Kluger lecture three

 

rkluger@arcor.de

 

 

Last Time:

 

Environment in which Kluger lived as a child:

 

--basic rights and privileges gradually removed: constriction of Jewish existence

--Kluger’s civil disobedience: goes to the cinema

--Her willing exposure to Nazi propaganda (Stürmer, Jud Süss)

--Love of literature and her early poetry

--Criticism of her mother

 

 

DOING: in retracing her experiences and commenting on them, Kluger re-situates Holocaust discourse—reviewing the historically verifiable circumstances, but enabling a different range of response.

 

 

 

 

I. Viktor and Schorschi:

 

Remember Erwin Kowalke?

 

Kluger: “Where there is no grave we are condemned to go on mourning.” (80)

 

Father: Viktor Klüger   umlaut: ü

 

Klugerbelieved for many years that he was gassed at Auschwitz: p.39

 

Public Writing can also change personal history: pp.39-40

 

 

Brother: Georg

 

Schorschi = Austrian nickname for George (Georgie)

 

Deported from Prague to Theresienstadt and sent postcards

 

p. 82

 

Historian uses the example of a transport to Riga

 

83.   butKluger does not share details

 

In his 70th year—“buries” her brother in this way—completing her Antigone duty

 

 

Intersection of History and personal history

 

Historical fact and human truth

 

These are personal memories supplemented and completed by historical research into the transports and chance encounters with others who knew the details

 

.

 

II. Memory and Truth:

 

What do (Holocaust) Monuments, Memorials, and Memorial Museums do?

 

Mass murders of Jews, Roma, Sinti, Poles, the disabled

 

 

 

****Problem of memorializing****:

You are the mayor of a German town who has been given funding for a memorial of some kind.  What do you DO?

 

 

1. Decide on your purpose: Possible purposes

 

---Honor the dead and remember them

 

---Inform the living: Make this information available

 

---Teach: Never Again--those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Ergo, those who can learn from history can prevent repetition??

 

---Inspire humanity in the visitors by showing inhumanity in the proper context

 

---Anything else—other reasons for memorials?

 

 

2. Implement your intentions: How?

 

What design or sequence of exhibits will DO what you hope to achieve?

 

 

Berlin faced these questions after German reunification

 

Peter Eisenman’s design of 2,700 concrete slabs of varying heights: http://z.about.com/d/architecture/1/7/r/j/berlinmemorial.jpg

 

Children playing: http://www.theeuropeans.net/blog/images/Holocaust_Memorial.JPG

 

From above: http://www.sacred-destinations.com/germany/images/berlin/memorial-to-jews/aerial-1332ft.jpg

 

 

 

Think about how you would do this. Or give examples of a well-done monument, memorial, or memorial museum

 

 

Kluger on Museums and Monuments:

pp.63-64

 

***pp. 66. on using the camp sites for museums

 

 

 

 

Theresienstadt as a place where people still live

 

 

III. Kluger’s museum, her monument, her memorial to humanity and human goodness:

 

Doing: The good deed

 

There is one event and one person about which Kluger is absolutely uncritical and utterly appreciative.

 

The perpetrator is an enigma, her motives incomprehensible, and her identity unknown.

 

 

Ruth is 12 and the minimum age is 15

 

 

p. 105-6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfny1Fs8fJQ

 

What is she doing here with this epilogue?

 

“perhaps redeemed” ??