Outlining the Victims of the Holocaust and the Argentinian Dictatorship: Jerzy Skąpski’s Każdy Dzień Oświęcimia and Rodolfo Aguerreberry, Julio Flores, and Guillermo Kexel’s “El Siluetazo”

Abstract

In this article, I examine two case studies of spatial representation of atrocity and trauma: Jerzy Skąpski’s poster Każdy Dzień Oświęcimia (Every Day at Auschwitz) (1974), published in the October 1978 edition of The Unesco Courier, and the aesthetic/activist action known as “El Siluetazo” (1983), which was created by Rodolfo Aguerreberry, Julio Flores, and Guillermo Kexel, and carried out as a memory-activist intervention by the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo and the Argentinian public on 21–22 September 1983. To examine the interconnections of Holocaust memory within these two case studies, I follow Michael Rothberg’s notion of multidirectional memory and Astrid Erll’s conceptualization of transcultural and travelling memory. In particular, I analyze how Skąpski’s use of silhouettes to spatially depict the victims of Auschwitz is adopted and transformed by the Argentinian artists and public to denounce the disappearance of 30,000 of their compatriots. I argue that in outlining the figures of the victims of the Holocaust and the Argentinian dictatorship, respectively, these creative works exemplify the transcultural use of silhouettes originating in Holocaust memory and the multidirectional influence, derived from their organic connection, of spatial visualizations of absent bodies as they commemorate and make present the victims of these traumatic histories.