Reframing Holocaust Testimony [Paperback]

Institutions that have collected video testimonies from the few remaining Holocaust survivors are grappling with how to continue their mission to educate and commemorate. Noah Shenker calls attention to the ways that audiovisual testimonies of the Holocaust have been mediated by the institutional histories and practices of their respective archives. Shenker argues that testimonies are shaped not only by the encounter between interviewer and interviewee, but also by technical practices and the testimony process. He analyzes the ways in which interview questions, the framing of the camera, and curatorial and programming preferences impact how Holocaust testimony is molded, distributed, and received.

Shenkers book is a major addition to the scholarly literature on video testimony. His in-depth knowledge of the archival collections he examines enables him to provide a nuanced demonstration of the ways in which institutional imperatives regarding testimony act to shape the kinds of testimonies that are produced.

Film and the Holocaust: New Perspectives on Dramas, Documentaries, and Experimental Films by Aaron Kerner (Bloomsbury Academic, 2011). ISBN 9781441124180.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Testimonies from the Grassroots: The Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
2. The Centralization of Holocaust Testimony: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
3. The Cinematic Origins and the Digital Future of the USC Shoah Foundation
4. Telling and Retelling Holocaust Testimonies
Conclusion: Documenting Testimonies of Genocide through the Lens of the Holocaust
Notes
References
Index

What makes Noah Shenker's book so distinctive is his insistence that testimony is shaped by many institutional factors that profoundly effect whether or not a witness is 'allowed' access to deep memory. His discussion of what gets lost in the spaces between formal interviewsduring breaks, before interviews, after themis fascilCœ