Remembrance and the visual history of National Socialism and the Holocaust are largely shaped by film documents. But while these film documents are vital for collective memories they are also records or case structures of specific events and therefore resonate in sometimes local, sometimes transnational remembrance communities (Erll, 2011) or "Erinnerungsgemeinschaften" (Burke, 1991). Additionally, a lot of the circulating material was filmed by the perpetrators but has been appropriated and transformed from trophy to seemingly neutral evidence (Ebbrecht-Hartmann, 2016), and has been subject to various kinds of appropriation (Schmidt, 2020). Our panel is revolving around these topics and specifically the change of cinematic memory attributed to these film materials throughout the post war decades by varying communities and within opposing memories (Diner, 2007).

By introducing the transnational project "(Con)sequential Images – An archaeology of iconic film footage from the Nazi era" (https://filmikonen.projekte-filmuni.de/) our panel contributes to the discussion about communities and change. Focusing on iconic perpetrator footage and its uses in documentary and art films, specifically in the context of Holocaust remembrance and the formation of collective imageries in general, the project deals with the importance of these materials for the formation of local remembrance communities. "(Con)sequential Images" is a DFG funded, collaborative long-term project (2021-2029) between the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Film University Babelsberg.

Our panel examines the challenges and limitations digital media has for the analysis of remembrance formation in the context of National Socialism and the Holocaust and the ways how specifically films affect and shape memories of communities. We will also discuss some of the motivations and ethical principles that have guided us in the "(Con)sequential Images – An archaeology of iconic film footage from the Nazi era" project to work specifically community oriented as a new approach to explore visual heritage. By presenting four exemplary case studies from our project research, the panel aims at illustrating our project work that self-evidently largely deals with conflict, violence and memory in the light of community and change.

Fabian Schmidt

The Westerbork film in the context of local and transnational remembrance communities

In 1944 the camp commander SS-Obersturmführer Albert Konrad Gemmeker commissioned the production of a 16mm film in order to document the successful deportation of Dutch and German Jews in the today infamous transit camp in the Netherlands. After the war, some of the scenes, specifically the passage with the leaving deportation train, became iconic images of the Holocaust. They are used as illustrations in many documentaries and art films about the genocide. However, the actual event of the deportation on May 19th, 1944, recorded on the Westerbork film, suddenly gained new importance, when in 1994 the Dutch journalist Aad Wagenaar identified the most prominent person visible in the film as of Sinti (and not Jewish) decent. For the Sinti and Roma community, this was a crucial discovery that suddenly included them and their ancestors in the iconic imagery of the Holocaust. The tension these films are subjected to, being records of actual events on the one hand and generalising icons of the Holocaust on the other at the same time, becomes tangible by looking at the different remembrance communities or Erinnerungsgemeinschaften that use these images as identity forming assets. So called perpetrator footage, such as the Westerbork film which was produced by the SS, developed in these processes from anti-Semitic trophies to seemingly neutral documents and symbols or icons of the Holocaust. This has recently raised critical questions about the perpetrator gaze inscribed in these images, but this process can also be understood as a successful appropriation of a self-confident remembrance culture. By focusing on specific remembrance communities, the paper tries to uncover change and durability within the formation of remembrances of violent pasts such as the Holocaust and the significance of archive films for this process.

Aleksandra Miljković

Eva Braun films - home movies as secret public spheres

Today, the private films of Hitler's financée Eva Braun are part of the iconic imagery of National Socialism. They are frequently quoted and serve as decadent mountain idyll backdrop for the NS eilte. Since the beginning of their use in the late 1940s, they are contrasted, sometimes in graphic edits/collages, to horrific images from the camps and from the destructions of WW2. The Eva Braun films are usually presented as a secret and intimate perspective on the private life of the most brutal mass murder of all times. But in fact, they are orchestrations or can be at least also read as enactments which served as a kind of rehearsal stage for Adolf Hitler. They surely reveal many things, but decadence is among the least interesting of those possible endeavours. Rather striking are the, partially intended, references to class and social strata. Hitler, the petite bourgeoise, enacting the leader of a nation, here becomes visible as a social climber.

And there's only few materials too private to be screened publicly. Eva Braun chose or even enacted motifs that remind of films she had seen (like Riefenstahls "Olympia" or even materials such as „Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit") and therefore places herself (though unjustified) near contemporary artists, one could assume. She seems to have had some kind of audience in mind at least, an audience that would never watch her clumsy cinematic attempts. But instead, today the films serve as a naive mountain idyll backdrop, showing mainly a submissive entourage of beneficiaries and a ridiculously jovial Führer. Obviously, it largely depends on the anticipated audience, how we read these films. The talk tries to shift the usual perspective on the Eva Braun Films towards a more archaeological investigation of the intentions and references manifest in the materials. Specifically, the questions about anticipated audiences and implicitly addressed communities and how these groups changed after the war will be discussed.

Daniel Körling

Jewish life in Poland in NS-propaganda films - discussing modes of appropriation

Despite its status as probably the most notorious anti-Semitic propaganda film of the National Socialists, only few people have ever seen the whole picture DER EWIGE JUDE. While it can't be screened publicly in Germany without scholarly introduction, abroad even Neo Nazis would rarely present it due to its excessive voice-over. Parts of it are easily recognized in documentaries, for example the infamous comparison of the Jewish people with rats, but in fact – apart from some iconic scenes, such as Hitler's speech about the extermination of European Jews from 1939 – most of us actually have seen further passages from DER EWIGE JUDE, as it is frequently quoted like stock footage, unacknowledged.
In spite of its appalling purpose, the compilation film DER EWIGE JUDE does in fact include various scenes from Jewish quarters in Warsaw and Łódź. They were shot in the autumn of 1939, a couple of weeks after the German invasion of Poland. This footage, ordered by Joseph Goebbels himself, includes scenes from the newly established ghettos, for example religious ceremonies and urban life in general. Even though the gaze of the perpetrators and especially the propagandistic purpose of the production are widely inscribed into this material, and considering that it was shot at gunpoint, today it is often used as footage for a reconstruction of the past. Such utilizations implicitly claim that the material grants, if unintentionally, some valuable insights into the Jewish life prior to the genocide. If analysed from this perspective and keeping a changing audience in mind, does it further empower remembrance communities to appropriate these scenes self-confidently? Or is it impossible to neglect the origin and purpose of the footage and will it therefore always entail a trace referring to the Holocaust? The talk discusses implications of the so far often unacknowledged use of footage from DER EWIGE JUDE by advocating a more nuanced perspective.

Alexander Zöller

Spectres of Propaganda: the 1942 Warsaw Ghetto Film

Over the course of several weeks in May and June of 1942, professional cameramen of the German Army shot 35 mm film in the Warsaw Ghetto. While not an isolated incident - the ghetto had been visited and revisited by German cameramen and photographers on many occasions - and despite its obvious propagandistic purpose, the resultant footage has entered the post-war collective memory as a crucial and near-inescapable visual source on the Warsaw Ghetto. That it has assumed this significant position is partly explained by the scarcity of comparable material: numerous amateur films of the Warsaw Ghetto exist, yet virtually no other film footage shot in 35 mm has survived. First circulated in the form of brief outtakes in the 1950s, much of the material, totalling some ninety minutes, has since been appropriated by filmmakers, notably by Yael Hersonski in her documentary film SHTIKAT HAARCHION / A FILM UNFINISHED (Germany/Israel 2010). Both in academia and in filmmaking practice, a more archaeological approach has since led to new readings and uses of the source material, such as in Chen Shelach's documentary film MURANOV (Israel 2020), where the Warsaw Ghetto footage is drawn upon to examine questions of persistent ghosts of memory that haunt and influence today's life in the post-war neighbourhood built on the site of the destroyed ghetto.

The talk looks at the production background and the archival provenance of the film to help explain the changing use over time, and the ethical implications and strategies employed in order to appropriate a film shot by the perpetrators by post war communities.