ABSTRACT
This essay aims to analyse the memorial function carried out by objects belonging to people imprisoned in concentration camps. It refers to objects taken from the victims or sometimes laboriously constructed by them, that are now conserved and exposed in museums and memory sites. These objects can be classified as serial objects and singular objects. Serial objects are those that we often see in most Holocaust museums, characterised by the repetition of different items: masses of shoes, piles of glasses, mountains of used clothes. These are governed by a quantitative logic of accumulation that cancels all traces of their individuality. Singular objects, on the contrary, have a non-reproducible character, as fragile and precious uniqueness. These are not, as in the case of serial objects, things taken away and violently snatched from the victims, but objects that the victims themselves have kept, sometimes created, that they managed to conceal from the surveillance of the jailers. While serial objects de-subjectify victims, singular ones seek to re-subjectify them, as forms of resistance.
