Browsing by Subject "Holocaust"

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Centering the Sonic: Sound Mediation in Holocaust Memory, Memorials, and Museums
(2021-06) Huether, Kathryn
While a great deal of scholarship has critically assessed Holocaust texts, films, and photographs for decades, scholars have largely overlooked music and sound. Musicologists and historians have made substantial contributions to understanding music during the Holocaust and how it functioned within the social makeup of the camps, yet on the role of sound and music within Holocaust memorial forms remains underexamined. In this dissertation, I examine the processes by which sound, music, and vocal affect are employed and ascribed to modes of Holocaust memory and how these applications in turn shape how that memory is received. A connecting thread throughout all my case studies is that these sonic elements are not necessarily considered the primary mode of mediation—at least by their curators—and that the sonic component is secondary to the overarching mode of memory. Overall, my findings demonstrate that despite largely being overlooked in scholarly discussions regarding Holocaust memorial representation, sound mediation is very present and drastically shapes a visitor’s engagement with each experience.
Church of Greece under Axis Occupation (1941-1944)
(2009-08) Anastasakis, Panteleymon E
This dissertation examines the response of the Church of Greece to enemy occupation during the Second World War. Historically, in periods of crisis, especially during Ottoman rule (1453-1821) and the Greek War of Independence (1821-1830), the Greek people looked to the church to help them preserve faith and culture. In some cases, church policy played an important role in the very physical survival of the Greek nation. In the period under consideration, the leadership of Archbishop Damaskinos helped the Greek church rise to the occasion once more. Education, training, ability, perseverance, and political acumen made Damaskinos the ideal prelate to lead the nation. In essence he became an ethnarch, a phenomenon with which Greek society was thoroughly familiar. Drawing upon contemporary official sources from the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the British Foreign Office, the US State Department, and the Archive of the Greek Holy Synod, as well as pertinent published primary and secondary literature, the dissertation explores attempts by the church leadership to maintain a precarious balance between capitalizing on opportunistic moments to gain concessions from the enemy occupiers and opposing the latter's policies deemed detrimental to the wellbeing of state and society. For example, Damaskinos and his colleagues used skillful diplomacy with the Axis and Greek political power groups ranging from the extreme left to the extreme right to wrench important concessions for the benefit of the beleaguered population ravaged by a nationwide famine. Church leadership also utilized more imaginative forms of passive or active resistance against Axis policies on vital issues such as the Holocaust and ethnic policies in the Bulgarian-occupied territories of the country. Despite significant differences between the Greek case and those of other territories in Axis-occupied Europe, the response of Damaskinos and his colleagues is instructive in helping us understand how and why traditional institutions such as the church provide indispensible service, guidance, and protection in moments of social upheaval and distress.
Comics, curriculum and the classroom: the development and implementation of an arts-integrated Holocaust unit
(2014-08) Johnson, Jeremy Lee
Traditionally, the Holocaust has been taught to middle school students using a novel like Anne Frank: The Diary of Young Girl. However, with the recent adoption of the Common Core Standards many teachers must incorporate new ways of teaching content, including the use of graphic novels. This study examined how two teachers, an English teacher and reading teacher, worked collaboratively to create and implement a Holocaust unit that asked students to use comics to demonstrate their learning. While the premise of the study was to examine how teachers with no prior experience incorporated graphic novels into their classrooms, the study became something altogether different. I discuss how the teachers relied on me to teach students how to draw figures and explain the conventions of comics with the final goal of creating a research-based comic examining some element from the Holocaust. During this study I was present in the classroom four full days a week. Data collection methods included participant observation, interviews with staff and students and document collection and analysis. Findings could be categorized three ways and include resistance, gender stereotyping and the accuracy and authenticity of student-created comic narratives. Resistance occurred from both teachers and students. The English and reading teachers resisted use of the term "comic" because they considered it not serious enough for a discussion of the Holocaust. The art teacher resisted participation because he felt that comics were a lower form of art that had no place in education. Student resistance came in the form of a young man who, for example, did not believe that the school should be dedicating nine weeks to studying the Holocaust. A second significant finding focused on gendered stereotypes and how assumptions about gender were made visible through students' comments and perceptions of drawing. Interesting gender differences also existed in the ways students drew their final projects with male students' comics exhibiting depersonalization. Information was shared in an almost bullet-point manner whereas female students spent more time developing characters and exploring emotions. The final area of focus was on the ways in which accuracy and authenticity of narratives were brought into question through failure to emphasize citation of sources and inclusion of bibliographies as part of the students' research project, thus devaluing the factual value of their comic Holocaust narratives.
The prosthetic life: theatrical performance, survivor testimony and the Terezín Ghetto, 1941-1963.
(2009-10) Peschel, Lisa A.
During all periods in postwar Czechoslovakia when the World War II Jewish ghetto at Terezín (in German, Theresienstadt) could be discussed in the public sphere, Czech-Jewish Holocaust survivors created and circulated narratives about the cultural life of the ghetto and their own experience of agency and pleasure while engaged in theatrical performances. Focusing on two periods, the immediate postwar years (1945-47) and an early point in the political thaw leading to the Prague Spring (1963), I examine testimony that survivors addressed to their fellow Czechs in the public sphere as a rhetorical performance in its own right. The constative and the performative aspects of testimony have shifted over time; in each period, survivors needed or wanted their testimony to achieve different effects, and they provided different information about theatrical performance in the ghetto. The survivors clearly adjusted their narratives in response to period-specific pressures as they tried to reinforce both their subjectivity and their subject position in postwar Czechoslovakia. Nevertheless, the testimony of both periods shares a consistent core of themes, suggesting that theatrical performance in the ghetto functioned as a social practice that increased the prisoners' resilience and ability to cope with the traumatic events occurring in the ghetto on a day-to-day basis. Their postwar testimony reveals a related function: they resisted objectification within the sometimes hostile environment of postwar Czechoslovakia by establishing and conveying the meaning they ascribed to their own experience, thus remaining speaking subjects.
Relinquishing the Real. New Strategies of Documentary Practice
(2017-06) Hofmann, Maria
I argue that there is a new development in documentary film that responds to a crisis of perception brought on by a changed media situation in which the image itself has become precarious. The topics these films address remain hidden, invisible, inaccessible and go beyond what is sayable. The new strategies of filmmakers that aim to overcome this crisis of perception are characterized by a high degree of artifice. By introducing artifice as a major strategy, contemporary films accept the impossibility of an immediate, objective representation of reality, and shift the focus to our way of looking, a perception obstructed by our highly medialized surroundings. The use of artifice has two major effects: Its blatant presence sidesteps a reception based on empathy and identification which represent conventional documentary devices used to produce social impact. In an era oversaturated with images created to make the viewer empathize, however, these emotional strategies have lost their potential for meaningful engagement. The disruption of empathy in these contemporary films distances the audience from the issue at hand. Devoid of a trained reaction providing comfort in its familiarity, the audience is forced to reflect on its own perspective. This puts it in an active state where a critical engagement with social topics is possible again. Artifice is a driving force in all examined films but is most prominent in the examples of what I call Indirect Cinema. Indirect Cinema replaces the unmediated, authentic appearance with artifice, the deliberate and unconcealed manipulation of what we see. Examples of Indirect Cinema avoid direct representation altogether, and instead opt for a new production of abstractly related images. The self-referentiality of the images allows an interrogation of the potential of documentary film in a crisis of perception, and provides a new and different access. A critical space emerges where the viewer can critically engage with these issues. I examine nine films from the past 15 years using structural analysis and close readings. These analyses create the basis for the development of a new documentary mode specific to a historical and medial context in which the image has become precarious.
Seven Girls, One Boy: A Family Endures Nazi Race Laws
(Journal of Opinions, Ideas & Essays (JOIE), 2016-12-20) Angell, Ferolyn
This is a collection of writings about a family torn apart by Nazi race laws and their experience of the Holocaust. It details the lives of a Christian family with Jewish lineage in a small town in the Brandenburg region of Germany in the first half of the 20th century. Most of this collection was written in German in 1939 by Dorothea Oppenheimer upon her arrival as a German "refugee" and prior to her immigration to the United States. It also includes excerpts from Ernst Oppenheimer's memoirs regarding his conversion from Judaism to Christianity. Some details regarding arrests and deportations to the Warsaw ghetto and Theresienstadt are also included. NOTE: The author of this article has also produced a 34 minute film, "In The Shadow," that explores through the medium of dance the shadow cast by the Holocaust. You are encouraged to watch this film; it can be accessed online at vimeo.com/202478709
Stolpersteine: Germans Remember Holocaust Victims
(Journal of Opinions, Ideas & Essays (JOIE), 2017-02-15) Pierach, Claus
A German artist, Gunter Demnig, has since 1996 inserted more than 60,000 stolpersteine (tripping stones) on public pavements, squares and sidewalks, commemorating the location where persons had lived prior to their deportation to concentration camps, and thus, to their death. These stolpersteine are brass squares (10x10 cm), mounted flush on cobble stones and stating "Here lived", followed by the victim's name, year of birth, date of deportation, place and year of death. The deported were mostly Jews, but also Roma, Sintis, homosexuals, disabled, dissidents and other persecuted persons during the Nazi era (1933-1945). By now, stolpersteine have been placed in more than 1600 towns in twenty European countries. The expenses of $130 per stolperstein are borne by donations from family, friends and anonymous donors. This decentralized project is not without controversy and has not been permitted in a few cities, for example in Munich with the city's governing board arguing that it is inappropriate to walk across these plaques; possible political reasons are not transparent. Where forbidden, stolpersteine are occasionally placed on private grounds as close as possible to public sidewalks. While memorials to fallen soldiers and victims of persecution are often anonymous, stolpersteine give those who were murdered for political reasons a place to remember them, following a motto of this movement "The secret of remembrance is the proximity".
Translation on the Move: Place, Language, and the Jewish Body in Rose Ausländer’s Poetry
(2018-07) Solemsli-Chrysler, Jennifer
Scholarly work on Rose Ausländer tends to focus too much on her biography, a gendered phenomenon closely linked to trivialization of the female poet. This dissertation presents a flexible framework of three main approaches which allow for an eclectic set of interpretations that are more suitable to Ausländer’s diverse body of work than any single approach. The three themes are (1) critical representations of the home city and empire, (2) movement in and among languages, and (3) the role of the body. The coexistence of traumatic and nostalgic memory manifests in all three categories, calling Ausländer’s work into focus not only as a particular, complex oeuvre, but also as a test case for reading German-Jewish literature.
We were all in the resistance": Historical Memory of the Holocaust and Second World War in the Netherlands"
(2020-07) Contreras, Jazmine
“‘We Were All in the Resistance’” examines contested cultural memories of the Second World War and the Holocaust through an analysis of the monuments, museums, educational programs, and commemoration ceremonies that shape memorial culture in the Netherlands. Focusing on moments of tension and debate, my dissertation explores how victim-centered organizations, state institutions, and the local and national government interact with one another and the public on the development of new memorial spaces. Employing the concepts of collective and cultural memory, I examine the impact of sites and spaces of memory on both Jewish and non-Jewish understandings of the occupation period and Dutch identity. Through an analysis of the discourse surrounding these public spaces, my dissertation highlights the importance of representations of the past in supporting or condemning national narratives of Dutch resistance and victimhood during the Second World War. The first three chapters delve into debates and controversies over sites of memory within the Netherlands. The first chapter explores the dynamics surrounding different forms of monuments and their impact on interpretations of Jewish persecution and Dutch complicity. The second chapter looks at Jewish responses to an exhibit at the former transit Camp Westerbork on the internment of Dutch collaborators and National Socialist members (NSB) in 1945. The next chapter, “Memory in Crisis”, traces the narratives emerging out of public discussions on the character of the yearly May 4th Dodenherdenking (National Remembrance Day). Lastly, I examine the various public educational programs and initiatives that specifically center Jewish experiences and their role in educating the public about Jewish lives prior to and during the Holocaust. This chapter showcases the multiple layers of memory that exist in the contemporary landscape of the Netherlands and how these spaces encourage acknowledgment of the complexity of Dutch memory politics. Each chapter utilizes interviews and oral histories with members of the Jewish community, children of resistance members and former NSB members, museum staff, and educational program directors in order to pinpoint how public spaces have enabled the transmission of specific wartime histories and how these groups shape, push back against, or embrace national narrative of the occupation. While “‘We Were All in the Resistance’” analyzes the tensions inherent to Dutch memorial culture, the project is ultimately a commentary on the complex nature of European Holocaust memory. Despite the large numbers of Jews deported from the Netherlands during the Holocaust, the Dutch are rarely recognized as having collaborated with the Third Reich. This dissertation not only complicates the resistance narrative central to all Western European nations but forces a closer look at the ways in which Western European countries used a narrative of collective victimization in order to rationalize the development of European Union. By highlighting how Holocaust commemoration has become integral to EU values, my dissertation illustrates the strategic selectivity of Holocaust memory within European societies.

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