Abstract
Mapping Holocaust Memoirs: Technology, Ethics and Pedagogy
Track: Lightning Talk - Teaching
Authors: Sharon Oster, Diana Sinton, David Smith
When studying first-person, Holocaust survivor accounts, we inevitably encounter spatial questions: perspective, scope, scale. My project explores accounts of the radical contraction of time and space: from the relocation of entire communities to circumscribed ghettos (in days, overnight), to the endless time in tiny, crowded, airless cattle cars (days, weeks), to concentration camp disorientation and reduction of space to the individual body, and within that tortured body's monotonous, repetitive tasks, to the obliteration of time itself. Simultaneously, the Nazi genocide took place over more than a decade, reinventing national borders, occupied zones, and remapping the entire European landscape according to Nazi domination and its death factories. Learning how to map these contradictory spatial dimensions of Holocaust geography, I will discuss how I use interactive GIS mapping tools to enhance, challenge, and be challenged by traditional modes of literary study, to elucidate the ethical dimensions of Holocaust memoirs in the classroom.