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)

This radio report (“Visual Language of Mass Murder: Digitization Project Visual History of the Holocaust”) introduces the project’s goals to digitize, contextualize and digitally curate historic film footage shot by Allied troops during and subsequent to the liberation of Nazi concentration camps and the discovery of other sites of Nazi atrocities. Little-known images stored in archives in Latvia, Belarus and the Ukraine bring new insights into the film production of Soviet cameramen. Michael Loebenstein talks about the ‘visual language’ developed by Allied soldiers in documenting Nazi atrocities and explains that unlike the Western Allies, the Soviets focused on the faces of the victims, highlighting their individual fates. Moreover Kerstin Herlt speaks about providing metadata about the original film footage. In addition, the radio report presents the project’s goal to link the filmic records with interviews, text documents and photographs, but also with TV series, memes, computer games or graphic novels that draw on these historical images.