Through the use of objects, various phenomena of individual and collective memory are vividly and comprehensibly conveyed. Objects can trigger, shape or interrupt memory processes, particularly through their impact on the human subject. The relationship between materiality, memory and affectivity is therefore at the heart of the Memory cluster, which examines the role of Jewish material culture in shaping memory and post-memory of the Holocaust in different historical and national contexts and narratives.

From the beginning, materiality has played a central role in Holocaust remembrance: in the extermination camps, the body was not a philosophical abstraction, but could be seen as the fundamental materialisation of the reality of the camps. The violent fragmentation of the subject was inscribed on the body, leaving irreparable traces. Surviving the camp became the literal “materialisation” of one’s own death. If we consider the body as a lieu de mémoire, it allows us to penetrate the past and gain access to experiences that were hidden and repressed due to the extreme nature of the suffering endured.

In addition to the body, the Memory cluster aims to reconstruct memory by approaching remnants and ruins of Jewish life after the Holocaust. The goal is to identify the various contexts in which the life and afterlife of Jewish objects in Europe after the Second World War and the end of Communism exert an affective force on individuals and societies. The focus is on reflecting on the fate and use of objects in order to explore their meanings within different forms of Jewish memory culture and to examine the implications of Jewish absence in post-Holocaust European societies. The research looks at both historical discourses and different media such as literary texts, memoirs, autobiographies, films and photographs. These media represent modes of relating different spheres of life, continuity between generations, bridges between individual and collective histories, and connections between human civilization and nature.