Performing the Hyphen

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jackie Feldman ◽  
Anja Peleikis
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
German History ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Special Events ◽  
Memorial Landscape ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Performative Space ◽  
History Of ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Guided Tours

The Jewish Museum Berlin (JMB) is a dynamic, performative space that negotiates between representing the Jew as an integral part of German history and as ultimate Other. While this tension has been documented through the political history of the museum (Lackmann 2000; Pieper 2006; Young 2000), we focus on the dynamics of guided tours and special events. We claim that guiding and festival events at JMB marginalise Holocaust memory and present an image of Jews of the past that promotes a multicultural vision of present-day Germany. In guiding performances, the identity of the guide as German/Jewish/Muslim is part of the guiding performance, even when not made explicit. By comparing tour performances for various publics, and the 'storytelling rights' granted by the group, we witness how visitors' scripts and expectations interact with the museum's mission that it serve as a place of encounter (Ort der Begegnung). As German-Jewish history at JMB serves primarily as a cosmopolitan template for intercultural relations, strongly affiliated local Jews may not feel a need for the museum. Organised groups of Jews from abroad, however, visit it as part of the Holocaust memorial landscape of Berlin, while many local Jews with weaker affiliations to the Jewish community may find it an attractive venue for performing their more fluid Jewish identities – for themselves and for others.

scholarly journals The reconfiguration of the European Archive in contemporary German-Jewish migrant-literature

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-54
Author(s):  
Jessica Ortner
Keyword(s):  
European Archive ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Migrant Literature ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Political Concern ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Mass Shooting ◽  
History Of ◽  
German Jewish

A considerable number of Eastern European migrant authors of Jewish origin are currently lifting Holocaust memory to a new level. Writing in German about events taking place in remote areas of the world, they expand the German framework of memory from a national to a transnational one. By partaking in reconsidering what is ‘vital for a shared remembering’ of Europe, this branch of writing reflects the European Union’s political concern for integrating the memories of the socialistic regimes in European history writing without relativising the Holocaust. In Vielleicht Esther, Katja Petrowskaja consults various national and private archives in order to recount the history of the mass shooting of over 30,000 Ukrainian Jews at Babij Jar – a canyon near Kiev. Thus, she ‘carries’ a marginalised event of the Holocaust into the German framework of memory and uncovers the layers of amnesia that have not only concealed the event amongst the Soviet public but also distorted and for ever made inaccessible her family’s past.

scholarly journals On Becoming a Non-Jewish Holocaust Writer: Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Rachel F. Brenner
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The World ◽  
Family Level ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Origins

To appraise Martel’s non-Jewish perspective of Holocaust thematic, it is important to assess it in the context of the Jewish relations with the Holocaust. Even though the Jewish claim to the uniqueness of the Holocaust has been disputed since the end of the war especially in Eastern Europe, the Jewish response determined to a large extent the reception of the disaster on the global scene. On a family level, the children of survivors have identified themselves as the legitimate heirs of the unknowable experience of their parents. On a collective level, the decree of Jewish annihilation constructed a Jewish identity that imposed an obligation to keep the Holocaust memory in the consciousness of the world. Martel proposes to supersede the history of the Holocaust with a story which would downplay the Jewish filiation with the Holocaust, elicit an affiliative response to the event of the non-Jewish writer and consequently integrate it into the memory of humanity at large. However, the Holocaust theme of Beatrice and Virgil refuses to assimilate within the general memory of humanity; rather, the consciousness of the event, which pervades the post-Holocaust world, insists on its constant presence. The omnipresence of the Holocaust blurs the distinctions between the filiative (Jewish) and affiliative (non-Jewish) attitudes toward the Jewish tragedy, gripping the writer in its transcendent horror. Disregarding his ethnic or religious origins, the Holocaust takes over the writer’s personal life and determines his story.

The Work of Testimony in the Age of Decolonization: Chronicle of a Summer, Cinema Verité, and the Emergence of the Holocaust Survivor

PMLA ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 119 (5) ◽  
pp. 1231-1246
Author(s):  
Michael Rothberg
Keyword(s):  
Turning Point ◽  
Discrete Event ◽  
Holocaust Survivor ◽  
Algerian War ◽  
The Public ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
First Time

The trial of Adolf Eichmann, in 1961, is generally considered a turning point in the history of Holocaust memory because it brought the Holocaust into the public sphere for the first time as a discrete event on an international scale. In the same year, Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin's film Chronicle of a Summer appeared in France. While absent from scholarship on memory of the Nazi genocide for over forty years, Chronicle of a Summer contains a scene of Holocaust testimony that suggests the need to look beyond the Eichmann trial for alternative articulations of public Holocaust remembrance. This essay considers the juxtaposition in Chronicle of a Summer of Holocaust memory and the history of decolonization in order to rethink the “unique” place that the Holocaust has come to hold in discourses on extreme violence. The essay argues that a discourse of truth and testimony arose in French resistance to the Algerian war that shaped and was shaped by memory of the Nazi genocide.

German-Jewish Esotericism: The Case of Meir Wiener’s Expressionist Kabbalah

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amir Engel
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
German History ◽  
German Expressionism ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Western Esotericism ◽  
New Framework

Abstract The fact that bizarre intellectual trends and teachings, like occultism, parapsychology, and neopaganism played an important role in modern German culture is thoroughly documented by scholars of German history. Experts on German-Jewish history, however, still tend to describe German-Jewish culture as one formed around the ideals of ‘Bildung’ and the Enlightenment. As a result, German-Jewish occultism, mysticism, and other non-Enlightenment texts and authors have received relatively little scholarly attention. The present article aims to help correct this bias by introducing a new framework for the study of German-Jewish culture, and by examining an all but forgotten case study: Meir Wiener and his work. After introducing the term ‘Western esotericism’, developed by scholars of religious studies, the article uses it to explore two of Meir Wiener’s strangest and virtually forgotten works. Wiener, it is shown, produced fantastically esoteric works in the context of German expressionism and Kabbalah studies, which better represent their time and place than scholars have thus far acknowledged.

scholarly journals Mur i okno. Gruz getta warszawskiego jako przestrzeń narracyjna Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN [Wall and window: the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto as the narrative space of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews]

2016 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Konrad Matyjaszek
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Narrative Space ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
Design Structure ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Polish Jews ◽  
Post War

Wall and window: the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto as the narrative space of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish JewsOpened in 2013, the Warsaw-based POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews is situated in the center of the former Nazi Warsaw ghetto, which was destroyed during its liquidation in 1943. The museum is also located opposite to the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes and Martyrs, built in 1948, as well as in between of the area of the former 19th-century Jewish district, and of the post-war modernist residential district of Muranów, designed as a district-memorial of the destroyed ghetto. Constructed on such site, the Museum was however narrated as a “museum of life”, telling the “thousand-year old history” of Polish Jews, and not focused directly on the history of the Holocaust or the history of Polish antisemitism.The paper offers a critical analysis of the curatorial and architectural strategies assumed by the Museum’s designers in the process of employing the urban location of the Museum in the narratives communicated by the building and its main exhibition. In this analysis, two key architectural interiors are examined in detail in terms of their correspondence with the context of the site: the Museum’s entrance lobby and the space of the “Jewish street,” incorporated into the main exhibition’s sub-galleries presenting the interwar period of Polish-Jewish history and the history of the Holocaust. The analysis of the design structure of these two interiors allows to raise a research question about physical and symbolic role of the material substance of the destroyed ghetto in construction of a historical narrative that is separated from the history of the destruction, as well as one about the designers’ responsibilities arising from the decision to present a given history on the physical site where it took place.Mur i okno. Gruz getta warszawskiego jako przestrzeń narracyjna Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLINOtwarte w 2013 roku warszawskie Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN stanęło pośrodku terenu dawnego nazistowskiego getta warszawskiego, zburzonego podczas jego likwidacji w 1943 roku, naprzeciwko powstałego w roku 1948 Pomnika Bohaterów i Męczenników Getta; jednocześnie pośrodku obszaru dawnej, dziewiętnastowiecznej warszawskiej dzielnicy żydowskiej i powojennego modernistycznego osied­la Muranów, zaplanowanego jako osiedle-pomnik zburzonego getta. Zlokalizowane w takim miejscu Muzeum przedstawia się jako „muzeum życia”, opowiadające „tysiącletnią historię” polskich Żydów, niebędące insty­tucją skoncentrowaną na historii Zagłady Żydów i historii polskiego antysemityzmu.Artykuł zawiera krytyczną analizę kuratorskich i architektonicznych strategii przyjętych przez twórców Mu­zeum w procesie umieszczania środowiska miejskiego w roli elementu narracji historycznej, komunikowanej przez budynek Muzeum i przez jego wystawę główną. Szczegółowej analizie poddawane są dwa kluczowe dla projektu Muzeum wnętrza architektoniczne: główny hall wejściowy oraz przestrzeń „żydowskiej ulicy” stanowiąca fragment dwóch galerii wystawy głównej, poświęconych historii Żydów w Polsce międzywojen­nej oraz historii Zagłady. Analiza struktury projektowej tych dwóch wnętrz służy próbie sformułowania od­powiedzi na pytanie badawcze dotyczące właściwości fizyczno-symbolicznych materialnej substancji znisz­czonego getta w odniesieniu do narracji abstrahującej od historii jego zniszczenia oraz odpowiedzialności projektantów wynikającej z decyzji o umieszczeniu narracji historycznej w fizycznej przestrzeni, w której wydarzyła się historia będąca tej narracji przedmiotem.

scholarly journals Exhibiting Galicia: Problems of Interpretation and Other Reflections on the Permanent Exhibition at the Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 105-126
Author(s):  
Jonathan Webber
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Small Town ◽  
Critical Comment ◽  
Jewish Heritage ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Opening Section ◽  
Jewish Museum

The purpose of this article is to offer a critical comment on the permanent exhibition of the Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków. The exhibition is innovative in museological terms. It is not about the Jewish history of Galicia, nor is it arranged using conventional chronology, nor is it comprehensive. Rather it is divided into five sections, based on a five-part set of ideas, simple ideas intended to help visitors make sense of the complex realities surrounding the present-day situation of the Jewish heritage seventy-five years after the Holocaust. Let me now briefly outline how these five ideas are represented museologically, the five sections in which the exhibition is organized. The opening section directly presents the popular Jewish stereotype that post-Holocaust Poland is nothing but a vast Jewish graveyard. So this section of the exhibition consists entirely of the raw, shocking sight of desolation – for example, photos of ruined synagogues or ruined Jewish cemeteries. The 23 photos on show in this section include the appalling condition of the synagogue in Stary Dzików (a small town near the Ukrainian border) as it looked in the 1990s and of the devastated Jewish cemetery in Czarny Dunajec (a small town near the Slovak border) at that time. Emphasizing what has been lost by showing the Jewish past of Poland in ruins, and how in that sense the effects of the Holocaust on the built Jewish heritage are still visible, even today, is certainly a powerful and provocative way to begin an exhibition in a Jewish museum.

scholarly journals The Holocaust in Lithuania: The Key Characteristics of Its History, and the Key Issues in Historiography and Cultural Memory

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 261-279
Author(s):  
Stanislovas Stasiulis
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
The West ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Considerable Impact

This article is part of the special cluster titled Conceptualizations of the Holocaust in Germany, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine since the 1990s, guest edited by Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe. The Holocaust is the darkest page of Lithuanian history: Nearly the whole Jewish community in Lithuania was destroyed, while a part of ethnic Lithuanians participated in this destruction. This article discusses three layers and periods of the Holocaust in Lithuania that have made a considerable impact on the perception of this traumatic period in Lithuanian society. The first period deals with the Lithuanian–Jewish relations during the German occupation in Lithuania (1941–1944). The second one is related to the Soviet reoccupation of Lithuania and discussions among Lithuanian émigrés in the West (1944–1990), which shaped the history of the Holocaust in Lithuania from the ideological (Soviet) and defensive (Lithuanian émigré) perspectives. The final part of this article discusses the historiography and Holocaust memory in independent Lithuania after the 1990s. Almost thirty years of independence mark not only the re-creation of some old myths and stereotypes in Lithuania, but also new groundbreaking and open discussions in society, concerning the perception of this dark page of Lithuanian history.

scholarly journals Split Memory: The Geography of Holocaust Memory and Amnesia in Belarus

Slavic Review ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 174-197
Author(s):  
Anika Walke
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
Space And Place ◽  
Historical Experience ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact

The remote location of Beshankovichy's mass grave for Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide reflects the exclusion of local Jews during the German occupation of Soviet territories and limits their memory to a few knowledgeable survivors and witnesses. In contrast, local commemorative practices focus on memorials for Soviet soldiers, partisans, and their aides. The paper reveals an incongruence of the place of historical experience on the one hand, and the locale of popular commemoration on the other, highlighting the impact of the Holocaust in Belarus to destroy Jewish history and its memory. The spatial division reflects the trauma of loss as much as shame for local participation in the mass murder. Drawing on oral histories, archival materials, and field visits, the study builds on a growing field of scholarship on the role of space and place in the construction of memories and identities in the aftermath of atrocity and trauma to discuss the geographical dimensions of memory and amnesia.

scholarly journals Unheimlich: Struktury Pustki w berlińskim muzeum Libeskinda

2014 ◽  
pp. 333-357
Author(s):  
Artur Kamczycki
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Main Axis ◽  
Architectural Theory ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Underground Passage ◽  
External Form ◽  
Made In

The Museum of 2000 years of German-Jewish History in Berlin, designed in 1989 by Daniela Libeskind, an architect of Polish origins, was to make a powerful reference to the Holocaust as well. Using an underground passage, the architect connected the existing Baroque edifice of the Kollegienhaus in Kreuzberg’s Lindenstrasse, with the building created to his design (the so-called Abteilung). The external form of the buildings is a steel, flat-topped structure, composed of cubical blocks, irregular and marked by incisive edges. Inside, this zig-zagging building was intersected by a straight structure, 4.5 m wide, 27 m high and 150 long, which runs interruptedly along the main axis. The resulting empty spaces, extending from the ground floor to the roof, are tightly isolated from the remaining sections of the edifice. The analysis conducted by the author targets the comparison of that structure of the Void with the Freudian notion of the Unheimlich (uncanny). The comparison was made in a conversation with Libeskind by the originator of the theory of deconstruction, Jacques Derrida. Unheimlich is a psychological notion, which in this case denotes “secret”, “hidden” Jewishness, which instead of remaining an “internally closed” aspect is manifested as a characteristic, “negative” reflection. The term, entangled in the context of architectural theory as well as in the notion of anti-monument, represents a starting point in considering the contemporary condition of German culture, where that Void /unheimlich is a constant, “burdensome” echo of the Holocaust.

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