Article

The Upperworld and Underworld of Nazi Terror in Trieste

by Taja Kramberger

in Versus n. 119, Traces of Terror, Signs of Trauma, pp.131-155

Abstract (english)

In the article, I intend to situate the Trieste’s terror/traumascape
through the topography of terror/trauma places put in place
during the Nazi occupation of the city (1943–1945). I will do this
by showing how some of the elements in such a network of topoi
– especially the extermination camp Risiera di San Sabba in the
industrial outskirts of the city and the casemates of Kleine Berlin
in the inner city – are decisively semantically interconnected and
interdependent. Inside of the Nazi semiosphere and its semiosis,
oblivion with its lethal erasure, concealments of crimes, silence
complicities and perpetual discontinuities (and not memory as
a guarantee of duration) becomes a principal driving force and
takes over everyday practices. Totalitarian Nazi cosmology,
complex but visible through the traces and relations, based on
detachment from reality, deception and perverted pleasures, is an
inverted social structure in comparison with democratic societies