The EU Horizon 2020 project “Visual History of the Holocaust: Rethinking Curation in the Digital Age” (2019–2022) explores the potentials as well as the limitations of digital technologies in the ongoing effort to preserve, analyze and communicate historical evidence of the Holocaust, and in particular audiovisual records. It is coordinated by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History (Vienna), in close collaboration with the Austrian Film Museum (Vienna).

Featured Videos


Dunkles Erbe: Digitales Kuratieren von Holocaust-Filmen

VHH Research Seminar – Session 3: Soviet Footage on Nazi Crimes and Its Textual Documentation: Identification and Research Issues

Unfolding the Visual History of the Holocaust through American Liberation Footage (4/4): Advanced Digitization & the VHH-MMSI

Digital Humanities and the Archive: Datafication and Curation of “Non Feature” Film Documents, Transhuman Agents, Historiographical Challenges – and Chances

Using Prototype Tools to Detect and Classify Cinematographic Concepts and Relations in Digitized Film Collections

Combining Sources on Nazi Atrocities: A Metadata Schema to Describe, Relate and Annotate Film and Non-Film Material

Upcoming and Recent Events


This event poster shows a film still of children's toys

Kinodokumenty o zverstvach nemecko-fašistskich zachvatčikov (Die von den deutsch-faschistischen Invasoren verübten Gräueltaten)

Screening
29.01.2023, 18:00
Vienna

Filmvorführung mit einer Einführung von Irina Tcherneva

This event poster shows a photograph of a video interview with a Holocaust survivor

Das Fortunoff Video Archive, Überlebende und "archivarischer Aktivismus"

Presentation
29.01.2023, 15:00
Vienna

1979 begann eine zivilgesellschaftliche Organisation, das Holocaust Survivors Film Project, in New Haven (Connecticut, USA) Überlebende und Zeug*innen des Holocaust auf Video aufzunehmen. Im Jahr 1981 kam diese Sammlung von 183 Interviews an die Yale-Universität, und 1982 öffnete das Videoarchiv für Holocaust-Zeugenaussagen seine Türen für die Öffentlichkeit.

This event poster shows an excerpt from a database with a film still showing a soldier from behind while filming corpses in a train car.

Von Bildern extremer Gewalt und vom digitalen Kuratieren

Presentation
27.01.2023, 18:00 to 27.01.2023, 20:00
Vienna

Im Rahmen dieser Präsentation wird gezeigt, wie avancierte Digitalisierungskonzepte, digitale Bild- und Textanalyse und die zeitbasierte Annotation von Film neue Zusammenhänge für die Erforschung des Holocaust und neue Zugänge zum visuellen Kulturerbe insgesamt erschließen.

Media Reports


Media Report

ZIB 2: Die visuelle Geschichte des Massenmordes

ORF ZIB 2 - Friday, 27.01.2023

TV report by Christian Konrad in ORF's main news show Zeit im Bild 2

Media Report

Wie umgehen mit Bildern des Holocaust?

Der Standard - Friday, 27.01.2023

Newspaper article by Valerie Dirk published in the culture section of the Austrian daily “Der Standard”

Media Report

Kulturzeit extra: Auschwitz und wir – Wie der Shoah gedenken?

3sat - Thursday, 27.01.2022

TV report by Sandra Krieger as part of the broadcast series "Kulturzeit"

Media Report

Bildsprache des Massenmords: Digitalisierungsprojekt „Visual History of the Holocaust"

SWR2 - Wednesday, 27.01.2021

Radio feature by Sabine Mahr as part of the broadcast series „SWR2 am Morgen” on SWR2, a radio channel of the Südwestrundfunk (the regional public broadcasting corporation for the southwest of Germany)

Publications


Deliverable

D4.4 Translation of Selected Russian Text Documents

Significantly going beyond the initial plan, this deliverable not only provides English translations of highly important text documents accompanying the Soviet filming of Nazi atrocities. It also includes a study on the possibilities and limits of automated translation processes.

Article

The Auschwitz Tattoo in Visual Memory

Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann, Noga Stiassny, Fabian Schmidt: The Auschwitz Tattoo in Visual Memory. Mapping Multilayered Relations of a Migrating Image, in: Research in Film and History. Video Essays (November 2022), https://film-history.org/node/1129

Mapping Multilayered Relations of a Migrating Image

Journal

Filmography of the Genocide: Official and Ephemeral Film Documents on the Persecution and Extermination of the European Jews 1933-1945

Fabian Schmidt, Alexander Oliver Zöller: Filmography of the Genocide: Official and Ephemeral Film Documents on the Persecution and Extermination of the European Jews 1933-1945, in: Research in Film and History. Audiovisual Traces, no. 4 (February 2022), S. 1–160.

A comprehensive list of archival film material related to the genocide, including film materials which are only mentioned in contemporary sources, or which were only reported by witnesses after the war.

Journal

Digital Digging: Traces, Gazes, and the Archival In-Between

Evelyn Kreutzer, Noga Stiassny: Digital Digging: Traces, Gazes, and the Archival In-Between, in: Research in Film and History. Audiovisual Traces, no. 4 (February 2022), S. 1–13.

Traces and gazes have become leading paradigms in dealing with the (visual) history of the Holocaust within academia.