Mass Culture/Mass Media/Mass Death: Teaching Film, Television, and the Holocaust

Judging 'Privileged' Jews

“…While a considerable critical literature has been preoccupied with the (un)representability of the Holocaust experience, little explicit attention has been given to the place of moral judgment in representations of Jews, particularly those holding "privileged" positions. 96 Friedländer points out that the events of the Holocaust are often perceived as "so extreme and so unusual that they are considered events at the limits, posing unique problems of interpretation and representation." 97 He addresses the necessity of both maintaining the memory of the past through representation and avoiding its distortion in his introduction to the seminal collection, Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the "Final Solution" (1992).…”

“…95 Levi later notes that he is "more particularly interested in the Jewish prominents, because while the others are automatically invested with offi ces as they enter the camp in virtue of their natural supremacy, the Jews have to plot and struggle hard to gain them." 96 Due to their low position in the Nazis' racial hierarchy, Jewish Kapos held their life-prolonging "privileged" positions much more tentatively. Although Levi acknowledges this, his judgments are foreshadowed by his use of words such as "plot," "betrayal," "hateful," "cruel," and "tyrannical."…”

“…While inevitably introducing an explicit subjectivity into their memoirs, historians still invariably reinforce their conviction that historiography is concerned with reconstructing "historical truth." 96 Nonetheless, although fi rst-person narratives by historians generally refl ect the form and tone of historical writing and attempt to gain the reader's confi dence through their historical perspective, life writing arguably allows more opportunities for judgments to be made without the author's usual scholarly scrupulousness. Hilberg is no exception to this.…”

“…95 Reiterating the shame induced by the admirable qualities of the deportees completely ignorant of their fate, Glazar describes the determination of the special squad that "this couldn't go on, that something had to happen." 96 He then makes reference to the Sonderkommando's forthcoming armed revolt, which marks the end of the scene. Lanz mann's editing of this testimony-the last words Glazar speaks in the fi lm-suggests that Treblinka's "privileged" Jews had not been corrupted as they feared, but it does imply a judgment of their desire (in Glazar's words) "to survive until the rebellion" as the height of dignity.…”

“…Barry Langford argues that the Sonderkommandos "fi gure in Holocaust fi lms out of all proportion to their actual numbers or (arguably) historical signifi cance." 96 However, the appearances of crematorium workers in fi ction fi lms often reveal disparate ideological agendas and seldom dwell on the ethical dilemmas they faced. In the heavily politicized fi lm Exodus (1960), experiences in an Auschwitz Sonderkommando form the traumatic background of an Irgun fi ghter in Palestine.…”