: Nicholas Chare, Dominic Williams
: The Auschwitz Sonderkommando Testimonies, Histories, Representations
: Palgrave Macmillan
: 9783030114916
: 1
: CHF 52.10
:
: 20. Jahrhundert (bis 1945)
: English
: 278
: Wasserzeichen/DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: PDF

This book is the first to bring together analyses of the full range of post-war testimony given by survivors of the Sonderkommando of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Auschwitz Sonderkommando were slave labourers in the gas chambers and crematoria, forced to process and dispose of the bodies of those who were murdered. They have been central to a number of key topics in post-war debates about the Shoah: collaboration, moral compromise and survival, resistance, representation, and the possibility of bearing witness. Their testimony however has mostly met with a reluctance to engage in depth with it. Moving from testimonies produced within the event, the Scrolls of Auschwitz and the Sonderkommando photographs, to testimonies given at trials and for video archives, and to the paintings of David Olère and the filmShoah by Claude Lanzmann, this book demonstrates the importance of their witnessing in the post-war memory of the Holocaust, and provides vital new insights into the questions of representation, memory, gender, and the Shoah.



Acknowledgements6
Contents8
Chapter 1 Introduction: Figuring the Sonderkommando in History9
Gender in the Archive14
The Uses of Testimony21
Chapter 2 Acts of Deposition: Gender and Testimony in the Scrolls of Auschwitz33
The Deaths of Schillinger33
The Scrolls of Auschwitz39
Sex and Gender in Auschwitz-Birkenau43
The Play of Gazes50
Sadism59
Chapter 3 Tragic Pictures: The Sonderkommando and Their Photographs79
Introduction: On Attribution79
Limits of Seeing81
Wanting Immediacy84
Texts and Images87
Postmemory Avant La Lettre92
Words for Pictures97
Chapter 4 The Trials of Witnessing: Legal Testimony and the Sonderkommando109
An Interested Audience109
The Belsen Trial at Lüneburg (1945)114
Poland—Trials of Höss and Auschwitz Staff119
The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial (1963–1965)126
Conclusion128
Chapter 5 Figure Studies from the Grey Zone: David Olère137
In Line with the Facts137
The Reception of the Artist142
Ilse Koch at Auschwitz145
Sexual Violence151
Marked Men154
A Beautiful Death158
Out of Line162
Collage163
Chapter 6 Matters of Video Testimony178
Listening and Resistance178
Age and Gender: Dario Gabbai and Daniel Bennahmias190
Memory in the Frame: Technique and Technology198
Ethics and Reception: Segmentation, Transcription and Interpretation204
Chapter 7 The Voice of Bronze: Filip Müller and Shoah225
Telling for the Last Time225
Shaping the Voice228
Embodiment234
Müller’s Unique Position236
Going Back to the Archive239
Conclusion243
Bibliography254
Index273