A As Holocaust memorial posts are shared on social media every year on January 27th, you see images of tracks leading towards the red entrance building of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Or black and white photos showing gaunt prisoners in striped suits. Yes, this horror is part of the Holocaust and yet at the same time it is more complex than the simplified media representation allows.
There is an iconography associated with the images, which are intended to commemorate the violent crimes of National Socialism. They have now become part of the collective memory. Not only are these used in media or educational material, but they also determine how the Holocaust is illustrated in fictional series and also documentary films.
According to analyzes by film scholar Marcus Stiglegger, realities simulated in this way, i.e. created, are equated with historical events. There are expectations about what the horror should look like. And with which colors and in which places it can take place. Remember the criticism of the green grass in „The Zone of Interest“.
Not only are the visual representations always the same, but too often they arise from the perspective of the perpetrators. Many of the iconographic photos of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp were taken by two SS photographers. They documented their everyday work and precisely selected which image content made it in front of the lens.
From the perspective of the perpetrators
This collection helped to identify the perpetrators in several criminal trials. Nevertheless, a critical look at these contemporary testimonies is necessary, say the historians Tal Bruttmann, Stefan Hördler and Christoph Kreuzmüller. The photos show a cynical perspective of the perpetrators who documented their success, and this now largely determines how our idea of the Holocaust is shaped.
If violence is linked to ideas that need to be confirmed, this explains why everyday, almost inconspicuous crime scenes are forgotten. The taz’s research on Kamenzer Straße 10–12 has shown how difficult it is to preserve a former Buchenwald forced labor camp as a monument. When other media picked up the research, it was illustrated with a picture from the concentration camp, even though the satellite camp in Leipzig was an inconspicuous, two-story building.
The aesthetics of memory make it impossible to understand how omnipresent the brutality of National Socialism was. If terror only becomes visible in dedicated concentration camps, then other places of violence that deviate from this experience a devaluation. In the end, the question that arises is perhaps a bigger one: Do we use these images to sensitize ourselves to the unimaginable, or do we not recognize when it happens again?