A question during Wednesday’s discussion was posted Robert’s power-point presentation: Can reenacting history offer us a viable historical insight? Surely, there are many different perspectives to atrocities. We learned of a specific example in class with excerpts from the novel, “The End: Hamburg 1943” by Hans Erich Nossack. This novel offers an interesting and relatively unexplored area of the Holocaust, but I think that it is definitely worth exploring. Discovering what the Holocaust was like for Germans who were trying to live their everyday lives made me realize that not all Germans contributed to the Holocaust, and there were surely Germans who did not want to be apart of the Nazi movement. Although I somehow always knew this to be true, it was nice to have a concrete example of a German man’s experiences living in the constant shadow of World War II.
I think that reenacting history offers us multiple viable historical insights. For example, many different media processes explore the Holocaust., each with its own personal insight into the atrocity. The film “Life Is Beautiful” offers a poignant perspective of the Holocaust, with the main character fabricating a story that compares life in his concentration camp to a game so his young son does not realize the terrors of camp life. Although some might think that this plot is disrespectful to the actual horrors of concentration camps, I think that it is an effective and memorable way to discuss family life and coping mechanisms of Jews during the Holocaust. Many people agree with the film’s unique perspective, because it won three Academy Awards. On the other hand, a dramatic film about the Holocaust could offer just as much insight as a film like “Life is Beautiful”, instead utilizing different methods and telling different stories. Films like “Schindler’s List”, “The Pianist”, “Sophie’s Choice”, and “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” tell stories of the Holocaust from more dramatic perspectives. Although all of these films are considered dramas, they all offer different insights, because they rely on unique experiences and methods of story-telling. The films allow audiences to become attached to figures in the stories, and serve as important tools for learning about heart-wrenching aspects of World War II.
I think that these films are often more effective than reading a history textbook or researching the Holocaust online, because audiences form attachments to stories and characters. For example, the first time I watched “Life is Beautiful” the reality of concentration camps really dawned on me. I felt such sorrow and discomfort when the characters I grew to love were made victims of the Holocaust, and these associations led me to carry these emotions over to the actual historical event.
Mary,
ReplyDeleteI am glad that my question got you thinking, and you have provided several great examples to think through. I actually would like to teach a class in the future exploring the question in greater detail, and having the class and myself, think through the consequences of those artifacts. In many ways, I absolutely agree that history must be represented in order to exist. For instance, what would happen if tomorrow every image of the Holocaust were to disappear--would this "forgetting" be a good or bad thing? But more importantly, I think the major question I am interested, and one you touch upon, is what are the implications of certain modes of remembering. For instance, why is it that we do not have more memories like that of Nossacks? The reason this is important is not so much that Nossack was a good or bad guy, or that he was or was not aware of the holocaust, but rather what might we learn about how it is that regular people can carry out so much atrocity? I wonder, for instance, if our voices will be remembered when future historians look back on our historical period and ask, how could these people engage in so much atrocity? My point is that, regardless of whether one supports this war or that, all wars or only a few or none, is that it is important to understand how people are able to carry on as if everything is normal even when nothing is--and this is what Nossack can offer us.