Violence and Sacrifice

IN THE COURSE OF the last decades, the longstanding literary debate on the “representation and memorialization of the Shoah” has been replaced by reflection on “the ways of representation and its prerequisites and consequences.” Yet the question, posed by Heiner Müller in May 1987, “[h]ow can we welcome beauty when the retina wears the traces of fingernail scratches on the walls of gas chambers: bodies of men, women, and children stacked on top of each other?” has not lost any of its relevance today, as it is this question that forces art to be self-reflective after Auschwitz.

An understanding of the structuring and stabilizing role of media in the creation of collective memory lies at the heart of this ongoing selfreflection. This is the understanding that, as James Edward Young has written, “what is remembered of the Holocaust depends on how it is remembered, and [that] how events are remembered depends in turn on the texts now giving them form.” Every single “present” creates its own past in the form of a construction of remembrance and memory, in which the medium of representation (historiography, literature, film, memorials, and remembrance days) with its specific narratives assumes the role of co-author.