The Memory of the Holocaust and Jewish Romanian Identity of Three Artists in Exile

• In Event: Gender, Trauma, and Memory in Wartime: Perspectives from Romania, Kosovo, and the Soviet Union

Abstract

This presentation focuses on ways in which Romanian Jews remembered and represented their past while in “exile.” The artistic, written and oral testimonies of artists Hedda Sterne, Marcel Iancu, and Daniel Spoerri reveal how through the act of testifying, identity and autobiographies are not only recalled but also created. All these witnesses survived the trauma of the Holocaust, and this historical moment shaped their socio-political and life perspective. Their narratives of trauma and reconstruction of the self are presented and analyzed through the concepts of active forgetting and narrative identity. This would be the first presentation featuring these testimonies.

Author

• Olga Stefan