Archiving the Trauma of Internment Camps in Film: Jacqueline Veuve’s Journal de Rivesaltes, 1941–1942 (1997)

Abstract

In 1997, independent Swiss filmmaker and anthropologist Jaqeuline Veuve (1930–2013) released her documentary Journal de Rivesaltes, 1941–1942based on the journal kept by Friedel Bohny-Reiter (1912–2001) while working as a nurse for the Swiss Red Cross/Aid to Children at the Rivesaltes internment camp in southwest France. This chapter will show how Veuve’s film brought public attention to hitherto unknown women humanitarians and contributed to shaping a new understanding of Switzerland’s role in the Second World War. It will also examine the film as a performance of both the trauma of others in the past and that of the public facing this history in the late 1990s, thus constituting an important source for the history of emotions.