Representation of the Holocaust

Triumph of the Will has significant footage of Adolf Hitler and also the positive and public perception of the Nazi party. Perhaps understanding their glorious representation can provide clues which one can understand how such a man could rise to power. Perhaps it provides a certain sympathy for the German people because we see the National Socialist party through their eyes.

In contrast, Der Untergang represents Hitler in a film with actors devoid of any actual footage, and confronted much controversy on the topic of humanising Hitler (discussed in an earlier entry in the blog.)

Documentaries such as Night and Fog, Shoah and The World at War, strengthen the sympathy for those who were persecuted and exterminated by the Nazis by displaying real images of the camps, real video footage, and generally making the nightmare a reality.

The Pianist and Schindler's List also attempts to portray the horrors of the Holocaust but in a different way. They use personal narratives to capture the audience, instead of real footage. Either way they accomplish the same result.

An argument could arise here which would suggest that perhaps the represented is not actually representable. In other words, the Holocaust cannot be represented on the screen because the unimaginable horror people suffered cannot even be imagined let alone written or depicted.

It is this argument which raises the question of whether or not any of these films can in fact truly teach us what it was like and thus avoid anything like it in the future. But what other options do we have? Assuming that you and I are not Holocaust victims, simply put, we cannot experience what they did.

These films will be as close as we will get and as a consequence we must utilise and understand them to the fullest extent. Novels and history books confront the same limitations that films based on a single perspectives and documentaries confront which is the failure to represent the experience of the Holocaust.