#HOLOCAUST: SOCIAL NETWORKS, PRODUCTION OF IMAGES AND THE CULTURAL MEMORY OF THE HOLOCAUST

Abstract

In October 2012 the Association of Jewish Students in France (UEJF) filed a complaint against Twitter. A wave of anti-Semitic posts had flooded the micro-blogging site following the #UnBonJuif (#AgoodJew). In January 2013 a French court ordered Twitter to hand over the details of those who had tweeted anti-Semitic remarks. The American company, protected by the First Amendment, refused to do it. This case points to the new context social networks have been creating for the relation of law, history, and the memory of the Holocaust. Many offensive images were tweeted alongside these anti-Semitic jokes. Among them was the iconic photo taken by Margaret Bourke-White in the barracks of Buchenwald, to which some degrading character had been added. This image is the starting point of my paper. Years ago, scholars such as Sybil Milton (“Images of the Holocaust” 1986) and Barbie Zelizer (Remembering to Forget 1998) had pointed out the relation between the mass circulation and decontextualization of photos of the liberated camps. With social media, this phenonemon takes on new proportions. The digital media economy challenges Holocaust scholars to devise new research practices that critically respond to the transformation of the ‘public archive’ of Nazi atrocities. Situating my paper in the context of digital humanities, I propose to examine social networks as primary sources on the cultural memory of the Holocaust. What do the new epistemological and social practices articulated to archive images and afterimages of the Holocaust in social media say about the way we represent and remember the crimes of the Third Reich in the twenty-first century? To tackle this issue I draw on examples from re-blogging applications such as Instagram and Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter communities, and Holocaust-related definitions in Wikipedia. My paper is based on the analysis of aesthetics and content of the images, discursive frameworks (captions, tags, comments), and hyperlinks. It connects empirical findings with theoretical frames produced in Holocaust studies (e.g. ‘prosthetic memory’, Alison Landsberg 2004) and media studies (‘convergence culture’, Henry Jenkins 2006).

Full text

#HOLOCAUST: SOCIAL NETWORKS, PRODUCTION OF IMAGES AND THE CULTURAL MEMORY
OF THE HOLOCAUST
1. Introduction
In October 2012 the Association of Jewish Students in France (UEJF) led a complaint against Twitter.1 A wave of anti-Semitic
posts had ooded the micro-blogging site following the #UnBonJuif (#AGoodJew). e infamous hashtag (#) became the third
most tweeted subject for several days. In January 2013 a French court ordered Twitter to hand over the details of those who had
posted anti-Semitic remarks. e American company, referring to the First Amendment’s freedom of speech, refused to comply
with the court’s decision. In response, the UEJF sued Twitter for 40 million euro, with the intent to hand the proceeds to the Shoah
Memorial in Paris. Aer several months of power struggle, the company nally released the requested personal account details
(July 2013). Many oensive images had been tweeted alongside the anti-Semitic jokes: cartoons, photo-collages, and a parody of
the iconic photo taken in the barracks of Buchenwald. (Fig.1)
I want to use this example as a jumping-o point for a reection on social networks, images and the cultural memory of the Holo-
caust.2 It shows that the massive Internet interaction creates a new context for the relationship of law, history, and the Holocaust.
It also raises the question: What happens to images of Nazi crimes in the electronic environment? Years ago, scholars such as Sybil
Milton (“Images of the Holocaust,” 1986) and Barbie Zelizer (Remembering to Forget, 1998) pointed out the relationship between
the mass circulation and de-contextualization of photos of the liberated camps. With social media, this phenomenon takes on new
proportions. An early analysis of “cyber-memory” of the Holocaust comes from media scholar Anna Reading who conducted a
research among the user population in several countries. At the time, she writes, “a general search of cyberspace activated by using
the word ‘Holocaust’ in Netscape and using standard search engines… elicit[ed] between 55,000 and 60,000 results” (2001: 326).
Nowadays, a Google Search elicits over 27 million results. How to nd your way in such a digital maze? Hashtags label topics of
tweets or photos so that they are easily found on the Web.3 Still, it seems that putting the # sign in front of the word ‘Holocaust’
does not help much. It leads to an aggregation of texts and images of all kinds that grows and changes at fast pace.
Fig.1 Screenshot of #UnBonJuif
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e digital media economy is a challenge for Holocaust scholars. It requires research practices that critically respond to the trans-
formation of the ‘public archive’ of Nazi atrocities. Social media and social networks oer Holocaust scholars, educators, and cura-
tors a formidable means of communication with audiences. Research institutions and museums make no mistake about it: many
tweet and have a Facebook page. But top-down projects have to coexist with bottom-up and peer-to-peer initiatives. Although the
notion of ‘digital humanities’ is more and more integrated into Holocaust studies, anxiety about the Internet does not abate. When
representations proliferate out of the academic and institutional realms, there is a risk that the Holocaust gets parodied, trivial-
ized, demeaned or misunderstood. I consider these representations the other way round. e window has never been so wide open
onto people’s perceptions and understanding of the Nazi regime and the atrocities it perpetrated. Social networks provide us with
a wealth of primary material about the cultural memory of the Holocaust in the twenty-rst century. I do not look at social media
as a radical change in communications systems. Drawing on concepts such as ‘hybridity’ (Latour, 1993), ‘remediation’ (Bolter and
Grusin, 1999) and ‘convergence culture’ (Jenkins, 2006), I stress the continuity between old and new media in processes of recy-
cling, reformatting and reinterpreting. ese are the elements I will try to highlight through two case studies focusing on photog-
raphy. First I look at snapshots of Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial [thereaer Auschwitz] posted via the photo-sharing application
Instagram. Second, I examine how historic images of Nazi atrocities are contextualized in the Wikipedia article ‘Holocaust’. My
paper is based on the analysis of the aesthetics of images, discursive practices, and structures of networked communities. It con-
nects empirical ndings with theoretical frames produced in Holocaust studies, memory studies and media studies.
2. Seeing the Holocaust through lters: snapshots of Auschwitz on Instagram
Since a few years we attend the rise of iPhoneography—that is, photography using the built-in camera of the iPhone (smartphone)
and, according to ‘purists’, editing and publishing the image with the iPhone as well. e dierence from previous cameras, includ-
ing digital ones, is that people always have their smartphone at hand, and the smartphone is connected to Internet. As a result,
photography has become more ubiquitous than ever. Journalist Nick Bilton reports that 45 million snapshots are shared every day
via Instagram, which means 16 billion photos in total since the application was launched in 2011. is makes ‘memobilia’, as Anna
Reading calls such mobile phone-produced memories,4 a major player in the way many people communicate about their daily ex-
periences. What happens when one of these experiences is visiting Auschwitz? How does this aect the representation of the Holo-
caust? With digital photography we got accustomed to seeing more and more photos circulated on the Internet. So what dierence
does iPhoneography make? To explore this issue I will examine snapshots of Auschwitz posted via Instagram. I will focus on one
particular feature: lter-altered images. ere are twenty-eight lters. Each gives photos a specic vintage/retro look by squaring
them in a Polaroid or Instamatic camera fashion,5 remapping their colors, blurring areas, adding lm grain and scratches (Blevins,
tutorial 2012). What does it mean to see Auschwitz through lters? Of course, lters are part of Instagram’s strategy of marketing
‘nostalgia commodity’. Yet, let us not stop at this aspect. Filters, we will see, help users articulate Auschwitz in the present, and man-
age the tension between appropriation and alienation, a-historical and historicizing perceptions, documenting and feeling.
My analysis of Instagram lters draws on the notion of ‘prosthetic’ in a twofold way. First, in reference to Alison Landsberg’s con-
ceptualization of remembrance of the Holocaust. She describes ‘prosthetic memory’ as sensuous forms of memory that are “nei-
ther purely individual nor entirely collective but emerge at the interface of individual and collective experience” (2004: 19). Filters
match this description. ey are readymade visualizations through which memory commodity and personal interpretations inter-
act, thereby drawing a picture of Auschwitz beyond “snapshot’s specicity or individual mark of identity” (Rubinstein and Sluis,
2008; 19). Second, within a (Western) history of visuality as I refer to instruments and practices shaping, at least since Renaissance
and modern times, our structures of viewing. ere is a long history of lters as visual prosthesis. Artists used convex grey or black
mirrors (called ‘Claude glass’) to transpose the scale of values of the scenes they painted into the canvas frame. In the eighteenth
century, the better classes traveling in the countryside or the wide world oen observed landscapes through lters made of colored
glasses. ese blue, red, yellow, orange and green glasses were generally round and mounted on a fan-shaped frame. “is way of
looking can be classed under the ‘picturesque’, that is, literally, that which can be converted into a picture,” the art historian Arnaud
Maillet explains (2004: 32, 138). Into what kind of picture, then, do lters turn Auschwitz? (Fig.2)
“Walking through ‘Auschwitz-land’ we do not see an authentic past preserved carefully for the present. We don’t experi
ence the past as it really was, but experience a mediated past which has been carefully created for our viewing.”
(Cole, 1999: 111).
How do lters in turn mediate this already mediated past? Users mostly resort to black and white lters (‘Inkwell’, ‘Willow’) or
lters with so colors, yellowish and sepia tones (‘Mayfair’, ‘Brannan’, ‘Earlybird’, ‘Sutro’).6 eir snapshots evoke Allied photos of
liberated camps and washed-out color footage of the war, themselves popularized by iconic movies such as Schindler’s List and tel-
evision programs such as “World War Two in HD Color” (Fig.3 and 4). is shows the importance of pre-mediation—“existent me-
dia which circulate in a given society provide schemata for future experience and its representation” (Erll, 2008: 392)—in forming
a picture of Auschwitz. Indeed the faux age look of Instragram snapshots goes straight to the core of the problem. e application
is oen criticized, especially by professional photographers, for faking a history or longetivity snapshots do not originally possess.
is is the contemporary version of an old debate. Suspicions of tampering have been associated with lters for a long time. In the
nineteenth century, the use of tints that aged paintings was common practice among unscrupulous art dealers who tried to pass
copies of masters for original works (Maillet, 2004: 112-113). Needless to say, the debate takes on specic meanings in the context
of the Holocaust. ere is always a risk deniers abuse such images. However this is an extreme case. On a more general level, the
disturbing impression le by Instagram snapshots stems from their providing a mirror eect of what happened to Auschwitz itself.
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e preservation of death sites in the name of remembrance necessarily implies their alteration, be it treating human hair with
naphtalene or reconstructing crematoria (Cole, 1999: 110, 113). is is why these photos of Auschwitz, however distorted and arti-
cial they may appear, accurately reect the reality of the memorial. What we see is not the actual camp complex but the “mythical
Auschwitz,” as Tim Cole calls it, created for domestic and international audiences.
Fig.2 Instagram snapshots of the Arbeit macht frei gateway in the following lters: Willow, Lo-Fi, Sutro, Earlybird, Amaro, Brannan, X-Pro II,
Lo-Fi, Rise, Inkwell, Valencia, Walden, X-Pro II, Earlybird, Willow, Sierra, Lo-Fi, Amaro, Sutro, Inkwell
3

Fig.3 Snapshots of Auschwitz using the lter Inkwell
“We visit a contrived tourist attraction, which oers that which a culture saturated with the myth of the ‘Holocaust’ expects to see.”
(Cole, 1999: 111). What happens when experience does not tally with expectations? is opens to another perspective on Insta-
gram, in line with the long-established tradition of using lters for ironing out dissonances. Colored glasses served to produce a
homogeneous image, an imitation of reality harmonizing the site and the viewer’s interpretation of it (Maillet, 2008: 157). Visitors
in Auschwitz do not search for an ideal beauty—even if many try to make beautiful photos of Auschwitz. ey look for an ideal
representation of both the memorial and their experience. is is not about representing historical complexity or dicult knowl-
edge, but bringing the ‘scenery’ into a single focal point. Filters provide a supplément d’âme (special feel/extra touch of soul), sup-
plement being read here in a quasi-Derridean sense of addition and replacement. rough lters, users compensate for an absence:
what they did not see in Auschwitz, what they did not feel in Auschwitz. e faux-vintage of Instagram, mimicking printed photos,
allows for reclaiming the physicality of the experience (Jurgenson, 2011). e bodily dimension was possibly missed in Auschwitz
because visitors were more xated on shooting the site than using their other senses for experiencing it.
Filters with contrast and saturation (‘Lo-Fi’, ‘X-Pro II’, ‘Amaro’) oer an easy way to dramatization. Buildings that, perhaps, ap-
peared unimpressive at rst sight suddenly become ominous. Photos that looked like nothing are suddenly charged with strong
emotions (Fig.5). In case this is not enough, users add tags: ‘creepy’, ‘sad’, ‘melancholia’. Dramatization is also achieved through
black and white: “A color photo doesn’t really express the emotion and darkness of the place,” Robin Batholomew writes in the cap-
tion of an Inkwell-ltered snapshot (2 August 2013). Unsurprisingly, lters associated with photographing light and happy scenes,
such as ‘1977’ with its disco-like eect, are seldom used. Who would turn the memorial into an entertaining place? Who would say
they had fun in Auschwitz (or didn’t care at all)?7 is indicates the existence of limits in the representation of Auschwitz. Prob-
lematic behaviours among tourists at the memorial have long been pointed out (Cole, 1999: 116). Yet they are hardly visualized.
Social media do not depart much from that point. By using lters, visitors close the gap between an ‘imagined Auschwitz’ and the
reality of the place, between ‘appropriate’ reactions and their actual feelings or lack thereof. In this sense, social media constitute an
access to what I call ‘digital unconscious’, in reference to Walter Benjamin’s ‘optical unconscious’ and what he denes as the me-
dium’s ability to reveal “structural formations of the subject” (Benjamin, 1968 [1936]: 236). Filters provide an entry point into the
interaction of psychic unconscious and the cultural imaginary of the Holocaust that is part of our forming and viewing images of
Auschwitz, and building a relation to the events.
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Fig.4 Snapshots of Auschwitz using the lter Earlybird
at people create pictures of Auschwitz and themselves more conform to social and cultural expectations shows that Instagram
snapshots are not only about Holocaust tourism, consumerism, and technological gadgetery. When users try to visually link their
photos to historical documentation and iconic movies, to over-demonstrate emotional connection to the tragedy of the Holocaust,
they engage in a process of transmission. It makes all the more sense through the medium of iPhoneography, in which the commu-
nication function of photography seems to prevail over the indexical one. French cultural theorist Olivier Beuvelet, among others,
emphasizes the oral dimension of photos processed through Instagram. He calls it the “phatic function”—to keep in touch, to pro-
duce a “contact-image.” Snapshots are not meant to report objectively about a place or an event (“it has been”) but to show presence
(“I was there”). ere is a legacy of witnessing attached to Auschwitz. For some visitors, ltered-snapshots posted on social media,
just like digital postcards addressed to each and anyone, are a way to assume this legacy and become witness themselves. Users inte-
grate Auschwitz in their self-documentation. ey turn the visit into an important, even transformative experience. More than this,
they bring it into chain of transmission that is re-phrased in the context of social media in terms of ‘followers’. is is something
that Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial has perfectly understood. Since August 2013, the institution posts a comment, not for every
snapshot hashtagged ‘Auschwitz’ but for interesting and sensitive ones demonstrating a reection about the place. It reads: “ank
you for sharing the picture and thank you for remembering.”
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Fig.5 Snapshots of Auschwitz using the lter Lo-Fi
3. A fair use of historic images: illustrating/evidencing the Holocaust on Wikipedia
e Wikipedia article ‘Holocaust’ exists in 115 languages, including Somali, Vietnamese, Afrikaans, Gaelic and Esperanto.8 Some
versions are extremely detailed, with a professional bibliography, hundreds of footnotes and a rich imagery. e articles in English
and French, for instance, display no less than 47 images: recent photos released under Creative Commons, maps, and archive im-
ages. For many people, the transfer of historic images from physical locations, such as archives and libraries, into digital settings
generates anxiety. What about ownership? What about manipulation? Who can guarantee the ‘good use’ of images? e underly-
ing question is that of the relationship between two systems of knowledge: one, scholarly and institutional, that denes scientic
procedures for the study of the Holocaust; the other based on peer production of knowledge and involving any user interested in
the subject matter. Can the latter system accommodate historiographic demands attached to rsthand documents of Nazi crimes?
is is what I will examine through two case studies based on content analysis of users’ discussions about historic images of the
Holocaust illustrating the article.
We need rst to understand the working of Wikipedia. e online encyclopedia mostly delivers free-content material—that is,
which has no signicant legal restriction on people’s freedom to re-use it. Wikimedia Commons, the online repository of free-use
media les, proposes 282 images of the Holocaust. is includes archive images in the public domain, or for which Wikipedia
obtained a free license through agreements. ese might be agreements with individuals, such as Robin Vrba who released images
of Rudolf Vrba under Creative Commons,9 and institutions, such as the German Federal Archives that donated 80,000 les in 2008.
en comes the problematic matter of copyrighted historic images. e use of non-free content on Wikipedia remains exceptional.
It is subjected to strict regulations based on the US legal doctrine of ‘fair use’.10 If valid conditions of use cannot be specied, there is
copyright infringement, and the image can be removed on sight (‘speedy deletion’).11 In most cases, however, images are not imme-
diately deleted and users engage in a process called ‘raw consensus’. is is not a yes/no vote but the exchange of serious arguments
for the use, or not, of the images at stake. Once a majority opinion is reached, administrators12 close the debate. If new arguments
appear, it may be re-opened at any moment.
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My rst case study is the discussion ‘Commons: Deletion requests/United States holocaust memorial museum images’.13 It concerns
a series of photos (e.g. victims at the Jasenovac camp, Hitler in Yugoslavia) that were donated by the Muzej Revolucije Narodnosti
Jugoslavije to the USHMM [thereaer USHMM], and which the American institution released to the public domain (Fig.6).
e discussion starts with a comment by user Lokal-Prol about the status of the photos (4 February 2008). Since they are not
public domain-old (seventy years), the question is whether the USHMM owns the actual copyright. e ensuing debate is a con-
frontation of two logics: on the one hand, the logic of Wikipedia sticking to the rules established by the encyclopedia for the use of
non-free images, no matter what is depicted on them; on the other hand, an institutional logic according to which the reputation of
the USHMM is a sucient condition for using the photos.
“is merely means that the images are somewhat incorrectly tagged if this is true about the USHMM. However, this still
doesn’t fully give valid reasons for deletion… If anything, these images should be kept until proper tagging is given but
deletion is something I for one am highly against.” (user Zarbon)
“With every other image on commons it’s delete until proven free not keep until proven unfree. Not being able to prove
the license is normally considered a valid reason for deletion.”14 (user Lokal_Prol)
“If USHMM claims this is PD [public domain], I would not question it, just verify that their website says so. is seems to
be an attempt to be more holly [sic] than a pope.” (user Jarekt)
“We oen deleted collected images from US sources with a public domain claim when they did not fulll our require
ments... In the past we could show for example, that portraits of Nazi ocials were done by Heinrich Homann and thus
are not in the public domain in Germany/European Union until 2028, no matter if his property was seized by the US gov
ernment.” (user Polarlys).
ere are combined commercial and legalistic issues in both logics. However, for proponents of the institutional logic the legal
status of the image seems to depend on its historical value. is gives their argument a moralizing twist, according to which the
weight of the subject matter (Nazi crimes) overrides Wikipedia policies:
“ese photographs are important historical records of actual crimes that were committed. I think the burden should be
Fig.6 Screenshot of the page ‘Commons: Deletion requests/US holocaust memorial museum images’
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to show why they should not be published, rather than the other way round.” (anonymous user)
“I would think that any photos from the Nuremberg trial court materials are in public domain, aren’t they. I do not think
that anybody would dare to le any copyright claims with the courts in respect with images showing Nazi crimes.” (user
Leonis Dzhepko)
User Copyright Attorney makes a decisive intervention. It re-frames in strict legal terms the situation of historic images of the
Holocaust in the public domain:
“Per the Berne Convention and the World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty, these images are in the
public domain, because as a matter of law a copyright can only be asserted when the creator is identied. Courts in both
Europe and the United States have repeatedly held that anonymous Holocaust images like this are not subject to copyright
and are therefore in the public domain… As well, international law has, for more than sixty years, voided all copyrights to
photographs made by the Axis powers in the 1933-1945 period.”
e debate is closed on 20 April 2008, when user EVula, a bureaucrat (i.e. a top-level Wikipedia administrator), declares: “All kept.
ere’s an overwhelming amount of evidence that these images are ne.”
Cropped in all kinds of ways, ipped from le to right and vice versa, the printed photographic object oers no guarantee of proof.
Still, this is the digital image that crystallizes fears about manipulation and loss of evidentiary power of archive photos. As my
second case study will show, retouching historic images is regulated on Wikipedia. Let us turn now to the Selection Birkenau ramp
jpg, a photo from the Lili Meier-Jacob album (Fig.7). e photo’s ‘description page’ clearly states, in blue-frame block, that the pic-
ture has been digitally altered.15 It also re-directs the reader to the ‘le talk page’, which provides context about the image editing.16
Fig.7 Screenshot of the page ‘File: Selection Birkenau ramp jpg.
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e discussion starts with a comment by user Hoops gza. Someone “continues to alter the print from the way in which it was re-
ceived by changing it to greyscale” (28 June 2011).
“ere are dangers in changing important historical images. For example, your changes made it look as though it was
quite a sunny day. But was it? We don’t know. So I’d say best to leave it as the source reproduced it.” (user SlimVirgin)
“My thinking is that Yad Vashem reproduced the image as they were given it and they did that for a reason. So personally
I’d be reluctant to sharpen it.” (user SlimVirgin)
“I have had the privilege to meet someone who was actually there around the time this photo is believed to have been
taken. According to what he told me, the photograph was taken during the late spring/early summer and the summer dur
ing that time of the year was somewhat warm.” (user OberRanks)
For both users digital retouching has consequences for the content of the original picture. It is justied, or not, through reference
to an authoritative voice, that of a reputable institution for SlimVirgin, that of an eyewitness for OberRanks. is is quite a dead
end for the discussion. All the more so as none of the users involved in the discussion at this stage takes into account the physical
life of the printed image itself and the many factors that could have altered its meaning: sensitivity of the lm, aperture, negative
exposure to light, proper or improper xation, cutting, archival storage. Users SlimVirgin and OberRanks seem to miss a point:
the photographic document, printed or digital, never speaks for itself. It needs frames, captions, and description. No wonder users
soon make a shi to a more arguable issue, the function the image within the context of Wikipedia. e question about digitally
retouching a picture is no longer whether it transforms the historical content but whether it contributes to the article. Does it aid
the reader’s understanding of the subject? From that perspective, modifying the photo is not considered as a form of tampering but
a matter of readability and pedagogy. is is why contextualization is so important.
“[Yad Vashem] clearly scanned a yellowed, faded copy which had color blotches… ere seems little point showing 60+
years of degradation in this image.” (user Hohum)
“I wouldn’t see the changed image as an issue from the historical standpoint as long as it’s made CLEAR that the image has
been modied in some way (and with those changes publicly tracked and annotated).” (user Intothatdarkness)
“I do not see how cropping the border aects the historical nature on the original image. Decreasing the yellowing to
restore the image to close to its original condition seems ok.” (user Fnlayson)
“I agree with Fnlayson for the reasons stated… ese minor modications just make the image a little more viewable.”
(user JGHowes)
Media scholar Shaun Wilson mentions the “digital ruins” we encounter when we dig the history of digital media content (2009:
193). “ousands of web pages are ‘thrown away’ each day,” writes librarian and media theorist Tjebbe van Tijen, listing various
reasons for that: storage costs, hard disk crashes, or lack of space on computer. One needs to know where to look if one wants to
retrieve vanished electronic documents. But what to do when the content is not properly described? is is something Wikipedia is
well aware of. Correct tagging is one of the pillars of the encyclopedia. erefore, it oers an eective system of traceability through
‘discussion pages’ and ‘description pages’. Further, it provides for each picture a ‘le history’ in the form of a table including thumb-
nails of successive stages of the historic photo. All these elements function as “spatial palimpsests” (Graham, 2011: 269). ey give
access to the layered history of the archive image, in the digital realm but also out of it.
Both case studies show the importance of the economy of information on Wikipedia. Reliability—be it in the respect of legal
frameworks, interaction with outside institutions, or correct tagging of the image—is key to the “networking” principle of the en-
cyclopedia. It closes the door to any speculation about the photos illustrating the article ‘Holocaust’ and reinforces “the building of
a network of relationships that make a proposed ‘fact’ dicult to attack” (Baetens, 2003: 185). In this light, a system based on peer
production of knowledge such as Wikipedia seems fully able to deal with historiographic and ethical complexities coming with
archive images of the Holocaust. It does not oppose in any way to other systems of knowledge, more scholarly or institutional, but
interacts with them, and possibly enriches them.
4. Conclusion
Social media are here to stay. ey will transform, absorb newer technologies, and keep playing a decisive role in our daily life. e
digital media economy is and will remain an important realm wherein knowledge and memory of the Holocaust are conveyed,
reected and commented upon, integrated into one’s own experience.
Against this backdrop, my paper presented a tentative approach to two distinct treatments of the Holocaust, through images, on the
Internet. e rst case study, ltered snapshots of Auschwitz posted via the application Instagram, shows a multiplicity of reactions
to the memorial and how people communicate about their experience visiting it. is is the backchannel that runs parallel to more
ocial or institutional discourses about Auschwitz, to be found for instance in the literature about memorial visits. e second case
study, two discussions about the use of historic images of Nazi crimes in the Wikipedia article ‘Holocaust’, tries to articulate digital
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archeology practices to autopsy practices used in the physical settings of archives and research institutions. ese discussions
reect opinions expressed by all kinds of people, such as legal experts and graphic designers (according to the information given on
their prole). ey make it possible to grasp Holocaust images from a variety of viewpoints and from there, to re-trace their trajec-
tory in and out of the digital realm.
is is a very early stage of research, based on empirical ndings. It aims to show that studying the cultural memory of the Holo-
caust in social media implies looking at the material apparatus, technology, discursive and social practices, content and aesthetics.
Such a study mobilizes disciplines as diverse as anthropology, media studies, history of photography, visual culture and art history
alongside Holocaust studies, history, and law. Media scholar Diraj Murthy compares Twitter to “a stream, which is composed of a
polyphony of voices all chiming in” (2013: 4). is is a sound comparison. Social media and social networks write a new text of the
Holocaust. As the case #UnBonJuif demonstrates it, parts of this text are not always agreeable (to say the least). But they are here,
and they are some of the voices that compose the polyphony of the Holocaust in the twenty-rst century. We just need to know
how to listen to it. is is essential not only for understanding how people remember, represent and relate to the Holocaust today,
but also to all those involved in Holocaust studies and education for devising new ways to communicate with audiences.
Footnotes
1. Several non-governmental organizations joined the UEJF: SOS Racisme, MRAP (Mouvement contre le Racisme et pour l’Amitié
entre les Peuples), LICRA (Ligue Internationale Contre le Racisme et l’Antisémitisme) and J’accuse!
2. Social networks (e.g. Facebook, Flickr) and social media (e.g. Twitter, Tumblr) are not exactly the same thing: “social media is
mainly conceived of as a medium wherein ‘ordinary’ people in ordinary social networks (as opposed to professional journalists)
can publish user-generated ‘news’/’updates’ (in a broadly dened sense). Additionally, social media’s emphasis is not as ‘bounded’
to communities of friends as social network sites are.” (Murthy, 2013: 8). Still, they overlap and inter-connect in many ways. In the
scope of the paper, I will treat social media and social networks as a whole, and emphasize the notion of digital media.
3. Hashtags (#) can be words of phrases. e # prex can be inserted anywhere within a post. # do not contain any denitions. It
means that a same # can be used for any number of purposes. A # functions best when used in combination with other well chosen
#, hence producing a line of text that is more unique. e limit of the total message in number of characters (140 for Twitter) makes
it necessary to formulate the post in a telegram style.
4. “e word memobile is a deliberate linguistic combination of me (individual/self) with mobile (on the move, mobilization) with
phonic echoes of the word meme—a unit of cultural information that is repeatedly transmitted and can self-propagate rather like a
virus.” (Reading, 2009: 82)
5. e cropping into a sqaure format is also an adaptation to the screen format of smartphones.
6. For the analysis, I collected around ve hundred snapshots via Statigram and classied them according to lters. en I sorted
out the groups according to visual eects.
7. Which does not mean there is no fun aer Auschwitz. One nds for instance series of snapshots, all with #Auschwitz, that retrace
school trips in Poland, including the visit at the memorial, shopping in Cracow, and partying at the hotel in the evening.
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/e_Holocaust (accessed July 12, 2013)
9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RudolfVrbawithArnostRosin.jpg (accessed August 1, 2013)
10. To be on the safe side, Wikipedia denes a further set of ten criteria including: the absence of free equivalent that would serve
the same encyclopedic purpose; minimal usage and extent of use; appearance in previous publications; contextual understanding.
To make the matter more complex, the fair use policy does not apply uniformly to all Wikipedias. It combines with copyright laws
used in the country of the article’s author/language.
11. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Deletion_policy (accessed July 29, 2013)
12. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Wikiquote:Administrators (accessed August 16, 2013)
13. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/US_holocaust_memorial_museum_images (accessed Au-
gust 2, 2013)
14. Lokal_prol refers here to the “burden of proof” principle in claims for fair use: it is the duty of users seeking to include/retain
content to provide a valid rationale.
15. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Selection_Birkenau_ramp.jpg (accessed August 26, 2013)
16. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_talk:Selection_Birkenau_ramp.jpg (accessed August 2, 2013)
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Stéphanie Benzaquen
PhD candidate
Center for Historical Culture
Erasmus University Rotterdam, e Netherlands
(August 2013)
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