Animation: textural difference and the materiality of Holocaust memory

The notion of “Holocaust animation” may seem paradoxical; how can a medium which, in the popular eye, is usually associated with comedy, play and fantasy be used to remember one of the 20th century’s most traumatic events? By examining the textural difference of animation to our lived world in texts such as Silence (Yadin and Bringas 1998) and I was a Child of Holocaust Survivors (Ann Marie Fleming 2010), it becomes clear how the medium can emphasise the fragile materiality of Holocaust memory. Adopting a methodology which blends transcendental phenomenology, as first outlined by Edmund Husserl, and existential phenomenology, brought into film studies in particular by Vivian Sobchack and Laura U. Marks, this paper considers the ability for animation to engage spectators with the materiality of memory, through bringing to the foreground a different way of experiencing the world to the quotidian.