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Here in this Train Car: Holocaust Family Memory, Art-Making, and Struggles for Justice

Mark Auslander considers interwoven journeys in his family and personal histories in the shadow of the Holocaust. His story centers on the enigmatic space of a dark cattle car, one of thousands of Holocaust death trains, within which family members were deported in October 1941. A surviving cousin, Dan Pagis, immortalized the car’s interior in a remarkable poem, which recasts this singular crime scene as a universal story of inhumanity and of a longing for language that shimmers amidst despair and desolation. Inspired by the poem, and the multiple histories it encompasses, Mark considers critical lessons of the 1930s and 1940s for the current moment of crisis, including the life-sustaining power of art in nurturing cultures of democracy, inclusion, resilience and compassion. He also ponders critically his own, contradictory journey as a secular Jewish white male scholar of Africa and the African Diaspora, struggling to interrogate his own positions of privilege and to nurture solidarities with historically oppressed
communities near and far.

Read more about Mark Auslander.