Jakub's World: A Boy's Story of Loss and Survival in the Holocaust

Afterword: Flossenbürg? Never Heard of It

1 Afterword: Flossenbürg? Never Heard of It Auschwitz, Majdanek, Dachau, Buchenwald, Theresienstadt. Mentioning these places summons up familiar images and elicits a variety of associations in both individual and communal conceptions of history. They represent the system of National Socialist concentration camps and symbolize the mass murder of millions of people. This is true for public consciousness in the United States as well as Germany. Auschwitz symbolizes the epitome of National Socialist mass murder. It has “become a symbol in which the historical importance has been superimposed on the physical topography. Time and memory have turned it into a sacred place that appears inviolable. It has become a place in the mind, an abstraction, a ghostly manifestation.”1 James E. Young is suggesting here that Auschwitz cannot speak freely and for itself. Since 1945, the place names have been given an almost stereotyped significance which has been reinforced over the years. This is due to both group-specific and comprehensive policies in the areas of remembrance and symbolism, which involve complex processes of projection , formulation, rejection, and instrumentalization of memory. Through political and academic debates, articles in the press and television reports, and also through public ceremonies of remembrance, the genocide of the National Socialists as well as the places associated with it have become a central component of our historical consciousness . These discussions about the National Socialist genocide 121 122 Jakub’s World are thus part of our daily lives. They materialize in the present. A topography of remembrance has formed itself out of the topography of terror. However, although the names of former camps are almost omnipresent in the historical, communal, and social discourse on the Holocaust—I prefer the term “National Socialist crimes against humanity”—the mental picture formed today at the mention of places like Flossenbürg remains blurred. “Flossenbürg? Never heard of it!” Compared to Flossenbürg, the symbolic discourse that has developed around Auschwitz and Dachau since their liberation is totally different. All three names have their own reception history but these last two have become more or less concentration camp icons, whereas Flossenbürg has been almost completely forgotten. In addition, Dachau now has its own importance within an international youth travel-culture and is the most frequented memorial in Germany, with over a million visitors a year. Even the critical and discriminating studies by James E. Young2 and the recently published piece of research by Harold Marcuse3 succumb to the aura of this symbolically charged place. The fact that history, culture science, and reception history focus studies on these two locations reinforces the picture of the two places as being historically unique and possessing special features. On no account will their uniqueness and special features be disputed or relativized here. But the consequence of restricting one’s view to these two concentration camp symbols is that countless other concentration and extermination camps have almost completely disappeared from the public consciousness. In these other camps, in dimensions unimaginable to us, people suffered just as much and were tortured and murdered in a bestial manner. It is a basic characteristic of National Socialist terror that it took place in innumerable locations, that in the last year of the war satellite camps of the concentration camps were to be found in every region of the German Reich, that the trail of blood of the death marches spread everywhere and that large 123 Afterword sections of the civilian population were confronted with the wretched figures of emaciated concentration camp prisoners. The National Socialist terror and genocide, as well as German society’s awareness of and participation in it, is given a more explosive significance by the fact that it was taken place in so many different locations. But not only the topographical and social dimension of the genocide has been shifted by the postwar reception. The fact that many camps have been forgotten often means that their victims have been forgotten as well. Sometimes the fate of camp prisoners appeared less terrible because the camp itself was unknown. “Never heard of it!—It can’t be that bad!” In addition, the lack of public discussion about many former camps did not exactly promote the preservation of what remained of them or the building of memorials. At most, the affected communities or civic authorities responsible put the remains to pragmatic use or reused them. Not only Germans were responsible for...