20 February 10am SAST
This talk examines how the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors navigate private memory within families and sites of collective remembrance. It presents findings from 25 museum case studies on the representation of these descendants in exhibitions, exploring the impact of extending narratives to include the aftermath across generations. The research also includes results from inviting descendants to reflect on archival testimonies of their survivor family members. The study suggests the need to reconceptualise what the the flow of memory ‘from generation to generation’ might look like after such a catastrophe.
Mirah Langer was a teacher and journalist in Johannesburg for many years before embarking on her new research project. This research is part of a doctoral study at the University of Vienna in Austria. It has been supported by the Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Studienwerk, OeAD – Austria’s Agency for Education and Internationalisation and theEuropean Holocaust Research Infrastructure.