Darstellungen von Gewalterfahrungen in Oral-History-Interviews

Abstract

Videotaped oral history interviews are used to investigate how contemporary witnesses from Nazi concentration and labor camps narrate their experiences of violence. Our analysis focuses on representations of experiences of violence that are not purely psychophysical in nature but reveal other aspects of violence. The present study understands narration as an embodied practice that is analyzed moment by moment in the framework of micro-sequential utterances. In the process of storytelling, physical-visual resources not only contribute to the local formation of meaning but also enable supra-individual insights into the communicative strategies used by contemporaneous witnesses. In the light of this volume’s question regarding the possibility of narrating violence, the consideration of all semiotic channels proves to be a profitable approach for narrative research.