”Why do you ask me not about Auschwitz?” says inspelningsledaren, and an older woman surrounded by flashing cameras, repeat the question. It’s a seemingly simple question. A few words as first pronounced by the a scores, then a survivor, and subsequently a hologram, but whose meaning is a call to remember.
Scene from a video report from the New York Times that follows a project in which Förintelseöverlevande filmed with 3D cameras to create a sort of interactive holograms. These are projected as a three-dimensional image of the survivors, a technique previously used mainly in concerts. Holodecks will tour in u.s. schools and tell about their experiences, the students should be able to ask questions and get answers – an example can currently be seen at the exhibition ”Speaking of memories” at the Historical museum in Stockholm.
there are few survivors left to testify about the Holocaust and at the same time we are facing a growing right-wing extremism, we must find new ways to remember. But the holodecks are one of the more spectacular projects in order to preserve the vittnestradition developed after the second world war. The survivors survive themselves and become a kind of eternal witnesses whose sole mission is to tell.
In the phrase ”Why do you ask me not?” is a nuance of the questions not asked, with the implication that they should have come up. The witness/the hologram doesn’t say, ”Let me tell you about Auschwitz”, but urges people to question, to listen and to not forget. To remember is not only to not forget, but an active document that extends both backwards and towards the future. To remember becomes a question of responsibility, which includes yesterday’s racism and fascism, in the understanding of our contemporary political position. Hence the call, hence the responsibility.
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”the great silence”, the few survivors wanted to tell you about what they experienced in the camps, and in Israel it led to a generation grew up unaware of their parents ‘ trauma. When prime minister David Ben-Gurion in 1961, put nazi Adolf Eichmann on trial in Jerusalem, he had several cases, among other things, to remind the world about the Holocaust and to inform those unaware of the young in Israel. Few of the over hundred people who testified during the trial had been in contact with Eichmann – their testimony was aimed at building a greater understanding of the Holocaust as such. It was the first time that the survivor publicly testified about their experiences in a larger scale. The trial was the first ever to be recorded on video and aired daily in tv in 38 countries and in radio for many more.
the Historian Annette Wieviorka calls the period beginning with the on the eichmann trial for ”Vittnesmålets era”, which now can be said to go against its end. When is the vittnestradition which will become the primary means for a remembrance of the Holocaust. Novels and biographies had been published earlier, for example, Primo Levi’s ”If this is a man”, which was published already in 1947, but the återaktualiseras against the 1900-century, through research and re-releases. From the 80’s produced plenty of art, philosophy, literary criticism and historieskrivningar about the Holocaust – which is sometimes explained by the fact that it is the survivors ‘ children had grown up.
According to Claude Lanzmanns reasoning was the crime so vast and terrible that we can not understand it through the pictures.
this context, is ”Shoah” by Claude Lanzmann, a nine-hour-long film, which has received a emblematisk status. It consists of interviews and testimonies of survivors, perpetrators and bystanders. The film contains no images from the war, something very rare when it comes to Förintelserepresentationer. ”Shoah” can be seen as a reaction to the store’s elevated status – Lanzmann said that the pictures that the allies took during the liberation does not offer much more than a misleading spectacle. According to his reasoning was the crime so vast and terrible that we can not understand it through the pictures.
the Idea that the Holocaust is impossible to witness, impossible to represent, and even impossible to imagine is a recurring theme. Primo Levi argued that those who could really testify about the camps where those who died in the gas chamber, and that the only thing that is possible for the survivors is to bear witness in their place – for him is a complete testimony is an impossibility. Literary critic Shoshana Felman also described the Holocaust as ”an event without witnesses” and formulated later if it to ”an event without a picture”. Hannah Arendt criticized, however, the idea of the unthinkable, and argue that because the genocide was thought out, it is possible. Jean-Luc Godard argued that there must be a film from the gas chamber – the nazis were obsessed with documentation, and must therefore have filmed this too, he said. Lanzmann responded Godard that such a film would not show anything.
Hannah Arendt criticized, however, the idea of the unthinkable, and argue that because the genocide was thought out, it is possible.
the events are conveyed through images, art, and literature? How should we remember when no survivor is left to tell? Interviews, texts, artworks, film clips and photographs will become even more important as a source and the question is what we do with these. A picture can capture something that is barely possible to express in words?
the Philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman has written about “Sonderkommandobilderna”, four photographs taken in Auschwitz in August 1944. The pictures are probably the only photographs of the camp taken by its prisoners while it was in operation. The photographs were taken by a member of the Polish resistance movement who worked in the Sonderkommando, that is to say, the prisoners who ran the gas chamber. The camera was smuggled into the camp in the bottom of a bucket, and two of the four photos are taken from inside the gas chamber. The biggest part of these photos is black, and through the doorway is seen a founded. The other two pictures are taken outside the gas chamber, on the one visible to naked women run, and on the other only tree tops. Didi-Huberman sees the images as something that breaks with the idea of the orepresenterbara, because they broaden the very understanding of what is possible to imagine. He believes that these images are the ”truest” representation which is available from the Holocaust. Not that they depict the camps more accurate, or understandable, but because their conditions of production, determines what and how they represent. The images are a re-enactment of the enabling conditions for the Holocaust and shows a structurally impossible representation. That is to say: the Holocaust is inscribed in the image itself.
thus becomes a kind of witness, when they break with the impossibility to show or tell about the Holocaust. But in what way can we understand the images as witnesses? Already put the question to mean a shift beyond the witness (as a subject) and beyond vittnestraditioner based on individual testimonials. Pictures tell not of themselves, and their testimony can only be understood if they are actively interpreted.
Since the birth have you discussed the camera’s ability to capture reality and, subsequently, also the image as evidence, but the photographs are not true in the sense that we can look at a picture and interpret a historical truth out of it. Images are complex entities that need to be interpreted. Therefore, it is up to the viewer to interpret the image also beyond its representation – a picture may not necessarily be understood by seeing what it is. In order to interpret the images, all the elements that create an image to be highlighted: its context and conditions of production.
the Argument is not only directed towards the understanding of pictures as representations, but also against the idea that the image, by definition, is something that comes after – photographs can also create situations or present situations in his own right. For example, mean the philosopher Judith Butler, the torture in Abu Ghraib were carried out in order to be photographed – the human pyramids were ordered for the camera’s sake. The image is then not just a representation of an event, but the event itself. Such a reading requires that the one who interprets an image, trying to reconstruct its creation, the photographic situation – that is to say, what happens around the camera – in order to understand the image conceptually and to anchor it in a time and place. The photographic situation is a basis for the understanding of images demands for truth that the viewer must interpret and evaluate – not that pictures are not true in any sense of the word, but to ”the truth” is not given. To see the picture that the witness is not a guarantee that to understand a historical event: the photos do not show the ”truth”, but allows for a sanningskonstruktion.
remember, provided that they are interpreted thoroughly and carefully. The often simplistic use of images and also the desire to go beyond the picture is based on that there are witnesses who can tell and explain. A hologram can never fill the role, not the least of which is they are at least as much images as witnesses. The hologram wonder, ”Why do you ask me not about Auschwitz?” and the question of how we remember becomes central. To investigate the images the testimony is, then, a possible way to remember, and to prevent history from repeating itself.