Mediated Evil: Reenacting the Holocaust for a Global Audience Steven Alan Carr, PhD Associate Professor of Communication U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Postdoctoral Fellow

Some Basic Questions Why should we address this catastrophe? What historical knowledge must we possess? How is this knowledge mediated? How is the Holocaust becoming globalized? What is a “media literacy” approach to the Holocaust, and how is it useful?

Figure No. 1 Photo postcard of lynching of five African American males - Nease Gillespie, John Gillespie, “Jack” Dillingham, Henry Lee, and George Irwin - with onlookers 6 Aug 1906 Salisbury NC withoutsanctuary.org

Figure No. 2 Photos of a woman beaten during a violent deportation, from an personal photo album kept by a German police officer Szydlowiec, Poland 1942 yadvashem.org

Holocaust History Topic Areas 1933–1939 –Dictatorship under the Third Reich –Early Stages of Persecution –The First Concentration Camps POST 1945 –Postwar Trials –Displaced Persons Camps and Emigration 1939–1945 –World War II in Europe –Murder of the Disabled (“Euthanasia” Program) –Persecution and Murder of Jews –Ghettos –Mobile Killing Squads (Einsatzgruppen) –Expansion of the Concentration Camp System –Killing Centers –Additional Victims of Nazi Persecution –Resistance –Rescue –United States/World Response –Death Marches –Liberation

Figure No. 3 Alan Schechner, Self-Portrait at Buchenwald- -It’s the Real Thing (1993)

Terezin: A Documentary Film of the Jewish Resettlement (1944)

Night and Fog (1955)

Basic Questions When Taking a Media Literacy Approach Narrative: What Is the Story? Who Tells It? How Is It Told? Genre: What Kind of Story Is It? Camerawork: What Appears in the Frame? How Is the Action Staged? How Does It Appear? Editing: How Do Shots Begin and End? What Is Their Relation to One Another? Sound: What Do We Hear? How Do We Hear It?

A Media Literacy Approach Complicate complex representations Consider how an image is shown, not just what is shown Make distinctions between different kinds of visuals Consider context and audience