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- Creators: Arizona State University
- Creators: Benkert, Volker
Description
Approaches to Holocaust representation often take their cues from both academic and public discourse. General opinion demands serious engagement that depicts the full range of the brutality and inhumanity of the genocide and the victimization of targeted groups perpetrated by the National Socialists. Such a treatment is considered necessary to adequately represent the Holocaust for generations to come. The analysis of four texts will show that humor is not only appropriate but is also an important addition to Holocaust discourse. This study argues that humor plays an important role as a stylistic tool for discussing the Holocaust as well as for its remembrance and representation. Jurek Becker's novel Jakob der Lügner and Ruth Klüger's autobiography Weiter Leben: Eine Jugend are witness-texts by Jewish authors. Humor in these two works helps the authors engage and work their experiences. Klüger's autobiography also utilizes humor to critically engage in the discussion of Holocaust representation. This study also analyzes two non-witness Jewish texts: the stage play Mein Kampf by George Tabori and the feature film Mein Führer, die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler by Dani Levy. These two works utilize overt humor to challenge established Holocaust representations. Drawing on ideas from Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Julia Kristeva, Giorgio Agamben, the core argument of this study demonstrates humor performs two main functions in the Holocaust literature and film chosen for this investigation. First, it restores a potential loss of dignity and helps victims endure the incomprehensible. Second, it challenges the prevailing truth and the established order.
ContributorsMeirich, Hanni (Author) / Gilfillan, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Ghanem, Carla (Committee member) / Holian, Anna (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
The Holocaust and the effects it has had upon witnesses has been a topic of study for nearly six decades; however, few angles of research have been conducted relating to the long-term effects of the Holocaust upon the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors--the After Generations. The After Generations are considered the proof--the living legacies--that their parents and grandparents survived. Growing up with intimate knowledge of the atrocities that occurred during the Holocaust, members of the After Generations not only carry with them their family's story, but also their own vicarious experience(s) of trauma. From this legacy comes a burden of responsibility to those who perished, their survivor parents/grandparents, the stories that were shared, as well as to future generations. Using grounded theory method, this study not only explores the long-term effects of the Holocaust upon members of the After Generations, but what it means to responsibly remember the stories from the Holocaust, as well as how individuals might ethically represent such stories/memories. Findings that developed out of an axial analysis of interview transcripts and journal writing, as well as the later development of a performance script, are embodied in a manner that allows the actual language and experiences of the participants to be collectively witnessed both symbolically and visually. Through their desire to remember, members of the After Generations demonstrate how they plan to carry on traditions, live lives that honor those that came before them, and maintain hope for the future. In so doing, the stories shared reveal the centrality of the Holocaust in the lives of members of the After Generations through their everyday choices to responsibly and actively remember through their art, writings, life-work, as well as from within their work in their local communities. Such acts of remembrance are important to the education of others as well as to the construction and maintenance of the After Generations' identities. The representation of these voices acts as a reminder of how hatred and its all-consuming characteristics can affect not only the person targeted, but multiple generations, as well.
ContributorsRath, Sandra (Author) / de la Garza, Sarah Amira (Thesis advisor) / Underiner, Tamara (Committee member) / Corey, Frederick C. (Committee member) / Eisenberg, Judith (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This dissertation examines U. S. American intergenerational witnesses to the Holocaust, particularly how addressees turned addressors maintain an ethical obligation to First Generation witnesses while creating an affective relation to this history for new generations. In response to revisionism and the incommunicability of the Holocaust, a focus on (accurate) First Generation testimony emerged that marginalizes that of intergenerational witnesses. The risk of such a position is that it paralyzes language, locking the addressee into a movement always into the past. Using examples of intergenerational witnesses (moving from close to more distant relationships), this project argues that there is a possibility for ethical intergenerational response. There are two major discussion arcs that the work follows: self-reflexivity and the use of the Banality of Evil as a theme. Self-reflexivity in intergenerational witnessing calls attention to the role of the author as transgenerational witness, an act that does not seek to appropriate the importance or position of the Holocaust survivor because it calls attention to a subjective site in relation to the survivor and the communities of memory created within the text. The other major discussion arc moves from traditional depictions of the Banality of Evil to ones that challenge the audience to consider the way evil is conceptualized after the Holocaust and its implications in contemporary life. In these ways, intergenerational witnesses move from addressee to addressors, continuing to stress the importance of this history through the imperative to pass Holocaust testimony onward into the future.
ContributorsDean, Sarah C (Author) / Foster, David W (Thesis advisor) / Sadowski-Smith, Claudia (Committee member) / Reyes, Angelita (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
During the 1970's to 90's, scholars in the fields of Jewish Studies, anthropology and sociology (notably, Hellen Epstein, Larry Langer and Yosef Yerushalmi), developed the idea of generational trauma theory, when analyzing the trauma inflicted upon European Jewish populations during the Holocaust. Epstein argues that trauma is passed down from generation to generation, while Langer argues that the second generation interprets the trauma in their own way. Other important terms in trauma theory include liturgical time, sites of memory, historical trauma and the historical trauma response. Scholars who analyze American Indian communities, like Yellow Horse Brave Heart and Durran/Durran, readily took up this theory, applying it to the Native American experience. One area where this theory has been applied to is the Native American Boarding School experience. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the efficacy of applying the post-Holocaust trauma theory to the Native American boarding school experience. In order to determine the effectiveness of the boarding schools, one must analyze the boarding school experience, beginning at the philosophical underpinnings of the boarding school, and then discussing the impacts that the boarding schools had on the students and finally, the impact that this had on the second generation. However, this approach has a number of flaws, such as the differences between native communities and post-Holocaust, American, Jewish communities, as discussed in the Philosophy of American Indian Studies. The length of the boarding schools was also longer than the length of the Holocaust. The fact that Native Americans faced repeated trauma, in a way that post-Holocaust American Jews did not. The trauma also changed for both native peoples and post-Holocaust Jews, making it difficult for there to be a single response to trauma. The philosophical bases of the Holocaust and boarding schools were also different. The post-Holocaust generational trauma approach also has a number of applications to native peoples. This includes the psychological aspect of trauma. The use of terminology by native scholars. Native peoples also developed concepts like sites of memory and liturgical time. Finally, both the post-Holocaust Jewas and Native Americans have used trauma for political ends. The conclusion is that post-Holocaust generational trauma theory has some applications to native peoples, but the application is limited. A scholar must take into careful consideration the native peoples who they are working with.
ContributorsMongeau, Michael Philip (Author) / Benkert, Volker (Thesis director) / Riding In, James (Committee member) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor) / American Indian Studies Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
“by my death...” is a composition in three movements for chamber ensemble and
laptop ensemble, with the instrumentation of clarinet in Bb, French horn in F, percussion, violin, double bass, and at least three laptops. The total duration of the piece is approximately twenty minutes. However, since the timing of the first and third movement is flexible, the total duration may vary.
“by my death...” is the creative culmination of my research into representations of
the Holocaust in music. More specifically, it corresponds to my analysis of three
Holocaust-based works by the Israeli composer Arie Shapira (1943-2015): Gideon Kleins Marterstrasse (1977), Gustl in Theresienstadt (1998-9), and Achtung Rapunzel (2007). I applied findings from the analysis in my own music, resonating Shapira's style, techniques, and expressive means. In a sense, “by my death...” is a homage to this composer, who had a strong influence on my path to dealing with the Holocaust in music.
My composition, however, is not necessarily about the Holocaust alone. It
concerns the larger Jewish historical narrative that is characterized by destruction and construction, with the Holocaust as a central, pivotal event. It reflect about the Holocaust within links between tradition and innovation, past and future, death and life, that are inherent to any aspect of Israeli culture, and that are intertwined within the Jewish narrative of extermination and resurrection.
laptop ensemble, with the instrumentation of clarinet in Bb, French horn in F, percussion, violin, double bass, and at least three laptops. The total duration of the piece is approximately twenty minutes. However, since the timing of the first and third movement is flexible, the total duration may vary.
“by my death...” is the creative culmination of my research into representations of
the Holocaust in music. More specifically, it corresponds to my analysis of three
Holocaust-based works by the Israeli composer Arie Shapira (1943-2015): Gideon Kleins Marterstrasse (1977), Gustl in Theresienstadt (1998-9), and Achtung Rapunzel (2007). I applied findings from the analysis in my own music, resonating Shapira's style, techniques, and expressive means. In a sense, “by my death...” is a homage to this composer, who had a strong influence on my path to dealing with the Holocaust in music.
My composition, however, is not necessarily about the Holocaust alone. It
concerns the larger Jewish historical narrative that is characterized by destruction and construction, with the Holocaust as a central, pivotal event. It reflect about the Holocaust within links between tradition and innovation, past and future, death and life, that are inherent to any aspect of Israeli culture, and that are intertwined within the Jewish narrative of extermination and resurrection.
ContributorsDori, Gil (Author) / Suzuki, Kotoka (Thesis advisor) / Feisst, Sabine (Committee member) / Paine, Garth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
ABSTRACT
German history during the 20th century was extremely complex—containing numerous events that can be labelled horrific and traumatic. The horrors and traumas of WWII forced Germans to actively address their country’s National Socialist pasts by taking responsibility for their roles, creating a national memory about the Nazi atrocities and implementing the reparations program, the Wiedergutmachungsabkommen, with the newly formed nation of Israel. The social theorist Theodor Adorno wrote in his 1959 essay “Was bedeutet: Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit?” about three subtly nuanced terms: Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit, Verarbeitung der Vergangenheit and Vergangensheitbewältigung, in which he addresses the various ways that Germany was dealing with traumatic events from this National Socialist past. Adorno specifically demanded a constant renegotiation of the past or Verarbeitung der Vergangenheit because it is the only way forward, through which people remember the horrors and atrocities of the past and work towards not allowing those events to occur again.
This thesis applies the theoretical framework set forth by Adorno to explore efforts to engage the DDR and Stasi past after the Fall of the Wall and reunification. Specifically, it examines the concept of Verarbeitung der Vergangenheit and demonstrates how Thomas Brussig’s satirical novel Helden wie wir, and two documentary films Aus Liebe zum Volk and Das Wunder von Leipzig are examples of working upon this DDR and Stasi past. More specifically, the utilization of humor in the novel and the paralanguage modifications in the films provide insight to the feelings and emotions that individuals had about their pasts in the DDR. It is through this expression of emotion and feelings while writing and speaking about the past, which serves as the immediate moment when individuals actively working upon their pasts.
German history during the 20th century was extremely complex—containing numerous events that can be labelled horrific and traumatic. The horrors and traumas of WWII forced Germans to actively address their country’s National Socialist pasts by taking responsibility for their roles, creating a national memory about the Nazi atrocities and implementing the reparations program, the Wiedergutmachungsabkommen, with the newly formed nation of Israel. The social theorist Theodor Adorno wrote in his 1959 essay “Was bedeutet: Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit?” about three subtly nuanced terms: Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit, Verarbeitung der Vergangenheit and Vergangensheitbewältigung, in which he addresses the various ways that Germany was dealing with traumatic events from this National Socialist past. Adorno specifically demanded a constant renegotiation of the past or Verarbeitung der Vergangenheit because it is the only way forward, through which people remember the horrors and atrocities of the past and work towards not allowing those events to occur again.
This thesis applies the theoretical framework set forth by Adorno to explore efforts to engage the DDR and Stasi past after the Fall of the Wall and reunification. Specifically, it examines the concept of Verarbeitung der Vergangenheit and demonstrates how Thomas Brussig’s satirical novel Helden wie wir, and two documentary films Aus Liebe zum Volk and Das Wunder von Leipzig are examples of working upon this DDR and Stasi past. More specifically, the utilization of humor in the novel and the paralanguage modifications in the films provide insight to the feelings and emotions that individuals had about their pasts in the DDR. It is through this expression of emotion and feelings while writing and speaking about the past, which serves as the immediate moment when individuals actively working upon their pasts.
ContributorsDietz, Dominik (Author) / Gilfillan, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Alexander, John (Committee member) / Benkert, Volker (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
In the sixty-seven years following the end of World War II, West Germany and Japan underwent a remarkable series of economic and social changes that irrevocably altered their respective ways of life. Formerly xenophobic, militaristic and highly socially stratified societies, both emerged from the 20th Century as liberal, prosperous and free. Both made great strides well beyond the expectations of their occupiers, and rebounded from the overwhelming destruction of their national economies within a few short decades. While these changes have yielded dramatic results, the wartime period still looms large in their respective collective memories. Therefore, an ongoing and diverse dialectical process would engage the considerable popular, official, and intellectual energy of their post-war generations. In West Germany, the term Vergangenheitsbewältigung (VGB) emerged to describe a process of coming to terms with the past, while the Japanese chose kako no kokufuku to describe their similar historical sojourns. Although intellectuals of widely varying backgrounds in both nations made great strides toward making Japanese and German citizens cognizant of the roles that their militaries played in gruesome atrocities, popular cinematic productions served to reiterate older, discredited assertions of the fundamental honor and innocence of the average soldier, thereby nurturing a historically revisionist line of reasoning that continues to compete for public attention. All forms of media would play an important role in sustaining this “apologetic narrative,” and cinema, among the most popular and visible of these mediums, was not excluded from this. Indeed, films would play a unique recurring role, like rhetorical time capsules, in offering a sanitized historical image of Japanese and German soldiers that continues to endure in modern times. Nevertheless, even as West Germany and Japan regained their sovereignty and re-examined their pasts with ever greater resolution and insight, their respective film industries continued to “reset” the clock, and accentuated the visibility and relevancy of apologetic forces still in existence within both societies. However, it is important to note that, when speaking of “Germans” and “Japanese,” that they are not meant to be thought of as being uniformly of one mind or another. Rather, the use of these words is meant as convenient shorthand to refer to the dominant forces in Japanese and German civil society at any given time over the course of their respective post- war histories. Furthermore, references to “Germany” during the Cold War period are to be understood to mean the Federal Republic of Germany, rather than their socialist counterpart, the German Democratic Republic, a nation that undertook its own coming to terms with the past in an entirely distinct fashion.
ContributorsPiscopo, Michael (Author) / Benkert, Volker (Thesis director) / Moore, Aaron (Committee member) / Machander, Sina (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12
Description
When the Warsaw Ghetto was demolished by German forces towards the end of World War II, there were few physical traces of the Ghetto left standing. As such, both historians and the public must look to other types of sources to understand what life and death were like for the inhabitants of the Ghetto, and how they have remembered their experiences within the Ghetto. These memories and representations of the Warsaw Ghetto can be found in memoir-style written works, and later, in films based on these works. This thesis will examine the ways in which the Warsaw Ghetto was represented by two authors who survived it, Władisław Szpilman and Marcel Reich-Ranicki, and how their memory of the Warsaw Ghetto is represented in the films based on their lives and survival, The Pianist, and Mein Leben: Marcel Reich-Ranicki.
ContributorsSmith, Erin Lianne (Author) / Benkert, Volker (Thesis advisor) / Cichopek-Gajraj, Anna (Committee member) / Gilfillan, Daniel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
Through the lens of a Jewish family in the early 20th century, histories of resilience, rescue, and resistance are shown. The Loewys were a Jewish family who migrated from Poland to Germany then France and ending up in the United States following World War II. In their travels they experienced many of which other Jewish experiences were, while also differentiating from the overall story. The family also experienced life as refugees and interns during the Holocaust. Arrested in Vichy following the Armistice between Germany and France, the Loewys were later granted their freedom which they used to help free others from the camp. One of the few stories of Jews rescuing Jews, the family began its life as resistors to the Vichy and German occupation. Participating in both passive and active resistance from 1940-1944, they witnessed the highs and lows of this new life. The end of the war saw the family make it to the United States beginning their next chapter as survivors of the Holocaust and the war. With the use of primary source material provided by the Loewys, along with scholarly work about the different periods, the story of the Loewys is one of resilience in the face of mounting adversity, rescuing of internes from camps, and resistance against an occupational force that furthers the research of the Jewish experience in the early 20th century.
ContributorsVance, Marc (Author) / Benkert, Volker (Thesis advisor) / Cichopek-Garaja, Anna (Committee member) / LePore, Paul (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
This thesis analyzes the unsettling presence of the Holocaust in Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl (1980), Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer (1979), and Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank (2013). Characters in these texts struggle to maintain a stable sense of what it means to be Jewish in America outside of a relationship to the Holocaust. This leaves the characters only able to form negative associations about what it means to live with the memory of the Holocaust or to over-identify so heavily with the memory that they can’t lead a normal life. These authors construct a re-formed memory of the Holocaust in ways that prompt a new focus on how permanently intertwined the Holocaust and Jewish identity are. In this context, re-formed means the way Jewish American writers have reconstructed the connection between Jewish identity and its relation to the Holocaust in ways that highlight issues of over-identification and negative identity associations.
By pushing past the trope of unspeakability that often surrounds the Holocaust, these authors construct a re-formed memory that allows for the formation of Jewish American identity as permanently bound with constant Holocaust preoccupation, the memory of Anne Frank, and the Holocaust itself. The authors’ treatment of issues surrounding Jewish identity contribute to the genre of post-Holocaust literature, which focuses on re-forming the discussion about present day Jewish American connection to the Holocaust. Giving voice to the Holocaust in new ways provides an opportunity for current and future generations of Jewish Americans to again consider the continued importance of the Holocaust as a historical event within the Jewish community.
In a world that is once again becoming increasingly anti-semitic as a result of the current political climate, white supremacist riots, desecration of Jewish grave sites, and shootings at temples, the discussion that these texts open up is increasingly important and should remain at the forefront of American consciousness. The research in this thesis reveals that through the process of Holocaust memory constantly being re-formed through the work of these Jewish American authors, its continued influence on Jewish American culture is not forgotten.
By pushing past the trope of unspeakability that often surrounds the Holocaust, these authors construct a re-formed memory that allows for the formation of Jewish American identity as permanently bound with constant Holocaust preoccupation, the memory of Anne Frank, and the Holocaust itself. The authors’ treatment of issues surrounding Jewish identity contribute to the genre of post-Holocaust literature, which focuses on re-forming the discussion about present day Jewish American connection to the Holocaust. Giving voice to the Holocaust in new ways provides an opportunity for current and future generations of Jewish Americans to again consider the continued importance of the Holocaust as a historical event within the Jewish community.
In a world that is once again becoming increasingly anti-semitic as a result of the current political climate, white supremacist riots, desecration of Jewish grave sites, and shootings at temples, the discussion that these texts open up is increasingly important and should remain at the forefront of American consciousness. The research in this thesis reveals that through the process of Holocaust memory constantly being re-formed through the work of these Jewish American authors, its continued influence on Jewish American culture is not forgotten.
ContributorsMiller, Samantha Tracy (Author) / Goodman, Brian (Thesis advisor) / Holbo, Christine (Committee member) / Lockard, Joe (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020