Preliminary Programme

Tue 26 February
    14.15
    16.30

Wed 27 February
    8.30
    10.45
    14.15
    16.30

Thu 28 February
    8.30
    10.45
    14.15
    16.30

Fri 29 February
    8.30
    10.45
    14.15
    16.30

Sat 1 March
    8.30
    10.45
    14.15
    16.30

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Tuesday 26 February 2008 16.30
F-2 ORA21 Mauthausen in Transnational Memories and Narrations
Sala Leite de Vasconcelos
Network: Oral History Chair: Gerhard Botz
Organizers: - Discussants: -
Piotr Filipkowski : Polish Mauthausen Narratives across Time and Context
There were 164 interviews conducted within Mauthausen Survivors Documentation Project in Poland in years 2002-3. It turned out that many survivors narrated their (camp) story for the first time then - at least in such a 'full' form: as recorded biographical life story interview. Quite many, however, used to share ... (Show more)
There were 164 interviews conducted within Mauthausen Survivors Documentation Project in Poland in years 2002-3. It turned out that many survivors narrated their (camp) story for the first time then - at least in such a 'full' form: as recorded biographical life story interview. Quite many, however, used to share and document their camp experiences some (long) time ago. Only few in a form of written text, some others - who are also Auschwitz survivors - gave their 'accounts' for the Auschwitz Musem (which has been collecting them for few decades already).

These various narratives of the same persons and relating to the same (?) past experiences, but produced in different contexts, time, circumstances.. are an empirical starting point for my analysis. They rise some important questions, which could be roughly divided into two sets of problems:
First - how different procedures of reaseach, esp. different ways of 'collecting data' influence survivors' narratives on their past experience, their form and content. Is there anything specific in MSDP interviews - often the last conducted with the survivors.
Second - If and how the autobiographical narrative of one person (survivor) is changing over time and context. Which elements are fixed and repeated, which are more context-dependent. More specific problem here: if and how the shift of 1989/90 re-structered the narratives.

I will try to shed some light on these problems, referring to Polish Mauthausen narratives and going beyond their factual layer. (Show less)

Regina Fritz : Expressions of Euphemism in Narratives of Hungarian Holocaust Survivors
The group of the Hungarian Jews was beside the polish one the second biggest national Jewish group in the concentration camp Mauthausen. Nevertheless the research of their fate began late.
In general, while the fighters of resistance were honored in Hungary as freedom fighters, the Jewish victims were suppressed. Whereas ... (Show more)
The group of the Hungarian Jews was beside the polish one the second biggest national Jewish group in the concentration camp Mauthausen. Nevertheless the research of their fate began late.
In general, while the fighters of resistance were honored in Hungary as freedom fighters, the Jewish victims were suppressed. Whereas the Jewish community was responsible for drawing the most attention to the Holocaust, the Hungarian society was partially characterised by a new wave on Anti-Semitism which was built on the reproach of “Jewish revenge”. On the other hand, analysing the first years after the war it becomes clear that between 1945 and 1948 the official state level was at first characterized with a certain readiness to broach the issues of the Holocaust but as the communist regime became more radical, even using the word "Jew" was taboo and only circumscribed as “persecuted by fascism/national socialism” (fasizmus/nemzeti szocializmus üldözöttei).
By and large the collective memory of the Holocaust was suppressed for a long time and remains even now almost unacknowledged in the Hungarian collective memory.
Within the framework of the Mauthausen Survivors Documentations Project (MSDP) 57 interviews were made with Hungarian survivors of Mauthausen. For many of them it was the first time that they could speak in a general public about their experiences. In my lecture I would like to analyse these interviews and ask how Hungarian survivors experienced the return to Hungary after the liberation. Did they meet with disapproval in the Hungarian society or could they integrate themselves without any problems? How could they speak about their experiences after the commusist came into power? Did they suit their individual memories to the state-controlled “collective” memory? What kind of narratives, pattern of thoughts had they to take over, in order to find some kind of appreciation in the general Hungarian non-jewish population? Actually, did they speak in different context in different ways? How could they handle the fact that a big part of the Hungarian society made the persecution of the Jews possible, either as persecutors or eyewitnesses? Can we observe here differences between survivors who stayed in Hungary and those who emigrated? What kind of strategies did they develop to live with their experiences and memories? Did they keep one Jewish identity after World War II, became it even stronger facing the events or did they deny it? How did their attitude change after the political turn in 1989?
Overall I would like to compare protokolls made in the second half of the 1940s with Hungarian survivors of different concentration camps (protocolls of DEGOB) with interviews of the MSDP. For pointing out the questions outlined above I would like to try a comparison with MSDP-interviews made with Austrian survivors, where the confrontation with the past could proceed in a persisent democratic country. (Show less)

Alexander Prenninger : The Verbalization of Experiences in Context Specific Narratives
will follow, confer session proposal by Prof. Gerhard Botz (Vienna)

Irina Scherbakowa : The Memories’ hard labor
Lacunae and distortions in the remembrances of former soviet Mauthausen-prisoners
Lacunae and distortions in the remembrances of former soviet Mauthausen-prisoners.
This paper is based on more than 200 interviews taken by the members of the Oral History department of the “Memorial” society in the framework of the “Mauthausen Survivors Documentation Project”

Karin Stoegner : Life Story Interviews and the „Truth of Memory” in the Perspective of Walter Benjamin
Karin Stoegner:
Life Story Interviews and the „Truth of Memory” in the Perspective of Walter Benjamin.

The interaction between an interviewee and an interviewer in a narrative life story interview is a relevant topic in Oral History as well as in empirical social sciences in general. This relationship seems to be ... (Show more)
Karin Stoegner:
Life Story Interviews and the „Truth of Memory” in the Perspective of Walter Benjamin.

The interaction between an interviewee and an interviewer in a narrative life story interview is a relevant topic in Oral History as well as in empirical social sciences in general. This relationship seems to be central especially with regard to the validity of memories produced in interviews as it affects in various ways the narrative and memory alike. The interview situation has immediate influence onto what is being remembered at all, which memories are being narrated and which are not.
Following such general considerations concerning the various problems of life story interviews I would like to shed light upon some questions raised by Walter Benjamin’s philosophy of history, e.g. how the past becomes a “historic item”. According to Walter Benjamin the genesis of history is to be seen as a constant process which is eminently shaped by the political, societal, and economic constellations not of the past in question, but of current society. This means that the historic fact is a constantly remembering/remembered actualisation from the perspective of the present. Thus, memory itself is an amalgamation of the past and the present, the remembered item itself being an expression of the past in the present.
What this actually means for Oral History and the dealing with memory and commemoration, as well as how researchers and interviewers have to react accordingly, these questions I will discuss on the basis of some selected life story interviews conducted in the framework of the Mauthausen Survivors Documentation Project. (Show less)



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