Film Screening: When Memory Comes

‘When Memory comes’ is a film about the Jewish historian Saul Friedländer (1932, Prague) and his life-long quest to describe the extermination of the European Jews without losing or repressing a primary feeling of disbelief. Friedländer’s life and work is totally intertwined with the history of Europe and European Jewry. He survived World War II in a convent school in France while his parents tried to flee to Switzerland in vain and were deported and murdered in Auschwitz. Friedländer’s quest, culminated in his book Nazi-Germany and the Jews 1933-1945, in which he used a new and unique historiography giving a voice and a face to victims, bystanders and perpetrators alike. The film balances Friedländer’s biography, with the explanation of his methodology, the use of diaries, particularly those of children. It shows his preoccupation with the trivialization of the Shoah in film and literature. And it illuminates Friedländer’s concept of Hitler’s “redemptive anti-semitism”. Either he would exterminate ‘the Jew’, or ‘the Jew’ would destroy Aryan humanity, everything Hitler had fought for. Friedländer convincingly argues that this was the defining concept of Nazi policy leading to the extermination of the Jews of Europe. The screening will be followed by a discussion with director Frank Diamand in conversation with Professor Dan Stone and Professor Bob Eaglestone of Royal Holloway, University of London. ‘When Memory comes’ is a production of INTERAKT co-produced by DIAMAND & FRIENDS PRODUCTIONS. Supported by the History Department, Royal Holloway, Unversity of London.

Source: http://www.culture24.org.uk//am52233?id=EVENT466963