Oren Baruch Stier

Holocaust Survivors Report Long-Term Effects on Attitudes toward Food

OBJECTIVE To gather information from survivors on the effects that the Holocaust had on their current attitudes toward food. DESIGN Qualitative study: one-on-one semistructured interviews with a script shaped by a pilot study. SETTING South Florida homes and community sites, including the Miami Beach Holocaust Memorial. PARTICIPANTS Convenience sample of 25 Holocaust survivors: 14 men, 11 women; ages 71 to 85 years. PHENOMENON OF INTEREST Current attitudes toward food in relation to Holocaust experiences. ANALYSIS Themes and illustrative quotations from transcriptions of audiotaped interviews. RESULTS Food attitudes were influenced by Holocaust experiences. Five themes emerged: (1) difficulty throwing food away, even when spoiled; (2) storing excess food; (3) craving certain food(s); (4) difficulty standing in line for food; and (5) experiencing anxiety when food is not readily available. Empathy for those currently suffering from hunger was also reported. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS Food-related issues from the Holocaust remain for survivors. Now in their 70s and 80s, many use health care and related services. Nutritionists, educators, and health professionals should be aware of such issues. Food and nutrition programs should minimize uncomfortable food-related situations for Holocaust survivors and others who experienced food deprivation.

Torah and Taboo: Containing Jewish Relics and Jewish Identity at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Is museum space religious space? Do strategies of display, i.e., the ways certain objects such as human remains and ritual items are presented and/or experienced, make them into sacred objects? Who or what determines whether or not a particular object may be appropriately displayed in a museum context? In focusing on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) and on a series of staged encounters there with spaces, objects, and other people, this article considers the possibility that the USHMM serves as a contemporary Jewish reliquary as well as the implications of such a notion, especially in relation to the performance of different types of Jewish identity at the museum. Using archival sources, it examines the debates over the treatment and display of selected artifacts and how those decisions impact the Museums Jewish character.

Framing the Witness

The video begins with familiar material: images from newsreels, old photographs, melancholy music, all evoking the difficult and disturbing history of the Holocaust. A disembodied voice comes over the images, sounding vaguely familiar. Soon, the images fade and are replaced by that of a distinguished-looking gentleman walking slowly through a high-tech media centre. And then we recognize him: Ben Kingsley, well-known actor and recent co-star of the Holocaust blockbuster Schindler’s List. Though he looks ‘normal’ in this setting, we cannot help but think of him in his movie persona, Yitzhak Stern, the paradigmatic Jew of the film, standing-in then (and now?) for the impersonal mass of Jewish suffering of the Shoah. In this appearance, Kingsley represents, perhaps, the doubled (though in this case assumed) identity of the survivor, embodying two distinct strains of lived and remembered experience: life then, ‘over there’, and life now, ‘over here’. The blurring and confusion is intentional: we are meant to conflate the two roles Kingsley plays and understand something about the frames of reference this video offers as a result.