Zugl.: Berlin, Freie Univ., Diss., 2009

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2005. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 228-240).

Thesis (doctoral) - Universität, Augsburg, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 377-410) and index.

Este estudo apresenta uma abordagem sobre o testemunho utilizado como fonte no ensino da história da Segunda Guerra Mundial. Tem como objeto de análise um projeto com sobreviventes da Shoah, desenvolvido pelo Instituto Marc Chagall. Por meio da história oral, da memória e do testemunho, possibilitou o desenvolvimento de uma sequência didática que promove a sensibilização, a aprendizagem humana e significativa em relação a história traumática da guerra. O produto elaborado por esta pesquisa constitui-se, então, em um material de referência para o professor utilizar o painel sobre a Shoah na educação básica. / This study presents an approach on the testimony used as a source in teaching the history of the World War II. Its object of analysis is a project with survivors of the Shoah, developed by the Marc Chagall Institute. Through oral history, memory and testimony, it enabled the development of a didactic sequence that promotes sensitization, human learning and meaningful relation to the traumatic history of the war. The product elaborated by this research constitutes, then, in a material of reference for the teacher to use the panel on Shoah in basic education.

The approach I have chosen for my study is to analyse the narrative techniques in Wiesel's fiction, with particular emphasis on the role of the narrator and listener in the narratives. This will not only highlight aspects of his authorial strategy involving the reader's response to various dimensions of the Holocaust, but will allow an appraisal of the literary merit of Wiesel's novels. The hushed reverence that tends to accompany allusions to Auschwitz and its literature has impeded certain theoretical investigations, with the result that most critical studies undertaken on Wiesel's works have dealt predominantly with themes and content rather than with form. A narrative approach, however, while it accounts for themes, does so within the narrative process of the work. Form and content are examined as interwoven entities in the particular context of an individual work. My decision to adopt this pursuit is based on the conviction that Wiesel's fiction is a significant contribution to the literature of testimony, not only because of its subject matter, but also because of the way in which his narrators unfold their stories with words suspended by silence in the text. The paradox of the mute narrator, the title of my study, is intended to convey the paradoxical quality of Wiesel's fiction and to show how silence, which is manifested in the themes of his work, is concretized by his strategy of entrusting the transmission of the tale to narrators, who, for various reasons have been silenced. A mute by definition cannot emit an articulate sound. A narrator, on the other hand, is a storyteller who is reliant on verbal articulation for communication. This contradiction in terms is dramatized in the novels and is symptomatic of the dilemma of Wiesel's narrators who are compelled to bear testimony through their silence. In my study of Wiesel's fiction, I will follow the chronological sequence in which the novels were written, although I will not be using a developmental approach, except to point out that the trilogy which marks the beginning of his exploration into narrative strategies, and The Testament, the last book I will be dealing with, are a culmination of his previous fictional techniques. While a developmental analysis of his fiction, particularly from a thematic point of view, enables the reader to gain insight into his background, which is important in a comprehensive study of his works, I feel that this avenue of investigation has been competently dealt with by other critics. Ellen Fine's Legacy of Night, one of the first book-length studies of Wiesel, puts forward a convincing argument for examining his fiction in chronological sequence as a kind of serialized journey from being a witness in l'univers concentrationnaire to bearing - witness in a post-Holocaust world. Furthermore, it is possible to trace the direction Wiesel's fiction follows, as in each book the seeds are sown for new ideas which are expanded upon in subsequent books. My discussion, however, will deal with the narrative process of each novel as an individual work in its own particular context. Apart from the trilogy which is examined in one chapter, and The Testament which serves as a conclusion to the study, I have not used cross references to Wiesel's other fiction when analysing specific books. Moreover, I have deliberately avoided including Wiesel's comments on his works and references to them in his essays, interviews and non-fiction writing. The reason for this approach is that I consider each novel to be a separate narrative work which merits an interpretative response that is independent of the comparative criteria that has up to now influenced the assessment of his fiction. (Introduction, p. 12-14)

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Focusing on novels by three contemporary German authors and one multi-author theater text, “A Multidirectional Europe” investigates how their writing responds to post-1989 memory paradigms in which post-socialist memory, in relation to the Holocaust and Second World War, has received asymmetrical attention. Conceived as an interdisciplinary and comparative study, this dissertation analyzes how narrative texts by Herta Müller (1953-), Nino Haratischwili (1983-), Saša Stanišić (1978-) and the play Ein europäisches Abendmahl [2017] frame the memory of socialism in relation to the Holocaust, considering the ways in which these authors challenge the larger post- or transnational discourse of a supposedly “unified Europe.” Having migrated from Romania, Georgia, and Bosnia respectively, these authors, I argue, integrate post-socialist memories into German, and European, memory discourses through their play with genre, narrative structure, figurative language, and intertextuality. Although sociohistorical context is crucial in my readings for questions of memory, this dissertation seeks to transcend bounded definitions of memory, embracing a dynamic approach that is more inclusive in terms of the (hi)stories that are told and that contribute to the imagination of a heterogenous continent. Combining cultural studies, literary analysis, and memory theory, I move away from reading these works under the lens of autobiographical trauma, seeking instead to examine the negotiation of post-socialist memory through attending to generic and formal elements of the literary texts. My literary close readings methodologically draw on individual texts, while reflecting how literature is in exchange with other media and also present in the public sphere. Rather than a homogeneous entity, I show, the invoked Europe constitutes a multidirectional network. Through my focus on contexts beyond East Germany and its experience of state socialism, I address the intersections of migration and memory and their relevance for contemporary and future Germany and Europe, while counteracting approaches that traditionally center West Central Europe in discussions of the continent. In dialogue with Michael Rothberg’s conceptualization of multidirectional memory, I furthermore contribute to ongoing debates on different histories of violence, such as the current discussion about the relation or interaction between the memories of colonialism and the Holocaust.

In May of 2021, in a move unprecedented in European history, the governments of Germany and Namibia announced the completion of their negotiations for funding to redress what they together have termed the "wounds" of the colonial past. The bilateral agreement had long been declared void by Namibians of diverse backgrounds, however, who protested that the way they have been treated pales in comparison to the kind of treatment that Jewish people of various communities have received from Germany since 1945. My ethnographic research followed the diversity of discourse about German colonialism in two years leading up to this agreement in multiple locations; from hearings concerning legal demands for the return of Herero and Nama indigenous land, bones, and cattle in New York City, to political struggles around race and racism in Berlin, to the intransigent settler work of German Lutheran landowners in Namibia. I explore this ethnographic and historical material in a thesis that has three distinct sections. In the first part, I look at the place of the idea of Germany in these ongoing struggles by turning to the German Namibian community and the networks that they operate in and through. I ask after the borders of Germany as an idea, as a territory, and as a political theology – and I look to what "German Namibia" can tell us about contemporary German politics more broadly – most specifically as a site to undertake a potential genealogy of German Protestant Liberalism and its various phantasms. In the second part, I look to the history of Holocaust reparations and its relationship to the Herero and Nama case in the New York courtroom to understand how historically specific iterations of the figure of the suffering Jew have come to contour various grammars in which repair for anti-Black violence and native dispossession are fought for and responded to, especially when figured through the juridical language of reparations. In the third part, I turn towards the contemporary German politics of acknowledgment, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, the process of coming to terms with the past. Rather than asking here after the lack of attention to colonial history on the part of the German state, I ask after how the state has actively tried to oppose colonial racism by integrating the history of colonialism into its memory politics. I look to the multiple paradoxes of this attempt that I argue ultimately leads to a reinscription of German white supremacy upon racialized bodies. Overall, my research turns to the past and present of German settler colonialism to explore the politics of reparation on an international scale alongside the relationship between race, religion, and repair in a fractured Europe.

No description available.

Museums today provide learning-rich experiences and quality informational resources through both physical and virtual environments. This study examined a Holocaust Museum traveling exhibition, Life in Shadows: Hidden Children and the Holocaust that was on display at the Art Center of Battle Creek, Michigan in fall 2005. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to assess the informational value of a Holocaust Museum exhibition in its onsite vs. online format by converging quantitative and qualitative data. Participants in the study included six eighth grade language arts classes who viewed various combinations or scenarios of the onsite and online Life in Shadows. Using student responses to questions in an online exhibition survey, an analysis of variance was performed to determine which scenario visit promotes the greatest content learning. Using student responses to additional questions on the same survey, data were analyzed qualitatively to discover the impact on students of each scenario visit. By means of an emotional empathy test, data were analyzed to determine differences among student response according to scenario visit. A principal finding of the study (supporting Falk and Dierking's contextual model of learning) was that the use of the online exhibition provided a source of prior orientation and functioned as an advanced organizer for students who subsequently viewed the onsite exhibition. Students who viewed the online exhibition received higher topic assessment scores. Students in each scenario visit gave positive exhibition feedback and evidence of emotional empathy. Further longitudinal studies in museum informatics and Holocaust education involving a more diverse population are needed. Of particular importance would be research focusing on using museum exhibitions and Web-based technology in a compelling manner so that students can continue to hear the words of survivors who themselves bear witness and give voice to silenced victims. When perpetuity of access to informational resources is assured, future generations will continue to be connected to the primary documents of history and cultural heritage.