Abstrakt
This chapter explores the visual representations of the Holocaust in the digital environments, especially on Pinterest. The authors focus on users' practices that document their relationships to the past and to the Holocaust.
Different realms of memory (the collective and the individual) interact with the specific media character of these digital environments (media memory ecologies). The key thesis of this chapter refers to the ongoing disruption of the grand narratives, especially in the digital environments.
Although, it does not mean that history is losing its importance in the society. Remembering gains new structures and new forms on the internet and shapes new forms of postcatastrophic conceptualization of the Holocaust.
In several case studies, the authors describe the way that photos documenting Holocaust-related motifs are interpreted and re-interpreted on Pinterest. Pinterest as an image-based social media platform does not serve primarily as a tool for the interpretation of history, but its users are performing their relation to the past there.
Some places of the Holocaust have become famous tourist's destination, thus users' albums on Pinterest documenting travels are the new (visual) context of the Holocaust memorials. A similar phenomenon is the decontextualization of visual icons and photo sources originally documenting the atrocities of the Holocaust on Pinterest.
These Holocaust images are linked to the new, surprising, and personal content on the users' boards on Pinterest. Pinterest as a model illustrates some common trends in the commemoration of the Holocaust in the digital era.