Introduction: Animals and the Holocaust

This special issue reflects on the history, memory and representation of animals and the Holocaust. It reveals the presence of animals in both Holocaust history and representations, and presents the methodological, archival and empirical significance of studying them. This introduction to the special issue by Balint and Gibbs explains that the articles themselves are divided into three sections: animals in archives/sources; animals during and after the Holocaust; and representations of animals in literary and cinematic works. As a result, this collection builds a methodological approach for including animals in research about the Holocaust and highlights important examples from archives that add to our understanding of victimhood and Nazi persecution. In addition to breaking new ground on a hitherto under-explored topic, these papers rebut assumptions about the triviality of animals during the Holocaust, revealing how studying the relationships between humans and animals exposes new dynamics of mass violence and personal and group experiences of the Holocaust.