The Price of Heroism: Veterans of the Dutch Resistance to the Nazi Occupation and the Holocaust in World War II

The article is devoted to the study of the formation of culture and policy Memory of the Holocaust victims in modern Ukraine. On the example of the international scholar and educational project „Protecting Memory”, which has been going on in Ukraine for more than ten years, the author analyzes the current state, trends, challenges and prospects of creating places of Memory and culture honoring the memory of World War II victims. war, including Ukrainian Jews and Ukrainian Roma. The article also provides a thorough analysis of the fundamental differences in the policy of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust during the communist regime in Ukrainian lands and in modern democratic Ukraine. In the period from 1945 to 1991, the Communist authorities of the Ukraine banned a special memory of Jewish people, which were the victims of the Holocaust, all victims of National Socialism (official title of the Nazi part − NSDAP in German) during World War II were marked by the euphemism of the Soviet regime as „peaceful Soviet citizens”. The anti-Semitic policy was particularly harsh between 1948 and 1953, when Ukrainian Jews affected by the Nazi occupation came under the brunt of Soviet postwar repression. Thus, the feature of the tragic fate of Jewish communities during the domination of the Nazi anti-Semitic ideology and practice was completely leveled. The USSR denied the identities of civilian victims of the Nazi occupation, especially Jewish people and Roma. Only in the days of sovereign and independent Ukraine, the identity and memory of the victims of the Holocaust and the Roma Genocide in Ukraine were revived. One of the most powerful examples of restoring the historical memory of these civilian victims of the Nazi regime in Ukraine was the „Protecting Memory” project. Thanks to this project, during 2010−2020 in five regions of Ukraine − Lviv, Rivne, Volyn, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr regions, 20 Memorials to Ukrainian Jewish people and Roma who were killed by Nazi punitive forces and their helpers during the German occupation of Ukraine in 1941−1944 were established. Key words: Holocaust, Antisemitism, Nazism, Stalin repressions Memory politics, World War II, Ukrainian Jews, Ukrainian Roma.

Download Full-text

Painted Memories

Gastronomica The Journal of Food and Culture ◽

10.1525/gfc.2007.7.4.26 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 7 (4) ◽

pp. 26-29

Author(s):

mayer kirshenblatt ◽

barbara kirshenblatt-gimblett

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

World War ◽

Daily Diet ◽

The Holocaust ◽

Yom Kippur ◽

Root Vegetables

Mayer Kirshenblatt remembers in words and paintings the daily diet of Jews in Poland before the Holocaust. Born in 1916 in Opatóów (Apt in Yiddish), a small Polish city, this self-taught artist describes and paints how women bought chickens from the peasants and brought them to the shoykhet (ritual slaughterer), where they plucked the feathers; the custom of shlogn kapores (transferring one's sins to a chicken) before Yom Kippur; and the role of herring and root vegetables in the diet, especially during the winter. Mayer describes how his family planted and harvested potatoes on leased land, stored them in a root cellar, and the variety of dishes prepared from this important staple, as well as how to make a kratsborsht or scratch borsht from the milt (semen sack) of a herring. In the course of a forty-year conversation with his daughter, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, who also interviewed Mayer's mother, a picture emerges of the daily, weekly, seasonal, and holiday cuisine of Jews who lived in southeastern Poland before World War II.

Download Full-text

“The heart above the ruins”: Miriam Waddington’s Poetry, the Spanish Civil War, and Jewish Canadian Literature

Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes ◽

10.25071/1916-0925.40065 ◽

1969 ◽

Vol 26 ◽

Author(s):

Emily Robins Sharpe

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

World War Ii ◽

Civil War ◽

Spanish Civil War ◽

World War ◽

Canadian Literature ◽

The Earth ◽

The Holocaust ◽

The Subject ◽

War Consequences

The Jewish Canadian writer Miriam Waddington returned repeatedly to the subject of the Spanish Civil War, searching for hope amid the ruins of Spanish democracy. The conflict, a prelude to World War II, inspired an outpouring of literature and volunteerism. My paper argues for Waddington’s unique poetic perspective, in which she represents the Holocaust as the Spanish Civil War’s outgrowth while highlighting the deeply personal repercussions of the war – consequences for women, for the earth, and for community. Waddington’s poetry connects women’s rights to human rights, Canadian peace to European war, and Jewish persecution to Spanish carnage.

Download Full-text

Exploring political rupture through Jewish children’s diaries: Kindertransport children in France, 1938-1942

Journal of Modern European History ◽

10.1177/16118944211017765 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 161189442110177

Author(s):

Laura Hobson Faure

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Childhood Studies ◽

Political Environment ◽

World War ◽

Daily Lives ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

Nazi Occupation ◽

Jewish Children ◽

European Jewish ◽

Children's Testimony

This article focuses on France as a refuge for unaccompanied Central European Jewish children on the eve of World War II. Contrary to the United Kingdom, which accepted 10,000 Jewish children through Kindertransport, only 350-450 children entered France. This article utilizes children’s diaries and organizational records to question how children perceived and recorded their displacement and resettlement in France, a country that would soon be at war, and then occupied, by Nazi Germany. By questioning how these events filtered into and transformed children’s lives, I argue that the shifting political environment led to profound transformations in these children’s daily lives long before their very existence was threatened by Nazi–Vichy deportation measures. Most children were cared for in collective children’s homes in the Paris region in which left-oriented educators established children’s republics. Yet the outbreak of war triggered a series of events in the homes that led to changes in pedagogical methods and new arrivals (and thus new conflicts). The Nazi occupation of France led to the children’s displacement to the Southern zone, their dispersal into new homes, and the reconfiguration of their networks. This analysis of children’s contemporaneous sources and the conditions under which they were produced places new emphasis on the epistemology of Kindertransport sources and thus contributes to larger theoretical discussions in Holocaust and Childhood studies on children’s testimony.

Download Full-text

Fragments of the Holocaust

10.5117/9789462986886 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

David Duindam

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Critical Analysis ◽

Museum Studies ◽

Historical Study ◽

World War ◽

Holocaust Memory ◽

Holocaust Memorial ◽

Memorial Museum ◽

The Holocaust ◽

A Site

Why do we attach so much value to sites of Holocaust memory, if all we ever encounter are fragments of a past that can never be fully comprehended? David Duindam examines how the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a former theater in Amsterdam used for the registration and deportation of nearly 50,000 Jews, fell into disrepair after World War II before it became the first Holocaust memorial museum of the Netherlands. Fragments of the Holocaust: The Amsterdam Hollandsche Schouwburg as a Site of Memory combines a detailed historical study of the postwar period of this site with a critical analysis of its contemporary presentation by placing it within international debates concerning memory, emotionally fraught heritage and museum studies. A case is made for the continued importance of the Hollandsche Schouwburg and other comparable sites, arguing that these will remain important in the future as indexical fragments where new generations can engage with the memory of the Holocaust on a personal and affective level.

Download Full-text

The Paths of Books of Latvian Jews during World War II

Knygotyra ◽

10.15388/kn.v71i0.12262 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 71 ◽

pp. 210-235

Author(s):

Jana Dreimane

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Second World War ◽

Jewish Literature ◽

World War ◽

Soviet Occupation ◽

Nazi Occupation ◽

Archival Documents ◽

Book Collections ◽

Book Values ◽

Second World

[full article, abstract in English; abstract in Lithuanian] The aim of the research is to find out the influence of the Nazi regime on preservation of historical book collections, which were established in Jewish societies, schools, religious organizations and private houses in Latvia until the first Soviet occupation (1940/1941). At the beginning, libraries of Jewish associations and other institutions were expropriated by the Soviet power, which started the elimination of Jewish books and periodicals published in the independent Republic of Latvia. The massive destruction of Jewish literature collections was carried out by Nazi occupation authorities (1941-1944/45), proclaiming Jews and Judaism as their main “enemies”. However, digitized archives of Nazi organizations (mainly documents of the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce) shows that a small part of the Latvian Jewish book collections was preserved for research purposes and after the Second World War scattered in different countries. Analysis of archival documents will clarify the Nazi strategy for Latvian Jewish book collections. It will be determined which book values survived the war and what their further fate in the second half of the 1940s was.

Download Full-text

Remediation and hypermediacy: Ezekiel’s World as a case in point

Visual Communication ◽

10.1177/1470357218785931 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 19 (2) ◽

pp. 199-229

Author(s):

Ayelet Kohn ◽

Rachel Weissbrod

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Original Work ◽

Second Generation ◽

Holocaust Survivors ◽

World War ◽

Graphic Narrative ◽

The Holocaust ◽

Graphic Narratives ◽

Jewish Resistance ◽

Resistance Movement

This article deals with Kovner’s graphic narrative Ezekiel’s World (2015) as a case of remediation and hypermediacy. The term ‘remediation’ refers to adaptations which involve the transformation of the original work into another medium. While some adaptations strive to eliminate the marks of the previous medium, others highlight the interplay between different media, resulting in ‘hypermediacy’. The latter approach characterizes Ezekiel’s World due to its unique blend of artistic materials adapted from different media. The author, Michael Kovner, uses his paintings to depict the story of Ezekiel – an imaginary figure based on his father, the poet Abba Kovner who was one of the leaders of the Jewish resistance movement during World War II. While employing the conventions of comics and graphic narratives, the author also makes use of readymade objects such as maps and photos, simulates the works of famous artists and quotes Abba Kovner’s poems. These are indirect ways of confronting the traumas of Holocaust survivors and ‘the second generation’. Dealing with the Holocaust in comics and graphic narratives (as in Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, 1986) is no longer an innovation, nor is their use as a means to deal with trauma; what makes this graphic narrative unique is the encounter between the works of the poet and the painter, which combine to create an exceptionally complex work integrating poetry, art and graphic narration.

Download Full-text