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“Memento”: music video for Holocaust remembrance day

Witnesses had been the main an agent of retrospection of the Holocaust. But the last Survivors will soon no longer there. As a reminder, in the era of YouTube could look like is shown in this video clip.

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“Memento” – video clip Holocaust remembrance day on 27. January

A Boy sits next to railroad tracks, it keeps the ears. Endless chatter of freight cars over freight trains rolling into the extermination camp of Auschwitz. A rumpled piece of paper flutters out, with the name of the people as cattle to be transported: without water, without food, without identity. Numbers on a transport list of the Nazibehörden. Janusz Korczak is on the top of the paper, the Name of the Polish doctor, of the children of his orphanage to the extermination camp Treblinka accompanied, although for him death meant. A national hero in Poland and throughout Eastern Europe.

Papers played in the lives of the Survivors a large role: On a plain piece of paper was the Jewish families of the date, time and location of their evacuation will be communicated. Small torn pieces of paper were the last Chance for someone to tell that “to the East” was sent with a ticket of the German Railways “Auschwitz simply” in the bag. Note, vollgekritzelt with Überlebensbotschaften, were in the camp the only way to contact each other.

Monument to Janusz Korczak and his orphans in the Israeli Yad Vashem memorial

The culture of remembrance for the YouTube Generation

In Warsaw is the Institution of the home, this exceptional video clip has produced: the European network for remembrance and solidarity. It deals not only with the Holocaust, but also with the Victims of Stalinism in Eastern Europe.

For this project, a commemorative Video to 27. January to produce, they would have a wide target audience have in their minds, says Rafal Rogulski, Director of the European network, in the DW interview. “Normally, we set up our projects in the direction of the younger Generation. With this video clip is not different. But with this kind of remembrance, one can actually reach everyone. At least, at least a basic knowledge about the Holocaust.”

Rogulski has long with the Polish politician and Auschwitz Survivor Wladyslaw Bartoszewski (1922 -2015) worked and know how hard it is, people today for this remembrance to be interested.

Cartoonist Art Spiegelman (here in 2012 in Paris) in 1992 it received the Pulitzer prize for his Holocaust Comic “Maus”.

Oriented have the producers of the video clips to the black-and-white comics as well as his the American artist Art Spiegelman. He was the first to the topic of the “Holocaust” as a Graphic Novel (“Maus”) is prepared. The idea of a scarred, artistic video clip to produce, either spontaneously, says Hans-Christian Jasch, head of the memorial house of the Wannsee conference in Berlin, also co-producer of the video clip.

Together with the memorial of Auschwitz-Birkenau was the focus of this special Erinnerungsprojektes quickly decided. “We have with the Director, Zoltán Szilágyi Varga searched for you in the time of YouTube formats on Holocaust remembrance day, attention and interest in the topic can generate,” says Jasch in the DW-Interview. “It was about making a small animated film that the audience concern, and to further demand irritating.”

Cartoon, instead of the witnesses

It was, of course, been a risk, this comicähnliche Form to choose, but Director Varga have as a graphic artist and international artist a lot of experience brought. “I have for a Moment faltered, but it has convinced me that it is now time for other forms of representation seek,” says Jasch. “Of course, are the iconic images: these rolling freight cars. But we thought that Comics as a Form for younger people more memorable.”

In the centennial year of 2015, 70 years after the liberation of the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, the German media with a flood of eye-witness Interviews been flooded. In TV Sows were sitting “the last Survivors”, as you in the press have been named, as emblems of memory, in addition to the usual Guests from the Show, Film and politics.

Children at the liberation of the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau – today, our witnesses

“Memento” will pique curiosity

With the video clip “Memento” are the producers, therefore, aware of a different way: without the abstract numbers of millions of dead, no pictures from the extermination camps, without any statements from witnesses. The Film in comic-book format is supposed to go under the skin, even if you don’t at first glance understand what it is. A paradigm shift in the culture of memory, ” Jasch: “It is rather a kind of Teaser, to get back to this topic to be of interest. And someone in the network sees and asks, what is that anyway, it clicks maybe even several times.”

The Director of the European network, Rafal Rogulski, is in any case more than satisfied with the result. “One sensed that the artist access to these feelings. And that he is also with the charcoal on the paper.” The emotional quality of the video clips from Director Zoltán Szilágyi Varga speaks for itself.

Historic documentary, or web video is the subject of the Holocaust are without the testimony of contemporaries, has so far hardly conceivable. “We try in Germany, of course, as long as it is still possible for a lot of with witnesses to make”, says Hans-Christian Jasch. “This direct experience, one will also in the future, can not replace. Not even as an artistic design or 3D animations,” he admits in the DW-Interview to keep in mind. “Memento” is composed as a contribution to the European culture of remembrance for the 27. January, a new impulse for the YouTube-Generation of the 21. Century.