Essay On Representation Of History And Memory

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Recommended: The Holocaust as a cultural memory

Good morning/afternoon audience of the Sydney Writers festival. As a writer, historian, and son of holocaust survivors I, Mark Baker have encountered challenges surrounding the representation of history and memory which I presented in my historical memoir novel “the 50th gate”. My objective today is to outline “the challenges of representing history and memory”. Traditional historians relied solely on history and research, and did not value the contributions of memory, due to believing it to be “flawed and limited”. My memoir, accompanied by James Cameron’s film “Titanic”, and Errol Morris’s ‘Fog of War’ documentary, reveals the complexities in the nature of History and Memory and how they both interplay to express a deeper representation of an event. Each exploits strong visual and literary techniques to explore how history and memory have an interdependent relationship, and how memory alone has flaws; it is influenced by emotions and creates a challenge in representing an event.
History alone is too factual, lacks emotion and easily disregard able, whilst memory alone is too personal, altered by experience and can be clouded by emotions. History and memory share an interdependent relationship, when these two are combined they are able to paint a more realistic representation of a certain event, situation or personality. For example In my novel “The 50th Gate”, I describe the trip to Treblinka by compiling and merging personal experiences and historical events and am able to represent a common experience shared by the Jewish people. With my use of the poem ‘Written in pencil in a sealed railway-car’, I am able to express the collective memory of the Holocaust through the use of an incomplete sentence. “Here in this carload I am ...

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...oard the ship is her perception and emotions interfering with her memory due to the familial issues prior to boarding the ship. This quote from Rose at the beginning of the film, accompanied by Constant hesitations, tears and "catching of breath" by Rose whilst retelling her experience to the members of the research team represents the trauma that she had undertaken. This also highlights that her entire memory of the event has been interfered with by emotions and possibly unreliable.

Previously I believed that history and memory were too different from each other and created challenges representing an event. Now I understand that when history and memory are intertwined together they can show a deeper representation and over-come the challenges. I hope you gained some knowledge regarding the challenges of representing history and memory.
Thank you for listening.

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