Michaela Haibl
Private Lecturer, University Assistant for Cultural Anthropology, Technische Universität Dortmund, Germany
Michaela Haibl is a researcher from Kaufbeuren, Germany. Her work at the USC Center for Genocide Research focused on the fields of visual anthropology, antisemitism, artifacts, concentration camps, methods of representing, cultural transformations, reception and effect of cultures. She was also a part of 2022-2023 Interdisciplinary Research Week Team where she worked on a project titled, “Inscribed Bodies, Unscripted Lives: (In-)Voluntary Body Alterations and Tattoos During and After Genocide.”
Her part in the project reflects the connection between forced concentration camp clothing, the numbers sewn on, and the identity of the prisoners. The aim is to find answers to the ambiguity and agency of the Auschwitz tattoo as well as the textile numbers on the inmate’s jackets, dresses, and trousers. Written sources about the personal aspects of numbers and about the numbering of prisoners are hard to find. The VHA provides an archive of fully indexed video testimonies. Haibl’s special interest are the objects and clothes the survivors present at the end of the interviews.
Artifacts that the survivors were able to save from the time of flight, persecution, and from the concentration camps are often shown and explained here. Further searching by items of clothing and numbering would enable me to collect a sample of supporting documents for developing a new research architecture in the relation between identity and forced clothing and tattooing of numbers after the Holocaust.
