Prism: Understanding Non-Sites of Memory

Abstract

T he idyllic river landscape that opens Claude Lanzmann's Shoah soon becomes scenes in which Szymon Srebrnik guides the filmmakers through the forest in order to finally stand before an empty clearing and say, "Es ist schwer zu erkennen, aber es war hier." [It is difficult to recognize, but it was here.p "Here" is Chełmno/Kulmhof, one of the many sites of genocidal massacres perpetrated be tween Berlin and M oscow that now contain the remains o f the victims.3 Forest clearings, clumps o f trees, grassy 1 This p a p e r is a c co m p a n ie d by e ig h t d ip ty c h s, w h ic h ca n be found in th e la s t 9 p a g e s o f th e in sert, p rep ared fo r th e p u rp o se s o f th is p u b lication by Ja so n F ra n c isco , an a rtist, e s s a y is t , and p h o to g rap h er. Fran cisco 's d ip ty c h s ra ise in visual la n g u a g e q u e s tio n s t h a t th e pres e n t a rticle s e t s fo rw a rd : th e c o n te m p o ra ry m e a n in g o f c o n te ste d , fo rg o tte n m e m o ry s ite s , th e u sa g e o f th e s ite s , ou r p re s e n c e w ith in t h e m , th e h a b ita b le and th e in h ab itab le, th e o rd in ary and th e in conc e iv a b le , th e c o n flic ts o f p a s t and p re s e n t, life and d e a th , th e visible and th e invisible. 2 Shoah, C h a p ter 4, 00:0 7:0 5. 3 Follow in g th e re a so n in g o f T im o th y S n y d e r in Bloodlands: Europe betw een H itler an d Stalin (N ew York: B asic B o o k s, 2010), I p ro p o se exp an d in g th e d isc u ssio n o f "n o n-p la c e s o f m e m o ry " to re fe r n ot only to H o lo c a u st s ite s b u t a lso to th e s ite s o f o th e r g e n o c id e s or o f o th e r fo rm s o f m a s s v io le n c e , and to s ite s re la te d to t h e s e e v e n ts (includ-Roma Sendyka is a director o f the Research C en te r for M em ory C ultures, te a c h e s a t th e C en ter for A n th rop olo gy o f Literature and Cultural S tu d ie s a t th e P olish S tu d ie s D ep artm en t, Jagiellonian University. S h e w as aw ard ed in the P attern s Program (Erste Stiftu n g, V ienna, 20 10-12) for th e p ro je ct "(In)visible Loss. The H o lo cau st and th e Everyday Visual Experience in C on tem po rary Poland and Central Europe" S h e recently publish ed : Prism-Understanding N on-Sites o f Mem ory

Figure 1 from: Muchowski J (2021) Vernacular historical practices on Holocaust non-sites of memory in Poland. International Journal of Heritage, Memory and Conflict 1: 37-44. https://doi.org/10.3897/hmc.1.63351

“…Our research is based on the assumption that these sites are important components of local memory cultures: unburied bodies affect activities of people living in the area and trigger memory practices. We describe them as non-sites of memory following Claude Lanzmann's refiguration of Pierre Nora's term (Lanzmann 1990;Sendyka 2015Sendyka , 2016Sendyka , 2017a. The field work on non-sites of memory referring to genocidal violence in the 1930's and 40's was conducted in various locations in Poland in 2016-2018.…”

The Environmental History of the Holocaust

“…43 Roma Sendyka has also published on the relationships between non-sites of memory/amnesia, the landscape and nature. 44 In the last ten years, Ewa Domańska has stimulated further research by teaching courses on "ecocides and genocides," presenting lectures on environmental aspects of the human dead body and remains, and encouraging PhD researchers and early career scholars to explore relations between ecology, ecowitnessing and post-genocidal spaces. 45 In 2017, the peer-reviewed journal Teksty Drugie (Second Texts) published a special thematic issue titled "Historia środowiskowa Zagłady" (Environmental history of the Holocaust).…”

Testimoniality: A lexicon of witnesses of Holocaust non-sites of memory in Poland

“…And it is precisely testimoniality, świadeczność -the disposition to bear witness and to be a witness -that we would like to discuss in the context of unmemorialised sites of violence, so common in Polish and Eastern European landscape, related to the Holocaust, Romani genocide and ethnic conflicts during World War II. Roma Sendyka (2015Sendyka ( , 2016 dubbed these abandoned post-violence localisations "non-sites of memory", expanding the term used by Claude Lanzmann in the context of post-camp and post-ghetto sites. As Sendyka argues, the category of "non-site of memory" proves to be especially useful in case of localisations that witnessed dispersed violence in Eastern-Central Europe, such as "Holocaust by bullets" and third phase of the Holocaust.…”