Portraits and Memories of the Jewish Community in Serbia before the Holocaust: Facing the inscription of the Holocaust in the postmemory media representation contexts

Abstract

One of the main problems of Holocaust research and representation is closely linked with the idea of original source. The original source is usually considered to be a visual or textual testimony and/or document of the actual historical event. However, we are always-already dealing with the multitude of complex (re)presentations mediated through the post-situation of a heavily layered knowledge and also with the segmented character of broken, suppressed debris of memories and traumas. Holocaust seems to inscript itself in the very core not only of the memory of that happening, but also in the memory of the whole period before, which was the primary aim of the project " The Portraits and Memories of the Jewish Community of Serbia Before the Holocaust ". Further approach to the problem reveals two parallel stories (one of the before-Holocaust past and one of the Holocaust past) that eventually become one – the one that becomes the actual source of knowledge of the Holocaust in the present, the source with which we are dealing with when we try to represent, interpret and speak about it. The implication of multimedia environment of the Internet and its mediation of such conflicted discourse is an interface through which we receive this complexity of knowledge. This paper deals with these many problems of the inscriptions and re-inscriptions of the knowledge of the Holocaust, as well as with the issue of opening the questions of the further construction and mediation of a Holocaust-related discourse.