26 Creating the Vieu.,er

shown in the newsreels of April and May ry45. American audiences havealso encountered some of this footage while watching television and filmdramas, such as ludgment at Nuremberg, first presented on cBS's p/ay-house 90 in 1959, and later released by united Artisrs as a feature film int96r;the 198r film version of chaim Potok's novelThe chosen; and cBS's1985 television movie Koiak: The Belarus File.so The presence of these vin-tage images also hovers more obliquely around other dramas, includingErnest Kinoy's teleplay 'walþ Down the Hill, aired on cBS's studio one int 9 5 7, and, the r 9 9 3 fearure fim S cb indler's List.

Presentations of liberation footage in documentary films of the later97os, r98os, and r99os implicitly invoke the first, shocking experience ofits witnessing as well as the moral response that its early public presenra-tions demanded. The shock that these images once induced may haveabated ove¡ the years, in the wake of their frequent reuse and the appear-ance over the years of other, more recent graphic images of horror. At thesame time, the symbolic value invested in watching liberation footage hasincreased, and it endures as a mainstay of Holocaust memory culture.

This is exemplified by a public service announcement (pSA) aired onMTV and other cable television channels in the fall of t992, one of a seriesof PSAs designed ro encourage young Americans to participate in thenational election thar rook place the following month. The psA opens witha montage of overlapping clips of vintage black-and-white footage; promi-nent among them are images of Nazis burning books and beating people inthe street. A voice-over comments: "'we'd like to take this opportunity toremind you of why so many of us came to this country in the first place."Liberation footage appears on the screen, showing groups of gaunt figuresin striped uniforms, some standing behind barbed wire, as the voice-overcontinues: "vote-for all the people who didn't make it." Then the sen-tence "There is no excuse not to vote" appears in white lette¡s against ablack screen; the spot is over.51

No caption or narration identifies the footage used in this thirry-secondsequence. Instead, its producers assumed that the young adult audience thePSA targeted could quickly recognize these vintage scenes as icons of theHolocaust. Moreover, the PSA's creators expected that its viewers couldtake its decidedly American reading of these images and the historicalmoment they represent-a reading that presumptuously identifies victimsof Nazi persecution as "people who didn't make it" to the united states-and link this with reasons for participating in the upcoming election. \ühilethis is among the more unusual uses of liberation footage to appear onAmerican television, it typifies the images' complex and powerful status inAmerican culture at the end of the twentieth century. Awe-inspiring yetaccessible, they are icons of an essentialized morality whose meaning isnonetheless open to ever-new possibilities of completion.

two"This ls Your Life"

these are photographed, and they are shaped by the temporal distance

between the Holocaust era and when it is recalled-years, sometimes

decades later.Just as the conceptualization of the Holocaust coalesced over time, so

did the notion of Holocaust survivors. During the immediate postwar

27

2E Creating the Vieuer

on life in the former German capital for the news series see It Now (cBS,195r-r958).1 The two interviewees-a man identified as ,.half Jewish,,and a woman, described as a "full Jewess," who survived the war becauseof her marriage to an "Arya¡"-¿¡s asked nothing about their life duringthe prewar era or the war years, but only about their cor.ent existence asJews in postwar Germany.

These early broadcasts paid particular attention to the relocation andrehabilitation of DPs. During the postwar years there was extensive inter-national debate over the proper resettlement of the many thousands of

Jews and non-Jews, temporarily housed inAust¡ia. In the United Stares, Jewish orga_dmit DPs to America and to enable their

late r94os, featured acrual reunions of Jewish families that had been scat-tered during the war. Jewish Dps were also the subject of radio dramas onepisodes of the religious se¡ies Tbe Eternal Light, produced by the JewishTheological Seminary in conjunction with NBC.2

Te'"uision soon followed with occasionar presentations of Dps' wartime

FilmingtheHebrewlmmigrantAidSociery'sdocudramaPlacingtbeDisplacedonloca-tion at Funk Kaserne, tnà tle largest emigration assembly center in the U'S' Zone in

German¡ rg4T.ltaddition to bei'ig televised by CBS in r948' this film about Europe's

Displaced persons was shown in th.ãt.r, and distributed to American Jewish communiry

org'aniz.tiorrs. (YTVO Institute for Jewish Research')

50 Creating the Vieuer

Is Your Life aìred on NBC on z7 May r9s3.4 This harf-hour telecasr pre-sented survivor testimony as part of one of the most popular entertainmentprograms of the r95os, which has come to be recognL.ã ", a quintessentialexample of Americat early television culrure. A close reading or rni, broad_cast demonstrates how television-a collabo¡atirre, corpoåte medium-can shape the telling of an individualt rife story. The broadcrst also revealsthe extent to which a Holocaust survivor's story was understood during theearly post'war years as emblematic of a larger chapter of history regarded assomehow singular.

*This Is Your Life, Hanna Bloch Kohner"As the series name appears amid dancing spotlights and the offstage orches-tra plays a fanfarc, an announcer introduce s This Is your Life às..televi-sion's most talked-about program," sponsored by Hazel Bishop No-smearLipstick. The program's rheme music plays as hosr Ralph Edwards strollsdown the aisle of the El capitan Theater in Hollywoåd, c"lifor.,ia. Hestops to ask the name of a young woman in the front row; she is HannaKohner, the wife of talent agent !ü'alter Kohner. Edwa¡ds asks her to iden-tify the young man next to her; he is actor Jeffrey Hunter. Edwards asksHunter what is written on the cover of the large album that he carries."This Is Your Life-Hanna Bloch Kohner," Hunter reads aloud. Flanna,ssmile drops and she buries her face in her hands, shouting, ..Oh, no! Oh,my God!" Bur soon she is smilin g again and laughing as Edlards t."s., h..about the ruse-her family led her to believe ,h", ,h. program would be asalute to Hunter.

Edwards escorts Hanna to the "Hazel Bishop stage,, to sit in the ..chairof honor." The set consists of an uphorstered sofa, ár"p.r, froral arrange-ments placed on pedestals, and a coffee tabre-evoking à posh living room;in the back alarge sign bears the sponsort name. once seated, Hanna asksEdwards if he has an extra handkerchief, and she expresses astonishment athow her family conspired in this surprise. Edwards àrr.rr., Hanna that shedeserves this hono¡ and begins his presentation, remarking that she hardryappears to be someone who has already experienced a '.lifetime of fear, ter-roq and tragedy"; she seems like a "young American girl just out of college,not at all like a survivor of Hitler's cruel purge of Geiman Jews.,, Edwardspromises to "relive" with Hanna both this and "happier', episodes of herlife. But because her story is ..so intense," the rariar, rporrro, ..wants todevote full time to it without interruption." The p.og."^- cuts away ro acommercial for Hazel Bishop No-Smear Lipstick.

Tbis Is Your Life returns with the fanfare from Beethoven,s Fifth Sym-phony as Edwards begins ro recount Flanna,s life story. He describes her

"Tbis Is Your Life" 51

hometown of Teplitz-Schönau, Czechoslovakia' where Hanna was born in-irl9

n"^, tlr. ot¿ castle' Edwards invokes the presence of Beethoven'

Goethe, and Wagner in Teplitz-a "rich heritage" for Hanna and her

iro,fr.r, Gottfried-", th. t"""'a cuts to pictures of the city and portraits

of their Parents.A voice offstage announces that he was a schoolmate of Hanna'

Edwards asks Hanna if she knows who it is-someone she hasn't seen in

over fifteen years. It turns out to be Frank Lieben' a childhood friend who

is now a research engineer in Manitoba, the first of five people from her

f"rt *ittt whom Hanna is reunited during the program' Lieben enters

ifrt."ttt a curtained ",th*"¡ accompanied by a glissando on a harp and

"rr¿i.i.. applause. He and H"ttt" embrace and reminisce briefly about

teachersandschoolholidays.Shegigglesasherecountshowshefellinlovewith 'walter Kohner at a school dance. Strings playing a waltz accomPany

his narrative, and a photograph of Hanna in her teens apPears' When

Lieben finishes, E,dwa,ds di'..t' him off camera)to sit in ..Hanna,S past.,'

Edwards asks Hanna what happened to her and-Walter' whom she

planned to marry' when the *"' btg"tt' As the musical accompaniment

switches to a minor mode, Edwards recounts the Anschluss and invasion of

the Sudetenland as "i"tágt film footage of German soldiers marching

through a city appears and brass instruments play the anti-Semitic Nazi

march"ing song "Horst'Wessel'" A slow cross-fade back to Hanna superlm-

poses her face on the footage' A btio.t, th" Nazis' torching the localto the plaintive strains of Kolof a ruined synagogue apPearenter Teplitz-S.hörr.o. "Ño' It must have been very awful"' she replies'

A..olp"nied by strings and harp, Edwards relates how'Walter got a

visa for the United Stttes ãnd tried to send for Hanna' but she was unable

to follow him due to American immigration quotas' Hanna sought refuge

in Amsterdam' finding work as a servant' In May :r94o the Nazis invaded

the Netherlands, "putiing a merciless end to your dream'" The camera cuts

to a map of Europe, ,hoi"it'g Germany in black' and the blackness spreads

into Belgium, L,r".*bot'rg,"and the Netherlands' Hanna reappears on the

screen, blotting h., t.""lith a handkerchief' The theme of Kol Nidrei

returns as Edwards describes Hanna as "alone, friendless, and hunted as a

non-Aryan in Hitler's world'"Edwards continues: In Amsterdam Hanna met and married Carl Ben-

jamin, a young German Jewish refugee' They were arrestedby Gestapo

agentsinthewinteroÍt9"43".'ds..,ttothedetentioncampat.síesterbork.A".r.* offstage uoi.. 't"it' that she and Hanna first met there' Hanna rec-

t ;J;;;"" Herzberg (now Mrs. .werner Florscheim), also a resident of

l-

32 Creating the Vieuer

Hollywood. The ¡wo \Momen, Edwards explains, remained friends through-out their imprisonment in four concentration camps. Eva enters, embracesHanna, and, in response to a question from Edwards, continues the narra-tive, explaining how they were transported to the camp at Theresienstadt incattle cars. Edwards comments that on this journey Hanna passed tbroughTeplitz-Schönau. "It wasn't a nice homecomingr" Hanna responds.

Eva explains that they were soon sent to Auschwitz. Edwards interjectsthat each woman was "sent to the so-called 'showers.' . . . Some showershad regular water, some had liquid gas, and you never knew which one youwere sent to." Among the less fortunate were Hanna's husband, father, andmother, who all died at Auschwitz. Hanna then learned that her brotherwas in the camp and sent a message to him on his birthday via the campunderground. Toda¡ Edwards notes, Gottfried is a doctor, living in Israel.Eva recounts that she and Hanna were sent to Mauthausen in the winter of1944, and Edwards ¡eminds Hanna that there she was assigned to shovelcoal, that she became frail and ill, *and then on May seventh ) 1945-,'

A photograph of liberated concentration camp prisoners appears as thefanfare from Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is heard. "V for victor¡,,Edwards proclaims, and he tells of Mauthausen's liberation by Americantroops, which prompts the introduction of the nexr guest: Harold Shuckart,one of three Jewish GIs who took part in liberating Mauthausen andbefriended Hanna in the early posrwar days. Shuckart also wrote to'walterKohner to inform him that Hanna, now widowed, had survived the war.('Walter, Edwards explains, had last heard from Hanna when she informedhim of her marriage.)

In July tg45rEdwards continues, Hanna returned to the Netherlands,and another person from her past appears: Irene Sachs, a fellow refugee,who lived in the same house as Hanna in postwar Amsterdam. Ireneexplains how one day an American sergeant came to the door to seeHanna; it was Walter Kohne¡. Walter himself enters at this cue, embracinghis wife and sitting beside her on the sofa. He recalls that he had been sta-tioned in Luxembourg when he received shuckartt letter and then learnedthat she might be in Amsterdam. Edwards asks Walter if he proposed toHanna straightaway. "No, I waited till the next day" 'Walter replies, andthe audience laughs. Edwards relates that they were married on z4 octoberr945 in three separate ceremonies (European and American civil cere-monies, as well as a Jewish ritual); their "dreams come true at lastr' as theysail to America the following July.

"This is your life," Edwards sums up. Now that Hanna is "safe' in heradopted homeland, he says, she has "but one prayer"-¡e make a trip tosee her brother in Israel. "Hanna, Hazel Bishop has moved that far-off dayinto the present. The last time you were in touch with him was in a Nazi

*Tbis Is Your Liþ" 55

series host Ralph Edwards reunites Holocaust survivor Hanna Bloch Kohner with figures

from her past on This Is Your Life, aired in MLay 1953' From left to right: Edwards'

Hanna,s childhood friend Frank Lieben, fellow survivor Irene sachs, brother Gottfried

Bloch, Hanna, fellow survivor Eva Herzberg Florscheim, husband walter Kohner' Stand-

ing berrina Gotrfried Bloch is Harold Shuckart, a u.s. soldier who befriended Hanna after

her liberation from Mauthausen. (National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting, theJewish

Museum,NewYork.ReproducedwithpermissionofRalphEdwardsProductions.)

concentration camP, nearly ten years ago' Now, here he is!" GottfriedBloch enters and embraces his sister. "This is my happiest day in all my

lif.," h. says. Edwards responds, "It's a happy day for all of us"' as all the

f"*i.ip"rr,, assemble on stage. "Out of darkness, of terror and despair' a

,r.* lii. has been born in " ** world for you, Hanna Kohner." Edwards

fro*ir", that Hazel Bishop will address the question of her future, after

another message from the sPonsor'Following the commercial, Edwards, Hanna, and all the guests reappear.

On behalf of H^relBishop he presents Hanna with a r6-millimeter filmcopy of the evening's program and a projector from the Spiegel catalogue' so

thåi she and her family 'ican relive this memorable night," and a fourteen-

karat-goldcharmbraceletdesignedbyMarchalJewelersofFifthAvenueinNew York for Hanna, each charm symbolizing an important episode in her

34 Creating tbe Vieuer

life. Finall¡ Hazel Bishop presents her with a lipstick in a jeweled case. (Allof these are standard gifts presented to the program's honorees.)

Edwards explains that while Hanna's unforgettable, tragic experienceshave been "tempered by the happiness" she has found in her new home,there remain throughout the world "countless thousands of others like you,who are still in desperate need of the barest living essentials." In Hanna'shonor, "HazeI Bishop turns to our viewers of all creeds and races" andappeals to them to make a donation to the United Jewish Appeal (UJA).Edwards recites the UJAs address as it appears on the screen and announcesthat the sponsor will initiate the campaign with a $r,ooo contribution.

"This is your life, Hanna Bloch Kohner. To you in your darkest hour,America held out a friendly hand. Your gratitude is reflected in your unwa-vering devotion and loyalty to the land of your adoption." Walter thanksEdwards, his staff, andHazel Bishop for "making the impossible possible."Edwards reminds viewers to tune in the following week for another showand then bids them good night as the program's theme music swells and thecredits roll.

The "Hanna Kohner" episode of This Is Your Life reveals how, even in theearly postwar years, television could shape the telling of a Holocaust sur-vivort life story. The broadcast demonstrates television's facility for ingest-ing other media-notabl¡ the use of vintage photographs and footage-and creating hybrid performances, here drawing on conventions of genresranging from documentary and newsreel to melodrama and game shows.The series also exploits the medium's small scale and the intimacy oftelevision viewing by making extensive use of close-ups, especially ofHanna's face.

In many \Mays this telecast is typical of Tbis Is Your Life, in whichEdwards evolved a unique approach to presenting the story of someone'slife. Most works of life history-including written memoirs, oral histories,and nonverbal examples in the form of paintings, musical compositions,crafts, and so on-are essentially either autobiographical or biographical.In addition, there are various collaborative efforts, ranging from interviewsand surveys to such group projects as theater pieces, quilts, and murals. Inthese works, the conventional boundaries between biographer and subjectare often obscured or otherwise transformed . Tbß Is Your Life is a kind ofcollaborative life histor¡ given the many participants involved. However, itis distinguished by the fact that, even though the subject appears and isinvolved in the actual performance of his or her life stor¡ the enterprise isundertaken without the subject's prior consent or cooperation.s

Like Hanna Kohner, honorees on Tbis ls Your Life were, with rareexceptions, completely unaware of having been selected by Edwards and

"This Is Your Life" 55

his production team. Extensive research on the honorees' personal histories

*"J.r.rd.rt"ken behind their backs, usually with the assistance of familymembers, friends, and colleagues, who were sworn to secrecy' This ensured

the honoree,s unrehearsed responses during the broadcast, which were con-

sidered essenrial to the series' app."l. Edwards himself described its agenda

as being cenrered around provoking emotional response rather than being

.o.r..rrr.d solel¡ or perhaps even primaril¡ with paying tribute to hon-

orees' achievements. A :- 956 Saturday Euening Post feature on the series'

whichdubbedThislsYourLifethe..weepiestshowontelevision,,,explainedthatitsproducer..willnothangthegarlandonanysubject*hor. tear ducts are gummed up. The researchers establish beyond a rea-

sonable doubt that thJ principal will sob, choke, flutter or even cry out."6The ,.Hanna Kohner" episode fulfilled the series' demand for emotion as

it conformed to its ritualized structure. once she was identified, her story

was presented, largely in chronological order, through a combination ofn"r.itio.t delivered by Edwards' questions that he asked her, photographs

and other documentary images, and-most important-through a series

of reunions between the subject and people from her past'The bursts of emotion that these reunions precipitate punctuated what

was essentially a tightly scored production (literally so, as much of the pro-

gram was p..for-"a, like nineteenth-century melodrama' to orchestral

ã..o-p..ri-ent). Th; producers of This Is Your Life considered careful

scripting and rehearsal to be essential, in order to ensure that the program

*orlld provide viewers wirh demonstrations of genuine emotion-eveninstructing participants "how to kiss or hug the subject on cue."7 Such close

control of ihe proceedings did not deprive the program of its emotional

impact.Rather,limitingthescopeofspontaneitycreatedtensionbetweenttre highly structured ritual of This Is Your Life and the expression of unre-

h."rrJd emorion. The breaks in the carefully orchestrated protocols of Tbis

ls Your Life, however slight, signify the emotional power of these moments'

The affective drama ãf ,trir episode of This Is Your Life depenð'ed as

much on the human embodiments of Hanna's Past as on the honoree herself'

Their serial appearance constituted a pageant that enacted Hanna's life in a

continuous dramatic present, much like medieval paintings that depict on a

single panel " ,.q.r.ri.. of scenes forming a narrâtive continuum' At the

,"-, ti*., their reunions with Hanna were very much a modern phenome-

nq¡-rni¡¿çle plays of the jet age, in which the program's sponsor figured as

deus ex machina, using broadcast technology and commercial air travel to

restofe family relationships and friendships that had been fractured and

scattered around the world by the ordeals of the twentieth century'

Each reunion between Hanna and her "past" itself constituted the cli-

max of a brief drama, in addition to being an element of the entire episode's

5ó Creating the Viewer

narrative, which the reunion reflected in miniature. This episode of This IsYour Life was thus a series of dramatic climaxes that came rapidly one afteranother over the course of a half hour, thereby sustaining the program,saffective power. Like the presentation of Hanna's life story, the reunionsthemselves posed a series of trials: Would she remember the person who isspeaking offstage? 'Would their reunion be joyous? tearful? surprising?Vould this reunion be the one that causes her to break down completely?ultimatel¡ a happy resolution followed, with the reward of a celebration inthe embrace of devoted companions and loved ones.

Edwards employed this narrative structure to transform Hanna's experi-ences of rupture, loss, and displacement into a cohesive narrative of tri-umph over adversiry. Most notablg the deaths of Hanna's parents and herfirst husband at Auschwitz were given the briefest mention, as they weresubsumed by a narrative shaped by the course of her romance with walter.Thus, Tåis Is Your Life presented Hanna's life simultaneously as an excep-tional tale of personal victory over genocidal evil and a conventional girl-meets-boy-girl-loses-boy-girl-gets-boy story.

vhile the "Hanna Kohner" episode largely conformed to the ritualizedformat of This Is Your Liþ, it occasionally demonstrated that its producersregarded Hanna's story as being somehow singular. But it was not the onlyepisode of the series to end with similar appeals for contributions to chari-ties. Nor was it the only episode to call attention to a tragic world evenr.The rr May 1955 episode of This Is Your Life honored Reverend KiyoshiTanimoto, a survivor of the atomic bomb dropped on Friroshima at the endof 'world war II. Reverend ranimoto was in the united States to raise fundsthat would enable the "Hiroshima Maidens,' a group of twenty-five youngwomen disfigured by the bomb blast, to receive plastic surgery.8

And yet, Edwards's mention of the exceptional "intensity,' of Hanna,sstory and of the decision not to interrupt its telling with commercials sig-naled a special sensitivity to the subject. This gesrure resembled the warningsto audiences that were sounded before the earliest presentations of the Holo-caust in American newsreels. Moreover, the decision to move the sponsor'sadvertisements from their usual place in the structur e of This Is your Lifefor the "Hanna Kohner" episode foreshadowed future controversies overthe "intrusion" of commercials into Holocaust dramas on television.Debates over the validity of Holocaust television have often focused on thepresence of advertisements during these programs, and this is frequentlyinvoked as epitomizing the incompatability between medium and message.On the occasion of the broadcast premiere of Scbindler's List in 1997, NBCresponded similarly to the question of advertising by airing the three-and-a-half-hour-long film without interruprion; instead, it was framed by commer-cials for the broadcast's sponsor, Ford Motor Company.9

"This ls Your Lìfe" 57

The..HannaKohner,,episodeofThislsYourLifeisalsoaculturalarti-;t responsive to it, ti*",'optt¡1lv to anxieties "*:: t:lît1^"*:-tt*i-ãifflr.rr.. prevalent in cold war America' Although the program

esented Hanna's *ory ", o,'" of special significance for Jews' its universal

e was emphasized io Eàw"'ds" "pptál to viewers of "all creeds and

j''fãt 1""¿s to aid l.*ittt "fosä'' Moreover' This ls Your Life'fagçù, rvr r qtleu rv

,repeat.dly concePtualized Hanna's life as',)^r^^s L-. oo l^nl¿inq mclre like an America

ceact

ter to the United States in the t93 wishimmigration va',-

Appeal, initia ricandated Americbusiness to do good'lo

In light of the UJAs particiPation'be considered part of the extensive p

early postwar Yeârs bY a varietY ofDPs as American citizens' ManYbetween the DPs' ,"..rr*p..r.nå, "nd

America's long history as a refuge

for immigrants-some goì"g to far as to describe DPs as "Delayed Pil-

American Jews, including those whoindustry such as Hanna's husband a

enberg and Alfred Paschall'12At the same time' This Is Your L

the earlY cold war YearsspiracY and covert inteonce Hanna resPondeEdwards imparted, exclaiming, "You know everphing about me!") This is

not a unique inr,"rr.. ir, ."rliit-.rican television; the Popular seties Can-

did Camera(which aired, at one time or another' on ABC' CBS' and NBCexpose private exPerience to the

of p.rhapt, preciselY because ofbeing insensitive to the individ-

ual,srightofprivacy.EvenEdwards'sfriendDwightNewton,mediacolum-

5ô Creating the Vieuer

nist for the san Francisco Examiner, excoriated This Is your Life in print,writing that "it becomes cruerty when all the country is permitied to p..,and peek into the private emorions of a private life.'l r: Arthorgh the pro-gram was presented as a tribute to her, Hanna often appeared io be mo¡eits victim, the camera fixing on her face in extended .lor.-op, throughoutthe broadcast. Edwards onry nominally involved Hanna as ari active partic-ipant in the proceedings, asking her occasionar rhetorical questions towhich she could give only the briefest of answers.

As media scholar Lynn spigel has observed, the notion of television as anagent of surveillance appeared frequently in discussions of the medium dur-ing the postwar years.14 In the mid-r95os sociologist Murray Hausknechtwrote thar, while it does not constitute the first ass",rlt on irivacy in themodern age, "the magic of television makes uoyeurs of us all.,, comment-ing on Person to Person (CBS, 1953-t96r),an interview program in whichhost Edward Murrow visited from his television studio with celebrities intheir homes via remote television cameras, Hausknecht observed that"within rhe context of the persistent cliché that television brings the worldinto our living room . . . , M¡. Murrow has hit upon the moJt intriguingvariation of this theme: he brings other living rooms into ou¡s.,, The samecould be said of Tbis Is your Life, with its srage-set parror and its changingcasts of families and friends. Indeed, describing person to person as"merely the sugar-coated end of a continuum at the other end of which isTbis Is Your Life and [r95os quiz show] striþe It Rich,,, Hausknechr wrotethat on these programs "the boundaries between the pubric and the privatesphere have disappeared," and he expressed .on..r'that this invasion ofprivacy is linked to the increased pressure on individuals to conform tosocial disciplines.ls By invading our own private worlds with the privateworlds of others, he argued, television makes it harder to resist the internal_ization of social discipline. Thus, at the same time that it purported to cele-brate the individual, Hausknecht would argue, Tbis Is viu, Lr¡rrobbed itshonorees of their privacy and undermined the notion of the private individ-ual in general.

The idea that television's attemprs to tell the story of ordinary individu-als are perverred by the very narure of the medium was also e*práred at thistime in Gerald Green's 1956 novel The Last Angry Man.lirnthis lookbehind the scenes of the production of a fictional television series, Ameri-cans, u.s-A. (which bears some resemblance to This Is your Life,), Greenluggests that relating someone,s genuine life history is beyond ,h. po*.r,rf commercial television. (Green acquired his cynicism about the medium,oresumabl¡ as an industry insider; he worked as a produce¡ for NBC,sToday show in the r95os. His subsequent credits include writing the script:or the 1978 Holocø¿¿st miniseries, which, ironicall¡ was attackld by crit-

'This Is Your Life" 59

ics for some of the problems Green had attributed to television in The LastAngry Man.)

Éot r.rch reservations about the medium were not universally shared'

The decision to honor Hanna Kohner on This Is Your Life evidently had

which the series survivors of Nazism, Jewishrefugees, and indi from Nazi persecution'17

Àior.ou.r, th. e had a lasting impact on bothHanna and her husband, who years later presented their life histories in a

book entitled Hanna and. Walter: A Loue Story.Is Like the This Is Your Lifebroadcast, the book focuses on the period beginning with their first meet-

ing in prewar czechoslovakia and ending with their reunion in postwarAmsterdam. Hanna and. 'walter provides a considerable amount of infor-mation not mentioned onTltis Is Your Life.In addition to offering an

extended account of 'Walter's life, there is more about Hanna, including the

f.act that she underwent an abortion while at Auschwitz. Nevertheless' the

Kohners' memoir bears some resemblance to the presentation of their story

as offered by Edwards on the television program'In addition to structuring its overall narrative around their "love story,"

Hanna and'Waþer has a number of details in common with the telecast;

this suggests something of how the exchange betlveen the Kohners' familylore aJthe editorial selectivity of Edwards and his production staff shaped

both the televised and written accounts. For example, in an early chapter of

town from the train en route to Theresienstadt'

During the last decades of the twentieth centufy the advent of popularint"r.rt in the Holocaust' both as a subject in itself and as a moral para-

40 Creating tlte Vieuer

can television has presented the stories of numerous Holocaust survivors indocumentaries, dramas, news reports, and other types of programming.These broadcasts generally situate the survivor at the active center of thetelling of his or her story and privilege the survivor's observations as unpar-alleled insights into the Holocausr.

In contrast, Hanna Kohner played a role in the televised telling of herpersonal history rhat was essentially passive, epitomized by Edwardsrepeatedly telling her, "This is your life." In more recent examples of Holo-caust television, not only have survivors' words been accorded greaterattention; each su¡vivor has also been called upon to bear the onus ofmemorializing the millions of Holocaust victims through his o¡ her individ-ual recollections and insights. Instead, the presentation of Hanna Koh¡er'sstory on This Is Your Life was, true to the program's name, emphaticallyabout living. The broadcast celebrated her endu¡ance and that of herfriends and family in a presentation unhaunted by anger, grief, or guilt overthe millions of dead. American television's "most talked-about program', int953 offered Hanna's life as an ext¡aordinarS moving tale of one Jewishwomant endurance of Nazi persecution. It was not, howeveg presented asa story of the Holocaust-a term, and a conceptualization of histor¡ thatdid not yet exist in American public discourse.

threeThe Theater of Our Century

Among television programs aired in the United States during the r94os and

r95os, those that have most influenced how Americans understand theHolocaust are, arguabl¡ dramas. These include original plays by such pio-neering television playwrights as Paddy chayefsk¡ Reginald Rose, andRod Serling, and they feature performances by John Cassavetes, CharlesLaughton, Robert Redford, and Maximilian Schell, among other renownedactors. These productions offered to American audiences some of the firstporüayals of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Anne Frank's diar¡ and life and

death in concentration camPs.These early television plays are now largely forgotten. Nevertheless, they

remain formative landmarks of Holocaust drama, which has been an ongo-ing presence on American television more consistently than it has on then",iãrr', stage or in film. For example, playwright Serling, actor Schell, andproducer Herbert Brodkin first dealt with the Holocaust in their televisionivork during the early postwar years and revisited the subject repeatedlyover rhe course of their professional lives. Beyond leaving an imprint onindividual careers, these d¡amas have had a pervasive impact on Ameri-cans' public remembrance of the Holocaust, familiarizing millions with a

repertofy of events, sites, characters, themes, and images. The dramaticmãde of representing the Holocaust has informed other genres of media,and its influence extends to other forms of Holocaust commemoration'such as public ceremonies and museum installations.

The breadth of this influence rests on the powerful role that television

time in human historS a majority of the population [has] regular and con-Stant access to drama, beyond occasion or Season." Mgreover, drama "isbuilt into the rh¡hms of everyday life," having become a "habitual experi-snçe"-i¡dsed, a "basic need'-of modern life.1

4l

2ó6 Notes to pages zr-28

4r. Abzl'tg, Inside tbe Vicious Heart, pp. r,z7-r'zg.42. Sante, Euidence, pp. 6o-62.43. Lawrence Douglas, "Film as witness: Screening Nazi concentration camps

Before the Nuremberg Tribunal," Yale Lata lournal ro5, no. z (Novembet .99i¡,PP. 452-453.

44. Taylo4 The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials, pp. :186-l87.45. court TV aired its fifteen-hour presenration of The Nuremberg Trial, irclud-

ing vintage footage of the trial as well as excerpts from Nazi concentration Camps,during the evenings of r3-r7 November t995, with a summary broadcast on zoNovember. Floyd Abrams appeared on 13 November; Ben Ferencz appeared on 14November. Citations are transcribed from a videorecording of the telecast. For fru-ther discussion of the court TV broadcasts of The Nuremberg Trial, see chapter g,pp.252-255.

46. See Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jeøs, r933-r94j (New york:Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975).

47. Crusade in Europe: Episode zz (MTR: irem no. T8o:o465); Victory at Sea:Design for Peace (MTR: item no. T79:oq3l.

48. The Tuisted Cross (NJAB: item no. T7 5); Trial at Nuremberg (NJAB: itemno. Tzo7l. Two other Proiect Twenty documentaries make passing reference to theNazi persecution of German Jewry: Three, Ttao, One, Zero (¡95+), which tracesthe development of nuclear power (here Nazi anti-Semitism is mentioned in the con-text of discussing refugee scientists who came to the united states in the r93os),and Life in the Thirties (t9 5g), which offers an overview of life in the united Statesduring this decade.

49. NJAB: item no. T316.5o. Chaim Potok, The Chosen (New York: Fawcett Crest, 196g); the film ver_

sion, directed by Jeremy Paul Kagan, was released by Twentieth century-Fox. TheKoiaÞbroadcast, aired 16 February r985, was based in part on actual incidentsdescribed in John Lofrus's The Belarus Secrer (New york: Knopf, rggz).

5r. "No Excuse Not to Vote: Reminder," Korey Kay and partners for MembersOnly, 1992. The PSA campaign, titled "No Excuse Not To Vote,', was sponsored byMembers only a manufacturer of clothing for the teenâge and young-adult market.

Chapter 2. "Thls ls Your Ltfe"

r. MTR: item no. T8z:o443, broadcast zz September 1953.z. For recordings of broadcasts of Reunion, the wNyc seríes Music by New

Americans andThe Golden Door, and episodes of The Eternal Light dealíngwithDPs, see the Max and Frieda.weinstein Archive for Recorded Sound, yIVo Insti-tute for Jewish Research, New York, RG r3o (Radio programs).

3. On Hunger Taþes No Holiday, see "Television Review: .The World We Liveln,"' Variety, 15 August 1945, p. z6; Placing tbe Displaced was aired on !7CBS-TVon r4 June 1948. See Roberta Newman, "D. P. Docudrama: Institutional propa-ganda and Post-'llorld war II Jewish Refugees," Jeutish Folklore and Etbnology

Notes to Pages 28-8 269

RG rrC, box 26, folder 38'

see le{frey Shandler' "'This Is Your

o" Ë"'tv Ám"'it"tt Television'" Joar-(t99+\' PP' 4r-68';í"-;; Y"" ctY"' SaturdøY Euening

, 52.

P'239'

92), PP' r r 8-r r9'ít Mass Culture: Tbe PoPu-

Manning White (New York:

270 Notes to pages j8-44

16. Gerald Green,The Last Angry Man (New york: Scribner's, :..9561.

Nazis and sav[ing] ar leasr one Jewess. " As listed in Fox: irem nos. o4ro3 (Hoff-man), o4ro4 (Herskovitz), o4ro5 (Shelkinl, o4to7 (von Luckner), o4ro9 (Nuss_baum), o4r14 (Stanley).

18. Hanna Kohner, walter Kohner, and Frederick Kohner, Hanna ønd.waher: ALoue story (New York: Random House, 19g4). The presentarion of Hanna's rifestory on This Is Your Liþ is mentioned in the book's epilogue (p. zog).

Chapter 5. The Theater of Our Century

r. Raymond rØilliams, "Drama in a Dramatised Sociery" in Raymond williamson Teleuision: selected writings, ed. Alan o'connor (London: Routledge, 19g9),PP.4-5.

z. Gilben Seldes, Writing for Teleuision (New york: Doubledag r95z), pp. r5r,f5z.

5. See, e.g. , David Marc and Robert J. Thompson, prime Time, prime Mouers(Syracuse: Syracuse Universiry Press, r995), pp. rr7-r3r.

ed. (New York: Oxford Universiry press, r99o), p. t6o.8. Erik Barnouw, The Teleuision writer (New york: Hill and wang, . 96z), p. 5;Paddy chayefsk¡ "Good Theatre in Television," as cited in Bodd¡ Fifties Teleui-

sion, p- 83; Paddy Chayefsk¡ Teleuision p/ays (New york: Touchsrone, r97r[tStS]), p. r3z.

9. Chayefsk¡ Teleuision Plays, p. r3o; John Brady, Tbe Craft of the S,een_u.triter: Interuietus øith Six Celebrated Screenwriters (New york: Touchstone,r98r), pp. 54-55.

Notes to Pages 44-t4 27L

ro. Barnouw, Tube ofPlentY'P'163'r r. See BoddY, Fifties Te

rz. Irving Howe, World ney of the Eøst European Jerus

þ America and the Life (New York: flarcourt Brace

Life in the r96os," conference paPer P

ference on American Jewish Histor¡dice: American Jeuts and tbe lntergroupCold War (NewYork: Columbia Universiry Press' r997)'

r6. Judd Teller, d Natiues: The Euotution of tbe American Jeu from

r92r to the Presen : Dell' 1968)' pp' 259' z6r'

17. MTR: item r; Sturcken' Liue Teleuision' p' 48'

18. Chayefsk¡ aYs'P'8'

ï. illi iro."lln-"", ..rt Happened on the Brookryn Subwav," Reader's Digest

54, no. 325 (May t9a9¡'t p'45; Jon npn* The Man in the Shadouts: Fred Coe

and the Golden Age of Teleuision ew Brunswick: Rutgers University Press,

19 Holocaust on Stage and

sc "'!;Î:ï:;";:'::'i:i'Sc

P.zf4'zz. Foxzitems nos. o1g37 (The Refugee\, o1y6 (Tbe Ransom of sigmund

in: A Signature of Conuiction and Integtity

985), PP' j8-9'

ki, Stalag 17: A ComedY Melodrama in

Service' 195r)' The film version was