Spaces of Suffering

Session Submission Type: Panel Session

Abstract

These three papers each address a different Holocaust "space." They focus on these sites as essential to understanding victim experiences. In examining "wandering routes" and the latrines of Auschwitz, two of these papers demonstrate the ways that Nazi persecution led to spatial inversions where familiar spaces took on new meaning and provided places of agency. The third paper on early death marches in Poland focuses attention on how spaces of suffering could also become mobile. All three show how spaces during the Holocaust did not remain static and could not be taken for granted.

Sub Unit

• Holocaust Studies

Chair

• Laura Auketayeva, The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation

Individual Presentations

• Mapping Wandering Routes: Exile and Nomadism Among Polish-Jewish Refugees During World War II - Naama Seri Levi, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

• Public Hygiene and the Private Grotesque: Exploring the Toilet as a Site of Spatial and Sensory Inquiry in Auschwitz-Birkenau - Tiarra Maznick, UMass Amherst

• Signum Temporis. Death marches in occupied Poland in 1939-1940 - Witold Medykowski, Author/Independent Scholar

Zoom Host

• Zoom Host 11