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- All Subjects: Holocaust
- Creators: Benkert, Volker
- Creators: Dean, Sarah C
- Member of: ASU Electronic Theses and Dissertations
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
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