Preserving the memory
On the Fragility of Commemorating the Shoah in Central Europe: Testimonies of Survivors from Saxony, Silesia and Bukovina
International Colloquium
(January 10 - 12, 2003)
Organizer:
MeZ
in cooperation with
the Silesian Museum in Görlitz
the City of Görlitz
and the "Saxon Memorials in Memory of the Victims of Political Tyranny" Foundation
Director:
Prof. Dr. Walter Schmitz
Organization:
Annette Teufel
Funding:
Funded by
the Saxon State Ministry of the Interior
the DAAD
the Silesian Museum Foundation in Görlitz
the Saxon Memorials Foundation in Memory of the Victims of Political Tyranny
and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
Content:
With the upheaval of 1989/90, the new federal states were also faced with the need to review their social and cultural memory. The GDR's standardization of memory, especially with regard to the National Socialist past, required correction. This is perhaps particularly true in the Free State of Saxony, as this new federal state has always worked particularly hard to establish a state identity among its citizens since its re-establishment.
With regard to the persecution and expulsion of the Jews, i.e. the Shoah, it is clear that many opportunities for remembrance have already been irretrievably lost. This makes the question of how social and cultural memory can be preserved today all the more urgent - especially the memory of the persecution and murder of the Jews in Germany and Central/Eastern Europe, because it is one of the premises of German state ethics.
Almost irretrievably lost in Saxony is the opportunity to talk to contemporary witnesses ('oral history') and here above all to the few survivors of the Shoah themselves. It is therefore all the more significant that, thanks to an earlier personal initiative by Prof. Hermann Zabel (Dortmund), some such conversations with survivors could be held in Israel. These documents will be presented to the Foundation "Saxon Memorials in Memory of the Victims of Political Tyranny" during the panel discussion. The selection of three neighboring regions - Saxony, Silesia and the almost lost Bukovina - creates the opportunity for comparative studies. At the same time, a formative part of the history of Central Europe will become visible in an exemplary manner.
A panel discussion will form the highlight of the colloquium. Here, the issues of guilt and responsibility, the tasks and possibilities of state remembrance policy will be explored. The composition of the panel guarantees that the Free State of Saxony can always be seen as an example in an international context. The topicality of these questions has been confirmed by ever new debates right up to the present day.
Overall, this colloquium will demonstrate how the Free State of Saxony is shaping its future by facing up to its responsibility for the past. The choice of the present-day border town of Görlitz as the venue for the conference, with its former synagogue, which was destroyed but is currently being reconstructed, bears witness to these ties to a past from which, despite guilt and destruction, paths to the future are opening up.
Program:
Friday, January 10, 2003
I. Saxony - Silesia - Bukovina: On the course of the Shoah in Central Europe (Hotel Tuchmacher)
15:30 Clemens Vollnhals: Jewish Life in Saxony: From Emancipation to Deportation
16:15 Gideon Greif: Silesia during the Shoah
17:00 Andrei Corbea-Hoise: Persecution - Deportation - Murder: The Shoah in Bukovina
19:30 Panel: Memory and Responsibility - Social Remembrance as a Political Task (Small Town Hall)
Participants:
Peter Ambros; Member of the Board of the Jewish Community of Chemnitz
Prof. Dr. Andrei Corbea-Hoisie, University of Jassy
Dr. Norbert Haase, Director of the Foundation Memorials to the Victims of Political Tyranny in Saxony
Michael Kretschmer, Member of the German Bundestag
Dr. Matthias Rößler, Minister of State for Art and Science of the Free State of Saxony
Prof. Dr. Walter Schmitz, Director of the MeZ
Prof. Dr. Hermann Zabel, University of Dortmund
Saturday, January 11, 2003
The morning will be dedicated to a 'workshop' devoted to an intensive analysis of the video recordings of interviews conducted by Prof. Hermann Zabel with survivors of the Shoah. The key questions will focus on the topics of "Language in old age", "Language and traumatization", "Patterns of narratives in life stories", "Language and non-verbal messages", "Comparison of the visualization profiles of victims and perpetrators". Participants in the workshop are academics and students; the results will be recorded and edited for publication. (Hotel Tuchmacher)
II The speech of the survivors - A 'workshop'
9:30 Sandra Wellinghoff / Hermann Zabel: Introduction - Conversations with survivors from Saxony, Silesia and Bukovina
9:45 Harald Weilnböck: Trauma and narration. Biographical research in the light of psychotraumatology
10:00 Walter Schmitz: Narrated life: On the narratives of self-expression and self-presentation
10:15 Martina Pietsch: Wanderings through memory. Report on a narrative round table and exhibition project on the expulsion of Germans and Poles 1939-1949.
Participants: Peter Ambros; stud. phil. Oliver Geisler; Dr. Gideon Greif; Prof. Dr. Heiko Hausendorf; Prof. Dr. Walter Schmitz; Annette Teufel; Dr. Harald Weilnböck (Ph.D.), Prof. Dr. Hermann Zabel.
III Media of Memory
14:30 Walter Schmitz: 'Cultural amnesia'? On the loss of memory in communication
15:15 Michael Neumann: Images of memory
16:30 Annette Teufel: Hybridization of memory - dramaturgy and authenticity in feature films about the 'Shoah'
17:15 Tobias Weger: The portrayal of the Jewish communities and the Shoah in the homeland books of German expellees from Silesia
Sunday, January 12, 2003
9:30 Kurt Rudolf Fischer: Science - Memory - Remembrance: Biographical Notes
10:15 Coffee break
10:30 Sibylle Kussmaul: On the debate about the representation of the Shoah in museums
11:15 Norbert Haase: Memorials and remembrance