Underwater Monuments: Iossif Ventura and the Poetry of Commemoration

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-148
Author(s):  
Anna Despotopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Current Concerns ◽  
Death By Drowning

Abstract The article looks at Iossif Ventura’s collected edition of “Tanaïs” and “Kyklonio” (two poems commemorating the death by drowning of almost the entire Jewish community of Crete in 1944, published in English in 2015), exploring the themes of memory, trauma, and guilt, while linking the poems’ haunting underwater imagery with current concerns about the deaths of refugees in the Mediterranean. Drawing connections between Ventura, Jason deCaires Taylor’s underwater statues, and Marie Jalowicz Simon’s book about survival in Nazi Germany, Gone to Ground, the essay considers the psychological ramifications of precarious sea crossings aiming at escape and freedom.

Jewish Responses to Fascism and Antisemitism in Edinburgh, 1933–1945

2015 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Gilfillan
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Significant Aspect ◽  
Defensive Strategies ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Diverse Origin

Despite the weaknesses of domestic fascist movements, in the context of the rise of Nazi Germany and the presence of antisemitic propaganda of diverse origin Edinburgh's Jewish leaders took the threat seriously. Their response to the fascist threat was influenced by the fact that Edinburgh's Jewish community was a small, integrated, and middle-class population, without links to leftist groups or trade unions. The Edinburgh community closely followed the approach of the Board of Deputies of British Jews in relation to the development of fascism in Britain, the most significant aspect of which was a counter-propaganda initiative. Another important aspect of the response in Edinburgh was the deliberate cultivation of closer ties to the Christian churches and other elite spheres of Scottish society. Despite some unique elements, none of the responses of Edinburgh Jewry, or indeed the Board of Deputies, were particularly novel, and all borrowed heavily from established traditions of post-emancipation Jewish defensive strategies.

History of a Failure

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaacob Dweck
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mediterranean

This epilogue argues that the failure of Ari Nohem was manifold. Modena failed to convince his immediate audience, and by extension the Jewish community of Venice, and by further extension Jewish communities throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, to abandon their embrace of a new Jewish theology that masqueraded under the guise of tradition. This was hardly surprising: no critic, no matter how stinging or how subtle, can convince people to change their beliefs or to abandon their practices. Modena had also failed to convince other scholars and other critics—the very people who might have been most receptive to his argument. To describe Ari Nohem as a failure is neither to indict the book nor to celebrate it. It is an attempt to understand it as a work written by an author constrained by the limits of his own particular moment in history.

Estonia

2019 ◽  
pp. 123-132
Author(s):  
Michael J. Bazyler ◽  
Kathryn Lee Boyd ◽  
Kristen L. Nelson ◽  
Rajika L. Shah
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
The Soviet Union

The independent Republic of Estonia was attacked and formally annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940. It was subsequently invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany in 1941 until Soviet troops re-entered the country in 1944. At the end of the war, virtually every member of Estonia’s small prewar Jewish community had been murdered, deported, or had fled the country. Estonia’s independence was restored in 1991, and post-Communist Estonia passed restitution laws that applied generally to private and communal immovable property confiscated during the Communist era. Estonia endorsed the Terezin Declaration in 2009 and the Guidelines and Best Practices in 2010.

Movement Eastward

2019 ◽  
pp. 185-203
Author(s):  
Robert Chazan
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Mediterranean Basin ◽  
Northern Europe ◽  
Soil P ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
The One ◽  
The Mediterranean Basin

This chapter details the Jewish movement eastward. Toward the end of the thirteenth century and on into the fourteenth, the more advanced polities of the northwest began to limit and then expel their Jews. The Jews expelled from England and France did not opt to return to the Mediterranean Basin, from which their ancestors had originated. The migration of these banished Jews eastward across northern Europe reflects the extent to which the one-time Jewish newcomers had come to identify with their adopted ambience. Jews were also expelled from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1497, following the banishments from England, France, and multiple locales in northcentral Europe. However, the Spanish expulsion had enormous impact on Jewish thinking, and the reason is simple. This was the banishment of an age-old Jewish community, one that saw itself and was seen by non-Jews as profoundly rooted in European soil.

scholarly journals “Moses c’est le maître à nous tous”:

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 66-81
Author(s):  
Giorgio Marini
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Modern Art ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Young Age ◽  
French Speaking ◽  
The Mediterranean ◽  
Artistic Work

The paper focuses on the artistic work of Moses Levy (Tunis, 1885 - Viareggio, 1968), painter and printmaker active in Italy, Tunisia and Paris. A peculiar figure of cosmopolitan painter, whose father was British and the mother Italian, and whose art eludes attempts at univocal classification. On the contrary, it remains emblematic of the fruitfulness made possible by the encounter between different artistic traditions, as well as the reciprocal enrichment offered by the plurality of cultures. Deeply linked by birth to the Jewish community in Tunis, he moved to Italy at a very young age, where he came into contact with the major exponents of the Tuscan school of painting around the turn of the century, starting with Giovanni Fattori. Constantly commuting between the two shores of the Mediterranean, he became an example of dialogue between different worlds, between his African roots, his Tuscan upbringing, his French-speaking culture and his stays in Paris, where he met Chagall and Picasso and could not fail to find a natural identification with Matisse’s pure rhythms and solar charge. A regular exhibitor at the Salons Tunisiens, in 1936 he was a co-founder of the Le Quatre group and later one of the promoters of the École de Tunis. Thus, the local artists saw in Levy the master who had been able to promote the birth of a modern art that was representative of Tunisian culture and people, but free from any easy Orientalist stereotype or folkloric flavour. 

Slovakia

2019 ◽  
pp. 401-414
Author(s):  
Michael J. Bazyler ◽  
Kathryn Lee Boyd ◽  
Kristen L. Nelson ◽  
Rajika L. Shah
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Nazi Occupation ◽  
Velvet Revolution ◽  
Communal Property ◽  
Property Transfers ◽  
Second Wave ◽  
Independent Country

During World War II, Slovakia (previously part of the independent country of Czechoslovakia) became a vassal state of Nazi Germany. Roughly 70,000 Jews were deported from Slovakia. Immediately after World War II, Czechoslovakia enacted legislation invalidating property transfers made during Nazi occupation. The measures were short-lived, however, because the country fell under Communist rule that resulted in a second wave of confiscations from all persons. It was not until after the Velvet Revolution in 1989 that new immovable property restitution laws were enacted for private and communal property. In 2002, Slovakia entered into an agreement with the Jewish community of Slovakia to accept a sum amounting to 10 percent of the estimated value of unrestituted Jewish heirless property, as payment for heirless property that had previously reverted to the state. Slovakia endorsed the Terezin Declaration in 2009 and the Guidelines and Best Practices in 2010.

Serbia

2019 ◽  
pp. 385-400
Author(s):  
Michael J. Bazyler ◽  
Kathryn Lee Boyd ◽  
Kristen L. Nelson ◽  
Rajika L. Shah
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Property Law ◽  
World War ◽  
Communal Property ◽  
Second Wave ◽  
Property Restitution

Yugoslavia (which included present-day Serbia) was invaded by the Axis powers in 1941. Nazi Germany established a brutal occupation. Other parts of modern-day Serbia were occupied by Hungary, Bulgaria and Italy. Roughly 85 percent of the Jews who lived in Serbia before World War II were murdered. Postwar war Yugoslavia enacted a short-lived property restitution law. As Yugoslavia fell under Communist rule, widespread nationalization resulted in a second wave of property confiscations. Restitution began in the 2000s. Serbia is the only country that has enacted private property restitution legislation since endorsing the Terezin Declaration in 2009. Serbia has also passed communal property legislation—albeit with key limitations whose effects have disproportionately negatively impacted the Jewish community. In February 2016, Serbia enacted heirless property restitution legislation and the first country to enact an heirless property law since the Terezin Declaration was drafted in 2009. Serbia endorsed the Terezin Declaration in 2009 and the Guidelines and Best Practices in 2010.

scholarly journals Fałszywy znak równości

2012 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Efraim Zuroff
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Main Mass ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Mass Murders

The equivalency canardEfraim Zuroff's text, originally published in Haaretz magazine, is a review of Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands. Snyder distinguishes six main mass murders commited by Nazi Germany and Soviet Union during the period of the Third Reich's existence. In Zuroff's opinion there are some significant differences between these tragedies. Dubious comparisons proposed by Snyder made the Holocaust most affected. Describing the Shoah as one of the six equally horryfying mass murders, the author ignores its ideological roots. Roots that sentenced to death all Jews  - regardless of their political views, religious practicies or the level of identification with Jewish community. Moreover Snyder takes no notice of the georaphical scope of the Holocaust. He also does not notice the fact, that the Nazis effectively managed to make so many Europeans their accomplices, who actively supported the Shoah. Fałszywy znak równościTekst Efraima Zuroffa, który pierwotnie ukazał się w piśmie Haaretz, to recenzja książki Skrwawione ziemie Timothy Snydera. Snyder wyróżnia sześć głównych masowych mordów popełnionych przez Niemcy i Związek Radziecki w okresie, który odpowiada istnieniu Trzeciej Rzeszy. Istnieją jednak, zdaniem Zuroffa, znaczące różnice między tymi tragediami. Na wątpliwych porównaniach, które proponuje Snyder, najbardziej „ucierpiał” Holokaust. Opisując Shoah jako jeden z sześciu równie straszliwych, masowych mordów, autor pomija jego ideologiczne korzenie, które sprawiały, że na śmierć skazany był każdy bez wyjątku Żyd, niezależnie od jego poglądów politycznych, praktyk religijnych czy stopnia identyfikacji z żydowską wspólnotą. Ponadto Snyder ignoruje ogromny zasięg geograficzny Holokaustu. Nie zauważa także skuteczności, z jaką naziści potrafili uczynić swoimi wspólnikami tak wielu Europejczyków, którzy w konsekwencji aktywnie wspomagali Shoah.

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