ABSTRACT
Search engines, genealogy websites, and social networks surround us and have connected the digital memories with an endless number of links between memory fragments that once belonged to living people. What effects do those memory technologies have on Holocaust connective memory? They enable us to share knowledge that was previously difficult to access and understand.
With the help of Big Data, we, the third generation, have discovered names, faces, places, and records that skipped generations, and uncovered new dimensions of the Holocaust memory. In this chapter, the story of the third-generation revelation of my grandma’s story illustrates how connective memory made by algorithms and databases have shaped our personal Holocaust memory in a new way. I called it the “connective postmemory of the Platform Age”.
This chapter will start by describing the changing patterns in memory that follow technological changes. Later, the personal story will illustrate the transition from personal to collective, mediated by the connected society – the connective postmemory. The chapter will conclude by trying to imagine what might be the next phases in the transitions of memory.
