Module C ~ Representation and

Text

History

and

Memory

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“Details, details. Fecks, Fecks”.

History can be cold, detached and clinical while memories provide us with a unique example of human endurance and triumph.

„You read, you read. Books, books everywhere.

But do you know how it feels?‟ B.Stanners

“It always begins in blackness until the first light

illuminates a hidden fragment of memory.”

The modern

historian Michel

Foucault has

argued, “…. with its

moments of intensity,

its lapses, its

extended periods of

feverish agitation, its

fainting spell,

memory fails to be

objective…”

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Memory can give:

• Appreciation and insight

• Contextual understanding

• Perspective of personalized experience

• Immediacy – the past is brought to life

• Empathetic connection to other times, places and events

• A humanized version of academic (recorded) history

Memory produces:

• A fuller, more informed understanding of human nature and the impact of events

and personal experience

• Subjectivity and emotional engagement with how people face crisis

• Truth can be perceived through fictionalized accounts of real people/events

• Empathy can become the trigger for reflection, re-evaluation and emotional

understanding

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THE HOLOCAUST

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Tactics: What happened to new

arrivals?

Deception &

Selection

At Auschwitz the trains

pulled into a mock up

of a normal station.

The Jews were helped

off the cattle trucks

by Jews who were

specially selected to

help the Nazis

At some death camps

the Nazis would play

records of classical

music to help calm

down the new arrivals.

At Auschwitz the new

arrivals were calmed

down by a Jewish

orchestra playing

classical music.

All new arrivals went

through a process

known as ‘selection.’

Mothers, children, the

old & sick were sent

straight to the

‘showers’ which were

really the gas

chambers.

The able bodied were

sent to work camp

were they were killed

through a process

known as ‘destruction

through work.’ B.Stanners

"...to remain silent and indifferent is the

greatest sin of all...” Elie Wiesel shown aged 15

„the murder of 6 million Jews must never

be reduced to a statistic.‟ Simon Wiesenthal B.Stanners

Resilience: The endurance of the human spirit

„History is the witness that

testifies to the passing of

time; it illuminates reality,

vitalizes memory, provides

guidance in daily life, and

brings us tidings of antiquity.‟

Cicero B.Stanners

Elie Wiesel,

Holocaust survivor, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize:

„Ask any survivor and he will tell you, he who

has not lived the event will never know it.

„And he who went through it will not reveal it,

not really, not entirely. Between his memory

and his reflection there is a wall and it cannot

be pierced.‟

Baker tells us his mother, „is more consumed by

the past ... She has always been a lone

survivor, an ageing woman longing for a

childhood buried in a distant sepulchre.‟ B.Stanners

Baker‟s methods

„Shadowy figures grope in the dark, forming a sea of human pillars held upright in a wooden cage.‟ Baker re-creates the scene of transportation, filling the gap that cannot easily be filled by hard data.

He has entered the story rather than reporting it through historical means. The language is emotionally evocative rather than factual-evocative. The clinical sterility of evidence has been humanized.

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Memory is

represented for both

parents as a tactile

place, a „site‟ given

the status of a real

thing equated with

factual veracity.

Father traverses the

painful „landscape of

his past‟ while his

mother‟s memories

are described as „the

territory she is

reclaiming from her

past‟. B.Stanners

The act of remembering can be painful as shown

by Baker‟s use of light/dark symbolism

•Baker’s mother recalls, ‘Pitch black. Pitch black’ and visions from a ‘horrible nightmare’. •Dark, hiding in the cupboard it was all dark, while outside we could hear the footsteps, the shots, the screams.’

•‘For my father, the rivers have not thawed, until now, when his words break out from their glacial silence, releasing a torrent whose flow runs backward into his darkest nights.’

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Baker uses an imaginative combination of typical and

atypical non-fiction representation methods has meant…

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Appropriate Related Texts? B.Stanners

There are 350,000 survivors of the

Holocaust alive today...

There are 350,000 experts who just want

to be useful with the remainder of their

lives. Please listen to the words and the

echoes and the ghosts.

Steven Spielberg, Academy Award

acceptance speech B.Stanners

Voices from the Past ~ Who and what is a survivor? someone who lives through affliction;

someone who survives in spite of adversity;

..only the survivor can bear witness,

transmit a spark of the flame,

tell a fragment of the tale,

a reflection of the truth.‟

„Every individual who survived that other world, has a duty to

leave documentation behind so that future generations will

remember and will not forget.‟Tamara Deuel, Holocaust survivor

„The Buchenwald

Boys‟

Holocaust

survivors, from

left: Joe

Szwarcberg,

Henry Salter,

Szaja Chaskiel,

Simon

Michalowicz.

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Remember…. • The HSC Advanced English course is about

thinking conceptually about the IDEAS, insights, perceptions and thoughts that have been triggered by your prescribed and related texts.

• One of the key syllabus aims is to make you think critically about what and how ideas are communicated within varied texts.

• Summarising what the text is about is not what is wanted.

• Concise, informative analysis about the text is needed for it illustrates your knowledge and understanding of the conceptual ideas developed within text.

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ORTs do NOT have to deal with

the Holocaust

Texts should represent in one way or

another:

„the interplay of personal experience,

memory and documented evidence‟

Interpretive response should focus on how

„history and personal history are shaped and

represented‟

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Recapping: How do texts represent the idea of ‘history and memory’ in relation to personal experience and

documented evidence? It can be through …

• Form and medium-prose, film, song lyric, cartoon

• Themes-resilience, bearing witness

• Construction-chronology, POV, time-frame

• Characterisation-range, contrast, flaws

• Language -word choice, techniques, figurative and literal techniques

• Style-mood, imagery, symbolism, linking motifs

and… B.Stanners

Sample Questions “There are no certainties, only representations" How have different representation forms and methods in the texts you have studied been used to demonstrate conflicting perspectives. Reference needs to be made to your prescribed text and TWO related texts of your own choosing. How has your understanding of events, personalities or situations been shaped by their representations in the texts you have studied. Refer to your prescribed text and at least TWO other related texts of your own choosing. ‘History, without memory, is merely a collection of facts, and consequently without real meaning in our world.’ Discuss with reference to your prescribed text and two related texts of your own choosing.

How could you respond to these questions? B.Stanners

Sample Introduction

History is commonly defined as a methodical record of public events, characterised by factual data and archival evidence. It is also typically considered the most objective and dependable way to examine a particular event, personality or situation. Memory alternatively, is defined as a personalised recollection of the past and thereby more fragile and subjective. Memory however can illuminate and emphasise certain aspects of the past in ways that history cannot. Re-visiting one’s memories enables us to re-live experiences, to unveil the past and bring history to life. As historian Mark Baker discovered whilst composing “A Journey through Memory; The Fiftieth Gate”; history and memory merges verifiable proof with personal experience. Wide ranging typical and atypical non-fiction techniques help broaden our perspective and develop a more emotional and empathetic understanding of the truth.

Strengths? Weaknesses? How could it be improved? B.Stanners

Responding requires a…

Thesis Statement:

For Greek logicians this meant

a

“premise or proposition to be

stated and then proved through

logical analysis and

argumentation.”

“The aim or purpose of

argument is to use logic to

create reasoned communication

of ideas,

insights, and experiences so as

to produce a new understanding

of some issue for an audience.”

What is the new understanding

of your topic that you will

provide for your audience? B.Stanners