Narratives of judgement: representations of 'privileged' Jews in Holocaust documentaries

Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi’s highly influential essay, “The Grey Zone”, explores the taboo issue of “privileged” Jews, those prisoners who were forced to cooperate with their Nazi captors in order to prolong their lives or the lives of their families. Levi argues that moral evaluations of privileged Jews should be suspended; however, judgements of these liminal figures have permeated representations of victims’ experiences. Taking Levi’s reflections on the “grey zone” as a point of departure, I analyse the ways in which a number of Holocaust documentary narratives construct problematic judgements of privileged Jews; nonetheless, it will be shown that some films engage with the issue in a nuanced manner. While Levi singles out the medium of film as particularly predisposed to simplistic judgements, I argue that documentary film has considerable potential to offer a complex representation of the extreme ethical dilemmas that privileged Jews faced.

The interior of our memories: a history of Melbourne's Jewish holocaust centre

The Interior of Our Memories describes the development of the Centre within global Holocaust memorial activity, both during the Holocaust and in the following decades when many survivors made new lives for themselves in Melbourne. The story begins, not in March 1984 when it first opened its doors, but during the Holocaust, when survivors began gathering documents. The book provides a history of the Centre’s early days and examines its transformation from a collection of photos, documents and material objects into the modern, educationally focused organisation it is today. The book situates the Jewish Holocaust Centre within a broader context, exploring issues of memory, testimony, the role of the museum within contemporary society, and what we can learn from one of the worst tragedies in human history.

Affect and the politics of testimony in Holocaust museums

In 2010, the Jewish Holocaust Centre (JHC) in Melbourne unveiled its new permanent exhibition, replacing one that had remained, mostly unchanged, for the past twenty years since a major redevelopment in 1990. The former exhibition had received many plaudits from visitors and reviewers for its homespun, intimate aesthetics and display techniques, largely based on photographs (Light, 2002). Central to the JHC’s role as a site of mourning and education, the exhibition included the use of personal testimony from Melbourne’s Holocaust survivors, both in the exhibition displays and through the survivors who ran the museum and shared their stories with individuals and groups. A continuing anxiety over the thirty-year history of the JHC has been the passing of Holocaust survivors. These survivor guides were central to the discourse of a “living museum,” seen as giving the organization its uniqueness compared to other Holocaust institutions as well as other museums generally. Oral survivor testimony was perceived as a key aspect of the museum’s pedagogic potential: The affective encounter with survivors telling their stories while the visitor was viewing the exhibition was identified as having a transformative function, particularly for school-age students who comprised the majority of the visitors. The exhibition redevelopment in 2010 was, in part, a manifestation of that anxiety, with the urgency to incorporate survivor video-testimony increasing as the survivors aged and their memories faded. However, replacing a much-loved exhibition was fraught with difficulties, as the survivors were still very much part of the museum decision-making process. As the JHC had gradually moved from a survivor-volunteer based place of mourning to a professionally run museum with paid employees, there was a need to preserve the voices of the survivors who had been guides at the museum since its opening. Approaching a time when the survivors are not bodily present to share their stories, how might their testimonies still have transformative potential and inform interpretive techniques?

On an ordinary suburban street: a brief history of Melbourne's Jewish Holocaust Centre

The Jewish Holocaust Centre (JHC) in Melbourne Australia, set well away from the sites of European atrocity, became one of the first permanent museums dedicated to the Holocaust in the Jewish Diaspora when it opened in March 1984. It was the response to the imminent passing of the survivor generation. You can enter this past from the present through an ordinary, nondescript door, opening from a suburban street. You walk up a short flight of carpeted stairs, as you might in your own house, but there waiting for you is something other than the faces of your children or parents. (Harry Redner).Upstairs in Leo Fink House, the original location for Melbourne's first permanent Holocaust exhibition, where thousands of school students now listen each year to the testimonies of Melbourne's dwindling number of Holocaust survivors, an unremarkable white door shows the original entrance. Before the changes to the location of the exhibition, and the building of the Hadasa and Szymon Rosenbaum Research Centre, the first visitors to the museum would have entered Leo Fink House from the street through Redner's 'nondescript door', past a brass plaque with words in English, Yiddish and Hebrew, and would have climbed the stairs to enter through a white door to view the intimate exhibition.These traces of the former configuration of the JHC reveal changes to the institution as it responded to different priorities, opportunities and a growth in visitor numbers during its 30-year history. The concept of biography helps us think through these changes, but also points to a longer historical focus.

You leaving me alone? The persistence of ethics during the Holocaust

Many Holocaust scholars subscribe to the theory that under the unimaginable stress of Holocaust persecution Jewish victims found that, in extremis, conventional morality did not apply. On the basis of an analysis of a sample of videotestimonies held in the Jewish Holocaust Museum and Research Centre in Melbourne, Australia (hereafter the JHMRC), this article argues that such assumptions require revision. Despite observing numerous instances of unconscionable behaviour, in these videotestimonies survivors provide many examples of their own ethical practices and those of others.

Real footballers don`t eat quiche: old narratives in new times

In this article, the authors examine the way that sport acts as a contradictory and complex medium for masculinity making. The analysis illustrates the way that many discourses now unite in a cybernetic mix that offers both new opportunities and presents complex challenges for educators, coaches, and administrators. The method used combines a number of strategies and narratives pitched at the local, national, and international levels. The analysis is grounded in the game of football, although it is argued that the issues raised translate to other settings. At the same time, the authors demonstrate that large-scale, macro level analyses miss an important force working within the dynamics of masculinity making and sport, namely, peer group power. The analysis concludes with insights from a junior coach who has consciously "worked" the peer group dynamics to foster a strong sense of personal and group responsibility.

Conversion stories as shifting narratives of organizational change

This paper is concerned with how employees talk about their experiences of organizational change and focuses specifically on the construction of conversion stories. These are particularly positive narratives that consider change as a turning point in which individuals depart from an old way of life pre-change to embrace a post-change organization. In this study, employees seek conversion into management groups and report the values and philosophies of management in their narratives, thus highlighting the benefits of change while suppressing any negative aspects. This paper draws attention to the dramatic nature of the conversion story and explores the sharp distinction between the reporting of experiences prior to and after change. We also investigate the relationship between constructing conversion stories and gaining personal and career advancement at work and suggest that beneath the positive exterior of the conversion narratives lies a theme of silence, which may be related to career advancement. Our findings suggest that such stories of silence complicate the conversion story as an example of positive organizational change and discuss implications for both the theory and practice of narrative change research.