VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS OF EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE KAUNAS GHETTO: REALITY AND MEMORY
VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS OF EVERYDAY LIFE IN THE KAUNAS GHETTO: REALITY AND MEMORY

Author(s): Giedrė Jankevičiūtė
Subject(s): Visual Arts, Political history, Social history, Recent History (1900 till today), WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), History of the Holocaust
Published by: Kauno IX forto muziejus
Keywords: art; artist; Holocaust; everyday life; Kaunas Ghetto; reality and memory; visual representations;
Summary/Abstract: The point of departure for the study presented in this article is the portrait gallery of Kaunas Ghetto policemen created by the Czech artist Josef Schlesinger, who was imprisoned in the Kaunas Ghetto. Drawing upon a hypothetical analysis of the circumstances in which this gallery was produced and its potential applications, the article expands the discussion on the role of art in the Kaunas Ghetto (typically limited to documenting reality at the behest of the ghetto council) and on the significance of artefacts that bear witness to ghetto reality. The article addresses not only the need for artistic production in the ghetto, but also raises the issue of the authenticity of artefacts that were made public after the Second World War and continue to be publicised to this day. It demonstrates how, in constructing the narrative of Shoah memory, and specifically the history of the Kaunas Ghetto, substitutes for the originals were employed alongside authentic materials – photo-staged scenes, replicas of artefacts, and counterfeit design objects (such as armbands of ghetto services). This aspect has not hitherto been explored in the historiography of Holocaust memory research.

• Details
• Contents