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In Place of Death

This film is the first in a series of works associated with the In Time of Place research project investigating sites associated with Jewish identity, the Diaspora and the Holocaust (www.abdn.ac.uk/timeofplace). Underpinned by research the author undertook at the Dachau camp memorial, the town of Dachau and city of Munich, in addition to an interview with a Dachau survivor recorded in San Francisco, this film seeks to present a new form of seeing associations between the public’s contemporary engagement with the site and its historic role. As the Nazis’ first state concentration camp, Dachau’s paradigmatic design and symbolic function as a place of torture, dehumanization and death, contrasts sharply with some of the scenes acted out by visitors to the site today, as seen in the film. Without aid of narration or non-diegetic music, the film’s methodological approach follows from the tradition of observational cinema. The interviewee’s lack of articulation and sparseness of language serves as a metaphorical signifier for the vocal void of those who perished or have since died or become infirm. Through shot juxtaposition and soundscape design, the film provides an experiential impression that subtextually betrays the relationship between Dachau as camp, as town and its links to Munich. These issues are explored more explicitly in related writings by the author (such as, Marcus, A. 2010. ‘A Tale of Two Cities: Dachau and KZ Munich’, in R. Koeck and L. Roberts (eds) The City and the Moving Image: Urban Projections, p125-139. Houndmills, Palgrave). The film has received broad dissemination (such as Cambridge, Warsaw, Haifa and Caltech) through screenings accompanied by invited talks at universities and museums and conference keynotes, and is held in the permanent collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.