The Ongoing Major Distortion of the Holocaust

2018 ◽  
pp. 151-178
Author(s):  
Manfred Gerstenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Fast Rate ◽  
Substantial Part ◽  
Very Old ◽  
Holocaust Denial ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Holocaust Memorial ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Memory Distortions ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Mainstream Society

This chapter analyzes mainly recent developments of the various types of distortions of the Holocaust. The analysis follows the main categories of the author's earlier book, The Abuse of the Holocaust Memory: Distortions and Responses (2009). These are justification of the Holocaust or promoting a new one, Holocaust denial or its minimization, deflection or whitewashing of guilt, Holocaust de-Judaization in part through its universalization, Holocaust equivalence, Holocaust inversion, Holocaust trivialization, and obliterating Holocaust memory. The abuse keeps increasing at a rather fast rate and has permeated several quarters of mainstream society. It is feared that manipulation of the truth may become a substantial part of the debate on the Holocaust. This will be even more possible when all surviving Holocaust victims are very old. It is difficult to see how in a more and more chaotic world this trend could be halted. It is recommended that Holocaust memorial institutions start to systematically and professionally monitor abuse in their respective countries and categorize them.

Fragments of the Holocaust

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Duindam
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Museum Studies ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
World War ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Holocaust Memorial ◽  
Memorial Museum ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
A Site

Why do we attach so much value to sites of Holocaust memory, if all we ever encounter are fragments of a past that can never be fully comprehended? David Duindam examines how the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a former theater in Amsterdam used for the registration and deportation of nearly 50,000 Jews, fell into disrepair after World War II before it became the first Holocaust memorial museum of the Netherlands. Fragments of the Holocaust: The Amsterdam Hollandsche Schouwburg as a Site of Memory combines a detailed historical study of the postwar period of this site with a critical analysis of its contemporary presentation by placing it within international debates concerning memory, emotionally fraught heritage and museum studies. A case is made for the continued importance of the Hollandsche Schouwburg and other comparable sites, arguing that these will remain important in the future as indexical fragments where new generations can engage with the memory of the Holocaust on a personal and affective level.

Berlin's Holocaust Memorial: A Report to the Bundestag Committee on Media and Culture

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 54-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Young
Keyword(s):  
Final Solution ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
National Monument ◽  
Holocaust Memorial ◽  
The Holocaust

The question as to why a national monument to the “Murdered Jewsof Europe” should be erected in Berlin is multi-dimensional, and hasanswers in political, cultural, and historical contexts. As most peoplealready know, I once took a hard stand against actually ever completinga central memorial in Germany to the Holocaust. “Better athousand years of Holocaust memorial competitions in Germanythan any final solution to Germany’s Holocaust memorial problem,”I wrote many years ago. “Instead of a fixed icon for Holocaust memoryin Germany, the debate itself—perpetually unresolved amid everchangingconditions—might now be enshrined.”

What is ‘virtual Holocaust memory’?

2019 ◽  
pp. 175069801988871
Author(s):  
Victoria Grace Walden
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Henri Bergson ◽  
Educational Organizations ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Digital Memory ◽  
Holocaust Memorial ◽  
The Holocaust

As more Holocaust memorial and educational organizations engage with digital technologies, the notion of virtual Holocaust memory has come to the fore. However, while this term is generally used simply to describe digital projects, this paper seeks to re-evaluate the specificity of virtuality and its relationship to memory through the thinking of Gilles Deleuze and Henri Bergson in order to consider how both digital and non-digital memory projects related to the Holocaust might be described as drawing attention to the virtuality of memory because they bring us into critical interstitial spaces between multiple layers of pasts and present in embodied ways that encourage us to consciously recognize the movements towards temporal planes which characterize memory. After reviewing the philosophies of Deleuze and Bergson in light of collaborative Holocaust memory, this article considers a range of digital and physical memorials to assess where we might find examples of virtual Holocaust memory today. I propose that we should see the virtual as a methodology – a particular form of memory practice – rather than a medium.

UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM (WASHINGTON, D.C.)

2021 ◽  
pp. 127-139
Author(s):  
Mariya M. Sirotinskaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
The Past ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Holocaust Memorial ◽  
German Ideology ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Age Appropriate

The article is aimed at examining how the United States Memori- al Museum in Washington, D.C., preserves the memory of the Holocaust, what educational technologies are recommended for teachers. Transmission of the Holocaust memory is still very important, as even nowadays attempts are made to deny the fact of systematic persecution and destruction of Jews or underrate its scale. The museum communicates, in the historical context, traditional nar- rative – Hitler’s rise to power, Nazi Jewish policy. Emphasis is put on German ideology and propaganda. Great attention is paid to the historical sources, not only official ones, – to the diaries, letters, memoirs, photographs, interviews with the camp prisoners who have survived, as well as to the artifacts, audio- and video materials. The online exhibition “Americans and the Holocaust” reveals events in Germany as seen through the lens of different U.S. periodi- cals. Concrete recommendations are made to the educators – to avoid simple answers to complex questions and the comparison of suffering, to show that the Holocaust was not inevitable, to take into consideration an age-appropriate approach, etc. The author shares the views of the researchers who come to the conclusion: the reconstruction of the Holocaust in the museum determines our perception of the past and, therefore, deepens our understanding of the present.

Grandparents Reveal Their Secrets: A New Holocaust Narrative for the Young ‘Third Generation’ in Israel

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yael Darr
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Third Generation ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
Safe Distance ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Very Young Children ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
New Type

Since the 1990s, a new type of Holocaust story has been emerging in Israeli children's literature. This new narrative is directed towards very young children, from preschool to the first years of elementary school, and its official goal is to instil in them an authentic ‘first Holocaust memory’. This essay presents the literary characteristics of this new Holocaust narrative for children and its master narrative. It brings into light a new profile of both writers and readers. The writers were young children during the Holocaust, and first chose to tell their stories from the safe distance of three generations. The readers are their grand-children and their grand-children's peers, who are assigned an essential role as listeners. These generational roles – the roles of a First Generation of writers and of a Third Generation of readers – are intrinsically familial ones. As such, they mark a significant change in the profile of yet another important figure in the Israeli intergenerational Holocaust discourse, the agent of the Holocaust story for children. Due to the new literary initiatives, the task of providing young children with a ‘first Holocaust memory’ is transferred from the educational authority, where it used to reside, to the domestic sphere.

It was horrible, but we live now

Focaal ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (74) ◽  
pp. 97-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa J. Krieg
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Field Study ◽  
Key Factors ◽  
Strange Matter ◽  
The Past ◽  
Holocaust Memorial ◽  
Personal Relation ◽  
The Holocaust

Based on an ethnographic field study in a museum and an evening high school in Cologne, this paper discusses experiences of young German adults in everyday encounters with the Holocaust, which are oft en accompanied by feelings of discomfort. Considering the Holocaust as an uncanny, strange matter contributes to understanding that distance and proximity are key factors in creating uncomfortable encounters. Distance from the Holocaust reduces discomfort, but where distance cannot be created, other strategies have to be put to work. This article underlines the significance of experience in an individual’s personal relation to the past for gaining an improved understanding of Holocaust memorial culture in Germany.

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.

Germany's Holocaust Memorial Problem——and Mine

2002 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 65-80 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Young
Keyword(s):  
Real Estate ◽  
Final Solution ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Holocaust Memorial ◽  
Peter Eisenman ◽  
Potsdamer Platz ◽  
German Bundestag

Once not so long ago Germany had what it called a "Jewish Problem". Then it had a paralyzing Holocaust memorial problem, a double-edged conundrum: How would a nation of former perpetrators mourn its victims? How would a divided nation reunite itself on the bedrock memory of its crimes? In June 1999, after ten years of tortured debate, the German Bundestag voted to build a national "Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe" on a prime, five-acre piece of real estate between the Brandenburger Tor and Potsdamer Platz, a stone's throw from Hitler's bunker. In their vote, the Bundestag also accepted the design——an undulating field of pillars——by American architect, Peter Eisenman, which had been recommended by a five-member Findungskommission, for which I served as spokesman. Like many others, I had been quite satisfied with the insolubility of Germany's memorial dilemma. Better a thousand years of Holocaust memorial competitions in Germany than any single "final solution" to Germany's memorial problem. But then I began to suspect that the neverending debate over Holocaust memory in Germany was itself becoming a substitute for taking any kind of action on behalf of such memory. In this report, I tell the story of Germany's national Holocaust memorial and my own role in it, my evolution from a highly skeptical critic on the outside of the process to one of the arbiters on the inside. I find that as the line between my role as critic and arbiter began to collapse, the issues at the heart of Germany's memorial conundrum came into ever sharper, more painful relief.

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