In this paper, I qualitatively investigate the effect of the Poland pilgrimage on a sample of Modern Orthodox American Jewish females, a population less represented in present day Poland pilgrimage scholarship. I begin this paper by exploring the conceptual framework of the Poland voyage as pilgrimage. I then offer a purview of the history of educational youth trips to Poland as well as provide a glimpse into the educational philosophy of Heritage Seminars, the program under present investigation. Original research in the form of semi-structured, in-depth interviews conducted with recent and veteran Heritage Seminars participants is then presented. Thematic analysis was used to address which themes surfaced when recent and veteran participants spoke of their trips to Poland, with particular emphasis placed on how participants felt they were impacted and/or transformed by the journey. By exploring how six participants engaged with, interpreted, and synthesized their experiences of Heritage Seminars, I draw conclusions about the impact of the Poland pilgrimage on a sample of Modern Orthodox American Jewish females.

Supervisor:
Prof. Carol Kidron

This thesis entails an examination of three prominent Holocaust museums: Yad Vashem and Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum (GFH) in Israel and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. They were chosen because of a combination of prominence as regards their early inception – the two Israeli museums – and the extent of influence on Holocaust historiography, scholarship, and related cultural ramifications. Utilizing a methodology drawn from the discipline of material culture, much of the work was focused through the lens of artifact collections. Part of the objective was to relate cultural and political influences to museum ethos, and in turn, take notice of the impact of museum development on the culture without. An indirect but unavoidable relationship was noted in the evolution of Holocaust historiography. The methodology consisted of an examination of specifically chosen artifacts from each museum, conducting an in-depth examination of the circumstances related to their acquisition and collection, along with detailed historical analysis of background information of involved individuals, families, communities, and as it turned out toward the end of the exercise, the involvement of the curating staff. The research work included a number of interviews with individuals closely linked and involved during the developmental stages of each museum, along with examination of internal documents, whenever available. An overall viewpoint emerged regarding each museum individually and as relates to Holocaust narrativization in combination. As the work progressed it also became clear, that wholly separate from institutional influence, the artifacts related information (history) accrued from individualized narratives, which remained unaffected by these external forces. Thus the artifacts collections appear to render a “populist” message of witnessing, very much in keeping with personalized memory transmission. The museums were seen as representing an ethos, mostly shared as regards Holocaust narrativization, while the artifacts – individually and as items of acquisition and collections – addressed ethnos, relayed individual agency, and represented personalized narrativization.

Supervisors:
Dr. David Silberklang
Dr. Stephanie Rotem
Prof. Hagit Lavsky

Museums display their materials and subjects with unique perspectives, often influenced by the museum’s vision. Holocaust Museums in Israel are no exception, and whilst the museums all explore the topic of Holocaust, they each present a different narrative. In turn, groups from different parts of society that endured the Holocaust will have had different experiences. This study explores four different Holocaust museums in Israel (Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum, Yad Vashem, Testimony House (Beit Edut), and Chamber of the Holocaust (Martef haShoah) and how they display and exhibit the experience of the Haredi communities during the Holocaust. This examination will delve into the various ways that museums utilize artifacts, photographs, and the written narrative, and to what extent these represent Haredi communities. The thesis first introduces the theoretical underpinning of the study, including definitions of Haredim and discussion of museums and Holocaust museums in particular. The first, second, and third chapters then explore how artifacts, photographs, and written narrative are used to represent the Haredi communities in these museums’ displays, respectively. The thesis shows that mission statements of museums and the communities that commissioned and established them heavily influence the exhibitions, which in turn influences the way and extent that Haredi communities are discussed and displayed.

Supervisors:
Prof. Maoz Azaryahu
Dr. Shosh Rotem

It was not until the late 1980s that serious scholarship on the Holocaust and its memorial culture began to take shape. It was not until that same decade that the very existence of the Roma genocide was recognized. It is therefore little wonder that the study of the genocide and its commemoration did not emerge until much later. The inauguration of the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism in 2012 in Berlin is a critical event in this process. It represents the culmination of a complex set of political, scholarly, and aesthetic forces that have shaped awareness of the genocide. The choices embodied in the Sinti and Roma Memorial become clearer when it is compared with two other Roma genocide memorials in Poland and Berlin. National context, aesthetic sensibility, educational approach, and community engagement are all key variables. Since its opening, the Memorial has witnessed many public as well as more personal and private engagements, which can be categorized as “anti-memorial” and/or “dialogical counter-monuments.” Although its primary purpose is to memorialize the Sinti and Roma victims of the genocide, the Memorial has become a symbol of many things, including recognition, respect, and dignity. The Sinti and Roma Memorial, in the end, is a static, physical installation whose symbolic themes are abstract and atmospheric. Since its inauguration it has been fascinating to observe its “afterlife.” The Memorial has become a site for the performance of identity and for the enactment of communal ritual of commemoration, some planned and officially sponsored and many spontaneous and unsanctioned.

Supervisors:
Dr. Rachel Perry
Prof. James E. Young

This thesis presents a unique case study of students from Kibbutz Yagur who have participated in the masaot to Poland in recent years. This study examines national Holocaust commemorative narratives and practices, with particular attention to their transmission to and interpretation by the present generation of kibbutz youth. The study begins with a brief outline of the history of the masa to Poland from the Carmel Zvulun Regional High School located on Kibbutz Yagur. It then continues to explore the possible ways in which kibbutz ideological principles and Zionist values have been transmitted to the current generation of kibbutznikim who choose to participate in the journey. The study shifts to an examination of materials and methods used to facilitate pre-trip learning and discussion. The goal of this section is to discover if any underlying connections can be drawn between those materials and methods to the kibbutz ideology at large. The next section of the thesis focuses on understanding the impact the masa has on the kibbutz students’ sense of identity as individuals, but also as students born and raised on the kibbutz as compared to non-kibbutz participants from the regional high school. The objective is to understand to what extent in-group “gibush” (bonding) that may or may not already be present amongst kibbutz participants who were born and raised in an insulated environment, has impacted their unique experience as “kibbutznikim” on the trip itself. The concluding chapter examines the patterns of Holocaust commemoration throughout Israel’s history and presents potential causes of friction within the discourse of Shoah memory narratives. It further seeks to understand if and how kibbutz specific interpretations of the Shoah narrative are affecting the current generation of kibbutz youth.

Supervisor:
Prof. Carol Kidron

This thesis examines postmemory experiences in the Israeli graphic novels Second Generation: Things I Did Not Tell My Father (2012) by Michel Kichka, The Property (2013) by Rutu Modan, and The Quiet Beach (2009) by Michal Tamir. Following Marianne Hirsch, postmemory is defined as a type of memory that the children of the survivors of trauma inherit from their parents not through the empirical connection to the event itself, but rather through stories, imagery, and iconic symbols of trauma. This transmission proves to be so strong that it creates a “memory” of its own right, rooted in imaginative investment, projection, and creative process. Operating in the framework of postmemory theory, this work applies its basic principles to the multimodal medium of graphic novels and identifies the unique artistic strategies employed by the authors, such as the use of imagery, symbolism, mirroring, colors, shading techniques, perspective, and incorporation of familial and iconic pictures into the narrative.

Through this analysis, the study reveals that the works in focus share common narrative themes: silence, loss, loneliness, traumatic reenactment, and struggle for personal autonomy manifested through similar memory nodes, like food, bodies, objects, and imagery. The interplay of visual and textual devices facilitates the expression of the authors’ relationship with the trauma of their parents, allowing them to depict the elusive and often ineffable shadow of the traumatic past.

This study expands the corpus of existing works on postmemory in the visual medium through offering a comparative viewpoint of the graphic novels and gives scholarly attention to works that have not been researched so far, such as the graphic novel The Quiet Beach by Michal Tamir. While this thesis focuses on Israeli graphic novels, it also presents opportunities for future research, including the analysis of works by Western authors.

Supervisor:
Dr. Tsafi Sebba-Elran

The purpose of this thesis is to analyze how politicians and different types of traditional media used Holocaust analogies during the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, this thesis will examine the countries of the United States and Britain during the years 2020-2022. I argue the use of Holocaust analogies that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic is the result of how collective memory was processed by American and British societies after World War II. I also show how the Holocaust has become a symbol for Nazi evil and Jewish suffering, which certain collectives applied to their situation during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the decades after WWII have passed, the memory of the Holocaust has been used by political actors to accomplish political objectives. The recent events of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a high usage of Holocaust terminology by political actors that compared COVID-19 restrictions with Jews that were persecuted during the Holocaust. The end result of politicians and politically motivated groups making these analogies was an increase in antisemitism and trivialization of the actual events that took place during the Holocaust. One of the most common places where Holocaust analogies occurred was on social media. Several politicians used social media platforms to voice their displeasure with COVID-19 restrictions and then compared these restrictions with those implemented by the Nazis during World War II. I will analyze how and when politicians and traditional media used Holocaust analogies throughout the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. I will also analyze how analogies contributed to Holocaust distortion during the COVID-19 pandemic. By looking at this information significant light will be shed on how collective memory played a role in the use of analogies by political actors and traditional media in America and Britain throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and what types of Holocaust distortion took place.

Supervisor:
Prof. Eliyana Adler

This study examines the use of Holocaust-related keywords in colloquial Hebrew conversation. It inquires about the emotional involvement of young Israelis with the Holocaust and its memory as gleaned through their linguistic choice to invoke the Holocaust in discussing mundane, everyday topics. In Israel today, words such as “Shoah” and “Nazi” have become commonplace in the vernacular Hebrew lexicon of the young generation as descriptors applicable to nearly any subject. This study looks at the social connotations of these words, the way they are employed and perceived, and their potential significance for Holocaust-related emotions and remembrance. It proposes that the use of Holocaust terms to describe mundane scenarios is a reaction of young Israelis to the burden of official, State-established Holocaust education and commemoration. Methodologically, the study is comprised of a combination of participant observation and interviews. Observations included not only unmediated conversational contexts but also textual analysis of social media exchanges from within Israel, such as Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp. The findings were divided into the major themes of understanding, emotion, identity, and memory. They support the previous research of scholars such as Dan Porat and Dalia Ofer, which points to the successful attempt of the Israeli governing bodies to establish the Holocaust as central to the identity of future generations of Israeli students through education and commemoration. However, this study suggests that the frequent and often casual use of Holocaust-related terms in everyday conversations among young Israeli adults has added a layer of connotational meanings to these terms. Functioning figuratively as hyperbolic intensifiers, the use of these terms allows speakers to distance themselves emotionally from the subject of the Holocaust. Through the use of this discursively marked self-distancing strategy speakers rebel against the expected behavioral norm that surrounds the official, solemn Holocaust commemoration in Israel. The use of these colloquialisms can be said to be a form of alternative commemoration casually generated by the third generation in Israel today, creating a new generational shared identity marked by patterns of daily interaction rather than high-profile ceremonial occasions.

Supervisor:
Prof. Tamar Katriel