Dec 12 2024 29 mins
The final episode of the third series of the EHRI podcast takes a step back to look at micro-archives in a more general sense. In keeping with our theme, however, we also focus on an object that teaches us more about the Holocaust. An object that represents both the richness of sources that can be found in micro-archives and the challenges that those working with them face.
Our object of focus is a black and white photograph, depicting a group of prisoners dressed in the distinctive striped uniforms of Nazi concentration camps and walking along a corridor of barbed wire fencing. In the photograph, there is a woman in the fourth row from the front, circled in yellow. The woman’s name is Suzana Schossberger (Šosberger), and the photograph was taken by a Soviet military officer when Auschwitz was liberated in January 1945. Her son Mirko Stefanović remembers that his mother kept the photograph on a bookshelf in the living room, unframed and turned around. Mirko recalls how he never spoke to his mother about her imprisonment in Auschwitz even though she never tried to hide her experience and wore her tattooed prisoner number visibly.
The photograph came to the attention of Dr. Dora Komnenović, our guest for this episode, following a call launched by the Jewish Community of Novi Sad in preparation for the workshop "Archival Basics: A Hands-On Workshop for Micro-Archives”. This workshop was one of the several EHRI workshops for micro-archives organized by the German Federal Archives and other EHRI partners. Mirko answered the call almost immediately to contribute his mother’s remarkable photograph. He did this, as he explains in the testimony we hear in the episode, because of the responsibility he feels as part of the generation of survivors’ children to help preserve the memory of the Holocaust for the future. The photograph is important not only because of its subject matter, but because it represents the challenging first step towards building relationships with non-traditional archives. In the further exchanges Dora had with Mirko, she also found out about an oral testimony that Mirko's mother gave to Yad Vashem in the 1990s. Mirko explained that he only listened to his mother’s testimony after her death and that he was not comfortable sharing it. This highlights the complex and emotionally charged nature of collecting such archival material from individuals and the relatives of survivors.
Suzana Schossberger was born and lived in Novi Sad, Serbia. She was the co-owner of a knitwear factory when, in April 1944, she was deported to Auschwitz along with her infant son, Andrija Schossberger and her father, Mirko Erdeš. Andrija and Mirko were sent directly to the gas chambers upon arrival and were murdered. Her husband, Tibor Schossberger, died of typhus as a prisoner of war.
Suzanna was selected by Mengele as a subject for experimentation. She was kept for some months in the hospital and subjected to unimaginable horrors before she could escape to the wider barracks where she managed to remain until the camp was liberated by Soviet soldiers in January 1945.
Dr. Dora Komnenovic is a research associate at the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam and an employee of the Federal Archives/Stasi Records Archive in Berlin. Podcast host is Katharina Freise.
- Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks – Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0).
- Andy Clark, Podcastmaker, Studio Lijn 14