S.F. symposium to examine Holocaust’s future in art

Friday, February 23, 2001 | by

ALEXANDRA J. WALL

How will representations of the Holocaust in film, literature and art change after those who lived through it are no longer here to tell their stories?

On Sunday, a free all-day symposium at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco called "The Future of the Holocaust: Storytelling, Oppression and Identity" will try to answer that question.

It's one that "is coming forward more and more to the forefront of Holocaust studies," said Murray Baumgarten, the Neufeld-Levin chair in Holocaust studies at U.C. Santa Cruz and the primary organizer of the symposium.

Israeli novelist David Grossman will give the keynote address. The symposium—along with a similar event scheduled for today at U.C. Santa Cruz—is timed to coincide with the world premiere of "See Under: Love," A Traveling Jewish Theatre's adaptation of Grossman's novel of the same name.

Not only is the symposium "an opportunity to talk about the problem of the second and third generation," Baumgarten said, but it "asks the question of how we think about our history and how we construct a usable past."

Baumgarten, who teaches a class on the Holocaust at U.C. Santa Cruz, frequently asks his students, "How can the second and third generations tell the story of the first generation?"

Today, he said, writers such as Grossman feel compelled to write about the aftereffects of the Holocaust even though they are not children of survivors themselves.

"The Holocaust is now a standard topic," Baumgarten added. "Everyone writes about it. It's profoundly shaping how they see the world. But how do they represent it?"

While two scholars will talk about the specific achievements of Grossman's novel, the discussion at the symposium will be far-reaching.

Complicating the issue is the question of understanding the Holocaust in the post-modern world.

"When I was in college, the French Revolution was always discussed as the beginning of the modern [era]," Baumgarten said. "Now, people are seeing that the modern, with its promise of progress and technology, innovation and affluence, has given way to a world where we're not sure about progress."

That the Holocaust was executed and carried out in what was considered one of the most technologically advanced and forward-thinking societies of the time has challenged all conceptions of the modern, Baumgarten added. "The society that was technologically the most advanced turned to the manufacturing of corpses and the industrial production of death."

Jeffrey Shandler of Rutgers University will discuss the Holocaust as it has been represented on American television.

Baumgarten said the '70s miniseries "Holocaust" is one interesting case because "while it was important and interesting, it wasn't great art."

Yet its impact was great nevertheless, he said, because it was shown abroad. "It transformed Polish consciousness."

To discuss artistic representations of the Holocaust, James E. Young of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, will speak. Widely considered the pre-eminent expert on Holocaust memorials, Young was the only American asked to sit on a committee to select the design of a government-sponsored Holocaust memorial in Berlin. His presentation will include slides of various memorials around the world.

"How [the Holocaust] is represented in visual imagery is so important because it's the way in which we really articulate our memory, even more than in text," Baumgarten said.

Mary Lowenthal Felstiner of San Francisco State University will speak about Charlotte Salomon, a German Jewish artist who perished at Auschwitz, but whose wartime experience survives through her paintings.

In addition, Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi of Hebrew University will speak about Grossman's novel in light of the contemporary situation in the Middle East.

Also on the program, two local poets who are children of survivors, Alan Kaufman and Elizabeth Rosner, will read from their work, and a musical interpretation of the Holocaust will be performed by John Schott with Ben Goldberg and Jeff Cressman.

The major sponsors of the symposium are the Jewish Community Endowment Fund of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation and the Koret Foundation plus the Consulate General of Israel in San Francisco and other organizations.

Baumgarten said this show of support for such an event was encouraging. Although Holocaust scholars often have the opportunity to talk among themselves about these issues, "bringing their views into contact with the general public and Jewish community is a way of building community and articulating a communal understanding of these issues."