"The Concept of Survival" a lecture by Visiting Scholar Falko Schmieder

Wednesday, November 20
TIME CHANGE
1:00 p.m.
Room 710 Social Sciences Building

One aspect of the emergence of bio politics around 1800 is the formation of a temporalized meaning of, Survival', indicating a profound change in the understanding of being and its relation to time and politics. A well known linguistic expression of this change is the metaphor "survival of the fittest" which was a key element of Social Darwinist worldview.

The Anthropologist and Ethnographer E.B.Tylor introduced another important concept: that of, "Survivals." As an important methodological tool of the new science of cultural anthropology this concept identifies and explores such elements of culture, which have their origins in pre-modern times and have a second life as inharmonious misfits in modernity, creating conditions of the synchronicity of the nonsynchronous.

In his presentation Schmieder examine the significance of the temporalization of survival for different fields of knowledge, and, in a further step, will discuss some turning points of the subsequent history of this concept, which is still relevant for contemporary discourses.

Falko Schmieder is a DAAD visiting professor at the University of Minnesota and is currently teaching the course "History of the Holocaust." He has studied Communications, Political Science and Sociology at various German Universities. Since 2005 he has worked as a researcher at the Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin.

Co sponsored by the Center for German and European Studies.

Art Exhibition The Metamorphosis to Freedom: by a Holocaust Survivor

The Metamorphosis to Freedom by Dr. Robert O. Fisch
November 1-December 27, 2012
Tychman Shapiro Gallery
Minneapolis Sabes JCC
4330 S. Cedar Lake Road, Minneapolis, 55416

"Remain human-even in inhuman circumstances." Dr. Robert O. Fisch

Dr. Fisch is a retired pediatrician and visual artist as well as a Holocaust survivor. His art expresses issues of humanity that he hopes will heal the world in the aftermath of the Holocaust.



Many of his works in this exhibit are a reflection from Fisch's experiences in a Nazi concentration camp documented through eloquent paintings and moving prose. Fisch states, "The impact on all of us who survived remains in our experience. I feel that all of us who were marked by the yellow star were tattooed inside. We have a special obligation, not a privilege, in being alive. As survivors, our moral and human obligations are essential, and our standards have to be based on human principles rather than on practicalities. We who survived are not different from others; we just played a special role in a special time."
For more on the exhibition please contact the Sabes Jewish Community Center at 952-381-3400.
For more on Dr. Fisch and his artwork please visit his page on the CHGS website.

Régine Waintrater's "Testimony: Genocide and Transmission" available to view online

On March 28, 2011 Régine Waintrater presented a paper entitled "Testimony: Genocide and Transmission" at the University of Minnesota. Prof. Waintrater's appearance was sponsored by University's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
CHGS is pleased to announce its new YouTube Channel, CHGSumn, where you can view her lecture. A print version in of the talk is availableTestimony Genocide and Transmission.pdf.
Régine Waintrater is a psychoanalyst, family therapist, and an associate professor at the Université Paris 7-Diderot. Her practice as a therapist is critical of the ideology of testimony as catharsis. Waintrater has been involved in the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University Library, and in the USC Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, two important projects of testimony collection. She is the author of Sortir du genocide (Out of Genocide: Testifying to Learn to Live Again).
Further Reading (including some of the sources cited in the lecture):
Améry, Jean. At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and Its Realities.
Delbo, Charlotte. Days and Memory.
Hatzfeld, Jean. Into the Quick of Life.
Langer, Lawrence. Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory.
Levi, Primo. The Drowned and the Saved.
Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz.
Ricoeur, Paul. Oneself as Another.

Volunteers Needed to Assist Holocaust Survivors with Oral History

A group of local Holocaust survivors meet every month at the Jewish Community Center in St. Paul. The meetings are recorded to preserve the stories, experiences and the conversations that take place at the gathering. The group is looking for volunteers to type up transcripts of the recordings for historical posterity.

To volunteer, send an email to amram001@umn.edu. Please type "holocaust" in the subject line.

For more information about the group please click here to be linked to their page on the CHGS website.