When Nations Remember: Hiroshima in the American Consciousness and Conscience

Prospects ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 467-488
Author(s):  
Alan G. Gross

Routinely represented by the mushroom cloud that arose from the city immediately subsequent to the atomic attack, Hiroshima has a central place in America's collective memory; it is, to borrow historian Pierre Nora's pregnant phrase, an American lieu de mémoire. In the American psyche, Hiroshima is not a place; it is an event of a special kind, one that is “immediately invested with symbolic significance” (Nora, 18). Even as the attack unfolded, even as the bomb left the bomb-bay doors, Hiroshima was “being commemorated in advance,” an event that was transformed, as it occurred, into a denning moment in national identity (18). Did the mushroom cloud mark an American triumph, the last act in the drama of World War II, or did it mask the inception of a new era for which America must take prime responsibility, an era of nuclear terror?

1994 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 105-128
Author(s):  
Susan M. Wolf

Writing in 1988, Arnold Relman heralded the dawning of the “third revolution“ in medical care. The first revolution, at the end of World War II, had inaugurated an Era of Expansion, with an explosion of hospitals, physicians, and research. Medicare and Medicaid were passed, and medicine experienced a golden age of growth. Inevitably, according to Relman, this yielded to an Era of Cost Containment starting in the 1970s. The federal government and private employers revolted against soaring costs, brandishing the weapons of prospective payment, managed care, and global budgeting. Yet these blunt instruments of cost-cutting eventually produced concern over how to evaluate the quality of health care, to promote the good while trimming the bad. Thus Relman announced the arrival of the Era of Assessment and Accountability.This chronology helps explain the current importance of quality. Quality assessment and more recently, quality improvement techniques, occupy a central place in this new era.


2014 ◽  
pp. 443-461
Author(s):  
Danijel Matijevic ◽  
Jan Kwiatkowski

The area around Krzesiny, located near the city of Poznań, Poland, witnessed several dark events during World War II: Germans oppressed the local population, culminating in a terrorizing action dubbed “akcja krzesińska;” also, a forced labor camp, named “Kreising,” was built near the township, housing mainly Jews. After the war, the suffering in Krzesiny was remembered, but selectively – “akcja” and other forms of Polish suffering were commemorated, while the camp was not. By exploring the “lieux de mémoire” in Krzesiny – dynamics of memory in a small township in Poland – this paper uses localized research to address the issue of gaps in collective memory and commemoration. We briefly look at the relevant history, Polish memory regarding wartime events in Krzesiny, and the postwar dynamics of collective memory. Discussing the latter, we identify a new phenomenon at work, one which we dub “collective disregard” – group neglect of the past of the “Other” that occurs without clear intent. We argue that “collective disregard” is an issue that naturally occurs in the dynamics of memory. By making a deliberate investment in balanced remembrance and commemoration, societies can counter the tendencies of “disregard” and curb the controversies of competitive victimization claims, also called “competitive martyrdom”.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-25
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Sztop-Rutkowska ◽  
Maciej Białous

The article presents the results of empirical research concerning the collective memory in Białystok and Lublin – two largest cities in the Eastern Poland. Before World War II they were multi-ethnic cities with big and important communities of Poles, Jews, Germans, Ukrainians and Belarusians. Their contemporary ethnic structure was formed as a result of World War II, in particular the Holocaust, post-war border shifts and intense migration from the countryside to the city in the next decades. Both Białystok and Lublin are an example of the typical cities in Central and Eastern Europe, which after World War II the memory politics was built on in the completely new political and social circumstances. We aim to confront the contemporary official memory of the cities, transmitted by major public institutions and the vernacular memories of their present inhabitants. Straipsnyje pristatomi Balstogės ir Liublino – dviejų didžiausių Rytų Lenkijos miestų kolektyvinės atminties empirinio tyrimo rezultatai. Prieš Antrąjį pasaulinį karą tai buvo daugiaetniniai miestai, turintys dideles ir svarbias lenkų, žydų, vokiečių, ukrainiečių ir baltarusių bendruomenes. Šių miestų šiuolaikinė struktūra susiformavo kaip Antrojo pasaulinio karo, ypač holokausto, sienų persislinkimų pokario metu ir vėlesniais dešimtmečiais vykusios intensyvios migracijos iš kaimo į miestus, rezultatas. Tiek Balstogė, tiek Liublinas yra tipiški Vidurio ir Rytų Europos miestų pavyzdžiai, kurių atminties politika po Antrojo pasaulinio karo buvo kuriama visiškai naujomis politinėmis ir socialinėmis aplinkybėmis. Straipsnyje siekiama palyginti šiuolaikinę oficialią šių miestų atmintį, kurios reguliavimas perduotas pagrindinėms viešosioms institucijoms, ir dabartinių miestų gyventojų vietines atmintis.


Slavic Review ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 566-590
Author(s):  
Patryk Babiracki

Engaging with regional, international, and spatial histories, this article proposes a new reading of the twentieth-century Polish past by exploring the vicissitudes of a building known as the Upper Silesia Tower. Renowned German architect Hans Poelzig designed the Tower for the 1911 Ostdeutsche Ausstellung in Posen, an ethnically Polish city under Prussian rule. After Poland regained its independence following World War I, the pavilion, standing centrally on the grounds of Poznań’s International Trade Fair, became the fair's symbol, and over time, also evolved into visual shorthand for the city itself. I argue that the Tower's significance extends beyond Posen/Poznań, however. As an embodiment of the conflicts and contradictions of Polish-German historical entanglements, the building, in its changing forms, also concretized various efforts to redefine the dominant Polish national identity away from Romantic ideals toward values such as order, industriousness, and hard work. I also suggest that eventually, as a material structure harnessed into the service of socialism, the Tower, with its complicated past, also brings into relief questions about the regional dimensions of the clashes over the meaning of modernity during the Cold War.


2008 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 411-413 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Eskola ◽  
V. Peuraniemi

AbstractLake sediments were studied from four lakes in environmentally different areas in northern Finland. Lakes Pyykösjärvi and Kuivasjärvi are situated near roads with heavy traffic and the city of Oulu. Lakes Martinlampi and Umpilampi are small lakes in a forest area with no immediate human impact nearby. The concentration of Pb increases in the upper parts of the sedimentary columns of Lake Kuivasjärvi and Lake Pyykösjärvi. This is interpreted as being an anthropogenic effect related to heavy traffic in the area and use of Lake Pyykösjärvi as an airport during World War II. High Ni and Zn concentrations in the Lake Umpilampi sediments are caused by weathered black schists. Sediments in Lake Martinlampi show high Pb and Zn contents with increasing Pb concentrations up through the sedimentary column. The sources of these elements are probably Pb-Zn mineralization in the bedrock, Pb-Zn-rich boulders and anomalous Pb and Zn contents in till in the catchment area of the lake.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1-1
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Bień

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> A cartographic map of Gdańsk in the years of 1918&amp;ndash;1939 was very different from the other maps of Polish cities. The reasons for some differences were, among others, the proximity of the sea, the multicultural mindset of the inhabitants of Gdańsk from that period, and some historical events in the interwar period (the founding of the Free City of Gdańsk and the events preceding World War II). Its uniqueness came from the fact that the city of Gdańsk combined the styles of Prussian and Polish housing, as well as form the fact that its inhabitants felt the need for autonomy from the Second Polish Republic. The city aspired to be politically, socially and economically independent.</p><p>The aim of my presentation is to analyze the cartographic maps of Gdańsk, including the changes that had been made in the years of 1918&amp;ndash;1939. I will also comment on the reasons of those changes, on their socio-historical effects on the city, the whole country and Europe.</p>


Author(s):  
Sarah Catalano
Keyword(s):  

Esta contribuição mostra que o período italiano de Lina Bo Bardi é um tema ainda suscetível de aprofundamento e que a pesquisa de arquivo e bibliográfica, a ser realizada principalmente na Itália, mas também no Instituto Lina Bo e P.M. Bardi, pode restituir materiais inéditos. Seguindo essa linha de pesquisa, a análise cuidadosa da revista Lo Stile restituiu dois projetos realizados pelo ateliê Bo-Pagani que remontam a 1942 e caídos no esquecimento, exemplos de “arquitetura efêmera” por eventos políticos na cidade de Milão.


2019 ◽  
Vol 168 ◽  
pp. 553-564
Author(s):  
Sabina Giergiel

Body, corpse and death in David Albahari’s Gotz and MeyerThe article investigates the broadly understood record of Jewish death that emerges from the text of the Serbian prose writer David Albahari. Emphasizing the dominance of economy in the Nazi system, the author indicates those procedures described in Albahari’s book which justify such an assessment e.g. human reification, the body as debris, technical syntax used by German officials. Additionally, these considerations on death representation are supplemented with an endeavor to establish the Belgrade dwellers’ attitude towards the fortunes of the Jews. According to the author, the novel explicitly marks the spatial opposition enclosure vs. opening, the camp vs. the city center that is reinforced by the river, which during World War II divided the capital into Zemun belonging to the Independent State of Croatia, also the place where the camp was situated and Belgrade’s Serbian center. This demarcation intensifies the victims’ feelings of separation and loneliness, at the same time enabling the capital’s dwellers to occupy a comfortable position of bystanders.  Telo, mrtvac, smrt u romanu Gec i Majer Davida AlbaharijaRad se bavi vidovima smrti u romanu Gec i Majer Davida Albaharija. Pokazuje mehanizme koje potvrđuju opštepoznatu činjenicu da je u nacističkom sistemu dominirala ekonomija. U te mehanizme se ubrajaju, između ostalih: reifikacija čoveka, tretiranje tela kao otpada i tehnička leksika koju upotrebljavaju nemački funkcioneri. Analiza uključuje i pokušaj odgovora na pitanje kakav je bio odnos stanovnika Beograda prema sudbini Jevreja. Istraživanje pokazuje prostornu opoziciju zatvoren i otvoren prostor, logor i centar grada. Nju naglašava reka koja je za vreme Drugog svetskog rata delila srpsku prestonicu na Zemun, gde je bio smešten logor, a koji je pripadao NDH, i srpski centar Beograda. Ova granica je vezana za osećaj separacije i usamljenost žrtava, s jedne starne, i udobnost i bajstander-efekat stanovnika prestonice, s druge strane


Slovo ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol The autobiographical... (Beyond the steppes of Central...) ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabelle Ohayon

International audience Two men, deported in Kazakhstan during the World War II, recount their respective experiences. Despite the great difficulties they encountered – detentionin gulag, house arrest, administrative stigmatization, precarious material conditions of life- they report the story of their successful integration in the city of Karaganda. These two itineraries are providing a grassroots understanding of the articulation between diverse ethnic groups and banned people, which make up a specific soviet society in this mining town of Central Asia. Deux hommes, déportés au Kazakhstan durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, rapportent leur expérience respective. En dépit des grandes difficultés qu’ils rencontrent – détention au Goulag, assignation à résidence, stigmatisation administrative, conditions matérielles précaires – ils racontent l’histoire de leur intégration réussie dans la ville de Karaganda. Ces deux itinéraires donnent à voir comment s’agence, dans une ville minière d’Asie centrale, une société soviétique particulière, composée de proscrits et de groupes ethniques différents. Двое мужчин, депортированные в Казахстан во время второй мировой войны, рассказывают о своем жизненном опыте. Несмотря на тяжелые моменты, которые они пережили - заключение в лагере, административная ссылка, политическая стигматизация, небезопасные условия жизни- они оба поведают о том, как они успешно устроились в городе Караганда, найдя свое место в обществе. Эти две траектории свидетельствуют о том, как в таком шахтовом городе как Караганда, сформировался некий советский социум, составленный из разнообразных изгнанников сталинского времени и приезжавших этнических групп.


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