Framing the Holocaust

Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-0-299-34410-8
Verlag: University of Wisconsin Press

Buch, Englisch, 296 Seiten, Hardback, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

In December 1941, German police and their local collaborators murdered 2,749 Jews at the beach in Škede, near Liepaja, Latvia. Twelve photographs were taken at the scene. These now-infamous images show people in extreme distress, sometimes without clothing. Some capture the very moments when women and children confronted their imminent deaths, while others show their dead bodies. They are nearly unbearable to look at—so why should we? Framing the Holocaust offers a multidimensional response to this question.

While photographs are central to our memory of modern historical events, they often inhabit an ambivalent intellectual space. What separates the sincere desire to understand from voyeuristic curiosity? Comprehending these images requires the viewer to place oneself in the very positions of the perpetrator who took the images. When we engage with atrocity photographs, do we risk replicating the original violence? In this tightly organized book, scholars from Holocaust studies, modern European history, Jewish studies, visual studies, and the history of photography examine the images of the Liepaja atrocity, giving historical, contextual, political, and moral depth to the act of looking and interpreting.

With a foreword by Edward Anders, who narrowly escaped the December shooting, Framing the Holocaust represents an original approach to an iconic series of Holocaust photographs. This book will contribute to powerful debates in the emerging field of visual history, including the challenges and responsibilities of teaching about atrocity.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Deutsche Geschichte Deutsche Geschichte: Holocaust
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Fotografie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Foreword by Edward Anders
 
Introduction: Twelve Photographs
Valerie HÉbert

Not to Tiptoe Away in the Face of Suffering: Why We Look at Holocaust Photographs
Valerie HÉbert

Investigating Both Sides of the Camera on the Beach at Škede
Daniel Newman

Reading against the Gaze: Perpetrator Motives and Subject Responses in Photographs of a Mass Shooting
Tanja Kinzel

Ordinary Acts, Extraordinary Crimes: Photographic Practice and Atrocity
Daniel Hoffman

Describing Atrocity: Soviet Words on German Perpetrator Images
Marilyn Campeau

A Day at the Beach: The Škede Massacre and Littoral Photography
Daniel H. Magilow

Representations of Female Bodies in Holocaust Photographs
Dorota Glowacka

A Pedagogy of Witnessing: Reading and Interpreting the Škede Photographs in the Classroom
Hilary Earl
 
Contributors
Index