After Action: Oral History and War

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Hutching
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Collective Narratives ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Collective Experience ◽  
Narrow Concept ◽  
War Experience ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Oral History Interviews ◽  
Second World

This article focuses on the importance of oral history in recording wars. The article draws on personal experiences of interviewing veterans of the Second World War. Oral history interviews illuminate the often-ignored experiences of ordinary people caught up in war and the range of reactions that different aspects of war evoked from them, while reminding us that combat—”the quintessential war experience”—is not the sole defining experience of war. Interviews that concentrate on combat experiences reflect a very narrow concept of war. Most of the time in uniform is actually spent out of action. Most servicemen and women are not in front-line units. This article also reminds us that one of the joys of oral history is that you always get so much more than you ask for. This article emphasizes that commemorating war is often a collective experience. By contextualizing the individual experience in the narrative of war, oral history adds texture to those collective narratives.

The Schedule of Reserved Occupations, Oral History and Other Methodologies

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Chand
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
World War ◽  
Oral Testimony ◽  
Materials Used ◽  
Oral History Interviews ◽  
Second World ◽  
Source Materials

This chapter begins by discussing important theories of masculinity underlying the arguments in the book, before defining the policy of reservation in Second World War Britain and its implications. The geographical boundaries of the study are also defined here, with the areas understood as being incorporated into ‘Glasgow’ and ‘Clydeside’ discussed. The chapter also defines the notions of ‘lived’ and ‘imagined’ subjectivities, which centrally underpin the arguments made in the book, before considering the methodologies used in conducting the research involved, primarily oral history. The chapter moves on to look at uses of oral testimonies in previous historical research before examining the different kinds of oral testimony used for this study, including those held in existing oral history archives and newly conducted oral history interviews. Finally, the chapter examines other primary source materials used in this research, including cultural materials such as newspapers, novels and films.

In Search of Victor: Transnationalism, Emotion, and War

Total War ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 157-176
Author(s):  
Joy Damousi
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Northern Greece ◽  
Oral Storytelling ◽  
History Of ◽  
War Experience ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World ◽  
Over Time

In October 1949, in the closing month of the Greek Civil War, a young soldier named Pandelis Klinkatsis was killed stepping on a landmine in Northern Greece. Pandelis was my uncle. The announcement of his death devastated his immediate family including my mother Sophia. I focus this chapter on the individual story of the loss of my uncle and my mother’s grief to cast a wider canvas on the emotions of war and their enduring legacies. This story explores the repercussions of war such as migration, the impact on sibling and romantic love, absence and separation during and after war. It examines the implications of these displacements in writing an emotional history of war. Such a history is typically conveyed through oral storytelling, and oral history forms the basis of the narrative. But there are two other ways in which the memory and emotion of war experience are kept alive in a transnational world. The first expression is in the form of photography, the second is the role grave sites play in the nexus between mourning and memory over time. Pandelis’s story takes us to Greece, Austria, America, and Australia. I argue that it encapsulates the complex geographical and emotional fragments created by war, which are manifest in love and death, mourning and memory, in a transnational context across four countries. Both the Second World War and the Greek Civil War created a landscape of emotions—the legacies of which are indelible—and continue to the present day.

Men in reserve

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliette Pattinson ◽  
Arthur McIvor ◽  
Linsey Robb
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Hegemonic Discourse ◽  
Oral History Interviews ◽  
Military Masculinity ◽  
Second World ◽  
Male Workers

This book focuses on working class civilian men who as a result of working in reserved occupations were exempt from enlistment in the armed forces. It utilises fifty six newly conducted oral history interviews as well as autobiographies, visual sources and existing archived interviews to explore how they articulated their wartime experiences and how they positioned themselves in relation to the hegemonic discourse of military masculinity. It considers the range of masculine identities circulating amongst civilian male workers during the war and investigates the extent to which reserved workers draw upon these identities when recalling their wartime selves. It argues that the Second World War was capable of challenging civilian masculinities, positioning the civilian man below that of the ‘soldier hero’ while, simultaneously, reinforcing them by bolstering the capacity to provide and to earn high wages, both of which were key markers of masculinity.

scholarly journals To the question of the relationship between the brothers of Sheptytskyi and the Jews

2020 ◽  
pp. 159-178
Author(s):  
Ivan Matkovskyy
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
History Of ◽  
Deep Relationship ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

The history of relations of the Sheptytskyj family and the Jewish people reaches back to those remote times when the representatives of the Sheptytskyi lineage held high and honorable secular and clerical posts, and the Jews, either upon invitation of King Danylo of Halych or King Casimir the Great, began to build up their own world in Halychyna. Throughout the whole life of Metropolitan Sheptytskyi and Blessed Martyr Klymentii, a thread of cooperation with the Jews is traceable. It should be noted that heroic deeds of the Sheptytskyi Brothers to save Jews during the Second World War were not purely circumstantial: they were preceded by a long-standing deep relationship with representatives of Jewish culture. In addition, the sense of responsibility of the Spiritual Pastor, as advocated by the Brothers, extended to all people of different religions and genesis with no exception. The world-view principles of Metropolitan Sheptytskyi are important for us in order to understand what was going on in the then society in attitude to the Jews. Also, of importance is the influence of the Metropolitan on Kasymyr Sheptytskyi, later Fr. Klymentii, because the Archbishop was not only his Brother, but also a church authority and the leader. And if from under the Metropolitan Sheptytskyi’s pen letters and pastorals were published, they were directives, instructions, edifications and explanations for the faithful and the clergy, and not at all, the products of His own reflections or personal experiences, which Archbishop Andrey wanted to share with the faithful. On the grounds of the available archive materials, an effort to reconstruct the chief moments of those relations was undertaken, aiming among others, to illustrate the fact that the saving of Jews during the Holocaust was not incidental, nor with any underlying reasons behind, but a natural manifestation of a good Christian tradition of «Love thy Neighbor», to which the Sheptytskyj were faithful. Keywords: Andrey Sheptytskyi, the Blessed Hieromartyr Klymentii Sheptytskyi, Jews, the Holocaust, Galicia, Righteous Among the Nations.

Postmodernism, French critics of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reginald Lilly
Keyword(s):  
French Revolution ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Rational Discourse ◽  
Philosophical School ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Second World

French anti-postmodernism emerged with the generation of philosophers that came of age in the late 1970s and early 1980s and counts among its ranks some of the most visible and prolific young scholars in France. Unlike schools of thought such as phenomenology, existentialism or Marxism, French anti-postmodernism has no founding figure, central text or core doctrine; anti-postmodernism (a term seldom, if ever, used by the French) therefore is less a philosophical school than a characterization for a diverse group of thinkers who react against those trends that have dominated French intellectual life since the Second World War, especially Marxism, structuralism, existentialism and deconstruction. These trends, grouped together under the heading of ‘postmodernism’, are seen by anti-postmodernists as the last episodes in a failed intellectual adventure whose origins go back at least to the French Revolution. Critical of nineteenth-century philosophy as having produced, on the one hand, totalizing, speculative philosophies such as those of Hegel and Marx, and, on the other hand, the anti-rationalism of Nietzsche and his postmodern scions, anti-postmodernists (or neo-moderns as the French prefer to say) represent a return to the concept of the individual and of history as the product of free human agency. Reaffirming the efficacy of public, rational discourse, they tend to be interested in political philosophy, taking democracy and its ideals as a model for raising and addressing philosophical issues. Pluralist in their outlook, they value the disciplinary structure of scholarly work; fields such as epistemology, theology, philosophy of science and the history of ideas which were neglected or marginalized by much postmodern thought have enjoyed renewed prestige and interest among the anti-postmodernists.

Case Study: “Above all, we need the WITNESS”: The Oral History of Holocaust Survivor

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Wiederhorn
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Holocaust Survivor ◽  
Holocaust Studies ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research And Education ◽  
Holocaust Narratives ◽  
Second World

Holocaust survivor and witness accounts began long before the Second World War ended. Diaries, journals, letters, notes hidden, buried, and stuffed into jars or between floor boards were mostly lost and destroyed, but those that have been recovered express desperation to tell, to document, to bear witness, and to commemorate. This article records the oral history of holocaust survivors. Together with the countless thousands of testimonies that would be recorded during the next sixty years, these eyewitness accounts would change the face of research and education, not only in the field of Holocaust studies but across academic boundaries. Together with the countless thousands of testimonies that would be recorded during the next sixty years, these eyewitness accounts would change the face of research and education, not only in the field of Holocaust studies but across academic boundaries. The second half of the twentieth century saw a renewed interest in holocaust narratives.

Liberal Approaches

2018 ◽  
pp. 99-115
Author(s):  
John M. Owen
Keyword(s):  
International Institutions ◽  
International Security ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Transnational Terrorism ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
International Environment ◽  
The Individual ◽  
International Success ◽  
Second World

Liberalism always has been concerned with the security of the individual against violence and deprivation. Liberal approaches to international security focus on institutions, or collectively held rules, as mediating between material variables and international outcomes. States are arenas of contestation among individuals and groups, and differ according to their institutions. International realms are distinguished by the number, type, and membership of institutions. The realms are linked: liberal democracies construct and maintain liberal international institutions. As the increase of peaceful, wealthy democracies since the Second World War shows, these states have relatively secure citizens and enjoy comparative international success. In the future, the liberal order could be weakened by the ongoing rise of nonliberal China; escalations of transnational terrorism; and alienation from liberalism within the wealthy democracies. Future liberal security scholarship should attend to differences among non-democracies; causal links between domestic and international institutions; and the co-evolution of states and the international environment.

scholarly journals Between or Beyond? Jewish British Short Stories in English since the 1970s

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 110
Author(s):  
Axel Stähler
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Jewish Experience ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Continuous Progress ◽  
Post War ◽  
War Experience ◽  
Second World

Looking at short stories by writers as diverse as Brian Glanville, Ruth Fainlight, Clive Sinclair, Jonathan Wilson, James Lasdun, Gabriel Josipovici, Tamar Yellin, Michelene Wandor, and Naomi Alderman, and extending from the center of Jewish British writing to its margins, this article seeks to locate the defining feature of their ‘Jewish substratum’ in conditions particular to the Jewish post-war experience, and to trace its impact across their thematic plurality which, for the most part, transcends any specifically British concerns that may also emerge, opening up an Anglophone sphere of Jewish writing. More specifically, it is argued that the unease pervading so many Jewish British short stories since the 1970s is a product of, and response to, what may very broadly be described as the Jewish experience and the precarious circumstances of Jewish existence even after the Second World War and its cataclysmic impact. It is suggested that it is prompted in particular by the persistence of the Holocaust and the anxieties the historical event continues to produce; by the confrontation with competing patterns of identification, with antisemitism, and with Israel; and by anxieties of non-belonging, of fragmentation, of dislocation, and of dissolution. Turned into literary tropes, these experiences provide the basis of a Jewish substratum whose articulation is facilitated by the expansion of Jewish British writers into the space of Anglophone Jewish writing. As a result, the Jewish British short story emerges as a multifaceted and hybrid project in continuous progress.

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