What to do with the plastic testimonies of Auschwitz-Birkenau: Erasure and presence of the story, told by these visual works

Abstract

The Nazi deportation and genocide memorial museums, rarely exhibit drawings, paintings and sculptures produced by survivors, representing their experience of horror. The many images exhibited are mainly photographs. This is particularly the case in the exhibition at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum. When testimonial works are put forward, it is in a separate space, separate from the historical exhibition. My hypothesis is that the discourse on the Holocaust conveyed by the exhibition is unlikely to leave them a place. If the historical exhibition shows the immeasurability of horror, these plastic testimonies indeed induce to imagine the story of the life of the victims represented and therefore to make their lives commensurable with what visitors can understand. Representative works confront the viewer with the evidence of the experience of horror rather than of its ineffability