The Virtual Holocaust @Home

The Holocaust has taken on a virtual dimension. For young people in particular,visual memories of the Holocaust are constructed not only from fflms, museums/and art but also from Internet sources and CD-ROM materials.l Many major Holo-câust museums and memorial sites, such as the U.S. Holocaust Museum and YadVashem in Israel, have their own websites. Museum shops generally sell CD-ROMmaterials as well as videos and books to supplement visitors' memories of theirvisit to the museum. University and community libraries also make use of suchmaterials. These mâny websites as well as multimedia CD-ROMs, such as DavidCesarani with Logos Research System's LestWe Forget and Nadine Burke's Imagesfrom the Holocaust, provide interactive access to documents, photographs, filmfootage, and commentaries in digital memory form through the personal computer.Yet how different are these virtual relays from other visual forms? How should weunderstand the ways in which cyberspace constructs our understanding, knowl-edge, feelings, and memories of the atrocities of the Nazi era?

This chapter aims to enhance our understanding of cybermemory and therepresentetion of the Holocaust accessed through the computer and the impactof cyberspatial representations on our collective remembering. I begin by definingcyberspace and multimedia, before discussing some of the conventional approachesto the Internet and digital multimedia. I then consider what is available on theHolocaust in the matrix of cyberspace and in CD-ROM, who uses the Internet, andwhy people visit Holocaust sites. The reasons given, I suggest, indicate that weshould move beyond the conventional approaches to digital media and understandthe process of reading the translations of the events of the Holocaust in cyberspacein terms of a journey of remembering that involves the reproduction of elementsof trauma and recovery. Distinctive aspects of the technology and the codes andconventions of the digitized form itself give rise to processes and experiences thatare in articulation with the pârticuler content of Holocaust-related sites. For thevisitor to a Holocaust-related site in cyberspace, this produces interpretive expe-riences of dislocation, relocation/ connection, and interconnection, which maybe understood as reproducing the processes of traumatic memory and recoverysuggested by psychiatrists such as |udith Herman in relation to war atrocities and

Copyright O 2001 by Anna Reading.

Clicking on Hitler:

Anna Reading

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abuse llgg4l.This, I argue, is not to deny that there are certain limitations as wellas important problems with the representâtion of the Holocaust on the Internetand in interactive digital media. But it does offer one possible understanding ofhow Holocaust memory is articulated within the particular possibilities of digi-tal codes and conventions.

Cyberspace, a term initially popularized through the fantasy fiction of books suchas William Gibson's Neuromancer ll984l, constitutes a tar'ge of different forms:fi.rst, it includes the world of dialogue and conversations epitomized by personale-mails and virtual chat rooms. Second, it includes posted pages and electroniccommunications within a given community or organization. Third, it includespresentations that can be personal or collective, non-profit making or commercialthrough web pages that may or may not be registered with a search engine on theWorld Wide Web of global computers. The World Wide Web is what concerns ushere: in discussing the construction of Holocaust memories, young people men-tioned primarily the Web rather than e-mails and local discussion groups (Reading,

forthcoming).But the virtual Holocaust does not end with the world of cyberspace. There

is also the construction of Holocaust memory within a multimedia environment.The multimedia environment includes games, software plograms/ and the spe-cialist write-only mediascapes of CD-ROMs. The essential difference betweencyberspace and multimedia such as CD-ROMs is that the latter are "write-only"media: once written and programmed, they are fixed. In contrast, presentationsand conversations within cyberspace are characterized by their fluid nature, inwhich presentations mây be subject to changes, and conversations (as in everydaylife) may be left unfinished and subsequently altered.

Defining Cyberspace and Multimedia

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have suggested that far from the Internet providing a new democratic mediumto which all have equal access, in fact, those who do have access to the Internetand thus Holocaust memory within cyberspace are those of privilege and wealth(Streck 1999,3Ill. According to David Carter (1997l¡, what lurks before us is a divi-sion between the information rich, with access to the Internet, and the informationpoor, who mây not even have access to other mass media. Indeed, although thepercentage of home Internet use has increased dramatically over the past ffve years(Cornford and Robins 1999,116-17l¡, mâny argue that its use is limited to thosetermed the cybergoisie, who live in city cyburbias (Dear and Flusty 1999, 64-851.This points to the importance of recognizing the structural context in whichcybermemories work. In many ways it is no different from recognizing, followingPierre Bourdieu (I99Ol, the structural context that interacts with visitors in otherart forms. Thus the majority of people who visit aî art exhibition about the Holo-caust or Holocaust museums or see Holocaust-related fflms will in a global contextbe skewed in favor of a Western urban elite.

Various research suggests that this structuring of Internet and computer useis also gendered: fewer women than men use the Internet, according to Bergmanand Van Zoonert, with figures ranging between fifteen and twenty-five percent ofall users 11999, 106). Of these, it is argued, women use the Net primarily for con-versation and letter writing rather than for information gâthering (Bergman andVan Zoonen 1999,9O-I07). However, other studies have suggested that while mostusers of the Internet are still overwhelmingly white and with higher than averageincomes, the gendered use of cyberspace has, in fact, changed: in 1993 the major-ity of users, according to Tim |ordan, were men, but by 1999 Internet use is aboutequal between men and women (1999,53-54). This would certainly fft in with myown research in which seventy-ffve young people were asked where they hadobtained their information concerning the Holocaust: an equal number of maleand female respondents cited the Internet as a source. The greater variant wâs notgender but cultural context: while no respondents in Poland cited the Internet asâ source (focus groups/ Gdansk, Lodz, and Kracow, April 1998), 25 percent ofAmerican respondents included the Internet as important to the development oftheir understanding of the Holocaust (focus groups/ New York, Washington, D.C.,March 19991. My own analysis of visitor profiles given on one Holocaust particularwebsite in |uly 1999 also supports the view that both men and women âccess Holo-caust sites in equal measure (|eff and Elliott's Holocaust Page: http://geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/9589). Further, what is important is not just the kind ofpeople who visit but why people visit and what kind of sites they visit. This, as Iargue later, suggests â more nuanced way of understanding the place and processesof cyberspace in memories of the Holocaust than simply pointing to the structuralcontext alone.

A political economy approach also suggests thât Holocaust sites in cyber-space mây be dominated by corporate sites or historical perspectives packaged bybigbusiness. Flowever, cyberspace memories include an enormous variety of sites,

Established academic approaches to digital technologies within media and com-munications studies provide a number of starting points for how we mây under-stând the place and role of virtual memory of the Holocaust in multimedia andon the Web.

Political economists have emphasized the underlying economic dimensionof the Internet, arguing that in cyberspace corporate visions dominate and com-mercial imperatives structure who has access to sites, the kinds of sites available,and the software framework of representations in cyberspace. A number of critics

Approaches to the Virtual

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r¿nging from the institutional to the individual. A general search of cyberspace-activated by using the word "Holocaust" in Netscape and using standard searchengines such as Lycos, Yahoo, and Go-Network----elicits between 55,000 and 60,000results. These include a mixture of museum sites, news articles, references toother media such as CD-ROM materials and books, and people's personal homepages. A search of reviewed and rated Holocaust websites through PlanetClick(http://www.PlanetClick.com) offers the possibility of ninety-one websites. Theoverwhelming majority of these sites provide access to documentary sources oreducational materials on the Holocaust. Of these a number specialize in the dis-semination of written documentation, such as Stuart Stein's site provided throughthe University of East Anglia (http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk.). Six sites are projectsspeciffcally geared to provide collections of hypertext links or guides to materialsavailable in cyberspace such as the Cybrary of the Holocaust (http://www.remem-ber.org). More than half provide information and contacts in relation to particularissues such as the Remember the Women project in New York that specializes inproviding a link for those involved in research on the Holocaust concerned partic-ularþ with gender issues (http://www.rememberwomen.org) or the Euthanasia T-4Programme (http://www.us-israel.org/jso). Three sites specialize in visual media-based presentations that draw on or provide a cyberspace archive of photographs,film clips, and artsworks about the Holocaust, such as the Holocaust PicturesExhibition (http://www.fmv.ulg.ac.be/schmitz/holocaust/html),

What is signiffcant here is that twelve sites provide multimedia presen-tations that interface with museums, including the U.S. Holocaust Museum inWashington, D.C. (www.ushmm.org), the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerancein Los Angeles (http://www.wiesenthal.com), the Museum of |ewish Heritage: Liv-ing Memorial to the Holocaust in New York (http://www.mihnyc.org), the |ewishHistorical Museum in Amsterdam, The Netherlands (http://www.jhm.nU, and YadVashem in |erusalem (http://www.yad-vashem.org.il). A few refer to former con-centration camp sites such as K-Z Mauthausen-Gusen lhttp : I I linz I org. at.orÍ. I psen Iindex). Such sites have been established at the behest of the government or localgovernment and are usually maintained within the ethos of providing a publicmemorial and educational public service rather than as corporate enterprises.

Furthermore, despite reservations about the costs involved to set up asite, the Web does allow individuals to set up and maintain Web-based projectsand sites in ways that can circumvent the gatekeepers in other big business media.Some of these, such as "Forty Years Later: A Personal Recollection by Rav Yehuda"(http://www.virtual.co.il/edu), are run by survivors themselves, providing amedium through which survivors can and do tell their stories. Other sites are runby second- or third-generation individuals who feel duty-bound to remember, suchas Alan |acobs's site, which presents photographs of Auschwitz-Birkenau takenby him in 1979-BI (http://www.remember.org. auschwitz). The Web also allowsyoung people to explore and establish their own sites in ways that may be lesspossible with other media: |eff and Elliott's Holocaust Page, for example, was con-

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structed by two grade 12 students in Ontario. "Dedicated to the six million |ewsand millions of others who died in the Holocaust," it provides, underneath an iconof a yellow star, hypertext links to thirty other Holocaust sites (http://geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/95 B 1 ).

In this respeçt/ then, the view of corpoïate domination or commercialimperatives governing Holocaust memory in cyberspace is not entirely true. How-ever, the ethos of cyberspace being free of governmental controls and providinga new space for anyone to present their views has a serious downside. feff andElliott's site also provides visitors with hypertext links to fascist sites and Holo-caust revisionist and denial sites. This section of their website, prefaced with thewarning "Beware These Sites," provides a series of chilling links for visitors in anendeavor to be "even-handed" in their approach. Neither does one have to go via|eff and Elliott's site to ffnd these links: any surfer of cyberspace searching via theword "Holocâust" in May 1999 would ffnd ten sites on Netscape under the searchstring "Holocaust, denial." As Michael whine (r99g, zo9-zrl notes, the Internetprovides unprecedented access to and meâns for propagating racist ideas and pro-moting Holocaust denial by Neo-Nazis. This is further illustrated by the f.act thatthe major promoter of Holocaust denial in the United States, the Institute forHistorical Review, has made Internet publications a priority (whine lggg, zr}l.

Further, although Holocaust denial sites may transgress national legisla-tion, countries have found it difffcult to implement effective censorship becauseof the nature of the technology itself. In Germany, prosecutoïs tried to close downNeo-Nazi sites that went against the country's national laws, but they could notprevent the copying and posting of the sites from countries without laws pre-venting the promotion of fascism. "Having done this Germany's only choice wasto sever its connection to cyberspace, a choice with an almost impossibly highcost, or to accept that the uncensorable and global net had subverted its nationallaws" (|ordan 1999,}il.Internet technology and the way itworks-sending globalmessages as small packets of information accessible from more than one source-has allowed for the relay of âspects of Holocaust revisionism that have been pre-vented in particular national contexts within other visual media. The Internettreats âny attempt at censorship, including the censorship of Holocaust denial andNeo-Nazism, "like damage, it routes around it,, (http://www.c)rgnus,coms/- gnu).

In this respect, cyberspace has allowed for the development of Holocaustdenial within the public sphere. In other visual media it may be possible to cen-sor those who wish to deny the atrocities that happened; within cyberspace thisis problematic. users can easily download, if they wish, Holocaust denial webpâges. Given this, how do people themselves react to the presence of such sites?One of my interviewees said this had motivated her to monitor the number ofdenial sites over six months, where she found that the numbers had not, to herrelief, increased (Maria, washington, D.c, Marchlgggl.Another interviewee statedthat visiting denial sites (in addition to Holocaust sitesl had convinced him fur-ther of the necessity to remember the Holocaust and the lessons to be learned

328Anna Reading

from it, since the sites demonstrated that racism was still alive (Marcus, NewYork, March 19991, Several visitors to f eff and Elliott's site expressed the view thatproviding links to Holocaust denial materials resulted in Holocaust deniersdamning themselves through their own words (|eff and Elliott's Holocaust Page;http://geocities.com.Athens/Olympus/9589).Two of my interviewees articulatedthe feeling that such material was so repugnant to them that downloading denialsites would in some way contaminate them (Aysha, London, November 1998;Carlos, New York, March 1999). One suggested that denial sites would expose one'scomputer to viruses that might destroy their "memory" or result in loss of data.zCertainly, with the advent of worm viruses and viruses that can disguise themselvesas friendly attachments, as well as the very real possibility that downloading webpages can bring home electronic spys, burglars, and vandals, this is a developmentworth monitoring (see http:// www.datafellows.com).

For a small but visible minority, though, it should be recognized thatHolocaust denial sites serve to confflm and promote anti-Semitic and racist ide-ology: one visitor to |eff and Elliott's site asked for more denial sites to be listed;another remained stuck in his denial, despite having viewed the range of Holo-caust sites listed by leff and Elliott: "Irepeat: show me or draw me a gas chamber,one of these machines of mass murder invented by these wicked Nazis, a machinethat no one has ever seen" (|eff and Elliott's Holocaust Page: http://geocities.com/Athens/Olympus/9589). Although his or her words within the context of othervisitor feedback emphasize the offensive nature of his or her denial, they bring homethe fact that there are still those who seek to deny the reality of Nazi mâss mur-der. (For further information on Holocaust denial sites, see Whine 1999.1

Yet another issue raised by a political economy approach concerns devel-oping an understanding of virtual Holocaust memory. Although not all Holocaustsites are commercial enterprises, their content is viewed through a series of com-mercial electronic windows. At the beginning of the twenty-first century/ ourview of material on the World Wide Web is predominantly provided by one com-pany, Microsoft. Tim |ordan estimates that between B0 and 90 percent of personalcomputers use a Microsoft operating system/ which with Windows 98 (and Win-dows NT) increasingly collapses the distinction between our electronic desktop andthe browser required to surf the Net (|ordan 1999,125|. Further, the technology,as Sean Cubitt (1998) points out, is based on WIMP-the windows, icon, menu,pointer interface-in which icons rather than indices (images corresponding toactual existing things) are used. To some, the acquisition of the same skills andpractices to âccess cyberspace through WIMP is perceived as a form of "intellec-tual and economic colonisation," in which cultural diversity is increasingly beingeroded (Pickering 1999, IB0l.

Thus, whether we enter the Simon Wiesenthal Web site {http://www.motlc.wiesenthal.com) from Tel Aviv, London, or New York, it is visually framed in themajority of cases through Bill Gates's Microsoft Netscape Browser. With its mixedmetaphor of windows providing âccess to pages that are part of nonactual sites,

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we experience the same visual frame design and tool bar with its active buttonsand split screen. we use the same icons to decode Holocaust memory: we haveour virtual home [page] that we return to through the click on an icon of a house;we have our own cyberhlstory accessed through a time-piece icon; our own list of'favorites.'

Furtheç although we may each customize our window on the history of theHolocaust, it will be translated through the same software using the same digitallanguage and same choice of commercial search engines. Thus a search with theword "Holocaust" using lycos:Yout Personal Inteïnet Guide tells us:

ResultsMatches l-10 out of 56019r23456789r0Holocaust ArchívesHolocaust Archives Anne Frank WWI / Site Fighting Hate: Neo-Nazi,s, Fas-cists and Holocaust Related Archives Holocaust Indexhttp'//r""ni".it"*"r..dn/t..tti"/s.rbj""tr/Holo"".trt/holo"".*t.ht-l(100% oK).

The Lycos search engine provides a summar, links, and estimation of the totalmemory space for each match of the 56019 matches relating to the word ,,Holo-caust." we are also entreated to "check These out": books about the Holocaust,pictures of the Holocaust, sounds relating to the Holocaust. Further, framing theffrst ten Holocaust matches are additional moving and flickering icons and textmessages: at the top are colored hotspots with advertisements for low-cost flightsto a variety of worldwide destinations; around the right of the page âre invitationsto visit CD music stores on-line and leisure planet. Hypertext links on the lefthand side provide temptations to click on pictures of the day, look at the weather,or obtain an update of the news (http://www.l)'cos.co.uk).

How should we understand this way of representing the history of theHolocaust? Since the Internet is not immune from commercial imperatives, sitesdedicated to the Holocaust are not exempt from the encroachments of capitalismand commercialism. Perhaps it is indicetive of what Raphael Samuel notes hasbeen pilloried within cultural studies-the way in which capitalism is seen to com-modify history (samuel 1994,259-60). In this respect it is not just the Internetthat can be accused of commercializrngour experience of the history of the Holo-câust: it can also be found at memorial sites such as Auschwitz-Birkenau, with itsnearby hotel, coach tours/ bookshop, and cafeteria (personal observation, April1998). Likewise, the same charge can be made for other visual representations ofthe Holocaust, such as films. The success of Stephen Spieiberg's Schindler'slis¿ hasbeen used to stimulate further interest in the Holocaust: in Kracow, for example,visitors are invited to go on a tour showing the sites of the frlrr- Schindler's List(Zaglada Zydow Krakowskich, 1 998 ).

From this perspective we could argue that capitalism undermines the

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representations of the Holocaust in cyberspace, providing inappropriate commer-cial framing and distasteful distractions in the light of something so importantand so serious. However, I suggest that this raises the need to understand our ownreliance on digital technologies for accessing representations of the Holocaust. Itunderscores the fact that we should recognize that these practices take place withina commercially framed context. In this way, rather than dismissing Holocaustsites as somehow contaminated or ruined by their commercial context, I wouldsuggest a reading that places the tension between the two-between the Holocaustand the commercial software that tells its story, using a visual language of sharedicons, flickering quicktime fi.gures, and hot spots at its heart.

The visual content of the web page may be understood in terms of the dialecticbetween the central panel providing information speciffcally on the Holocaust andthe window through which we view it. There is a contradiction between the com-mercial invitations for low-cost flights, the weather and news, and hypertext linksto the desired Holocaust sites; in other words I we are pulled between clicking onthe Holocaust or a CD music store.

This unsettling experience in some wâys mimics pârticular processes thatwe know are typical of traumatic memory. fudith Herman's (19941research ontrauma and memory in its domestic, political, and wartime contexts has shownus how personal and wartime atrocities give rise to a central dialectic of traumawhich involves both the desire to deny and the urge to remember. This suspendsvictims/survivors between the past and the present/ between remembrance andavoidance:

The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness.Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud. Thisis the meaning of the word unspeakable. Atrocities, however, refuse to beburied . . . the conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the willto proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. (Her-rnan1994,Il

I would argue that what is true at the individual level is also the case atthe social and collective level. Societies have subsequently experienced the post-Holocaust world in terms of the simultaneous urges to deny, forget, and remember.A web page in cyberspace with its central panel that provides us with hypertextlinks to the Holocaust surrounded by commercial framing may be understood asmimicking this process, placing the visitor or user within the nexus of a virtualdialectic similar although obviously not the sâme as the post-traumatic. There

The Atrocious Dialectic

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is a contradiction between the everyday {invitations for low cost flights and theweather) and the unique (the Holocaust), between the present (hypertext links tothe news and the weather) and the past (hypertext links to Holocaust sites),between wanting to ffpd out about and remember the Holocaust and its histoït(click on the Holocaust) and wanting to avoid it (click on the cD music store).

Thus, the underlying economic dynamic and commerciar framing of dig-ital representations is, as the political economy approach suggests/ important. Butthe contradictions highlighted here also point to the importance of understandingthem in connection to specific content/ in this case content relating to the ,"pr"lsentation of the history and memory of the Holocaust in cyberspace. one way ofunderstanding this is to use an approach that considers the processes of traumaand recovery within collective memoïy. As I argue in the following section, thisapproach provides us with some insights into other codes and conventions dis-tinctive of digital forms on the world wide web and on cD-RoM in articulationwith the content of the Holocausr.

A distinctive aspect of both the Internet and CD-ROM to be considered in artic-ulation with their translations of the Holocaust is their recency. Unlike the othervisual media considered in this collection, they were not available as visual mediaduring the events themselves. The World Wide Web only became accessible to non-specialist users with the advent of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), inventedin l99l by British physicist Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in Swirzerland. HTMLmeant that the Internet was made accessible to people who are not acquaintedwith complex computer programming codes. This accessibility occurred only asrecently as the 1990s, enhanced by HTML Internet browsers such as Netscape toprovide people with access to the web through the simple click of a mouse ontheir home computer (Toulouse rg9g, z).In contrast, artifacts in museums arematerial iegacies of the past with a real provenânce. Other visual media, includ-ing black-and-white and color fflm and photography, provide ïepïesentâtions fromthe time of the events themselves, as Dariusz fablonski's (1998) use of color slidesof the Lodz ghetto orAdrian Wood's extraordinary The SecondWorldWar in Colour(wood 1999)have shown.3 In contrast, web sites and cD-RoMs are solely relianton these dislocated earlier representations.

Conversations and presentations in cyberspace are further characterized.by their dislocation from time and space in a number of other wals; an e-mailaddress is not rooted within a national boundary, and neither is a web address.People may have multiple e-mail addresses, and the addresses of web pages changeover time. Unlike films or videos, web presentâtions have no ffxed narrative time;

Clicking on Hitler: From Icon ro Home lpage]

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unlike galleries, archives/ and museums, cyberspace presentations may be easily"taken home," by downloading onto one's computer or visited frequently et anytime of day or night.

In many ways this would seem to support |ean Baudrillard's (1993lrdescrip-tion of a postmodern society that is characterized by the compression of time andspace within an economy of simulation, in which our experiences and knowledgeof the world are increasingly constructed not from the actual or real but theircopies. Fabricated from something real, copies subsequently come to substitutefor it (Baudrillard 1993, 125-85). |ohn Pickering has subsequently argued that theInternet is the epitome of the simulacra society in this respect and that people'srelationship with the world is increasingly becoming a virtual one (Pickeringt999, r75-BOl.

From this perspective, to visit the Simon Wiesenthal Centre on-line couldbe understood as part of a postmodern world of simulacra: there in the pixels ofthe VDU are'Virtual Exhibits: on-line versions of past exhibitions from the SimonWiesenthal Centre's Museum of Tolerance' (http://www.motlc.wiesenthal.com/).There one sees digital copies of artifacts, some of which may themselves be copiesof artifacts. Likewise, one sees copies of photographs which are in themselves copiesof originals. Little of the text is original but is extracted from other sources, suchas the Encyclopedia ludaica. Click on an unnamed icon of a man-Hitler-to learnmore about "The Nazis." Alternatively, click on an icon of an unnamed girl-AnneFrank-to learn more about "The |ews." At the top of each page we see anothercopy of Hitler, another copy of Anne Frank that may link us to further pages.

Likewise, an analysis of the CD-ROM Lest We Forget also demonstrâtesthe dominance of simulacra and its reliance on previous forms, images, and record-ings. This begins with the packaging of the disc itself. The CD-ROM comes in agray box with a painted style Star of David in yellow. Over it we see the title t¿s¿We Forget, and beneath it is the black-and-white photograph of a small boy in anovercoat, short trousers, and hat with his hands in the aír tn a gesture of surren-der. Inside, the box opens to include six images from the CD surrounded by textheaded with the caption "[we wili never understand the Holocaust]." The imagesinclude an extrâct of text surrounded by stills of Adolf Hitler and |ulius Streicher;a photograph of Hitler Youth; the same young boy as on the cover but with thefigure of a German soldier aiming a gun at him also visible. Underneath these aredigital stills of a graphic map of Poland and an aerial view of Auschwitz. The CDitself combines "photography, film footage, and sound with the historian's craftof information and context." A footnote informs us that the historian is ProfessorDavid Cesarani, academic consultant to the Wiener Líbrary of London and pro-fessor of modern |ewish studies at the University of Manchester. The CD provides" archlal video clips" artd " a gallery of photographs from the collections of the YadVashem Museum in |erusalem, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, the Bundes-Archiv in Berlin, the Auschwitz Museum in Oswiecim, and many other sourcesaround the World." On the CD-ROM itself we see the same images from the box

33Cliching on Hitler

cover. One returns between each section of the CD-ROM to the same three photo-graphs of unnamed prisoners from Auschwitz.

Understanding these Holocaust memories in cyberspace from Baudrillard,sperspective suggests that we consider these simul acraínteïms of the general trendin late capitalism toin¡ard the loss of authenticity, truth, and originality. yet, theevidence suggests that how people treat copies of the real in relation to the Holo-caust is not in terms of Baudrillard's pessimistic vision of people believing thatthe copy is the real thing, It is notable that on the cD-RoM the nature of pixe-lated photographs or fflm stills is that of exaggerated reproduction, particularly ifone clicks on the option to make the images full screen. The pixelated image isvery obviously a poor copy with indistinct edges and patches lacking in detail.

The copying of Holocaust images and the subsequent tendency toward theformulaic has been remarked on by Barbie Zelizer in relation to the recycling ofHolocaust photographs, to the extent that they ,,reduce what was known aboutthe camps to familiar visual cues" (zelizer l99g,l5g). As visitors to not only web-sites but also museums and as viewers of documentaries and films, we often ffndourselves seeing the same images over again. This is also a recognized feature ofindividual traumatic memory in response to atrocities, rendering it a feature of theway in which communities and societies respond over time to remembering theHolocaust. Part of the process of moving from tïaumâ to recovery involves the shiftfrom what has been described as frozen or indelible images out of context, to buiid-ing a narrative of what happened:

Out of the fragmented components of frozen imagery and sensation, patientand therapist slowly reassemble an organized, detailed, verbal account orientedin time and historical context. . . . At times the patient may spontaneouslyswitch to non-verbal methods of communication, such as drawing or paint-ing. Given the "iconic", visual nature of traumatic memories, creating picturesmay represent the most effective initial approach to these "indelible images.,,(Herman 1994,IT7l

In the Simon wiesenthal Multi-Media Learning centre websire (http:llwww.motlc.wiesenthal.com), we have the experience at the beginning of our visitof clicking on copies of dislocated photogïaphs relating to the Holocaust, some ofwhich rl;'ay aheady be habituated in ouï memoïies or in some way frozen. Butwithin the website, we go through the process of linking and relocating theseimages to their historical and spatial context/ beginning by clicking not on wordsor indexes of memory, but on icons. We enter the virtual Multi-Media Learningcentre, for example, andface a choice of icons: one choice is to click on Hitler,and from there we are led into the historical context and different âspects of theNazis and the Holocaust. We read text about and look at photos relating to anti-semitism, the rise of the Nazis, biographies of different Nazis, including Hitleçthe policies and practices of the Nazis, their occupation of Europe, the establish-ment of concentration câmps/ ghettos, and death camps.

334Anna Reading

In addition, if we consider evidence on how people make meaning fromHolocaust sites in cyberspace, we ffnd an altogether different picture from the sim-plistic one of visitors mistaking copies for the real thing. PlanetClick (http://www.PlanetClick.com) rates Holocaust websites in terms of the number of visits tothe site and the confidence rating given by visitors to the information available.Notably, the most highly rated sites are those that are not only constructed invirtuality but also have a reference to actuality.

Anne Frank's House (website) has a rating oÍ 9.02 and a confidence ratingthat is "high." Yad vashem has a rating of (8.971and a conffdence rating that isalso "high." The u.s. Holocaust Museum site, the Mauthausen concentrationcamp Memorial site, and the shoah Museum in Belgium site are also highly pop-ular and rated with high to medium confidence. All of these virtual sites haveactual sites. This suggests that visitors seeking memories and historical informa-tion on the Holocaust in cyberspace look for sites that are given legitimacy througha terrestrial anchor. Sites that visitors do not recognize as having a"real,,counter-part in the world are less visited and treated with greater skepticism. In some waysthis could be interpreted as the Internet equivalent of Roland Barthes,s ideasconcerning the ways in which words or text provide an anchor for the photograph(Barthes 1975, 15-31) or in terms of Susan Sontag's suggestion that archival footagein Holocaust documentaries leads to the need to anchor that footage (Sontag I982,403-zrl. The museum, memorial site, or archive could be seen as providing aninstitutional anchor for the website.

Yet, an analysis of the reviews by visitors on PlanetClick of various Holo-caust websites suggests that the sites act as rehearsals or substitutes for visits toreal places: reviewers often visit the cyberspace Holocaust site before or aftervisiting an actual memorial or museum. For example, one reviewer of the site {orthe Anne Frank Flouse, Natalie cohen, states: "I visited the Anne Frank Housewhen I was in Amsterd am. This site is as good as it if gets without a perconal visit.It is moving and informative; I recommend it highly" (www.planetclick.com/reviews) (my emphasis).

A similar intertextual reference between the site's institutional anchorand its virtual counterpart is made by the anonymous reviewer for the site for yadVashem:

The world-wide holocaust Museurn in |erusalem. The fewish people,sresponse to the Holocaust/Shoah, Yad Vashem is the fullest and most enrich-ing Holocaust Memorial in the world .If you can't get there in person, this siteis the next best thing. (www. planetclick.com/reviews). (my emphasis)

In addition, other reviews suggest that many visitors to Holocaust sitesin cyberspace elide the virtual with the real. One anonymous reviewer for yadvashem simply describes the genesis of the institution itself: ,,yad vashem isthe Holocaust memorial of the fewish people. . . . A complex of museums, mon-

35Cliching on Hitler

umentS/tesearch,teachingandresourcecentÏeS//(@reviews)' The review continues by providing basic facts aboutthe Holocaust itselisimilarly the anonymous reviewers for Mauthausen concentration camp andfor the shoah Museum in Belgium ) describe thememorial and the -.ir"rr- respecti ting to them.The visitors to the Holocaust cybersites in these instances thus read virtual realityas actual reality. This could be interpreted as the epitome of the simulacra ,o"i"tyin which people cease to notice that what they are experiencing is a copy of a copyand instead see the simulacra as the real thing. Howwer, I would suggest that thevisitor to a Holocaust website refuses the dislocation in terms of time and spacethat is a featute of cyberspace and of traumatic memory and instead seeks anchor-age and authentication for the memories of the Holocaust in the real. The visitorin these instances who writes a review to introduce others to the site of Holocaustmemory seeks to connect real people sitting at their computeïs at home or workwith actual memorial sites and places rather than their lrir,.rrt simulacra.

Furthermore, we know that one of the horrifying features about the Holo-caust was the manner in which families and loved ones were toÍ' apaïttthe man_ner in which fewish culture and social groupings were relocated and dislocated. Inmany places fewish people's history and culture were all but destroyed or eradicatedin what Primo Levi in the Drowned and the savedhas termed the war on mem_ory (Levi r99B).In contrast, the difffcult journey of recovery from trauma, bothcollective and individual, caused by such atrocities involves the opposite: fudithHerman (r9941notes that one of the key steps to recovery after atrocity and to beginresolving the painful dialectic of traumatic mernoïy is to rebuild the connectionsthat were toïn apaït.

The particular processes experienced by the visitor to Holocaust websitesarticulated within the codes and conventions involved in digital media are simi-lar, albeit on a much diluted level of the processes of reconnection involved inrecovery from trauma. we tend to think of computers as apartfrom ourselves,as disconnected from human beings. yet, ultimatery, as Tim fordan reminds us,"people do not communicate with computers but use computers to communi-cate with each other. And in so doing, genuine heartfelt communities may be built,,(|ordan 1999,571.

The cyberspacial memories of the Holocaust, with the particular codes andconventions of digital media, in some ways take us through the reverse of an atro_cious journey of dislocation, annihiration, and disconnection. Initially, we entera virtual world that is dislocated in time and space, we experience at moments thecontradictory impulses of wanting to remernber

"nd w"nting to forget as we aïeconfronted with the dialectic of the commercial search engine page framing ourmatches on the word "Holocaust. " As we enter a particular site, we begin with iconsand seek to reconnect the virtual with the real. ultimately, whereever we go, unlikethe victims of the Holocaust, we can and do ïeturn to ouï own home [page].

In this respect/ I would argue that the interactive and nonlinear narrative possi-bilities offered by digital formats using hypertext links allows for the history andstories of the Holocaust to be articulated in ways that are distinct from othervisual forms. As Michael Frieling argues/ multimedia with its combination ofimage sound and text moves beyond fragmentary aesthetics and allows for alay-ered approach to narrative (L996,269). similarly, Erkki Huhtamo has suggestedthat the hypertextual structure of CD-RoMs provides e new alternative to linearprogression (1996). Hypertext in the CD-ROM, LestWe Forget, allows both directaccess overview and instant access to any portion of the progrâm. It allows forinteractive and detailed timelines, interactive maps/ and interactive graphics. Itailows the reader to stop and start fflm footage and audio excerpts/ to zoom in onphotographs/ to go back and forth in a nonlinear manner. An interactive map sec-tion allows the user to click on a timeline at the bottom and view gradualþ theexpansion of Nazi Germany and its establishment of ghettos and camps through_out Europe, while exploring any individual camp or ghetto by clicking on its nameand bringing up a text box with additional facts and figures. Further, one of theother features of âtrocities is, as Herman,s research shows, its ,,unspeakable,,nâture' Much of the debate concerning how to remember the Holocaust has con-cerned which form or medium is best to âttempt this process of speaking theunspeakable. The computer has enabled the translation of previousiy divergentmedia into one form that also includes the iconic, which perhaps offers a rr"* g"rr_eration different possibilities for speaking the unspeakable and rememberinftheatrocious.

In some ways, this discussion calls to mind the more negâtive aspects ofcyberspace caused by interactive hypertext links. For example, on the ffrst page ofthe Simon Wiesenthal site, we are offered the choice to view a panel discussionon wâr crimes and war criminals. Yet, one's access is denied if the visitor does nothave an updated version of Real player software. There is, then, the opportunityto be redirected through a hypertext link to another website (http://www.reai.com) so as to download the necessaïy viewing software. If one clicks on RealPlayer Plus even with a 56k modem it can take up to four hours to download thesoftware, during which the website connection can be broken. one has been dis-tracted from the original ïeason for going on-line to access information on theHolocaust and view a panel discussion for war crimes, which is frustrating andconfusing. Interestingly, though, this too seems in some way to reenact a partic-ular aspect of the central dialectic of trauma caused by atrocity. It involves boththe urge to repress and remember, while the urge to repress oï not remember oftengives rise to symptoms of distraction, confusion, and distress (Herman, Lg94l.

To conclude/ conventional approaches to the Internet and multimedia pointto the importance of the structural context of Holocaust memories in cyberspace.They underscoïe too the extent to which Holocaust images are recycled or made

336Anna Reading

The Virtually Unspeakable

37Cliching on Hitler

into simulacra. However, I would suggest that amoïe comprex understanding canbe achieved by moving away homconventional approaches to digital media towardconsidering how Holocaust websites and Holocaust multimedia are articulatedwithin digital codes 4nd conventions. How people themselves experience and relateto the Holocaust in cyberspace suggests a journey of remembering that reenacts ormimics the processes of traumatic memory and recovery from atrocity describedbypsreloc ofdislocation, contradiction,

with e involved when we engageHitler a potentially differentkind r visual media.

NOTES

sites for Serbianwould affect theher this fear was

public televi-st color slidesshop in 1982.unearthed by

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Hershman Leeson (ed.l, Clicking in: Hot Links to the Digital Cultwe,269-80. Seattle:Bay Press.

Gates, David. "Of Texts and Hypertexts." Newsweek, February 27 , 1995, 7l-73.Gibson, William. 1984. Newomancer. London: Gollancz.Herman, fudith Lewis. 1994. Trauma and Recovery: From Domestic Abuse to Political

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fablonski, Dariusz (Director). 1998. The Lodz Ghetto. Apple Film Production. Broadcast Av.TVP. S.A. Canal. Polska. Agencja Produkcjii Filmowej. MDR.

fordan, Tim. 1999. Cyberpower: The Culture and Politics of Cyberspace and the Internet.London: Routledge.

Levi, Primo. 1998. The Drowned and the Saved. London: Abacus.Pickering, fohn. 1999. "Designs on the City: Urban Experience in the Age of Electronic

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Reading, Anna. Forthcoming. Gender, Memory and Cuhwe. London: Macmillan.Samuel, Raphael. 1994. Theatres of Memory. London: Verso.Sontag, Susan. 1982. "Syberberg Hitler." In Sontagr A Susan Sontag Reade4403-21. New

York: Vintage.Streck, fohn M. 1998. "Pulling the Plug on Electronic Town Meetings: Participatory Democ-

rucy and the Reality of the Usenet." In Chris Toulouse and Timothy W. Luke (eds.),The Politics of Cyberspace, New York and London: Routledge.

Toulouse, Chris. 1999. "The Internet and the Millennium. " In The Politics of Cybercpace.New York and London: Routledge.

Whine, Michael. 1999. "The Far Right on the Internet." In Brian D. Loader (ed.l, TheGovernance of Cyberspace: Politics, Technology and Resttucturing,20S-27. London:Routledge.

Wood, Adrian. 1999. The Second World War in Colour (Three Parts) First screened on ITV,September 9, 1999, 9 t.ttt.

ZagladaZydowa Krakowskich: Prezewodnik Inspirowany Filmem Stevena Spielberga'ListaSchlindera'. 1998. Kracow: Agencja Reklamowo-Wydadnicza'Gestum'.

Zelizer, Barbie. 1998. Remembeilng to Forget: Holocaust Memory Through the Camera'sEye, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

DIGITAL REFERENCES

CD-ROMsBurke, A. Nadine. 1997. Images From the Holocaust. NTC Publishing Group.LestWe Forget [A History of the Holocaust]. Multimedia CD ROM. 1999. Original Text

by David Cesarani. Marketed by Logos Research Systems. Published by Endless S.A.Sitac and Media Investment Club.

Websites, accessed between lune 15 and luly 30, 1999Alan facobs Photographs of Auschwitz:http:// www.remember.orgDatafellows Virus Updates:http:// www.dataf ellows. comEuthanisia T-4 Program:http: //www.us-israel. org/ìsoForty Years Later: A Personal Recollection by Rav Yehuda:http ://www.virtual. co. il/edu

339Cliching on Hitler

Holocaust Pictures Exhibition:

http ://geocities. com/Athens/Ol)¡mpus/95 89fewish Historical Museum (Amsterdam):http: //www. jhm.nl/e hbme.htm.K-Z Mauthausen-Gusen Concentration Camp:http://linz. org.at/orf/gusen/indexLycos Search Engine:http:// www.l)'cos.co.ukMuseum of fewish Heritage (New york):http://www.mihn)¡c.orgPlanetClick:http ://www. PlanetClick. comPlanetClick Reviews:http://www.PlanetClick. comVeviewsSurvivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation:http://www.vhf .orgRemember the Women, New York:http://www.rememberwomen. org/Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance:http:// www.wiesenthal. comStein's Resources on Genocide:http ://www. ess.uwe. ac.uk/genocide.Wiesenthal Multimedia Learning Centre On-Line:http ://www.motlc.wiesenthal. comU.S. Holocaust Museum Site:http://www.ushmm.orgYad Vashem Site:http://www.)¡ad-vashem.org.il/