The Fiftieth Gate and Europa Europa
There cannot be an absolute truth in the understanding of the event of the Holocaust as both history and memory are merely partial representations of the event. In the bricolage, Fiftieth Gate by Mark Baker and the film Europa Europa (1990) directed by Agnieszka Holland based on the autobiography of Solomon Perel, the representation of history and memory seeks not to find an absolute truth but to provide a deeper understanding of the past through the interplay of personal experience and documented evidence of the events of the Holocaust. In The Fiftieth Gate, Mark Baker initially has a strong dependence on history and thus devalues the importance and validity of the individualistic nature of his mother’s memory due to the lack of historical evidence available but eventually comes to value its …show more content…
The selective and fragmented nature of memory is displayed throughout the text in a bricolage of polyphonous interviews and dialogue by using aposiopesis and fragmented sentences, to imitate the form of memory, thus showing Yossl and Genia’s reluctance to remember. In Gate 44, the non-linear structure integrates Yossl and Genia’s past with the present and shows how history can be used to supplement the gaps in memory as shown by “Sixty thousand Jews walked out of the European concentration camps. Within a week twenty thousand had died, and many others were sick from malnutrition and physical abuse.” Wherein Baker supplements the bricolage of interviews and creative reconstruction with historical records and statistics to add authenticity. Baker is able to provide an insightful representation of the past through the interplay of personal experience and documented
There cannot be an absolute truth in the understanding of the event of the Holocaust as both history and memory are merely partial representations of the event. In the bricolage, Fiftieth Gate by Mark Baker and the film Europa Europa (1990) directed by Agnieszka Holland based on the autobiography of Solomon Perel, the representation of history and memory seeks not to find an absolute truth but to provide a deeper understanding of the past through the interplay of personal experience and documented evidence of the events of the Holocaust. In The Fiftieth Gate, Mark Baker initially has a strong dependence on history and thus devalues the importance and validity of the individualistic nature of his mother’s memory due to the lack of historical evidence available but eventually comes to value its …show more content…
The selective and fragmented nature of memory is displayed throughout the text in a bricolage of polyphonous interviews and dialogue by using aposiopesis and fragmented sentences, to imitate the form of memory, thus showing Yossl and Genia’s reluctance to remember. In Gate 44, the non-linear structure integrates Yossl and Genia’s past with the present and shows how history can be used to supplement the gaps in memory as shown by “Sixty thousand Jews walked out of the European concentration camps. Within a week twenty thousand had died, and many others were sick from malnutrition and physical abuse.” Wherein Baker supplements the bricolage of interviews and creative reconstruction with historical records and statistics to add authenticity. Baker is able to provide an insightful representation of the past through the interplay of personal experience and documented