Making History Accessible: the Personal Touch

Article written by Alice O’Driscoll. Edited and Researched by Liam Brake.

As part of Holocaust Memorial Day, last month saw the BBC broadcast the story of Henia Bryer, an Auschwitz survivor. The allusion to the Nazi’s method of identification in the programme’s title Prisoner Number A26188 struck Prisoner Number A26188at the heart of the dehumanisation that has come to distinguish the horrors of the twentieth century from those which came before. This paradoxically served not to undermine the power of Henia’s own emotional account but enhance its potency by way of providing a piercing contrast. The programme an example of a genre increasingly used by popular historians: that of the use of personal experience. Recounting historical events through a prism of human emotion has proved one of the most powerful weapons in the arsenal of historians attempting to reach a wider audience in didactic pursuits. But what are the benefits of this method? And why is its popularity flourishing now?

The increasing use of the experiences of the ‘average citizen’ to narrate historical events can be accredited to several factors that have proliferated recently. From a logical point of view, the advent of mass literacy has allowed these accounts to be passed on and reach a broad audience. Moreover, the spread of liberal democracy and its role in empowering the civil population through enfranchisement has played a key role. Anyone seeking to use historical events, as a deterrent or otherwise, to influence contemporary domestic or foreign policy now has vested interest in informing the wider population in a bid to pressure the Government of the day by threatening their electoral hopes. However, perhaps most profoundly, the use of emotive accounts provides a contrast, so as to slice through the calculated, mechanised barbarism evident in 20th century history.

Straying from acutely detailed accounts of political, diplomatic and military strategy in favour of individual experience has the obvious benefit of being more engaging to a wide audience who can relate to the information being relayed on a personal level. This recognition of similarities between past and present is accompanied, in cases like Henia’s concerning persecution, by a vulnerability amongst the audience. Prisoner Number A26188 used this vulnerability with the intention of inducing a sense of instability and reminding the audience of their reliance on stable social, economic and political conditions beyond their control. Thus, the use of personal experience becomes a political tool that can manipulate the demands of an electorate upon its leadership.

The power of emotion as opposed to the use of, undoubtedly shocking, statistics and other more objective measurements has been noted across a range of historical media. The use of the girl in the red coat in Spielberg’s Schindler’s List is one such example. Martin Amis provides another in the sub-title of his account of Stalin’s Russia Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million. Both, as well as Prisoner Number A26188, make the argument that, as the immense scale of tragedy exceeds that which the human mind is capable of processing, a case study should instead be observed. The heinous crimes inflicted upon the oppressed become all the more abhorrent in the minds of the audience when directed at one individual. Moreover, individual focus allows for a startling juxtaposition between the ordinariness of the person and the disproportionate harm they experience.

Focus on personal experience provides a much needed injection of humanity into a century all too often found to be lacking such a basic quality. Instead of concentrating on scrutinising the official policies enacted, evaluating their effects on the civil population more effectively engages the current citizenry, in turn placing more pressure on the government of the day to prevent the reoccurrence of such horrors. Entrenching a heightened awareness of the past into the zeitgeist through such fear mongering may seem crass or insensitive. However, only such a potent emotion as fear can be both accessible to future generations, through the intensity of national feeling which it continues to foster over time, and yet impenetrable to attempted manipulation by those seeking to re-enact past turmoil.

Henia ended by highlighting the importance that “a tragedy of that enormity must never be forgotten” and perhaps this is where the use of human experience becomes invaluable: the devastating consequences of such calamitous events must be stored somewhere as accessible as it is impenetrable, the social consciousness. And only the rawest of human emotion can survive undisturbed here.

Additional Research

– If you wish to see Prisoner Number A26188 you can go to the BBC’s website and it is still available for viewing.

– The Holocaust Memorial Day, as mentioned at the start of the article, is now a national event in the United Kingdom held, as of 2001, on the 27th of January.

-The chosen date for the Holocaust Memorial Day is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet Union.

– Schindler’s List was released in 1993, the girl with the red coat is well remembered as the film is shot, otherwise, in black and white.

– Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million, as mentioned in the text, is a non fiction book by a British author on the communist regime in Russia. Its title (Koba) refers to a revolutionary name given to Joseph Stalin.

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