Taja Kramberger 1 The Upperworld and Underworld of Nazi Terror in Trieste Risiera di San Sabba and Kleine Berlin as Traumascapes Abstract 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. Keywords Risiera di San Sabba, Kleine Berlin, extermination camp, places of memory, ritual practices 1. Introduction Spatial images are the dreams of society. Wherever the hieroglyphics of any spatial image are deciphered, there the basis of social reality presents itself. (Kracauer 1997: 60) I’ll start with two figures. Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945), Hitler’s most powerful deputy and the founder of the Nazi elite corps Schutzstaffel (SS) which conducted the Nazi death camps, was initially a chicken farmer (Sax 2000: 150). In autumn 1922, he finished his agricultural studies at the Munich Technical High School (Technische Hochschule) with “good” as a grade and took a job of assistant administrator in an artificial fertilizer factory – the Stickhoff- Land-GmbH in Schleissheim near Munich. There “he had taken an 1 Educational Research Institute in Ljubljana, taja.kramberger@gmail.com This article could not have been completed without the inspiration and benevolent suggestions of many colleagues. In particular, I am grateful to Ravel Kodric ˇ for his invaluable comments and advices. I’m also indebted to the anonymous reviewer of the text for his extensive critique and expositions of the paper’s weak points. While I was able to meet some of his remarks and hopefully improve weak arguments through an extensive revision of the text, the others are still open to further research, criticism and discussion. 131 11/11/14 17:56