Site of amnesia: The absence of North African Jewry in visual depictions of the experience of World War II

Studies in the field of history and cinema have found that viewers’ historical consciousness is structured by mass media in print and the audiovisual media of cinema, video, theater, and other visual and performing arts. This is particularly true of representations of the Holocaust. The audiovisual media and the arts have reflected relatively fewer representations of the impact of the Holocaust on the Jews of North Africa between 1943 and 1945 than the visual representations of the experience of European Jewry. The present article focuses on this absence and the reasons why the experience of North African Jewry has become a site of amnesia.