Trauma & Memory

The Holocaust in Contemporary Culture

Christine Berberich

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367703165
• eBook ISBN: 9781000368642
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Holocaust History
• Index: History

Over the past decades, the memory of the Holocaust has not only become a common cultural consciousness but also a cultural property shared by people all over the world. This collection brings together academics, critics and creative practitioners from the fields of Holocaust Studies, Literature, History, Media Studies, Creative Writing and German Studies to discuss contemporary trends in Holocaust commemoration and representation in literature, film, TV, the entertainment industry and social media.

The essays in this trans-disciplinary collection debate how contemporary culture engages with the legacy of the Holocaust now that, 75 years on from the end of the Second World War, the number of actual survivors is dwindling. It engages with ongoing cultural debates in Holocaust Studies that have seen a development from, largely, testimonial presentations of the Holocaust to more fictional narratives both in literature and film. In addition to a number of chapters focusing in particular on literary trends in Holocaust representation, the collection also assesses other forms of cultural production surrounding the Holocaust, ranging from recent official memorialisation in Germany to Holocaust presentation in film, computer games and social media. The collection also highlights the contributions by creative practitioners such as writers and performers who use drama and the traditional art of storytelling in order to keep memories alive and pass them on to new generations.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History.

Part I

Introduction

Introduction: the Holocaust in contemporary culture

Christine Berberich

Dancing on thin ice

Picture the following scene: an ice-skating rink. The lights are dimmed, but a spotlight seeks out a couple in the middle of the ice. Instead of sequins and sparkly spandex, though, both are dressed in concentration camp striped pyjamas, with Stars of David on prominent display. Music begins slowly and haltingly to only become louder and more powerful. To the strains of the theme tune of the acclaimed Italian film La vita è bella (1997), the couple begin to perform a Holocaust-themed ice-dancing revue that features pretend shooting, guard dogs barking, and that ends with the sound of machine gun fire. Throughout the performance, both skaters smile broadly. Their emotional dance ends in raucous applause from the spectators and a perfect score from the ring-side judges.

No. This is not a tasteless imagined scenario. It is a very real performance that featured on the Russian reality show Ice Age in November 2016. The skaters were the former Olympic ice-dancer Tatyana Navka and her partner Andrew Burkovsjy – and maybe, just maybe, the performance would not have received quite so much media attention worldwide if Tatyana Navka had not happened to be the wife of Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Although studio audience and show judges seemed to ‘enjoy’ the performance – one can only hope that the judgment was based on its athletic and not its ethical value – it received strong condemnation in the international news media.¹ Jeremy Jones, the Director of International Affairs at Australia’s Israel and Jewish Affair Council, considered the performance ‘unbelievably tasteless.’ In an interview with CNN he condemned ‘the lack of thought’ behind the performance and predicted that ‘long after they’re forgotten as ice skaters they’ll be remembered as people who sunk to such depths to get some celebrity.’² In the run up to the performance, Navka herself had posted images of her upcoming routine on Instagram, urging viewers to witness the performance to remember the Holocaust, and explaining that the film La vita è bella, with its devastating use of humor to highlight horror yet still resulting in a message of hope, was her favorite film. But when the show was broadcast, their performance caused a veritable Twitter storm, with viewers giving full rein to their shock and disgust. Some called it ‘Tasteless. Insensitive. The Holocaust is not happy entertainment’ while others became more personal with comments such as ‘you make me sick.’³ The performance also had political undertones – presumably due to Navka’s proximity to Putin and the Russian government – with viewers contacting Russian embassies worldwide; twitter user ‪@nevilleprinsloo‪ tweeted: ‘@EmbassyofRussia I want to lodge a complaint of disgust against your government and Tatyana Navka’s Holocaust themed ice skating show!!’ and demanded that ‘Tatyana Navka should be ordered by Putin to make a public apology.’⁴ The following article does not offer a detailed discussion nor, indeed, a judgment pro or con Navka and Burkovsjy’s hotly debated performance. Instead, it wants to use the previously created image of the performance that has so divided viewers all over the world as a starting point for a discussion of what is and isn’t considered acceptable in Holocaust representation and commemoration. It seeks to offer an overview of debates of recent trends in Holocaust studies that simultaneously serves as an introduction to this Special Issues that – at its core – addresses the fundamental questions ‘Who has the right to represent the Holocaust?’ and ‘How should the Holocaust be represented to ensure its continued commemoration?’

The Holocaust debate: from eyewitness account to trauma-drama

In 1905, the Spanish philosopher George Santayana coined the well-known phrase ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’⁵ Santayana’s words came decades before the Holocaust – but have been consistently used to warn of historical amnesia and to emphasize the importance of commemoration. The Holocaust has, since WWII, become the most notorious historical event of the twentieth century, and debate about ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ commemoration of it is rife. Since the liberation of the camps by the Allies at the end of the War and the first war-crimes tribunals, the Holocaust has become the epitome of man’s cruelty to his fellow man and, far from being restricted in its commemoration to survivors and their families, commemorating the Holocaust has become a global phenomenon. In 2005, the United Nations officially designated 27 January, the Liberation of Auschwitz, as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This is, of course, a positive development. Global commemoration of and education about traumatic historical events is vital. However, Holocaust commemoration has also become overtly politicized, with different countries following different agendas in their commemorative practices, and that can be problematic. The novelist Lisa Appignanesi, herself the daughter of two Polish Holocaust survivors, ponders that

Memory is an emotional climate, a thick set of sights and smells and sounds and imprinted attitudes which can pollute as well as clarify. In several parts of the world today, battles of ideas are being fought over how we remember the Second World War. Sometimes the ideas take up arms. In France, people still agonise over degrees of collaboration and complicity, what the immediate post-war years chose to bury along with the dead. The Poles have a festering need to be exonerated from some of their guilt in the Holocaust: they too, after all, were victims of the Nazis. In Israel, the Holocaust has become a holy litany: can its embattled survivors ever do any wrong? In the former Yugoslavia, old remembered enmities between partisans and Cetniks fuelled the ethnic strife. In Germany, many wonder whether bigger and better memorials to guilt are a simple way of shedding it, while neo-Nazi parties once again agitate for a homogenous German population.⁶

Appignanesi succinctly shows how different countries use the Holocaust and its commemoration for their individual agendas that, potentially, overshadows the actual act of commemoration. David Rieff points out that remembrance has become ‘a species of morality’ and that ‘today, most societies all but venerate the imperative to remember.’⁷ This suggests that what has become imperative is the actual act of commemoration, not necessarily what is remembered and how. In its beginnings, Holocaust commemoration did not even have a name. During and after the liberation of the Camps, the Allies chronicled what they saw and experienced; German residents were marched through the camps to see for themselves what had been done in their name. The earliest form of ‘commemoration’ was to seek justice – the Nuremberg War-Crimes tribunal that tried high-ranking Nazis but also doctors, judges and concentration camp guards, for instance. Trials highlighted the facts, the overall and horrific crimes against the Jews, but did not allow – yet – for personal stories, the individual account. Early survivor memoirs struggled to find publishers or listeners. The world did not want personal stories, it wanted the larger picture. Elie Wiesel, one of the most prominent Holocaust survivors, who dedicated his life to writing and teaching about the Holocaust, struggled to find a publisher for his memoirs Un di velt hot geshvign in 1954. The 800+ page manuscript was eventually picked up by an Argentine publisher but barely sold any copies.⁸ It was only in 1958, and with the prominent help of François Mauriac, that Wiesel found a French publisher for the much slimmed down version La Nuit which was then eventually published in English as Night in 1960. Similarly, Primo Levi’s seminal Se questo è un uomo, although first published by a small Italian press in 1947, failed to attract a larger readership. It was only in 1957 that it was picked up and reprinted by the more influential Italian publisher Einaudi, and not before 1959 that an English translation was published.⁹ Even at that point, almost 15 years after the Holocaust, the world was not ready to read about individual suffering. But the time for personal stories came with the Eichmann trial in 1961 when survivors acted as witnesses for the prosecution and recounted their personal experience in the dock. The Yad Vashem website states that

The trial introduced the Holocaust into the historical, educational, legal and cultural discourse, not merely in Israel and the Jewish world, but on the consciousness of all peoples of the world. Sixteen years after the end of the Holocaust, it focused attention upon the account of the suffering and torment of the Jewish people.¹⁰

After the trial, survivor accounts were highly sought after; Holocaust survivor memoirs were suddenly widely read; authors such as Wiesel and Levi achieved canonical status. With this new focus on the suffering of the victims came the increased use of the term ‘Holocaust’ to denote the genocide of the European Jews. And once a term was attached to it, official commemorations could start, and ‘the Holocaust’ became a collective cultural property, seemingly belonging to all who want to engage with it.

This summary might seem over-simplified. But there are some clearly discernible stages of post-war engageme...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Part I Introduction
• Part II New Trends in Holocaust Fiction
• Part III The Holocaust in Contemporary Culture
• Afterword: Conclusion
• Index