II. The Role of a Theologian in Genocide Prevention: Theology in Postgenocide Rwanda

Horizons ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-89
Author(s):  
Elisee Rutagambwa

When the world came to its senses after the Second World War and reports of the horrors of the Holocaust began to spread, the international community reacted with disbelief. And when reality proved much worse than even the worst nightmare, the world community reacted unanimously with a general outcry: crimes of this magnitude must never happen again. It appeared quite clear that, in the future, the international community would never again remain inactive in the face of such appalling tragedy. Yet, the firm imperative “never again” has become “again and again,” and the same dreadful crimes have been repeated in many parts of the world.

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-25
Author(s):  
Marcin Kępiński

Literature of an autobiographical character acquires a special significance in the world of the bloody tragic events of the 20th century, i.e. the Holocaust, the Second World War, the realities of the Nazi and Soviet totalitarianisms, death camps, and forced labour. Those are the recollections of experienced trauma which shatters identity, and of existential experiences of a borderline nature, of which Shalamov, a witness to the epoch, felt an obligation to talk. An anthropological analysis of Varlam Shalamov’s short story titled Artificial Limbs, Etc. enables one to grasp the role of memory and autobiographical testimony as a kind of cultural and literary antidote to silence and memory distorted by the Soviet totalitarianism. The author of Kolyma Tales offered a faithful description of a world outside the‘human’ world, one which was almost impossible to describe due to its inherent moral void, level of violence, and fear of the authorities who made people forget about the crimes, victims, and oppressors.


Author(s):  
Naomi Seidman

This chapter details the phenomenology of the Bais Yaakov movement during the Holocaust and after. The experiment that was Bais Yaakov was still expanding at a rapid rate and had hardly had a chance to come into its own when it fell victim to the destruction of European Jewry. Despite the disbanding of Bais Yaakov schools with the outbreak of the Second World War, numerous memoirs and histories of the movement attest to its continued clandestine activity during the war years. The networks forged in the interwar movement aided in the rapid re-emergence of Bais Yaakov schools and Bnos groups in the immediate aftermath of the war. Bais Yaakov established itself more permanently after the Holocaust in the centres of Orthodox life throughout the world, particularly in North America and Israel. Bais Yaakov schools had already been founded in both countries during the interwar period, and the Beth Jacob High School established in 1938 by Sarah Schenirer's student Vichna Kaplan operated under the authority of the Central Office in Europe.


2019 ◽  
pp. 13-31
Author(s):  
Tim Strangleman

This chapter looks at the decisions made by Guinness related to the building of its English brewery at Park Royal in west London. It places these decisions within the context of Anglo-Irish politics of the 1920s and 1930s. Using a variety of archive sources, oral histories, and autobiographies, it tells the story of how the Park Royal site was identified and developed in secret. The chapter looks at the building and architecture of the brewery and the role of the world-renowned architect Giles Gilbert Scott. It also relates the experience of some of the early workers employed at the site during construction and subsequent production. The chapter finishes at the end of the Second World War in 1945.


2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-174
Author(s):  
Gad Kaynar-Kissinger

Can The Merchant of Venice be performed in Germany after the Holocaust, and if so, how? Is the claim that the play is a touchstone for German-Jewish relations, with a philosemitic tradition – and therefore eligible to be performed today – verifiable? The article begins by briefly surveying this tradition from the Jewish emancipation in the mid-eighteenth century, which, with a few relapses, continued – especially in productions directed by Jews and/or with Jewish actors in the role of Shylock – until the rise of the Nazi regime, to be resumed after the Second World War. The main part analyses a test case, staged by the Israeli director Hanan Snir at the Weimar National Theatre (1995), and intended rhetorically to avenge the Holocaust on the German audience: Merchant as a viciously antisemitic play-within-a-play, directed by SS personnel in the nearby Buchenwald concentration camp with eventually murdered Jewish inmates compelled to play the Jewish parts.


Author(s):  
Naomi Seidman

This chapter details the phenomenology of the Bais Yaakov movement during the Holocaust and after. The experiment that was Bais Yaakov was still expanding at a rapid rate and had hardly had a chance to come into its own when it fell victim to the destruction of European Jewry. Despite the disbanding of Bais Yaakov schools with the outbreak of the Second World War, numerous memoirs and histories of the movement attest to its continued clandestine activity during the war years. The networks forged in the interwar movement aided in the rapid re-emergence of Bais Yaakov schools and Bnos groups in the immediate aftermath of the war. Bais Yaakov established itself more permanently after the Holocaust in the centres of Orthodox life throughout the world, particularly in North America and Israel. Bais Yaakov schools had already been founded in both countries during the interwar period, and the Beth Jacob High School established in 1938 by Sarah Schenirer's student Vichna Kaplan operated under the authority of the Central Office in Europe.


2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 78-90
Author(s):  
Julija Matejic

By analyzing the role of the family in the process of inter/transgenerational inheritance of trauma and memory (remembrance), the paper is an attempt at providing an answer to how the un-experienced past affects the lives of the descendants of the direct perpetrators and victims of the Holocaust, or rather, how it affects the identity forming of the so-called postgeneration. As the temporal distance from the Second World War increases, and as the number of those with immediate experiences and memories decreases, the expressions like memory and remembrance begin to lose their conventional meaning. As the research shows, even with the lack of first-hand experience, the descendents of those who survived mass traumatic events are subjectively deeply attached to the memory of the previous generation (so much so that they label that attachment as remembrance, and they feel their parents? traumas as their own). Given the fact that it is not possible to physically transfer the trauma and memory to descendants, the paper analyzes and compares the terminology that the professional literature has adopted so far, i.e. secondary traumatization (in case of a child), tertian traumatization (in case of a grandchild), as well as echoes of the trauma and postmemory. The main thesis of this paper is that echoes of the memory and echoes of the trauma cause the so-called identity crisis of the Holocaust postgeneration, that is, only facing the past leads to postgeneration?s coming to terms with it.


2016 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristopher Kinsinger

<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">The notion of a Canadian foreign policy “golden age” during the decades following the Second World War has shaped how Canadians have come to view their country’s place in the world. While recent historical scholarship has laudably done much to demonstrate how the idea of a Canadian diplomatic “golden age” is ultimately an exercise in mythmaking, historians have done comparatively little to assess when and how this mythological notion became ingrained in Canada’s political consciousness. This paper seeks to begin to fill this gap in the historiography of Canadian politics by analyzing the role of foreign policy in the four federal elections held between 1958 and 1965. This analysis not only reaffirms the mythological status of the “golden age” but also demonstrates how this notion was fuelled by the foreign policy rhetoric of the Liberal Party during Lester B. Pearson’s tenure as leader. </span>


Author(s):  
Мilorad Stamenovic

The establishment of health cooperatives is the milestone in the development of the health system in the Kingdom of SCS and later in Yugoslavia. Healthcare cooperatives were applied for the first time in our area with joint efforts of the Ministry of National Health, national movements and International Organizations, and above all the United States Mission to help the Serbian people. The heavy public health image of the people after the First World War initiated healthcare cooperatives. Numerous obstacles were in the path of establishment and development of health cooperatives. However, due to good organization, mutual coordination of all important agents and also solidarity of the cooperative spirit, these problems were surpassed. The positive role of health cooperatives can best be seen in comparing the results of public health problems after the World War I and in the period before the Second World War, as shown in the paper. The first health cooperatives were established in 1922, and until the beginning of the Second World War, their number had grown, as well as the number of cooperatives and beneficiaries of services provided by health cooperatives. One of the most significant obstacles in the establishment and operation of health cooperatives is the financial nature, but also the problems of the uneducated population and numerous ?inherited? problems in the national health after the previous wars. However, by means of good work, cooperatives has been saving and every year they have more and more money reinvested in the desire to improve their position and provide better health care. The role of a physician has changed from a passive one ?waiting? at an outpatient clinic for the patients to be examined to active one in which a cooperative doctor travels to the patients? locations with his team. This approach has strengthened prevention, reduced the number of people infected with infectious and other diseases and influenced the education of the population, which was prone to illiterate and poor educational status. The ?spirit? of cooperatives was strong and it was also one of the reasons for the great success of healthcare cooperatives. After initial success, experts from around the world - from Japan, China, India and USA, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, France were interested in transferring knowledge about the development of this innovative movement. Numerous healthcare cooperatives in the world have been created just by the model that our experts have developed. This global importance should be emphasized and new models of health care cooperatives are worth exploring further.


Author(s):  
Ilan Stavans

“The Yiddish self” analyzes the emergence and dissemination of Yiddish as the lingua franca of eastern European Jews from the thirteenth century to the Holocaust and beyond, focusing on the three founders of Yiddish literature: Mendele Mokher Sforim, Israel Joshua Singer, and Sholem Aleichem. Sholem Aleichem’s volume of interconnected stories Tevye the Dairyman is arguably the most important narrative ever to be produced in the Yiddish language. Yiddish writers have reflected on anti-Semitism and migration. Yiddish writing in the United States, Latin America, and other parts of the world and the Singer siblings (Israel Joshua, and Isaac Bashevis) in particular are examples of adaptation to different environments after the Second World War.


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