Abstract Within Holocaust studies, there has been an increasingly uncritical acceptance that by engaging with social media, Holocaust memory has shifted from the ‘era of the witness’ to the ‘era of the user’ (Hogervorst 2020). This paper starts by problematising this proposition. This claim to a paradigmatic shift implies that (1) the user somehow replaces the witness as an authority of memory, which neglects the wealth of digital recordings of witnesses now circulating in digital spaces and (2) agency online is solely human-centric, a position that ignores the complex negotiations between corporations, individuals, and computational logics that shape our digital experiences. This article proposes instead that we take a posthumanist approach to understanding Holocaust memory on, and with, social media. Adapting Barad's (2007) work on entanglement to memory studies, we analyse two case studies on TikTok: the #WeRemember campaign and the docuseries How To: Never Forget to demonstrate: (1) the usefulness of reading Holocaust memory on social media through the lens of entanglement which offers a methodology that accounts for the complex network of human and non-human actants involved in the production of this phenomenon which are simultaneously being shaped by it. (2) That professional memory institutions and organisations are [...]

Published in Eastern European Holocaust Studies Introduction I recently commented on the international furore provoked by the plans Moscow filmmaker Ilya Khrzhanovsky leaked in May 2020 for the renovation of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Centre.[1] In its critique, The New York Times[2] states that a computer algorithm designed to create a personalised museum experience would assign visitors the roles of executioner, collaborator, or victim: donning a VR headset, they would be placed into the historical scenes of the massacre with the use of deep fake technology. The media storm that erupted after this leak led to Khrzhanovsky’s plans being dropped. Putting the controversy aside, Khrzhanovsky’s proposal was nevertheless ambitious in foregrounding the symbiotic relationship between computational and human agency in digital environments, which is an affordance of contemporary technologies rarely emphasised in Holocaust museums and memorial sites’ digital projects. One of the issues often neglected when we pose the questions “is digitalisation a blessing or a curse for Holocaust memorialisation?”, is that digital interventions are not entirely automated and out of human control; rather they are an entanglement between computational and human logics and materialities.[3] To put this more bluntly, whether digitalization of Holocaust memorialisation is a blessing or a [...]

Abstract This editorial introduces this special edition of Holocaust Studies, which reflects on how bringing concerns central to the fields of Digital Media, Communication and Cultural Studies to bear on Holocaust Studies raises significant questions that could help inform memory and educational initiatives for the future. The editorial contextualizes the increasing visibility of denial and distortion online within algorithmic, participatory, and gaming cultures, that have the potential to benefit memory activism as much as they draw attention to dangerous alternative rhetoric. Nevertheless, it also highlights a need to think more carefully about the complicity of educators, curators, and researchers in unethical digital practices. Before introducing the contributions to this special edition of Holocaust Studies, it then briefly reflects on some of the trends that Holocaust organizations adopted during the Covid-19 Pandemic. This special edition, perhaps, offers more questions than answers, but establishing the right questions is an important step towards expanding the disciplinary boundaries of ‘Holocaust Studies’, so that it is befitting of the digital age. The full article can be accessed here.

Originally published in Frames Cinema Journal Introduction Much of the discourse about the ethics of Holocaust representation considers it a sacred event that imposes representational limits. Survivors are often considered “authorities” of Holocaust memory. However, Alasdair Richardson defines the Holocaust as an event “on the edge of living memory”: soon there will be no first-hand witnesses to share their stories.[1] When the last survivor dies, the responsibility to remember will be entirely passed onto a new generation who cannot provide first-hand accounts of events; they did not literally witness this tragic past, but are called to “bear witness” in a more abstract sense as they remember the Holocaust through memorials, education and other media.[2] While debates about the “appropriateness” of Holocaust representation have long-existed, the recent surge in online engagement with it complicates issues further and has led to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) launching social media guidelines for educators.[3] Young people are particularly prevalent users of social media, thus it is not surprising that they might turn to this format to remember the Holocaust. The theme of this issue is conflicting images/ contested realities, and much of the youth-produced material relating to the Holocaust online has been [...]