"This Is Your Life": Telling a Holocaust Survivor's Life Story on Early American Television

1994 ◽  
Vol 4 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 41-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Shandler
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Personal History ◽  
World War ◽  
Early American ◽  
American Television ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract The appearance of Hanna Bloch Kohner on a 1953 episode of the series This Is Your Life is among the earliest presentations of a Holocaust survivor's personal history on American television. Analysis of the program explores how television—a collaborative, corporate medium—shapes the telling of an individual's life story, and how the program relates the story of the Holocaust in terms of personal history. The article also examines how the program's producers employed television's distinctive characteristics to enable, limit, or otherwise shape the presentation of the Holocaust, and how the episode indicates that its creators understood its subject as being somehow singular, even as the conceptualization of the Holocaust was emerging, before the term Holocaust entered American public discourse. The article also considers how the program reflects the social and political context of post-World War II America in general and postwar American Jewish life in particular. Finally, the article considers how analysis of this program offers insight into other, later presentations of the Holocaust on American television, especially those dealing with the life story of an individual survivor. (Yiddish Studies/Jewish ethnology)

scholarly journals Nathalie Skowronek « a la recherche de Max » : Construction litteraire et autometatextualite dans les ouvrages de la 3e generation de la Shoah

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 187-208
Author(s):  
José Luis Arráez
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Scientific Papers ◽  
Moral Narrative ◽  
Insight Into

The third generation survivors of the World War II genocide of the European Jews withstand, analyse and create literary texts about the Holocaust, a historical event, which was not endured by them directly but experienced through scientific papers and creative literature. Thanks to Nathalie Skowronek, a novelist living in Brussels, and her publication of Max en apparence (2013) and La Shoah de Monsieur Durand (2015), we can gain some insight into the social and literary reality of Jewish genocide memory and into its intergenerational transmission. Firstly, we will carefully analyse the approach used by this author in the composition of a biographical text about her grandfather’s reconstruction of events. After that, using an intertextual approach, we will analyse formal and moral narrative considerations of the authoress which govern the literary reconstruction grandfather’s biography.

Comments

1975 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 55-56
Author(s):  
Karl R. Stadler
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
World War ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Historical Role ◽  
Made In

In recent years there has been a deplorable lack of interest in Austria in the historical role of the Jews in Central Europe. Given the general trends towards internationalization of the social sciences and the interdisciplinary method of analysis, this neglect is most distressing. Presumably this lack of scholarly interest is related to the fact that since World War II the Central European Jews no longer constitute a distinct ethnic and religious group. Apart from studies made in university institutes for Jewish studies and in occasional publications which have mainly treated various aspects of “the holocaust,” most studies have approached Jewish history only collaterally by focusing on anti-Semitism.

THE DEPICTION OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR ON AMERICAN TELEVISION DURING THE SECOND RED SCARE

2021 ◽  
pp. 22-36
Author(s):  
Michael A. LoSasso ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Red Scare ◽  
World War ◽  
Early American ◽  
American Television ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
War Propaganda

This article analyzes the portrayal of the Eastern Front of World War II on early American television, specifically the documentary anthology series The Twentieth Century . It explores how most early portrayals of World War II on television excised or minimized the Eastern Front in response to the Second Red Scare. Although The Twentieth Century was one of the first to display the Eastern Front in detail, its portrayal paralleled Cold War propaganda of the Soviet Union and its people. This work analyzes three episodes of the series devoted to the Soviet Union’s role in the war and notes how each utilized certain traits of U.S. anti-communist propaganda. Other matters considered are the mediators in the crafting the display of the war and the way the history was presented to satisfy the interests of the sponsor and the network. It concludes that the presentation of the Soviet people responded to Cold War imperatives with episodes produced in times when tensions were high having sharper criticism, whilst periods of eased relations leading to less propagandistic depictions.

The Partisan Movement in Postwar Lithuania

Slavic Review ◽  
1963 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 499-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Stanley Vardys
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
Practical Importance ◽  
Guerrilla Warfare ◽  
Soviet Rule ◽  
World War ◽  
East European ◽  
The Social ◽  
The One ◽  
Insight Into

The story of armed resistance to Soviet rule in postwar Lithuania is of interest both to historians and to political scientists. On the one hand, it unveils an important period of modern Lithuanian history and offers a glimpse into the dilemma of East European nationalism, caught between Nazis and Communists in World War II. On the other, it allows an insight into the nature of a movement that seeks to produce political changes by the use of violence. In an age when political practitioners use guerrilla warfare and paramilitary tactics as basic means of struggle for power, justification of a study of partisan movements seems hardly necessary. By showing academic interest, the social scientist merely recognizes their growing practical importance.The Lithuanian partisan resistance to the Soviet regime now can be analyzed with the help of varied source material, including firsthand testimony of both nationalist and Communist origin.

The Holocaust and Genocide

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristen Renwick Monroe
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
Human Psychology ◽  
Data Section ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Human Psyche ◽  
Political Behaviors ◽  
Insight Into

This chapter reviews the literature on genocide to define it, asks what scholars already know about it, and provides a context within which the stories that constitute the heart of the data section of this volume can be analyzed. While the Holocaust and World War II is often considered as so horrific that they become unique, the chapter argues that is not the case. Moreover, it remains conscious of the extent to which understanding the human psychology surrounding the Holocaust can lend insight into a far wider range of related, important, and ongoing political behaviors that emanate in forces deep-seated within the human psyche: prejudice; discrimination; ethnic, sectarian, religious hatred and violence.

Aversion and Erasure

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn J. Dean
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Democratic Societies ◽  
Scholarly Attention

This book offers a bold account of how the Holocaust's status as humanity's most terrible example of evil has shaped contemporary discourses about victims in the West. Popular and scholarly attention to the Holocaust has led some observers to conclude that a “surfeit of Jewish memory” is obscuring the suffering of other peoples. The text explores the pervasive idea that suffering and trauma in the United States and Western Europe have become central to identity, with victims competing for recognition by displaying their collective wounds. It argues that this notion has never been examined systematically even though it now possesses the force of self-evidence. It developed in nascent form after World War II, when the near-annihilation of European Jewry began to transform patriotic mourning into a slogan of “Never Again”: as the Holocaust demonstrated, all people might become victims because of their ethnicity, race, gender, or sexuality—because of who they are. The recent concept that suffering is central to identity and that Jewish suffering under Nazism is iconic of modern evil has dominated public discourse since the 1980s. The book also argues that we believe that the rational contestation of grievances in democratic societies is being replaced by the proclamation of injury and the desire to be a victim. Such dramatic and yet culturally powerful assertions, however, cast suspicion on victims and define their credibility in new ways that require analysis.

scholarly journals Rethinking the Traumatic Memory of the Holocaust in Literature (Based on Monika Schneiderman’s Work “Fałszerze pieprzu. Historia rodzinna”)

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (45) ◽  
pp. 170-180
Author(s):  
Uliana Yevchuk
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Human Values ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of

The article analyzes the attempt to reconstruct the historical memory of the Holocaust in the novel by Polish writer Monika Schneiderman “Fałszerze pieprzu. Historia rodzinna”. The writer questions the issue of Polish-Jewish relations, the responsibility and guilt of Holocaust witnesses to its victims. The author, who has a complex identity, seeks to find out for herself why her Polish family did not show enough sympathy for the suffering of Jews during World War II, including her Jewish relatives. As such indifference on the part of Poles to Holocaust victims was quite common, Monica Schneiderman tries to explain this by examining the relations between societies who lived side by side for centuries in the pre-war period, concluding that the two neighbouring nations lived in separate communities that were not open to each other. Based on the reproduction of the history of her own family, the author seeks answers to difficult questions of universal human values – perception and understanding of others, empathy, compassion. In her works Monica Schneiderman shows the need to include these recently “closed” but extremely important topics in the public discourse.

scholarly journals Mendöl Tibor (1905–1966), a Budapesti Tudományegyetem emberföldrajzi tanszékének alapító professzora

2021 ◽  
Vol 144 (4) ◽  
pp. 411-427
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Life Story ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
World War ◽  
Policy Context ◽  
University Curriculum ◽  
History Of ◽  
Heritage Industry ◽  
The University ◽  
Insight Into

This article examines the career of Hungarian geographer, Tibor Mendöl, who was appointed the first Chair of Human Geography at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest in 1940. Mendöl’s career had a bright start but was shattered following World War II. His story is not unique in Hungary, and in fact was common to other countries in the former Soviet sphere where a generation of geographers shared his fate. The history of Mendöl’s career and the reception of his work reaches beyond the significance of a personal life story. It offers insight into twentieth-century Hungarian geography and into Hungarian scholarly life in general. Mendöl’s career was emblematic of a period when geography–which had been institutionally strong, vital in public thought in Hungary, and important in a policy context–became marginalised within academia, and came very close to disciplinary annihilation. Mendöl was allowed to retain his chair up to his date of retirement, but his disciples had to leave the university. His efforts to publish his work were in turn hindered, and his scientific theories received strong criticism. Students of geography in Budapest probably did not even hear his name uttered, even a few years after his death. Mendöl’s works were even removed from the university curriculum. The output of the more recent Mendöl ‘heritage industry,’ however, proves that the legacy of his work has not yet been exhausted, and that his story remains relevant. Though the protagonist of this story has been dead for more than fifty years, his spirit (or perhaps his phantom) returns occasionally. Varying attitudes towards his life and work–from rejection, through concealment, to carefully expressed and later more bravely- worded tributes–have always been only partially about professional and subject-based issues. Interpretations of his life and work have also always been matters of historiography and politics.

scholarly journals Kojenie obrazem, leczenie snem. Konstruowanie pamięci o Zagładzie w polskich filmach fabularnych po 1989 roku

2018 ◽  
pp. 97-114
Author(s):  
Piotr Forecki
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
World War ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Sensitive Issue ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Polish Version ◽  
Good Feeling

In the period between the end of World War II and the late 1980s the Polish film industry produced nearly twenty films on the Holocaust which approached the topic within secure lim- its. Those films that were permitted to be shown did not disturb the good feeling of the na- tional community, did not refer to the Polish version of anti-Semitism, and first and foremost avoided the sensitive issue of Polish society’s attitude to the annihilation of the Jews. Each film complied with the then current historical policy, which either treated this issue instru- mentally or simply ignored it. After 1989, both historiography and cinematography began to fill in the blank spots and address topics that were formerly forbidden, taboo or distorted in the official state discourse. Due to the abolishment of political restrictions and the liberation of public discourse, Polish cinematography embarked upon a belated examination of conscience and revision of the memories of the Holocaust cultivated till then. At least it seemed so. Has it actually happened, though? Have Polish filmmakers actually taken the trouble to deconstruct the myths, fill in the gaps and correct the deformed Polish memories of the Holocaust? Even if the answers to these superficial questions are affirmative, at least in terms of their intentions, what has become of it? This paper is an attempt to identify how the memory of the Holocaust has been constructed in Polish feature movies since 1989.

scholarly journals Surviving to Tell the Tale: 'No One is Here Except All of Us'

Linguaculture ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-50
Author(s):  
Cristina Chevereșan
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Trauma Narratives ◽  
Creation Myths ◽  
Generation Immigrant ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Unique Approach ◽  
Awareness Raising ◽  
Insight Into

The article focuses on Romanian-American Ramona Ausubel’s 2012 No One Is Here Except All of Us. Written in English by a second-generation immigrant to the United States, the World War II story unfolds dramatically as a fable that relies upon community, memory and imagination. It revolves around the protagonists’ shared belief that by erasing and reinventing their past, by starting their lives anew via reshuffled creation myths, their small assembly of forgotten individuals might survive in an enclave of its own, fantastic. This makes Ausubel’s unique approach to the Holocaust and its pogroms part of a compelling series of trauma narratives, as a biographically-informed fictional account of factual circumstances. By emphasizing the crucial, cathartic dimension of storytelling and employing it textually and meta-textually, the book blurs the boundaries between genres. The author’s mediated insight into community stereotyping, persecution, solidarity and, ultimately, migration, and its skillful integration into a postmodern (counter) fairytale, will be scrutinized as valuable and effective contemporary awareness-raising tools.

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