2. The Yiddish self

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.

Author(s):  
Antony Polonsky

For many centuries Poland and Russia formed the heartland of the Jewish world: right up to the Second World War, the area was home to over 40 per cent of the world's Jews. Yet the history of their Jewish communities is not well known. This book recreates this lost world, beginning with Jewish economic, cultural and religious life, including the emergence of hasidism. By the late eighteenth century, other factors had come into play: with the onset of modernization there were government attempts to integrate and transform the Jews, and the stirrings of Enlightenment led to the growth of the Haskalah movement. The book looks at developments in each area in turn: the problems of emancipation, acculturation, and assimilation in Prussian and Austrian Poland; the politics of integration in the Kingdom of Poland; and the failure of forced integration in the tsarist empire. It shows how the deterioration in the position of the Jews between 1881 and 1914 encouraged a range of new movements as well as the emergence of modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature. It also examines Jewish urbanization and the rise of Jewish mass culture. The final part, starting from the First World War and the establishment of the Soviet Union, looks in turn at Poland, Lithuania, and the Soviet Union up to the Second World War. It reviews Polish–Jewish relations during the war and examines the Soviet record in relation to the Holocaust. The final chapters deal with the Jews in the Soviet Union and in Poland since 1945, concluding with an epilogue on the Jews in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia since the collapse of communism.


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.


Author(s):  
Kal Raustiala

The single most important feature of American history after 1945 was the United States’s assumption of hegemonic leadership. Europeans had noted America’s enormous potential since at least the nineteenth century. After the Civil War the United States had one of the largest economies in the world, but, as noted earlier in this book, in geopolitical terms it remained a surprisingly minor player. By 1900 the United States was playing a more significant political role. But it was only after 1945 that the nation’s potential on the world stage was fully realized. Victory in the Second World War left the United States in an enviable position. Unlike the Soviet Union, which endured devastating fighting on its territory and lost tens of millions of citizens, the United States had experienced only one major attack on its soil. Thanks to its actions in the war America had great influence in Europe. And the national economy emerged surprisingly vibrant from the years of conflagration, easily dominant over any conceivable rival or set of rivals. When the First World War ended the United States ultimately chose to return to its hemispheric perch. It declined to join the new League of Nations, and rather than maintaining engagement with the great powers of the day, America generally turned inward. The years following the Second World War were quite different. In addition to championing—and hosting—the new United Nations, the United States quickly established a panoply of important institutions aimed at maintaining and organizing international cooperation in both economic and security affairs. Rising tensions with the Soviet Union, apparent to many shortly after the war’s end, led the United States to remain militarily active in both Europe and Asia. The intensifying Cold War cemented this unprecedented approach to world politics. The prolonged occupations of Germany and Japan were straightforward examples of this newly active global role. In both cases the United States refashioned a conquered enemy into a democratic, free-market ally—a significant feat. The United States did not, however, seek a formal empire in the wake of its victory.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jessica Caldwell

<p>This thesis chronicles and examines the major New Zealand specific Holocaust-related issues of the last three decades, in the time period 1980 to 2010. The Holocaust has had a long reaching legacy worldwide since the end of the Second World War. There have been major news items and issues that have brought the Holocaust to the forefront of people's consciousness throughout the decades, the most prominent example being the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961. It was major news such as that trial, as well as Hollywood productions such as the TV miniseries Holocaust in the late 1970s, that brought about widespread consciousness of the Holocaust worldwide, in countries such as the United States and Australia. In New Zealand, but major Holocaust-related issues connected specifically to New Zealand did not begin to emerge until the 1980s. This thesis investigates, in three chapters, differing issues over the aforementioned time period that have had an impact on consciousness of the Holocaust in New Zealand. The issues investigated are respectively: the war criminals investigation of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the colonial 'holocaust' argument of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Holocaust denial controversies in New Zealand academia, and the growth and evolution of Holocaust commemoration and education. Although some issues, such as commemoration and education, began earlier, it was not until the 1980s that these issues developed in earnest and a greater number of people began to take notice of the connection of these issues, and in turn New Zealand, to the Holocaust. The main arguments made in this thesis are that New Zealand's consciousness of the Holocaust developed when it did and at the rate it did because of particular aspects of the Jewish community and New Zealand society as a whole, including the geographical isolation of the country, the size and assimilation of the Jewish and survivor communities here, and the overall attitudes and on occasion apathy and ignorance towards the Holocaust. All of these aspects have influenced, to varying degrees, consciousness of the Holocaust within New Zealand throughout the time period of 1980 to 2010.</p>


2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-109
Author(s):  
Ramojus Kraujelis

The fate of Lithuania and Romania as well as future of the whole Central and Eastern European region was determined in the years of the Second World War. The common origin of their tragic and painful history was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – the secret deal between Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, which divided Central and Eastern Europe between two totalitarian regimes. In June 1940 the three Baltic States and a part of Romania were directly occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union. The main objective of this paper is to identify, analyze and compare the attitudes of the United States and Great Britain with respect to the annexation of the Baltic States and the Romania territory and discussed the post-war future reserved to them. During the early years of the Second Word War (1940-1942) few interesting international discussions about possible post-war arrangement plans existed. The analysis of the Western attitude would enable us to give answers to certain questions: What could have been done by the Western states for the benefit of Central and Eastern European region; what have they, in fact, done and what did they avoid doing? The year 1943 witnessed the consolidation of the Western attitude with regard to Soviet Union’s western borders, which resulted in the fundamental fact that Moscow did not intend to retract its interests in the Baltic States, Eastern Poland, North Bucovina and Bessarabia while the West did not intend to fight for these territories. Considering the fact that at the Teheran conference (1943) the Western states agreed upon turning the Baltic states into a Soviet interest sphere, the United States and Britain entered the Yalta conference (1945) with no illusions as to the fate of Central and Eastern Europe in general.


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.


Author(s):  
Michael Hicks ◽  
Christian Asplund

This chapter describes Wolff's childhood and formative years in the world of music. Born to cellist Kurt Wolff and his wife Helen in 1934, Christian Wolff grew up during an era of political unrest, which later culminated in the Second World War. Though born in France to German parents, Wolff would spend a significant part of his life in the United States, where he had begun an informal education in music, and where he would eventually study under his mentor John Cage, from whom Wolff would draw the fundamental ideas, habits, and relationships that would guide the rest of his compositional career. Here, the chapter shows how Wolff's early opus—which set the pattern for all his subsequent compositional periods—were formed and influenced through Cage's instruction. Yet the chapter shows that this influence proved reciprocal, with Wolff likewise leaving his own lasting impacts upon Cage's compositional career.


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.


2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-30
Author(s):  
Eugeniusz Sobczyński ◽  
Jerzy Pietruszka

Abstract The history of the development of military aeronautical charts began immediately before the First World War. The first charts created at that time did not differ much from topographic maps. Air planes were fairly slow back then and had a small range of action, which meant that the charts were developed at the scale of 1:200,000. When speed of aircraft increased, it soon turned out that this scale was too large. Therefore, many countries began to create charts with smaller scales: 1:300,000 and 1:500,000. The International Map of the World 1:1,000,000 (IMW) was frequently used for continental flights prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, while 1:3,500,000 and 1:5,000,000 maps were commonly used for intercontinental flights. The Second World War brought a breakthrough in the field of aeronautical chart development, especially after 7 December 1941, when the USA entered into the war. The Americans created more than 6000 map sheets and published more than 100 million copies, which covered all continents. In their cartographic endeavours, they were aided foremost by the Brits. On the other hand, the Third Reich had more than 1,500 officers and about 15,000 soldiers and civil servants involved in the development of maps and other geographic publications during the Second World War. What is more, the Reich employed local cartographers and made use of local source materials in all the countries it occupied. The Germans introduced one new element to the aeronautical charts – the printed reference grid which made it easier to command its air force. The experience gained during the Second World War and local conflicts was for the United States an impulse to undertake work on the standardization of the development of aeronautical charts. Initially, standardization work concerned only aeronautical charts issued by the US, but after the establishment of NATO, standardization began to be applied to all countries entering the Alliance. The currently binding NATO STANAGs (Standardization Agreements) distinguish between operational charts and special low-flight charts. The charts are developed in the WGS-84 coordinate system, where the WGS-84 ellipsoid of rotation is the reference surface. The cylindrical transverse Mercator projection was used for the scale of 1:250,000, while the conformal conic projection was used for other scales. The first aeronautical charts issued at the beginning of the 20th century contained only a dozen or so special symbols concerning charts’ navigational content, whereas currently the number of symbols and abbreviations found on such charts exceeds one hundred. The updating documents are published every 28 days in order to ensure that aeronautical charts remain up-to-date between releases of their subsequent editions. It concerns foremost aerial obstacles and air traffic zones. The aeronautical charts published by NATO have scales between 1:50,000 and 1:500,000 and the printed Military Grid Reference System (MGRS), while the aeronautical charts at scales between 1:250,000 and 1:2,000,000 contain the World Geographic Reference System (GEOREF). Nowadays, modern military air planes are characterised by their exceptional combat capabilities in terms of speed, range and manoeuvrability. Aside from aircraft, contemporary armed forces make increasingly frequent use of aerial robots, drones and unmanned cruise missiles. This is why, there has been a noticeable increase, especially in NATO, in the amount of work devoted to the standardization and development of aeronautical charts, as well as deepening of knowledge of navigation and aeronautical information.


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