Remaking Holocaust Memory

Since the late 1990s in Israel, third-generation Holocaust survivors have become the new custodians of cultural memory, and the documentary films they produce play a major role in shaping a societal consensus of commemoration. In Remaking Holocaust Memory, a pioneering analysis of third-generation Holocaust documentaries in Israel, Liat Steir-Livny, co-recipient of the 2019 Young Scholar Award given jointly by the Association of Israel Studies and the Israel Institute, investigates compelling films that have been screened in Israel, Europe, and the United States, appeared in numerous international film festivals, and won international awards, but have yet to receive significant academic attention. Steir-Livny’s comprehensive investigation reveals how the "absolute truths" that appeared in the majority of second-generation films are deconstructed and disputed in the newer films, which do not dismiss their "cinematic parents’ " approach but rather rethink fixed notions, extend the debates, and pose questions where previously there had been exclamation marks. Steir-Livny also explores the ways in which the third-generation’s perspectives on Holocaust memory govern cinematic trends and aesthetic choices, and how these might impact the moral recollection of the past. Finally, Remaking Holocaust Memory serves as an excellent reference tool, as it helpfully lists all of the second- and third-generation films available, as well as the festival screenings and awards they have garnered.

Compelling examples from 200 hours of testimony by Holocaust survivors form the foundation of this volume on how memory responds to atrocity—how people comprehend and remember deeply traumatic experiences, and how they ultimately adapt. Depicting how the Holocaust exists in the minds of those who experienced it, this book simultaneously reveals the principles of enduring memory and makes the Holocaust more specific and immediate to readers. A synthesis of myriad testimonies allows one individual to be presented in relation to others, showing personal tragedies as well as the collective atrocity. The findings are also applied to other groups of people who have lived through extended atrocity. The volume demonstrates a Balkanization of memory, where Holocaust memories and normal memories are assigned to two, sometimes hostile, territories. Holocaust memories are not integrated into the survivor's sense of self. They stand apart as defining another self, at another time, in another place. As a contribution to psychology, this work integrates measured qualitative analysis of Holocaust testimony into the study of traumatic memory. As a contribution to oral history, it applies constructs from memory research to the understanding of Holocaust testimony.

AcknowledgmentsI: Collective Memories, Images, and the Atrocity of War II: Before the Liberation: Journalism, Photography, and the Early Coverage of Atrocity III: Covering Atrocity in Word IV: Covering Atrocity in Image V: Forgetting to Remember: Photography as Ground of Early Atrocity MemoriesVI: Remembering to Remember: Photography as Figure of Contemporary Atrocity Memories VII: Remembering to Forget: Contemporary Scrapbooks of Atrocity Notes Selected Bibliography Index Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Remembering Histories of Trauma compares and links Native American, First Nation and Jewish histories of traumatic memory. Using source material from both sides of the Atlantic, it examines the differences between ancestral experiences of genocide and the representation of those histories in public sites in the United States, Canada and Europe. Challenging the ways public bodies have used those histories to frame the cultural and political identity of regions, states, and nations, it considers the effects of those representations on internal group memory, external public memory and cultural assimilation. Offering new ways to understand the Native-Jewish encounter by highlighting shared critiques of public historical representation, Mailer seeks to transcend historical tensions between Native American studies and Holocaust studies. In linking and comparing European and American contexts of historical trauma and their representation in public memory, this book brings Native American studies, Jewish studies, early American history, Holocaust studies, and museum studies into conversation with each other. In revealing similarities in the public representation of Indigenous genocide and the Holocaust it offers common ground for Jewish and Indigenous histories, and provides a new framework to better understand the divergence between traumatic histories and the ways they are memorialized.

An intriguing analysis of how place constructs memory and how memory constructs place, Remembering the Holocaust shows how visiting sites such as Auschwitz shapes the transfer of Holocaust memory from one generation to the next. Through the discussion of a range of memoirs and novels, including Landscapes of Memory by Ruth Kluger, Too Many Men by Lily Brett, The War After by Anne Karpf and Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer, Remembering the Holocaust reveals the pivotal yet complicated role of place in each generation's writing about the Holocaust. This book provides an insightful and nuanced investigation of the effect of the Holocaust upon families, from survivors of the genocide to members of the second and even third generations of families involved. By deploying an innovative combination of generational and literary study of Holocaust survivor families focussed on place, Remembering the Holocaust makes an important contribution to the field of Holocaust Studies that will be of interest to scholars and anyone interested in Holocaust remembrance.

This book is the first of its kind: an exploration of the experiences of the Third Generation - the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors - who have particular relationships to the Holocaust, mediated through their interactions with their parents, grandparents, and communities. The book's editors innovatively combine scholarly work that deals with questions of trauma and its transmission across generations, with autobiographical accounts which incorporate many of the concerns raised by scholars. The contributors include historians, literary and cultural studies scholars, psychologists, and sociologists, together with autobiographical narratives from members of the Third Generation, which illuminate the scholarly research presented. *** ''At a moment when even the last of the Holocaust survivors will soon no longer be able to speak to us directly, In the Shadows of Memory introduces a diverse third generation of grandchildren, all asking what it means to be part of another 'last' cohort, who still knew and lived among the survivors - with their trauma and their resilience - in ways that the next generation will not.they grapple with the problematic questions of 'legacy', 'generational transmission', and historical responsibility, providing us with a challenging and pioneering contribution to the future of Holocaust memory.'' -- Atina Grossmann, Professor of History, Cooper Union, New York *** Librarians: ebook available [Subject: Holocaust Studies, Jewish Studies, Sociology, History]

The main objective of the book is to allocate the grass roots initiatives of remembering the Holocaust victims in a particular region of Russia which has a very diverse ethnic structure and little presence of Jews at the same time. It aims to find out how such individual initiatives correspond to the official Russian hero-orientated concept of remembering the Second World war with almost no attention to the memory of war victims, including Holocaust victims. North Caucasus became the last address of thousands of Soviet Jews, both evacuees and locals. While there was almost no attention paid to the Holocaust victims in the official Soviet propaganda in the postwar period, local activists and historians together with the members of Jewish communities preserved Holocaust memory by installing small obelisks at the killing sites, writing novels and making documentaries, teaching about the Holocaust at schools and making small thematic exhibitions in the local and school museums. Individual types of grass roots activities in the region on remembering Holocaust victims are analyzed in each chapter of the book.

"This behind-the-scenes account details the emotionally complex fifteen-year struggle surrounding the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's birth."--