The Shoah in Film: A Valuable Contribution to the Historiography of the Holocaust and a Glimpse into the Shuttered Voices of the Shoah

Abstract

Abstract

 Almost all the voices of the six million Jewish men, women, and children who perished in the Shoah were shuttered in the massacres of the Einsatzgruppen and inside the gas chambers (and vans) of the six German extermination camps (Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka II, Bełżec, Sobibór, Chełmno, and Majdanek). Some of the victims’ accounts and chronicles have survived, and these testimonies remain today a fraction of the millions of voices that were lost forever. In this paper, I argue that the (reconstructed and often fictionalized) voices that can be found in Holocaust feature films represent a homage to the victims, and that these films (independently of their commercial success or their minor historical errors) bring the victims’ suffering, antisemitism, the ghettos, the transports, the massacres, the Vernichtungslager (VL) and the Konzentrationslager (KZ) to the attention of the vast public, and represent a glimpse into the shuttered voices of the Shoah. I also argue that, approached with caution, Holocaust films (antisemitic German propaganda films, post-war documentaries and post-war feature films) can be a valuable contribution to the historiography of the Shoah.

Keywords

 Shoah, Holocaust, historiography, antisemitism, Holocaust films, Jewish victims