Telling, Describing and Representing Extermination The Auschwitz Sonderkommando, their Testimony and their Legacy

Programm

12 April 2018    Venue: Centre Marc Bloch Friedrichstraße 191, 10117 Berlin, Conference Room Germaine Tillion     9:00     Catherine Goussef (Director of the CMB) Welcoming words   9:10-9:30                    Aurélia Kalisky (CMB/ZfL) and Dominic Williams (University of Leeds): Introduction    9:30-10:15                  Gideon Greif (Foundation for Holocaust Education Projects Miami): The Sonderkommando Uprising: New Aspects and New Elements      10:15-11:15                Panel 1: The Histories of the Sonderkommando: New Discoveries, New Approaches    Igor Bartosik (Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum): New Perspectives from SS Documents Tom Lawson (Northumbria University at Newcastle): The Sonderkommando and Cultural History   11:15-11:30    Break   11:30-12:30                Panel 2: Microhistories of the Sonderkommando   Bart Nauta (Arq Center of Excellence in War, Persecution and Violence, Amsterdam): A Microhistory of Dutch Men in the Sonderkommando and the Waffen-SS at the Crematoria of Auschwitz   Andreas Kilian (Independent Scholar): Individual and Member of the Resistance in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommando: Marcel Nadjary in the Testimony of his Contemporaries     12:30-13:30    Buffet Lunch    13:30-14 :30  Panel 3: Juridical Testimony from the Sonderkommando: Morality, History, Agency    Andrea Rudorff (Edition Judenverfolgung des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte München-Berlin): Early Testimony from Feinsilber, Dragon and Tauber. Moral Dimensions Peter Davies (University of Edinburgh): What Can We Learn from Trial Testimony? Filip Müller’s Sonderkommando Testimony to the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial 14:30-14:45    Break 14:45-16:15  Panel 4: Responding to the Sonderkommando’s Writings: The Manuscripts as Literary and Philosophical Texts    Orietta Ombrosi (Sapienza University of Rome): Silence of the witnesses. For a Philosophy of Testimony Avichai Zur (Jerusalem University/Potsdam University): Zalmen Gradowski’s Diary: A Literary-Theological Analysis Philippe Mesnard (Université Blaise Pascal Clermont Ferrand 2): Reading the Sonderkommando: Writing beyond Oneself 16:15-16:45    Break 16:45-18:15                Panel 5: Questioning Paradigms: Rethinking the Sonderkommando     Michal Aharony (Ben Gurion University of the Negev): Resisting Dehumanization in Auschwitz – the Case of the Sonderkommando Dawn Skorczewski (Brandeis University): Sonderkommando Testimonies in the Intersubjective Field  Florine Marmigère (Université de Strasbourg): From a Post-war Memorialization to a Later Memorability: the Rehabilitative Turning Point of the 1990s 18:15-18:30    Break 18:30-19:45                           Roundtable 1: Editing the Sonderkommando and Transnational Logics of Reception   Anchor: Dominic Williams, with Philippe Mesnard (Clermont Ferrand University), Pavel Polian, Zsombor Hunyadi (University of Jerusalem), Avichai Zur (Potsdam/University of Jerusalem)   19:45   Conference Dinner       13. April 2018   Venue: Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Schützenstr. 18, 10117 Berlin, „Trajekte“ Conference Room     9:00-10:30                  Panel 6: Reading Traces. Materialities of Things Past     Noah Benninga (University of Jerusalem): Material Cultures of Auschwitz Marta Zawodna-Stephan (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań): Scrolls hidden under the ashes. Thoughts about the relationship between material witnesses Pavel Polian (Russian Academy of Sciences/Freiburg University) and Alexander Nikityaev: To Read the Unreadable: Techniques of Multi-Spectral Imaging and Manuscripts of Jewish Sonderkommando of Auschwitz-Birkenau     10:30-10:45    Break   10:45-12:00                           Roundtable 2: Translating Zalmen Gradowski and the authors of the Sonderkommando.   Anchor: Aurelia Kalisky (also reading some remarks of Batia Baum and Avichai Zur) with Aleksandra Polian, Almut Seiffert, Miriam Trinh, Zsombor Hunyadi   12:00-14:00    Lunch    14:00-15:30                Panel 7: Representing Extermination    David Dickson (University of Portsmouth): The Fictional Representation of the Sonderkommando Beyond the Third Wave of Holocaust Commemoration Nicholas Chare (University of Montreal): The Gendered Aestheticization of David Olère         Samantha Mitschke (Independent Scholar) Do we weep with them? Empathy and the Sonderkommando onstage   15:30-15:45    Break   15:45-17:15                Panel 8: Son of Saul   Catalina Botez (University of Konstanz) Collateral Perpetration, Agency, and Suspended Ethics in Son of Saul (2015) and Jud Süss. Film ohne Gewissen (2010) Isabel Wollaston (University of Birmingham): ‘Half-victim, half-hangman’? Representing the Auschwitz Sonderkommando in The Grey Zone (Tim Blake Nelson, 2001) and Son of Saul (László Nemes, 2015) Jeff Wallen (Hampshire College): Facing the Sonderkommando: Son of Saul and the Dynamics of Witnessing   17:15-18:15    Break with a snack     18:15-21:30    Screening of Son of Saul of Laszlo Nemes (2016) followed by its discussion with Peter Geimer and Clara Royer (co-scriptwriter of Son of Saul)