Tenth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

The paper discusses the visual representation of the Holocaust in Israeli textbooks for different ages, especially the use of images: photographs and paintings or drawings. It considers the choice of Holocaust images, their importance as testimony but also the thin line between images as testimony and the “pornography of evil,” and its possible effects. Questions of ethics, respect for the dead and the vulgarization of brutality are considered as well. The study adopts Social Semiotic mode of inquiry, treating every sign as “motivated” by interest, and applies a multimodal analysis. It draws on Holocaust scholars such as Friedlander, LaCapra, Rothberg and Yablonka, and on semioticians such as Barthes, Kress, Van Leeuwen and Geogre Didi Huberman, to name but a few. The findings from five Holocaust textbooks and five History textbooks published since 2000, show that in Holocaust textbooks verbal and visual chunks complement each other. The Shoa is represented verbally through descriptions of cruel scenes of sadism, while visually it depicts Jewish suffering in graphic, shocking images. However, the images and page layouts differ from one age to another: in books for the young they create myths of heroism, accompanied usually by songs or poems, showing the suffering and the bravery of children. The images become more realistic and disturbing as students approach their military service. This paper argues that Israeli textbooks have a common Holocaust Rhetoric that “act out” the Shoa and do not offer ways to “work through” the traumatic memories.