, pp. 1–26.
Zuroff, Efraim (2005) ‘Eastern Europe: Anti-Semitism in the Wake of Holocaust
Related Issues’, Jewish Political Studies Review 17.1-2, pp. 1–15.
Index
absence, absent, 2–3, 16, 26, 34, 40, Palace of the Republic (Palast der
44–6, 50, 67, 77, 96–7, 128, 137, Republik), 54, 63
144, 161, 168, 171, 177, 187, 203, Neue Reichskanzlei, 55
214, 216, 220, 228, 263 Neue Wache, 54–5, 73, 78–81, see also
Adorno, Theodor W., 1, 112, 164, 166, Central Memorial for the Victims of
177, 183–4, 188–92, 195, 257 War and Tyranny
afterwardness, 3 Nollendorfplatz, 61
Agamben, Giorgio, 34–6, 139–40, 144–5 Reichstag, 53, 55, 57–9, 61–3
amnesia, 5, 254–6, 266 Schöneberg, 4, 54, 61, 67–8
Anne Frank House, Amsterdam, 238, Tiergarten, 53, 58, 60–2, 71, 84
240–3 Betlejewski, Rafał, 135–6, 159
anti-Semitic, anti-Semites, Biber, Katherine, 26, 254, 257–8, 267
anti-Semitism, 47, 56, 95, 133, 135, biographical (also autobiographical), 3,
143, 149, 160, 165, 175, 178, 200–1, 6, 11, 165, 209, 239, 247, 255–6,
215, 235, 245, 254–7, 261–6, 275, 259, 274
277, 293–4, 297–301 biographics, 233, 236, 238, 241
Arendt, Hannah, 1, 163, 172–6, 179, Boltanski, Christian, 14–19, 40, 119
186, 280 Brandt, Willy, 152
art/artist Brunberg, Jon, 277, 279–80, 285
conceptual, 46, 55 Bubis, Ignatz, 55
reflective, 4, 235, 239 Bundeswehrdenkmal, 63
audio artwork, audio work/project, 4, bystander, 174, 176, 186, 190, 203–5,
54, 64–6 232, 281–4
Auschwitz, Auschwitz-Birkenau, bystander mentality, 121
Auschwitz Birkenau State Museum,
2, 4–5, 13, 28–33, 49–50, 57–8, Central Council of Sinti and Roma in
94–104, 107–29, 137, 143–4, 166, Germany, 56–7, 62
178, 183–96, 198–211, 222, 235–43, Central Memorial for the Victims of War
263, 272, 289, 293 and Tyranny (Zentrale Gedenkstätte
authenticity, authentic, 5, 36, 37, 57, 77, der Bundesrepublik Deutschland für die
100, 104, 121–4, 145, 157, 188, 199, Opfer von Krieg und Gewaltherrschaft),
205–8, 231, 237, 240–2, 245–6, 282 54–5, see also Neue Wache
centralized, 68, 99
Baksik, Łukasz, 139 closure, 2, 22, 49, 163, 176
Baum, Erwin, 102–3 coming to terms with the past, 64, 69,
Berlin 136, 175, 190, 239, 288
Berlin Palace (Berliner Schloss), 54 commemoration, public, 4, 55
Berlin Wall, 55, 75, 84, 88, 99–100 commemorative practice (also practices
Brandenburger Tor, 53, 55, 58, 59, of commemoration), 4, 295, 298
61, 84 concentration camp, 12–13, 31, 37, 41,
German Historical Museum 51, 58, 66, 102–3, 137, 144, 171,
(Deutsches Historisches Museum), 183, 185, 201–2, 207–8, 217–18,
54, 76 222, 226, 239, 243, 277, 281, 299
Marzahn, 57 Confino, Alon, 288
305
306 Index
connection Endlich, Stefanie, 58

living, 3, 6, 229 Evers, Florian, 232
personal, 25, 76, 121 extermination camp, 1, 137, 145,
emotional, 77, 87 151, 277
historical, 81, 88, 121, 229, 285
contemplation, 63, 171, 177 feminism, feminist, 60, 245
counter-monument, 4, 11, 44–8, 79, 159 Fischer, Bernd, 60
Croci, Pascal, 235–8, 240 Frahm, Ole, 232
Czerniakow, Adam, 93, 95 fragility, fragile, 22, 51, 63, 104, 133,
141, 229
Dachau concentration camp, 47, 66, fragment, fragmentaric, fragmented, 65–6,
102, 194 93, 165, 170, 193, 222, 233, 238, 240
de Waal, Edmund, 129 Frank, Anne, 232, 238, 241–2, see also
DeKoven Ezrahi, Sidra, 115, 189 Anne Frank House
Demnig, Gunther, 82, see also Stumbling Fraser, Nancy, 254, 259
Stones Frei, Norbert, 62, 78
democracy, democratic societies, 54, 62, Friedländer, Saul, 1, 47, 49, 112, 114, 177
108, 124, 159, 267, 273, 276, 283–4,
290, 292, 294, 298, 300–1 gay, 60–2, 160, 259, see also homosexual,
Derrida, Jacques, 137–8, 163, 167–8, homosexuality
173–7 gender, gendered, 60, 119, 216, 228
dialogue, 29, 46, 49, 107–8, 111, 149, Gentile, Emilio, 288–94
165–6, 175, 177, 221, 226, 246, Gerz, Jochen, 45–8
265, 300 Gottschlich, Maximilian, 257–8
dialogue, Polish–Jewish, 149–50, 153, Gradowski, Zalman, 104
157, 160 grief, 63, 78, 80, 136, 188
Didi-Huberman, Georges, 2, 33, 35, Gross, Andrew, 85, 183–4, 188–9
138, 142 Gross, Jan T., 4, 99, 296
Diepgen, Eberhard, 57 Grynberg, Mikołaj, 107, 106–30
Digital Monument of the Jewish guards, female, 215, 218, 222–7
Community (Digitaal Monument guide books, 104, 93, see also travel guides
Joodse Gemeenschap, initiated by guilt, guilty, 163, 167–9, 173, 209, 216,
Isaac Lipschits, 2005), 11, 24 218–29, 281, 285
discourse, imaginative/artistic, 1–3, 6 guilt
distance, 3, 5–6, 36, 73–6, 80, 87, 94, 99, Austrian, 4, 266
107, 111, 114–5, 121, 124–8, 136, Germany’s (also German), 56, 59, 291
169, 175–6, 184, 186, 195, 203, 254, inherited, 169
259, 282 Polish, 136, 155
distancing effect, 66, 68 Swedish, 124, 186, 190, 194
distancing process, 216 Gülnar, Ibrahim, 60
Downfall (Oliver Hirschbiegel, 2004),
201, 206–8, 215–16, 220–2, 226–9 Halbwachs, Maurice, 274–5
Dragset, Ingar, 53, 60–1 Hapetzeder, Felice, 163–78
Dres, Jérémie, 239 Hart, Kitty, 101–3
Durkheim, Emile, 73–7, 86, 88, 274, 289 Herzog, Roman, 58
historiographics, 245
Ebbrecht, Tobias, 233, 243 Heuvel, Eric, 241–3
Eisenman, Peter, 3, 36, 53, 55–6, 60, Hitler, Adolf, 45, 55, 63, 84, 114, 206,
85–6, 88 207, 216, 220, 221, 222–4, 226, 228,
Elmgreen, Michael, see Ingar Dragset 233–5, 238, 246, 260, 263
Index 307
Holocaust Lacan, Jacques, 140–1, 146

denial, 150, 200, 294, 299–300 LaCapra, Dominick, 133
representation, archival mode of, 2, 11 Lanzmann, Claude, 6, 32–33, 35, 142,
studies, 1, 12, 214, 272, 294 229, 253, 258
survivors, second/third generation, 6, lesbian, 59–60, 198, 219, 259
25, 164, 167, 175, 214, 239 Lesbian and Gay Federation in Germany
homosexual, homosexuality, 56, 59, (Lesben-und Schwulenverband in
60–2, see also gay Deutschland), 59
Hustvedt, Siri, 5, 184, 187–96 Levi, Primo, 115, 117, 128, 139, 170–1
Huyssen, Andreas, 3, 5, 36, 258–9 Levy, Daniel, 158, 274–84, 288, 292
Hvistendahl, Andrea, 277–80, 285 Liaison Project, 292–3, 299–300
Lin, Maya, 16, 26, 44–5
identification, identify, identity, 13, 20, Lipschits, Isaac, 11
36, 60, 63, 100, 135, 138, 150, 159, Living History Forum (Forum för levande
169, 176, 187, 201–2, 204–5, 208, historia), 5, 124, 272–83, 300
216, 221, 244, 256, 274–5, 279, 281, Löwenbräukeller, 64
284, 292, 297
imagination, imaginary, imagine, Malmsten, Bodil, 5, 184–97
imagined, 1–6, 15–16, 21, 25–6, Margalit, Avishai, 5, 254, 260–5, 268–9
37, 40, 42, 44, 53–4, 75, 99, 101, Matzevot for Everyday Use (Łukasz Baksik,
115, 133, 135, 150, 159, 177, 217, 2012), 139
231–48, 280 Maus (Art Spiegelman, 1986), 4, 49–50,
In Memoriam: The Deported and Killed 231, 258–9, 272
Jewish, Roma and Sinti Children Mausbach, Florian, 53–4
1942–1945 (In Memoriam: media, popular, 5, 232–3, 241, 247
De gedeporteerde en vermoorde Joodse, Melián, Michaela, 4, 54, 63–9
Roma en Sinti kinderen 1942–1945, Mémorial des enfants juifs deportés de
Guus Luijters, 2012), 12–13, 19–20, France (Serge Klarsfeld, 1995), 12, 20
24, 26 Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted under
International Holocaust Remembrance the National Socialist Regime (Michael
Alliance (IHRA), 273, 299, 302 Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset 2008),
intolerance, intolerant, 5, 272–4, 276, 53, 59–62
277–81, 284–5, 289 Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
(Peter Eisenman, 2005), 3, 36, 53,
Jacobson, Sid, 238 54–6, 59–63, 68, 73, 76, 84–8
Janicka, Elżbieta, 136–9 Memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe
Jedwabne, 136 Murdered under the National Socialist
Jewish Echo (Das Jüdische Echo), 260, 265 Regime (Dani Karavan, 2012), 53, 58
Junghaus, Tímea, 59 memory, memories
Jureit, Ulrike, 63 active, 2
commemoration, de-centralized, 4,
Karavan, Dani, 53, 57–8 54, 68–9, 84
Kértesz, Imre, 111, 185 cosmopolitan, 158, 272, 274–7, 284
Klarsfeld, Serge, 12, 20, 24, 25 cultural, 136, 150, 208–9, 232, 261
Klüger, Ruth, 128–9 deep, 2, 4, 36, 44, 49
Knigge, Volkhard, 56, 127 de-territorialization of, 274–5
Kohl, Helmut, 54–5, 80, 296 living, 3
Kroke, Roman, 241, 243–4 mediated, 2–6, 22, 28–9, 41–2, 193,
Kucharska, Aleksandra, 107, 110, 114, 210, 289
115, 118, 124–5, 128 politics of
308 Index
memory, memories – continued Persson, Göran, 124, 272–3, 285, 291,

popular, 259, 268 293, 300
universal, 260 Pinto, Diana, 266–7
vivid, 2 Places of Remembrance (Orte des Erinnerns,
work, 3–4, 40, 50, 133, 149–50, Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock,
158–9, 292 1993), 4, 54, 67–8, 83
memory culture pogrom, pogroms, 64, 66, 160, 263, 265
German, 3, 68, 118 politics
Jewish, 5, 136, 155, 158 identity, 4, 54
official, 108, 127–8, 149, 259 presentist, 267
Polish, 133–40, 146, 150 Pontiac, Peter, 239
Memory Loops (Michaela Melián, 2010), popular culture, 123, 132, 136, 141,
4, 54, 63–9 231–2, 234, 242–4, 247, 253–4,
Menasse, Peter, 266–8 256–60, 268
Merkel, Angela, 59 post-memory, 1, 2, 31, 41, 107
minority, minorities, 59, 62, 172, 217, post-ness, 2
265, 272, 277, 300 post-witness era, 1–6, 199
Monument for Freedom and Unity, 54 post-war, 3, 14–16, 47, 88, 95, 100–1,
Muranów district (former Warsaw 103, 149, 151, 183, 188, 214,
Ghetto area), 133, 139–40, 142–3, 218–19, 228, 254, 256, 259, 263,
151–2, 154–5, 160 265–6, 275
Murmelstein, Benjamin, 253
Muzicant, Ariel, 262, 265 Rabinovici, Doron, 253, 257–8, 260–1
racism, 5, 221, 264, 267, 293–4
The National Socialist German Workers’ Reader, The (Stephen Daldry, 2008), 201,
Party (Nationalsozialistische Arbeiter 215, 216, 220–9
Partei Deutschlands, NSDAP), 63, 64 reconciliation, reconcile, 5, 133, 140,
Nazisploitation, 144, 217 168, 174–6, 295
Neumann, Bernd, 59, 62 reimagine, 25, 150
Nilsson, Patrick, 107–29, 301 reunification of Germany, reunified,
Nowy Teatr (New Theatre), 151, 154 reunited, 47, 54–5, 59, 62–3, 73, 76,
79–80
oblivion, 2, 29, 51, 170, 296 ritual, ritualistic, ritualized, 55, 58, 59,
Ohlson Wallin, Elisabeth, 277–81, 284–5 66, 68, 74–6, 79, 84, 87–8, 127, 141,
Ostachowicz, Igor, 132–5, 139–46, 160 151, 155, 157, 261, 274, 290–2,
295–8, 300
participatory, active participation (art, Rohr, Susanne, 184, 237
projects, performances), 5, 30, 149, Rose, Romani, 56–9
152–7 Rosh, Lea, 54, 56, 59
perception, gendered, 216, 228
Perec, Georges, 20–5 Schindler’s List (Steven Spielberg, 1993),
performative (art, projects, perfor- 3, 200–3, 207, 232, 237, 246, 281
mances), 14, 135, 159, 161 Schmidt, Helmut, 56, 58
perpetrator, 3, 4, 5, 14, 47, 54, 56, 63, Schnock, Frieder, see Places of
64, 67, 80, 96, 114, 115, 119, 120, Remembrance
142, 144, 146, 164, 165, 169, 171, Schröder, Gerhard, 53, 293
172, 175–7, 201, 205, 214–29, 232, Schumann, Coco, 65
237, 247, 264, 266, 278, 281–85 self-reflection, self–reflexive, 14, 20, 104,
perpetrator, German (land of 149, 192, 258
perpetrators), 54, 56, 63, 126, 231 self-referential, 226
Index 309
self-representation, self–representative, uncertain, uncertainty, 23, 54, 63, 110,

3, 63 122, 127, 129, 134, 171, 272, 284
sensibility, forensic, 40–1 unidentifiable, unidentified, 143, 281
Shalev-Gerz, Esther, 4, 28–42, 45–51 unimaginable, unimaginability, 26,
silence, silenced, silencing, silent, 2, 4, 33, 216
29, 30, 32–6, 40–2, 50–1, 86, 94,
112, 114, 119, 128, 152, 155, 159, victim, victimization, 4, 12, 14, 24,
169, 190, 209, 219–20, 222, 257, 25, 36, 40, 41, 45, 47, 50, 54–9,
259, 266, 275, 282 62–4, 67–9, 75, 80–5, 89, 97–8,
Sinka, Margit, 68, 71 100–12, 120–22, 125, 129, 132,
Sinti Allianz, 57 134, 136–41, 144, 146, 157–8, 168,
Socio-Cultural Association of Jews in 170–1, 174, 176, 189, 200–1, 204–5,
Poland (TSKŻ), 152 214–16, 221–2, 227, 232, 234, 237,
Spelar Roll (It Matters, Forum för Levande 244, 247, 254, 257–8, 260, 264,
Historia, 2007), 274, 281–4 266–7, 274–5, 277–8, 280–5, 293,
Spiegelman, Art, see Maus 295, 297, 298
Spielberg, Steven, see Schindler’s List victim group, 56, 59, 62, 63, 67, 69, 85,
Spinelli, Santino, 58 298
Steiner, George, 112, 128 victim hierarchy/hierarchies, 57
Stih, Renata, see Places of Remembrance Vietnam Veterans’ Monument (Maya Lin,
Stockholm International Forum, 6, 1982), 16, 44, 45
288, 293 virtuality, virtual, 5, 65, 67, 59
Stumbling Stones (Stolpersteine, Gunther visibility, visible, 4, 18, 19, 24, 34. 35,
Demnig, 1992), 73, 82–4, 88, 240 41, 46, 48, 50, 54, 56, 57, 59, 60, 62,
symbolic, 16, 17, 26, 54, 62, 68, 79, 97, 66, 69, 83, 97, 103, 117, 139, 140,
98, 102, 103, 104, 116, 121, 141, 149, 154, 195, 205, 219, 233, 301
143, 145, 149, 151, 183, 189, 225, visual, visualize, 20, 26, 34, 55, 41, 46,
280, 288, 289, 293 49, 50, 51, 60, 95, 98, 102, 104,
Sznaider, Natan, 158, 274–6, 280, 283–4, 126, 154, 159, 160, 164, 165, 170,
288, 292 199, 202, 206, 207, 210, 225, 245
voyeurism, voyeuristic, 36, 96, 100, 215
Task Force for International
Co-operation on Holocaust Wagrell, Kristin
Education, Remembrance and Weill, Kurt, 65
Research (ITF), 273, 293, 299, 301–2 Weiss, Peter, 111, 115, 123–7, 129
Tel Hai, 45–7 Weisz, Zoni, 59
tolerance, tolerant, tolerate, 124, 164, 262, Weizsäcker, Richard von, 56
273, 276, 277, 279–80, 283–5, 300 Wiesenthal, Simon, 171
Tomberger, Corinna, 59
topography, topographical, 64, 66, 126 Yann, Martel, 2, 189
tourists, 5, 23, 48, 53, 54, 62, 87,
93–104, 165, 166 Zelman, Leon, 259–60, 264
travel guides, 94, 98, see also guide books Žižek, Slavoy, 140, 144

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Revisiting Holocaust Representation in the

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List of Illustrations vii

1 Introduction: Memory and Imagination in the

Part I Revisiting Artistic Practices of Holocaust Commemoration

Part II Sites of Struggle with Haunting Pasts

11 The Limits of Forgiveness and Postmodern Art 163

Part IV Memory Politics in Post-2000 (Trans)National Contexts

3.1 Esther Shalev-Gerz, Between Listening and Telling: Last

8.5 Aleksandra Kucharska, Untitled from the series Auschwitz

Larissa Allwork is a Lecturer at the University of Northampton School of

Jan Borowicz is a PhD student at the Institute of Polish Culture, Section

Tim Cole is Professor of Social History at the University of Bristol and

Ceri Eldin was a postgraduate student of Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Christine Gundermann studied history, ethics and philosophy in Halle/

Hampus Östh Gustafsson completed an MA in Intellectual History, History

Christian Karner is Associate Professor in the School of Sociology and Social

Erica Lehrer is Associate Professor in the Departments of History and

Ingrid Lewis is a PhD candidate at the School of Communications, Dublin

Jacob Lund is Associate Professor of Aesthetics and Culture and Director of

subjektivering i kunst og teori (The subjective Remnant: Enunciation and (De)

Diana I. Popescu is a cultural historian in Holocaust and Jewish studies.

Tracy Jean Rosenberg is a doctoral student in Sociology at Goethe University

Tanja Schult is a researcher and senior lecturer at Stockholm University.

Ernst van Alphen is Professor of Literary Studies at Leiden University.

School of Economics and Political Science. Her current focus is on com-

Memory and imagination are the unusual companions of creative thought,

generations as it offers the possibility to work against closure and silence.

articulated by the survivors’ generation can be glimpsed once again by

proximity to Auschwitz make possible? What is gained or lost through tem-

responsibility? Concluding the volume, Larissa Allwork evaluates the role of

The rise of the archival mode in Holocaust commemoration is a relatively

Killing through Archiving

commemorate the Holocaust, they also create Holocaust effects. Therefore,

The Referentiality of Lists

The representational genre of the list is often legitimized by its referential

• In Liste des artistes ayant participé à la Biennale de Venise 1895–1995 (1995),

international shows between 1896 and 1991, indicating in each case in

The referential reading of the list transforms into a metaphorical reading of

that the referential function transforms into a metaphorical – or symbolic –

The Imposition of Categories

Boltanski’s obsessive listing shows another problem with the referentiality

this listing is performed. This indicates that listing is a time-bound process:

• aesthetic criteria do not matter;

because they are institutionally dependent on storage, inventories and cata-

The Addendum of Lists

It is not only Luijters In Memoriam that raises this question. It seems to

The Mnemonic Function of Listing

My memories are attached to the narrowness of that bed, to the nar-

Spaces fail as points of reference. It is at this moment that Perec deviates

(date: 18 October 1974, Time: 12.40 pm, location: Café de la Mairie)

A Paris-Vision bus goes by. The tourists have headphones

project An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris. The project was a systematic

are first of all historical instruments, which offer information, whereas in

7. For an analysis of the photographic image in terms of a reality that unavoidably

Holocaust above become even more urgent as the generation of witnesses

Shalev-Gerz’s Dialogical Aesthetics

Esther Shalev-Gerz’s work is emphatically of the present; it takes its point of

of, as in a historical enunciation, being disconnected from the present in a

the moment when the supposed spectator becomes a participant by writ-

The Silent Gestures of the Last Witnesses