Spaces of Memory in Documentary Film

Born in Auschwitz is Cseke and S. Takács’s first full-time documentary film that follows the story of Angela Orosz, who was born in Auschwitz in December 1944 and survived miraculously. The article asks how various visual representations of space are combined in the film to document Angela Orosz’s survival in the past and her relationship with her daughter in the present. The paper claims that Born in Auschwitz plays with the film lexicon of Holocaust documentary films in that it constructs visual representations of spaces related to the Holocaust by involving diverse modes of graphic spatial constructions along with traditional settings and frames. At the same time, the film also advances its female protagonists’ ability to reflect on their relationship to the Holocaust and realize the ways it is present in their daily lives 70 years later. The film not only documents but arguably also triggers an intergenerational healing process of reflection on the legacy of the Holocaust in the protagonists’ daily interactions.