From Ravensbrück to Berlin: Will Lammert’s Monument to the Deported Jews 1957/1985

Images ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-163
Author(s):  
Natasha Goldman
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
East Berlin ◽  
Western Art ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Deutsche Demokratische Republik ◽  
Changing Attitudes ◽  
Art Style

In 1985 one of the earliest memorials dedicated to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust was installed in East Berlin. The Monument to the Deported Jews was an arrangement of thirteen bronze figures in expressionist style. Will Lammert, the artist, originally designed the figures for the base of his monument for Ravensbrück in 1957. The artist died in 1957, however, before finalizing his design for the monument. Only two figures on a pylon were installed at the concentration camp in 1959. The figures meant for the base of the Ravensbrück memorial were unfinished, but were nonetheless cast in bronze by the artist’s family. Thirteen of those figures were installed on the Große Hamburger Straße in 1985 by the artist’s grandson, Mark Lammert. This essay analyzes the Große Hamburger Straße monument in three ways: first, it returns to the literature on the Ravensbrück memorial in order to better understand the role that the unfinished figures would have played, had they been installed. I argue that they originally were most likely meant to depict “Strafestehen”—or torture by standing—at Ravensbrück. Secondly, it aims to explain why and how Lammert’s seemingly expressionist memorial would have been acceptable to East Germany in 1959. While Western art historical attitudes toward East Germany up until the 1990s assumed that Soviet socialist realism was the de facto art style of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), some elements of expressionism were being theorized in the late 1950s, at precisely the time when Lammert designed the Ravensbrück monument. Finally, I analyze the role that a monument for Ravensbrück plays in this particular neighborhood of Mitte, Berlin: standing silently, they are no longer legible as women being tortured by standing. Instead, the sculptures signify, at the same time, the deported Jews of Berlin and the harrowing aftermath of their deportations, the improbable return of the deported Jews, and the changing attitudes toward the history of the neighborhood in which the sculptural group is located.

It’s Still There

boundary 2 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-143
Author(s):  
Paula Rabinowitz
Keyword(s):  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Georges Perec ◽  
Visual Examination ◽  
Nazi Concentration Camp ◽  
Alain Resnais ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Chantal Akerman ◽  
History Of

Daniel Blaufuks’s video Als Ob/As If formally interrogates the history of Holocaust imagery using a close visual examination of the 1944 “Staged Nazi Film” shot in Thereseinstadt. Layering his footage from present-day Terezín with a number of earlier films and television shows shot at or about the Nazi concentration camp, he contemplates the role of the image, both still and moving, in the creation of memory and history of the Holocaust. His video and phototextual book connect to literary explorations of the Czech concentration camp—by Georges Perec, W. G. Sebald, and Jiří Weil—as well as cinematic documentaries about the Nazi murder of European Jews by Alain Resnais, Claude Lanzmann, and Jean-Luc Godard. By focusing on contemporary Terezín, Blaufuks also brings to light aspects of memorialization within post-totalitarian societies investigated by filmmakers Petra Epperlein and Chantal Akerman, as well as by scholars of the Holocaust and post-Soviet Eastern Europe.

scholarly journals Hungarian Women’s Holocaust Life Writing in the Context of the Nation’s Divided Social Memory, 1944-2014

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 54-81
Author(s):  
Louise O. Vasvári
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Intergenerational Transmission ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
Mothers And Daughters ◽  
Child Survivors ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Holocaust Narratives

In this paper, in commemoration of the seventieth anniversary year of 1944 in Hungary, I explore selected women’s Holocaust diaries, memoirs, letters, and other less studied documents, such as recipe books, all written during the war, which can provide invaluable resources for understanding the experiences of the victims of war, by personalizing the events and helping to write the obscure into history. At the same time, such documents allow historical voices of the period to provide testimony in the context of the divided social memory of the Holocaust in Hungary today.  I will first discuss several Hungarian diaries and “immediate memoirs” written right after liberation, among others, that of Éva Heyman who began writing her diary in 1944 on her thirteenth birthday and wrote until two days before her deportation to Auschwitz, where she perished. I will then discuss two recently published volumes, the Szakácskönyv a túlélélésért (2013), which contains the collected recipes that five Hungarian women wrote in a concentration camp in Austria, along with an oral history of the life of Hedwig Weiss, who redacted the collection. Finally, I will refer to the postmemory anthology, Lányok és anyák. Elmeséletlen történetek [‘Mothers and Daughters: Untold Stories’] (2013), where thirty five Hungarian women, some themselves child survivors, others daughters of survivors, write Holocaust narratives in which their mothers’ lives become the intersubject in their own autobiographies, underscoring the risks of intergenerational transmission, where traumatic memory can be transmitted (or silenced) to be repeated and reenacted, rather than worked through.

scholarly journals Lived experience and the Holocaust: spaces, senses and emotions in Auschwitz

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 27-58
Author(s):  
Nikolaus Wachsmann
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Construction Sites ◽  
Nazi Concentration Camp ◽  
Spatial History ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of

This article examines lived experience during the Holocaust, focusing on Auschwitz, the most lethal Nazi concentration camp. It draws on spatial history, as well as the history of senses and emotions, to explore subjective being in Auschwitz. The article suggests that a more explicit engagement with individual spaces�prisoner bunks, barracks, latrines, crematoria, construction sites, SS offices�and their emotional and sensory dimension, can reveal elements of lived experience that have remained peripheral on the edges of historical visibility. Such an approach can deepen understanding of Auschwitz, by making the camp more recognisable and by contributing to wider historiographical debates about the nature of Nazi terror.

scholarly journals ESCAPE FROM THE DEATH CAMP, OR LUCKY BREAK OF PRISONER 13390 (BASED ON THE MEMOIRS OF LEONARD ZAWACKI)

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 687-694
Author(s):  
S. S. Khodyachikh
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
World War ◽  
Death Camp ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The World ◽  
Short Run ◽  
History Of

The article analyzes the circumstances and conditions that led to the successful escape from the Auschwitz concentration camp of a group of Polish prisoners of war under the leadership of Leonard Zawacki, prisoner 13390. The escape was carried out on September 28, 1944 by a group of six prisoners of war, two of whom changed into SS uniforms and “escorted” four glaziers to work outside the camp. Zawacki’s memoirs, published in Poland in the form of a short-run pamphlet, as well as many hours of interviews in which he talked about his traumatic experience, life in imprisonment, partisan unit, and the very escape, are introduced into scientific circulation. Zawacki’s memoirs are a valuable source not only about the history of the World War II and the Holocaust, but also the deep experiences of a man who went through the hell of Auschwitz and survived against all odds.

scholarly journals Zapiski z „Miasta Umarłych”. Obóz koncentracyjny Jasenovac i Stara Gradiška w literackich narracjach tanatologicznych i dyskursie pamięci obszaru postjugosłowianskiego

2019 ◽  
Vol 168 ◽  
pp. 507-520
Author(s):  
Ewa Szperlik
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Independent State ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western Civilisation ◽  
Holocaust Narratives ◽  
The City

Notes from “the city of the dead”: Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška concentration camps in thanatological narratives and in the memory discourse of the post-Yugoslav areaThis paper discusses selected Holocaust narratives of the post-Yugoslav area, which were set in the history of Hitler’s Europe due to the establishment of the pro-Nazi Pavelić regime The Independent State of Croatia. They were also set in the context of the concealment policy, when both places and events related to concentration camps, Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška, were ousted from collective memory by the authorities of communist Yugoslavia. Concentration camp memoirs and records — autothanatographies J. Derrida, A. Ubertowska — reflecting on the post-Yugoslav area of Tito’s epoch had been a tabooed realm of unsolicited truths S. Buryła for a few decades due to political reasons and have recently been reintroduced into official discourse of memory. They also address the questions of the end of Western civilisation, the topos of the concentration camp as the territory of the reign of death and struggle for survival. The five selected thanatological testimonies present the Holocaust and the nightmare of World War II as an essential part of reflection on the human condition H. Arendt and they also show the phenomenon of collective trauma D. LaCapra.  Bilješke iz „Grada Mrtvih”. Konclogor Jasenovac i Stara Gradiška u književnim tanatološkim naracijama i u diskursu kolektivnog pamćenja na području bivše JugoslavijePredmet razmatranja u ovom tekstu su odabrani autobiografski zapisi o Holokaustu sa područja bivše Jugoslavije, stavljene u vizuru povijesti hitlerove Europe povodom osnivanja režima Ante Pavelića kakva je bila NDH. Istodobno vrlo je važan u ovoj analizi kontekst politike prešućivanja te brisanja iz kolektivnog pamćenja mjesta i dogaᵭaja vezanih uz logore smrti: Jasenovac i Stara Gradiška koje su vlasti komunističke Jugoslavije nakon II svjestkog rata uspješno poricale. Vraćene u zadnje vrijeme javnom pamćenju sjećanja i uspomene na logor – „autotanatografije J. Derrida, A. Ubertowska – bile su nekoliko decenija prešućivane ili od javnosti skrivane u Titovoj državi te zbog političkih razloga spadale su u zonu nepoželjnih istina S. Buryła. Zabilježena vlastita sjećanja na konclogora – kasnije proskribiranih autora/svjedoka – bave se univerzalnom temom smrti, rušenja civilizacije zapadnog kruga, konclogora kao područja svevladajuće smrti, istrebljivanja i životnjske borbe za preživljavanje zatočenika. Pet odabranih logorskih testimonija prikazuje traumu II svjestkog rata D. LaCapra te govori o stanju čovječanstva u postratnom razdoblju H. Arendt.

Out of the Whirlwind Reconsidered

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Michael Berkowitz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Personal History ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Holocaust Literature ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mutual Accountability ◽  
Union College

This article argues that Albert Friedlander’s edited book, Out of the Whirlwind (1968), should be recognised as pathbreaking. Among the first to articulate the idea of ‘Holocaust literature’, it established a body of texts and contextualised these as a way to integrate literature – as well as historical writing, music, art and poetry – as critical to an understanding of the Holocaust. This article also situates Out of the Whirlwind through the personal history of Friedlander and his wife Evelyn, who was a co-creator of the book, his colleagues from Hebrew Union College, and the illustrator, Jacob Landau. It explores the work’s connection to the expansive, humanistic development of progressive Judaism in the United States, Britain and continental Europe. It also underscores Friedlander’s study of Leo Baeck as a means to understand the importance of mutual accountability, not only between Jews, but in Jews’ engagement with the wider world.

Searching for Justice After the Holocaust

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Bazyler ◽  
Kathryn Lee Boyd ◽  
Kristen L. Nelson ◽  
Rajika L. Shah
Keyword(s):  
Best Practices ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Holocaust Survivors ◽  
European Parliament ◽  
Slave Labor ◽  
Insurance Policies ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nazi Era ◽  
Property Restitution

The Nazis and their cohorts stole mercilessly from the Jews of Europe. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, returning survivors had to navigate unclear and hostile legal paths to recover their stolen property from governments and neighbors who often had been complicit in their persecution and theft. While the return of Nazi-looted art and recent legal settlements involving dormant Swiss bank accounts, unpaid insurance policies and use of slave labor by German companies have been well-publicized, efforts by Holocaust survivors and heirs over the last 70 years to recover stolen land and buildings were forgotten. In 2009, 47 countries convened in Prague to deal with the lingering problem of restitution of prewar private, communal, and heirless property stolen during the Holocaust. The outcome was the Terezin Declaration on Holocaust Era Assets and Related Issues, aiming to “rectify the consequences” of the wrongful Nazi-era immovable property seizures. This book sets forth the legal history of Holocaust immovable property restitution in each of the Terezin Declaration signatory states. It also analyzes how each of the 47 countries has fulfilled the standards of the Guidelines and Best Practices of the Terezin Declaration. These standards were issued in 2010 in conjunction with the establishment of the European Shoah Legacy Institute (ESLI), a state-sponsored NGO created to monitor compliance. The book is based on the Holocaust (Shoah) Immovable Property Restitution Study commissioned by ESLI, written by the authors and issued in Brussels in 2017 before the European Parliament.

German Angst

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Biess
Keyword(s):  
Federal Republic ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Peace Movements ◽  
Original Analysis ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fear And Anxiety ◽  
Relationship Of

German Angst analyzes the relationship of fear and democracy in postwar West Germany. While fear has historically been associated with authoritarian regimes, the book highlights the role of fear and anxiety in a democratizing society: these emotions undermined democracy and stabilized it at the same time. By taking seriously postwar Germans’ uncertainties about the future, the book challenges dominant linear and teleological narratives of postwar West German “success.” It highlights the prospective function of memories of war and defeat, of National Socialism and the Holocaust. Fears and anxieties derived from memories of a catastrophic past that postwar Germans projected into the future. Based on case studies from the 1940s to the present, the book provides a new interpretive synthesis of the Federal Republic. It tells the history of the Federal Republic as a series of recurring crises, in which specific fears and anxieties emerged, served a variety of political functions, and then again abated. Drawing on recent interdisciplinary insights of emotion studies, the book transcends the dichotomy of “reason” and “emotion.” Fear and anxiety were not exclusively irrational and dysfunctional but served important roles in postwar democracy. These emotions sensitized postwar Germans to the dangers of an authoritarian transformation, and they also served as the emotional engine of the environmental and peace movements. The book also provides an original analysis of the emotional basis of right-wing populism in Germany today, and it explores the possibilities of a democratic politics of emotion.

The Tropes of Jewish/Muslim Difference

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yulia Egorova
Keyword(s):  
Reference Point ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Communal Violence ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The chapter explores how notions of Jewish and Muslim difference play out in the history of communal violence in independent India. In doing so it will first interrogate the way in which trajectories of anti-Muslim ideologies intersect in India with Nazi rhetoric that harks back to Hitler’s Germany, and the (lack of) the memory of the Holocaust on the subcontinent. It will then discuss how the experiences of contemporary Indian Jewish communities both mirror and contrast those of Indian Muslims and how Indian Jews and the alleged absence of anti-Semitism in India have become a reference point in the discourse of the Hindu right deployed to mask anti-Muslim and other forms of intolerance.

“Socialist Realist” Critiques of Neoliberal “Shock Therapy”

2019 ◽  
pp. 431-451
Author(s):  
April A. Eisman
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Shock Therapy ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
German Art ◽  
Socialist Realist ◽  
East German ◽  
Insight Into

This article focuses on the East German artistic response to the 1973 putsch in Chile, an event now recognized as foundational in the development of neoliberalism. Outraged and saddened, artists in East Germany responded to the putsch with thousands of works of art. These works disrupt Western expectations for East German art, which was far more modern and complex than the term “socialist realism” might suggest. They also offer insight into the horrors of the putsch and remind us that there have been—and can once again be—alternatives to neoliberal capitalism. In addition to creating prints, paintings, and sculptures, East German artists organized solidarity events to raise money for Chile and spearheaded a book project with artists from sixteen communist and capitalist countries to document the event and losses suffered. This article ultimately shows that communist visual culture can serve as a model for art as an activist practice.

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