Theresienstadt Experiments

From the very beginning, Adolf Hitler left no doubt that for him, in ‘solving the Jewish problem’, Nazi cultural policy had to be extermination policy. Nevertheless, the SS, represented by Adolf Eichmann, took up again the phantasmagoria that had existed since the ‘Madagascar Plan’ of carrying out an ‘experiment’ within which a Jewish community was to have the opportunity – under supervision – to build up ‘on a small scale a self-governing Jewish state’. The experimental arrangement corresponds structurally to what Erving Goffman characterizes as a ‘total institution’. A key trait of such institutions is the mechanization of action, the anonymization of responsibility, and a perpetration that expresses itself through the denial of reciprocity of perspectives to the victims. The ‘experimental space’ was a concentration camp, the ‘Jewish ghetto’ in the former KuK garrison Theresienstadt. The experiment was to be documented and fixed in an ostensible documentary film. In it, embellished historical backdrops, propaganda and fiction are combined to create a vivid example of ‘prognostic’ Nazi memorial politics.