Media: Film and Television
A broad number of Jewish communal organizations employed film technology for their publicity and a few, like UJA, JDC, and Hadassah, used the technology regularly. Jewish leaders recognized the possibility for story telling in the new medium and embraced the technology.
UJA sponsored an annual film as part of their fundraising campaign, making short films that told the story of survivors in Europe and Israel and that depicted the work of UJA constituent organizations around the world. Because sound was not recorded with the film, these short films often visually represented survivors, but the voice over was narrated by celebrities or UJA leaders. MORE HERE> link to you tube films
By the early 1950s, television became the newest adventure for American Jewish communal organizations looking to communicate the stories of survivors to the American public. On May 27, 1953, Hannah Bloch Kohner became the first Holocaust survivor to be featured on national television when the story of her survival under Nazism and subsequent immigration to America was documented on This is Your Life. Hannah's story was depicted as all other stories on This is Your Life: significant people in her life waited off stage and surprised Hannah as the host, Ralph Edwards, narrated each turn in her journey. For Hannah, Edwards marked her deportation to Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald with memories of her lost relatives and reunions with other other survivors, including her brother who had emigrated to Israel after the war. At the end of the episode, Hannah was given a charm bracelet that marked each stop along her journey and Edwards asked the listening audience to donate to the Joint Distribution Committee.
On the show, Hannah's story was told with a happy ending - her marriage and her immigration to America. Edwards even tells her that, "she looks American." The story is thus shaped to be one that celebrates the American dream. In the years since, her story has served as inspiration for Holocaust education, but the nature of Holocaust testimony has changed so dramatically since 1953, that the manufactured presentation XXX. Hannah's story was featured on a 2010 episode of This American Life, "Oh You Shouldn't Have," and the reporter questions the impulse to tell a Holocaust story through the This is Your Life model and in particular calls into question the "Holocaust Charm Bracelet."
While the nature of telling Holocaust survivor stories has changed and perceptions of media intervention in telling those stories has become refined, it is ever more important to recognize that these early expressions of Holocaust narratives were not ....
UJA sponsored an annual film as part of their fundraising campaign, making short films that told the story of survivors in Europe and Israel and that depicted the work of UJA constituent organizations around the world. Because sound was not recorded with the film, these short films often visually represented survivors, but the voice over was narrated by celebrities or UJA leaders. MORE HERE> link to you tube films
By the early 1950s, television became the newest adventure for American Jewish communal organizations looking to communicate the stories of survivors to the American public. On May 27, 1953, Hannah Bloch Kohner became the first Holocaust survivor to be featured on national television when the story of her survival under Nazism and subsequent immigration to America was documented on This is Your Life. Hannah's story was depicted as all other stories on This is Your Life: significant people in her life waited off stage and surprised Hannah as the host, Ralph Edwards, narrated each turn in her journey. For Hannah, Edwards marked her deportation to Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, and Buchenwald with memories of her lost relatives and reunions with other other survivors, including her brother who had emigrated to Israel after the war. At the end of the episode, Hannah was given a charm bracelet that marked each stop along her journey and Edwards asked the listening audience to donate to the Joint Distribution Committee.
On the show, Hannah's story was told with a happy ending - her marriage and her immigration to America. Edwards even tells her that, "she looks American." The story is thus shaped to be one that celebrates the American dream. In the years since, her story has served as inspiration for Holocaust education, but the nature of Holocaust testimony has changed so dramatically since 1953, that the manufactured presentation XXX. Hannah's story was featured on a 2010 episode of This American Life, "Oh You Shouldn't Have," and the reporter questions the impulse to tell a Holocaust story through the This is Your Life model and in particular calls into question the "Holocaust Charm Bracelet."
While the nature of telling Holocaust survivor stories has changed and perceptions of media intervention in telling those stories has become refined, it is ever more important to recognize that these early expressions of Holocaust narratives were not ....
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