MICHAELA WOLF, University of Graz

In Nazi concentration camps communication was vital for the prisoners’ survival. This lecture will focus on the ambiguous functions of interpreting between perpetrators and victims and the blurring boundaries between them. Sketching the “social field of the concentration camp” with the help of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of power and practice will contribute to unfolding the power relations between the various nationalities involved in the communication processes which shaped the “daily life” of the camp inmates. These questions will be explored on the basis of a series of survivor accounts which feature interpreting situations in concentration and death camps.

Discutant / Dorothée Cailleux