Survivors on "Schindler's List": Introduction
Most people today encounter the Holocaust through some kind of mediation: a book, film, class, travel, museum exhibition, or some other work or activity. Within these many forms of engaging the Holocaust, the recollections of Holocaust survivors—offered in written memoirs, live presentations, or filmed interviews—are widely regarded as providing firsthand accounts of wartime experiences of unrivaled directness, memories at their most immediate. However, all of these presentations of survivors' accounts of their past are shaped both by the individual act of memory and by the medium, protocols, forum, and context in which these accounts are created and encountered.
Mediation is inherent in remembering the Holocaust —even for survivors—and understanding how it informs works of Holocaust remembrance is vital to appreciating their value. Indeed, some Holocaust survivors attest to relying on other mediations for an understanding of their own past.
Dorit Whiteman, who had fled her native Austria before the start of the war, recalls that she first became aware of the “real full extent” of the Holocaust in a movie theater in the United States:
Harriet Solz, who had worked in a factory owned by Oskar Schindler during the war, remembers her response to Thomas Keneally's book Schindler's List, when it was published in 1982:
Dorit Whiteman, who had fled her native Austria before the start of the war, recalls that she first became aware of the “real full extent” of the Holocaust in a movie theater in the United States:
Harriet Solz, who had worked in a factory owned by Oskar Schindler during the war, remembers her response to Thomas Keneally's book Schindler's List, when it was published in 1982:
The Visual History Archive
These interviews and the context of their creation provide an opportunity to hear how a considerable number of survivors directly reference the same film within five years of its premiere, in the course of telling their personal histories, all recorded according to the protocols of the same project. This is a remarkable body of material to examine in order to address the larger topic at hand. Examining these interviews both offers insight into the VHA as a cultural artifact in its own right and contributes to a more general understanding of how individuals, caught up in epochal events that have become the subject of extensive public attention, engage this history and its mediation in the course of relating their personal narratives.
The English-language interviews, some of which are examined here, include survivors living in the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia at the time they were recorded. These survivors discuss Schindler's List in one of two places (and sometimes both) in their interviews: either during accounts of the war years (this is especially true of Schindler Jews) or toward the very end of the interview, when, according to VHA protocols, survivors are asked general, “reflective questions” including “questions concerning faith and meaning, dreams, and messages to future generations.”
Context: Schindler's List epiphenomena
The context in which these interviews were conducted is key to understanding them. The VHA can be considered in the trajectory of collecting personal narratives of the Holocaust from the immediate postwar years to the turn of the millennium; the VHA’s creation can also be examined within the range of epiphenomena surrounding Schindler’s List that flourished in the years immediately following its release.
Context: Collecting Holocaust survivor narratives
Context: Collecting Holocaust survivor narratives
Context: Schindler's List epiphenomena
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