Dissociation

Available for over a year

30 years ago, on the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army, a survivor of the camp told Michael Goldfarb, "One day they will never believe it happened". As soon as the conflict ended it became the task of artists to ensure that the industrial slaughter of European Jewry was never forgotten. How well have they succeeded? In this first episode, Michael describes how growing up safe in America in the 1950s with no direct connection to Auschwitz, other than the fact of being a Jew, the Holocaust became a part of his identity. When he was assigned to report from the camp on the fiftieth anniversary of its liberation, he had to find a way to dissociate himself from this imagined world of horror and just see the reality of the place.