Memorial Souvenirs

Concentration Camp and Holocaust Keepsakes – objects of memory in everyday life: their semiotic narratives in the scope of holocaust site tourism and event culture

By the time World War II came to an end and the concentration camps were liberated, the first keepsakes and souvenirs of the holocaust were being produced and kept by survivors who had to live on with their memory of suffering and the lost ones.

This thesis focuses on serial and mass produced souvenir objects which are sold at historical sites of the national socialist perpetrators - the sites of former concentration camps; open air exhibitions such as Wolfsschanze or at technology museums such as the former Rocket testing site in Peenemuende - as well as at “virtual” places such as the holocaust museums and the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe.

These objects are a typical representation of a traditional souvenir keeping behaviour which was commonplace before the war and re-continued shortly after this period of extermination and cultural destruction and despite the so-called breakdown of civilisation. In the context of perception of and visits to concentration camp memorials and museums as touristic sites the research project follows the question of how these fragment miniature memorials express in a way the universalizing of the holocaust and have their part within a historical event culture.

This work initially takes the form of an explorative and is then followed by an analysis from a cultural semiotic perspective. Eventually, I am seeking for analogies by comparing the structures of above mentioned institutions which clearly represent a “negative memory” with those of historical sites which mediate an interpretation of positive historical events.