Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses the commemorative and museological aspects of the Sachsenhausen Memorial-Museum through the creation of an artefact from the very material of the former concentration camp. By bringing Sachsenhausen literally into our presence, the limits of ethnography will be explored.

Paper long abstract:

The Sachsenhausen Memorial Museum deploys authentic artefacts to bring prisoners from the former concentration camp into the present, and from behind their secure glass vitrines, these material remnants appear to `speak`. To investigate this commemorative and museological approach, to hear its effects, an artefact was created from the very material of Sachsenhausen. This paper will explore the affects of this questionable mimetic process on the ethnographer by bringing the field of Sachsenhausen literally into the present, and in so doing, provoke the historians and political scientists who recreate the history of this most transgressive site to words.