From Individual Survival to Social Networks of Survivors: Rethinking the Digital Archive of the Greek Holocaust

Abstract

Digital audiovisual archives of Holocaust survivor testimonies follow a common classifying practice organizing the material at the unit of the individual. They thus prioritize the uniqueness of each survivor’s story and approach survival as a personal ordeal. The online meta-database of Greek Jewish Holocaust survivors’ testimonies (http://gjst.ha.uth.gr/en/) exemplifies this logic of archiving the historical experience and its mnemonic narrativization. The current project Bonds of Survival critically rethinks these methodological premises of the digital Holocaust archive. It complements current emphasis on the Holocaust survivor and her experience by shifting attention from the individual to her social relations. Taking the relationship as the organizing unit of the archiving order, it uses social network visualization tools to collect, categorize, and display the social interactions of survivors. Researchers can thus more accurately determine the weight and ontology of social relations in the camps and systematically explore the linkages between survival strategies, identity formation, and modes of social interaction.