Images of Children

Marianne Hirsch's provocative article "Projected Memory: Holocaust Photographs" offers many insightful ways to look at images and the messages that they convey. I was particularly interested in Hirsch's discussion of images of children. She poses the question "Why are such a large number of the archival images uses in the texts documenting and memorializing the Holocaust images of children?" (269), citing the boy from Warsaw and Anne Frank among others. My initial internal response was that images of children would undoubtedly evoke even more sympathy from those that view the photographs, drawing attention to their innocence and to the evil they were forced to endure. Hirsch relays Lucy Dawidowicz' response to the question, which is to "bring home the utter senselessness of Holocaust destruction," (271). I found it startling tht only 11 percent of Jewish children survived the "unforgiving ferocity of the Nazi death machine," (271). Hirsch continues to examine the issue by exploring the facets of our culture that make it conducive to being affected by such images: "As recent controversies suggest, our culture has a great deal invested in children's innocence and vulnerability--and at the same time, in their eroticism and knowledge," (272). All of this contributes to why the usage of children in images depicting the horrors of the Holocaust has been so widespread and so effective in conveying emotion.
On a related note, Hirsch contemplates an issue that we had discussed in class, regarding the photographs that appeared in Maus, particularly the inclusion of the photo of Richieu at the beginning of Volume II. According to Hirsch, such an image serves to "haunt us with its strange lifelike presence," and "acts like a ghostly apparition, materially recalling Richieu's absence," (271). Since we had talked about why Spiegelman had decided to include photographs amongst his drawings, I felt this was particularly relevant.