Ocalone w montażu. Obraz, empatia i przeciw-historia w Austerlitz W.G. Sebalda

This attempted analysis focuses on the motif of empathy in the oeuvre of W. G. Sebald from the historical perspective and within the context of relations between the text and the image in Austerlitz. The argument is based on a fragment in which the titular protagonist, seeking an image of his mother, comes across a Nazi propaganda film made in the Theresienstadt ghetto at the end of the war. Apparently, the path towards an empathetic encounter with one’s past and the traumatic history of Europe leads across montage, in which observed images become rendered as problems and salvaged.