"The Truth of a Mad Man": Collective Memory and Representation of the Holocaust in The Partisans of Vilna (1986) and the Documentary Genre

Title"The Truth of a Mad Man": Collective Memory and Representation of the Holocaust in The Partisans of Vilna (1986) and the Documentary Genre
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2002
AuthorsScott C. Zeman, Mark Chasins Samuels
JournalFilm & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies
Volume32
Issue1
Pagination38-42
ISSN1548-9922
Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Scott C. Zeman Scott C. Zeman is Assistant Professor of History in the Humanities Department at New Mexico Tech. He received his PhD in History from Arizona State University in 1998. In addition to questions of the interplay of memory and historical reconstruction, his research interests include the American West, American popular culture, and the cultural history of nuclear technology. He is the author of Chronology of the American West (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2002), and is co- editor and contributor to a forthcoming volume entitled Atomic Culture: How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (University Press of Colorado). When not suffering ankle sprains, he plays basketball against his co-author Mark Samuels. Mark Chasins Samuels Mark Chasins Samuels is Assistant Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Education at New Mexico Tech. His undergraduate degrees are in Psychology and Anthropology from the State University of New York at Albany. He holds a Masters degree in Human Development from the University of Chicago and a PhD in Experimental Psychology from New York University. He has also conducted postdoctoral research with stroke patients at New York University Medical Center. In addition, he has also performed research in the area of molecular genetics at Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York. His research is primarily in the areas of developmental psychology and cognitive psychology, specifically focusing on distortions of memory, biases in problem solving and on how individuals construct the world. He also plays basketball against New Mexico Tech History professors. Notes 1. Quoted in Elie Wiesel, "Art and the Holocaust: Trivializing Memory," New York Times, 11 June 1989. 2. Wiesel, "Art and the Holocaust." 3. Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth about History (New York: Norton, 1994), 262-263. 4. Annette Insdorf, Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 4. 5. Wiesel, "Art and the Holocaust." 6. Schindler's List, dir. Steven Spielberg, Amblin Entertainment, 1993. 7. Michael Schudson, "Dynamics of Distortion in Collective Memory," in Daniel Schacter and Joseph Coyle, eds., Memory Distortion: How Minds, Brains, and Societies Reconstruct the Past (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 348-349. 8. Bill Nichols, Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 3, 6. 9. Memory of the Camps, prod. Sidney Bernstein, advisor Alfred Hitchcock, 1945. 10. The Sorrow and the Pity, dir. Marcel Ophuls, Television Recontre, 1971. 11. Paula Rabinowitz, They Must be Represented: The Politics of Documentary (London: Verso, 1994), 17. 12. Partisans of Vilna, prod. Aviva Kempner, dir. Josh Waletzky, European Classics, 1986. The video can be purchased and the film rented from the National Center for Jewish Film, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02454-9110 (phone: 781.899.7044, fax: 781.736. 2070, email: ncjf@brandeis.edu). 13. Quoted in Insdorf, Indelible Shadows, 166. 14. Yitzhak Arad, Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust (New York: Holocaust Library, 1982), 236. 15. Insdorf, Indelible Shadows, 147. 16. Insdorf, Indelible Shadows, 148. 17. Shoah, dir. Claude Lanzmann, French Ministry of Culture and Information, 1985. 18. Kapo, dir. Gillo Pontecorvo, Cinerz, 1959. 19. Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (New York: Random House, 1952), 278. 20. Wiesel, "Art and the Holocaust." Copyright © 2002 Historians Film Committee Project MUSE® - View Citation MLA APA Chicago Endnote Scott C. Zeman. and Mark Chasins Samuels. ""The Truth of a Mad Man": Collective Memory and Representation of the Holocaust in The Partisans of Vilna (1986) and the Documentary Genre." Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies 32.1 (2002): 38-42. Project MUSE. Web. 27 Jan. 2013. . Zeman, S. C. & Samuels, M. C.(2002). "The Truth of a Mad Man": Collective Memory and Representation of the Holocaust in The Partisans of Vilna (1986) and the Documentary Genre. Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies 32(1), 38-42. Center for the Study of Film and History. Retrieved January 27, 2013, from Project MUSE database. Scott C. Zeman and Mark Chasins Samuels. ""The Truth of a Mad Man": Collective Memory and Representation of the Holocaust in The Partisans of Vilna (1986...

URLhttp://muse.jhu.edu/journals/film_and_history/v032/32.1.zeman.html
Short Title"The Truth of a Mad Man"