An Urban Semiotics of War

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saskia Coenen Snyder
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Military Force ◽  
World War ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
Nazi Occupation ◽  
Urban Topography ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Physical Dominance

This chapter examines the changing urban topography of Amsterdam under Nazi occupation during World War II, focusing on how the Dutch city’s once recognizable sights and sounds, familiar movements, and rhythms were disrupted by the so-called semiotics of war: signs and symbols of an external military force. It shows how the Nazis altered Amsterdam’s urban texture in which local residents lived, worked, and moved, and how the Nazification of the city’s grammar and semiotic communication reconfigured well-established social practices and reappropriated Dutch space. It argues that the construction of a visual and aural semiotics of war helped define relations between occupier and occupied, between Nazi sympathizers and antagonists, and also between Jews and non-Jews. While Nazi territorial expansion depended on military might and physical dominance, the chapter also explains how ideological coercion found expression in the colonization of the urban landscape and soundscape.

Neighbors

Studying Ida ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 61-70
Author(s):  
Sheila Skaff
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Small Town ◽  
World War ◽  
Striking Resemblance ◽  
Nazi Occupation ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Anti Jewish

This chapter dissects the history surrounding the controversy over Paweł Pawlikowski's Ida in the Polish and international press. It mentions the small town where Wanda and Ida search for the remains of their relatives that bears a striking resemblance to a town in Poland named Jedwabne, which is best known for a pogrom that took place during the Nazi occupation of World War II. It also talks about the controversial book, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabe, Poland, written by Jan Tomasz Gross and published in May 2000, which describes in detail how local residents began an anti-Jewish pogrom in Jedwabne. The chapter points out the massacre recounted in Neighbors that had been either attributed to the Nazi occupiers or shrouded in secrecy. It covers Gross's work that details how the Polish inhabitants of Jedwabne may have voluntarily massacred their Jewish neighbours.

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

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.

scholarly journals The Paths of Books of Latvian Jews during World War II

Knygotyra ◽  
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.

Soviet Selves

2019 ◽  
pp. 60-81
Author(s):  
Justine Buck Quijada
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
World War ◽  
Symbolic Form ◽  
Soviet History ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Religious Actors

Chapter 2 presents the Soviet chronotope embodied in Victory Day celebrations. Victory Day, which is the celebration of the Soviet victory over Germany in World War II, presumes the familiar Soviet genre of history, in which the Soviet Union brought civilization to Buryatia, and Buryats achieved full citizenship in the Soviet utopian dream through their collective sacrifice during the war. The ritual does not narrate Soviet history. Instead, through Soviet and wartime imagery, and the parade form, the public holiday evokes this genre in symbolic form, enabling local residents to read their own narratives of the past into the imagery. This space for interpretation enables both validation as well as critique of the Soviet experience in Buryatia. Although not everyone in Buryatia agrees on how to evaluate this history, this genre is the taken-for-granted backdrop against which other religious actors define their narratives.

Part II Commentaries to Typical Sofa Rules, 18 Travel and Transport

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Black-Branch Jonathan L
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Free Movement ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
World War ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
Host State ◽  
Contentious Issue ◽  
Local Residents

This chapter looks at the duties and rights concerning freedom of movement. The successful implementation of any UN or NATO mission is largely dependent on the ability to travel and make use of transport or what may be referred to as mobility rights and free movement. The ability to travel as freely and easily as possible invariably assists in accomplishing the mandate. As basic as this may sound, the movement of Visiting Forces within a Host State has raised a number of problems and remains a contentious issue. This is due in part because of the potential causing damage to the environment as well as Visiting Forces becoming involved in conflicts with local residents. Indeed, the circumstances that Visiting Forces face today have changed drastically since World War II.

scholarly journals The Melted Statue of Charcot: The Nazi Occupation of Paris During World War II

2019 ◽  
Vol 81 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 182-187
Author(s):  
Hélio A.G. Teive ◽  
Fernando Tensini ◽  
Francisco M.B. Germiniani ◽  
Carlos Henrique F. Camargo ◽  
Olivier Walusinski
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
Nazi Occupation

The authors describe the construction of a statue in honor of Professor Charcot, the father of modern neurology, in Paris in 1898, 5 years after his death. The Nazi invaders destroyed the statue, which was erected near the entrance to the Salpêtrière hospital with the support of his disciples and the international neurological community, in 1942 during World War II. An international campaign is now needed to rebuild the statue of this great neurologist.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret A. Simons
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
Nazi Occupation ◽  
French Resistance

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Simone de Beauvoir's post-World War II political engagement. The key to Beauvoir's post-World War II political engagement is, of course, her experience of the war itself—an experience recounted in her Wartime Diary (2009) and in The Blood of Others (1945), a novel set in the French Resistance and written during the Nazi Occupation. Although Beauvoir escaped the worst horrors of the war—on the front lines or in the concentration camps—she lost friends murdered by the Nazis and found her own life profoundly changed. Indeed, the Occupation that began in June 1940 confronted her with the realization that freedom, which she had assumed to be a metaphysical given, was contingent upon an economic and political situation that she had previously ignored.

scholarly journals Prison Escapes in Western Siberia (1930–1945)

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 362-369
Author(s):  
E. V. Suverov
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Western Siberia ◽  
Prison Population ◽  
Production Schedule ◽  
World War ◽  
Job Descriptions ◽  
Siberian Region ◽  
Opposite Pattern ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Labor System

The author analyzed the causes and consequences of prison escapes in Western Siberia in 1930–1945, which were a serious problem for the entire Soviet correctional labor system. The reasons behind frequent prison escapes can be summarized as follows: substandard living conditions, a complex production schedule, violent inmates, severe punitive measures for minor crimes, and relatively lenient punishment for escapes. The situation was aggravated by the negligent attitude to the service among wardens, their non-compliance with official discipline and job descriptions, as well as by ineffective use of the agent network. The escapes grew even more frequent in the late 1930s because the number of convicts increased during the Great Terror. The opposite pattern prevailed during World War II due to the general reduction of prison population during the occupation of the European Russia and the fact that some categories of convicts were allowed to enlist in the army. The fugitives posed a real threat to local residents. Once they were free, they committed murders, robberies, and rapes, which significantly worsened the difficult criminal situation in the West Siberian region. The NKVD employees of the Joint State Political Directorate of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR prevented escapes and detained the prisoners. The research objective was to establish the causes, consequences, and various forms of prison escapes in Western Siberia in 1930–1945.

Cancer Mortality near OAK Ridge, Tennessee

1994 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 521-533 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph J. Mangano
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Cancer Mortality ◽  
Local Area ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Nuclear Facilities ◽  
Oak Ridge ◽  
Local Residents ◽  
Low Levels

Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is the site of one of the two oldest nuclear facilities in the United States. Although precise records have not been maintained, low levels of radioactive products have been released into the environment since the facility began operation in World War II. Changes in age-adjusted cancer mortality rates for whites between the periods 1950–1952 and 1987–1989 were analyzed to assess whether these radioactive releases have had any adverse effects on the population living near Oak Ridge. Results indicate that the increases in the local area (under 100 miles from Oak Ridge) exceeded regional increases and far exceeded national increases. Within the region, increases were greatest in rural areas, in Anderson County (where Oak Ridge is located), in mountainous counties, and in the region downwind of Oak Ridge. Each of these findings suggest that low levels of radiation, ingested gradually by local residents, were a factor in the increases in local cancer death rates. Results indicate that more studies of this type are called for and that cessation of all future radioactive emissions from nuclear facilities should be considered.

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