scholarly journals The Language of Cruelty of the Holocaust on the Example of “The Ringelblum Archive. Annihilation – Day by Day”

2019 ◽  
pp. 113-128
Author(s):  
Izabela Olszewska

The Language of Cruelty of the Holocaust on the Example of The Ringelblum Archive. Annihilation – Day by DayThe Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto is one of the most significant testimonies of the annihilation of Polish Jews to be preserved in social life documents, mainly written reports and photographs. The founder of the Archive, Emanuel Ringelblum, described the purpose of the collected materials as follows: “We wanted the events in every town, the experiences of every Jew – and every Jew during this war is a world unto himself – to be conveyed in the simplest, most faithful manner. Every redundant word, every literary addition or embellishment, stood out, causing a sense of dissonance and distaste. The life of Jews during this war is so tragic that not a single extra word is needed”. The aim of the paper is a linguistic analysis of the drastic language of the Holocaust on the basis of The Ringelblum Archive: Annihilation - Day by Day. Język okrucieństwa Holokaustu na przykładzie Archiwum Ringelbluma. Dzień po dniu ZagładyPodziemne Archiwum Getta Warszawskiego jest jednym z najważniejszych świadectw zagłady polskich Żydów zachowanych w dokumentach życia społecznego, głównie w reportażach i fotografiach. Założyciel Archiwum, Emanuel Ringelblum, następująco opisał cel zebranych materiałów: „Chcieliśmy, aby wydarzenia w każdym mieście, doświadczenia każdego Żyda – a każdy Żyd w czasie tej wojny jest światem dla siebie – były przekazywane w najprostszy, najwierniejszy sposób. Każde zbędne słowo, każdy dodatek literacki czy ozdoba wyróżniały się, powodując poczucie dysonansu i niesmaku. Życie Żydów w czasie tej wojny jest tak tragiczne, że nie potrzeba ani jednego dodatkowego słowa”. Celem artykułu jest analiza lingwistyczna drastycznego języka Holokaustu na podstawie książki Archiwum Ringelbluma. Dzień po dniu Zagłady.


2016 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Konrad Matyjaszek

Wall and window: the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto as the narrative space of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish JewsOpened in 2013, the Warsaw-based POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews is situated in the center of the former Nazi Warsaw ghetto, which was destroyed during its liquidation in 1943. The museum is also located opposite to the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes and Martyrs, built in 1948, as well as in between of the area of the former 19th-century Jewish district, and of the post-war modernist residential district of Muranów, designed as a district-memorial of the destroyed ghetto. Constructed on such site, the Museum was however narrated as a “museum of life”, telling the “thousand-year old history” of Polish Jews, and not focused directly on the history of the Holocaust or the history of Polish antisemitism.The paper offers a critical analysis of the curatorial and architectural strategies assumed by the Museum’s designers in the process of employing the urban location of the Museum in the narratives communicated by the building and its main exhibition. In this analysis, two key architectural interiors are examined in detail in terms of their correspondence with the context of the site: the Museum’s entrance lobby and the space of the “Jewish street,” incorporated into the main exhibition’s sub-galleries presenting the interwar period of Polish-Jewish history and the history of the Holocaust. The analysis of the design structure of these two interiors allows to raise a research question about physical and symbolic role of the material substance of the destroyed ghetto in construction of a historical narrative that is separated from the history of the destruction, as well as one about the designers’ responsibilities arising from the decision to present a given history on the physical site where it took place.Mur i okno. Gruz getta warszawskiego jako przestrzeń narracyjna Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLINOtwarte w 2013 roku warszawskie Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN stanęło pośrodku terenu dawnego nazistowskiego getta warszawskiego, zburzonego podczas jego likwidacji w 1943 roku, naprzeciwko powstałego w roku 1948 Pomnika Bohaterów i Męczenników Getta; jednocześnie pośrodku obszaru dawnej, dziewiętnastowiecznej warszawskiej dzielnicy żydowskiej i powojennego modernistycznego osied­la Muranów, zaplanowanego jako osiedle-pomnik zburzonego getta. Zlokalizowane w takim miejscu Muzeum przedstawia się jako „muzeum życia”, opowiadające „tysiącletnią historię” polskich Żydów, niebędące insty­tucją skoncentrowaną na historii Zagłady Żydów i historii polskiego antysemityzmu.Artykuł zawiera krytyczną analizę kuratorskich i architektonicznych strategii przyjętych przez twórców Mu­zeum w procesie umieszczania środowiska miejskiego w roli elementu narracji historycznej, komunikowanej przez budynek Muzeum i przez jego wystawę główną. Szczegółowej analizie poddawane są dwa kluczowe dla projektu Muzeum wnętrza architektoniczne: główny hall wejściowy oraz przestrzeń „żydowskiej ulicy” stanowiąca fragment dwóch galerii wystawy głównej, poświęconych historii Żydów w Polsce międzywojen­nej oraz historii Zagłady. Analiza struktury projektowej tych dwóch wnętrz służy próbie sformułowania od­powiedzi na pytanie badawcze dotyczące właściwości fizyczno-symbolicznych materialnej substancji znisz­czonego getta w odniesieniu do narracji abstrahującej od historii jego zniszczenia oraz odpowiedzialności projektantów wynikającej z decyzji o umieszczeniu narracji historycznej w fizycznej przestrzeni, w której wydarzyła się historia będąca tej narracji przedmiotem.



Südosteuropa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ljiljana Radonić

AbstractThe Polish and the Hungarian governing party, PiS and Fidesz, are mnemonic warriors who had already tried to enforce their memory politics during their first government terms, as their flagship museums, the Warsaw Rising Museum, opened in 2004, and the House of Terror in Budapest, opened in 2002, show. In museums they ‘inherited’ from their predecessors, the current governments either change content, as PiS at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, or ‘only’ battle against the directors in office, as happened at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest. Yet even mnemonic warriors cannot ignore international developments like the ‘universalization of the Holocaust’. As the author shows, the Polish and the Hungarian governments favored opening new museums over changing existing museums identified as ‘Jewish’, including those that explicitly deal with Polish and Hungarian complicity. New museums, like the Ulma Family Museum in southeastern Poland, the House of Fates in Budapest, and the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, focus on rescuers of Jews and uplifting messages of Polish and Hungarian heroism.



2006 ◽  
pp. 221-241
Author(s):  
Gabriel Finder

This article follows the postwar trial of Shepsl Rotholc.  Rotholc was a successful interwar boxer for the Jewish sports club Gwiazda who was a Polish national champion in the flyweight class.  In the Warsaw ghetto he joined the ranks of the Jewish police [służba porządkowy].  After the war survivors accused Rotholc of mistreating them during deportations from the ghetto, and the Central Committee of Polish Jews (Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce), the principal representative of the postwar Jewish community in Poland in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust, put him on trial in November 1946 in its recently established citizens’ tribunal [sąd społeczny], whose charter authorized it to determine whether a Jew suspected of reproachable behavior under the German occupation of Poland “behaved in a manner befitting a Jewish citizen” [“zachował postawę godną obywatela-Żyda”].  Rotholc was the first defendant to be tried before the citizens’ tribunal [sąd społeczny] of the CKŻP.             At his trial Rotholc denied the charge that he had abused fellow Jews in the ghetto.  By his own account, he had joined the Jewish police to support his family because under the color of his authority and thanks to his reputation in the boxing ring he was able to protect smugglers who compensated him for his assistance.  He even claimed to have rescued members of his family and friends from deportation.  Defense witnesses painted a different picture.  His alleged victims repeated their accusations of his mistreatment of them during roundups, and postwar Jewish leaders who had taken part in the Jewish underground vilified the Jewish police in the ghetto.             The citizens’ tribunal [sąd społeczny] of the CKŻP found Rotholc guilty of violating its charter.  The basis for his conviction was not his mistreatment of fellow Jews but rather his continued service in the Jewish police after the conclusion of the first wave of deportations from Warsaw in September 1942, when, the judges reasoned, the Germans’ true intentions not to resettle but to murder the Jews of Poland was unmistakable.  In accordance with sanctions authorized in its charter, the tribunal [sąd społeczny] expelled Rotholc from the Jewish community for two years, revoked his right to participate in communal activities for three years, and ordered publication of his conviction in the Jewish press.  After two years Rotholc petitioned for and received a commutation of his sentence.  He then left Poland and immigrated to Canada.             After Rotholc an additional twenty-four Jewish defendants were tried in the citizens’ tribunal [sąd społeczny] of the CKŻP through the end of 1949.  Of these, eighteen, including Rotholc, were found guilty, while seven were acquitted.  The cases of an additional fifty suspected Jewish collaborators were dropped by lawyers for the CKŻP because of the lack of incriminating evidence.  Although Rotholc’s conviction was to be expected, the subsequent record of the tribunal [sąd społeczny] suggests that it took seriously the agonizing task of identifying putative collaborators from within the ranks of the Jewish remnant in postwar Poland and acted with a fair share of judicial integrity.



Teksty Drugie ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2020) ◽  
pp. 129-154
Author(s):  
Ljiljana Radonić

PiS and Fidesz are mnemonic warriors who tried to enforce their memory politics already during their first government terms – as the analysis of their flagship museums, the Warsaw Rising Museum and the House of Terror in Budapest shows. The current illiberal governments treat museums they ‘inherited’ from their predecessors differently: While PiS changes content at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews and the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest ‘only’ lost their directors. Even mnemonic warriors must take international developments like the ‘universalization of the Holocaust’ into consideration. Kaczyński and Orbán favored opening new museums rather than changing museums identified as ‘Jewish’, even those that explicitly deal with Polish and Hungarian complicity. New museums, like the Ulma Family Museum, the House of Fates in Budapest and the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, focus on rescuers of Jews and heroic uplifting messages.



Slavic Review ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 399-421
Author(s):  
Rachel Feldhay Brenner

This article is part of a project that examines Polish writers' diaristic responses to the Warsaw ghetto and to the Holocaust in general. Rachel Feldhay Brenner examines Maria Da̧browska's response in the context of her prewar attitude to Polish Jews, which was shaped by her nationalistic ideology of Poland's messianic position among the nations. Although Da̧browska publicly denounced Endecja and its antisemitism, in private she cultivated a powerful sense of ressentiment toward the Jews, seeing Jews as outsiders who stood in the way of Poland realizing its special mission. This attitude persisted during the Holocaust and explains Da̧browska's emotional disengagement in the face of Jewish extermination. In the postwar years, her resentment became more pronounced, as even Jewish suffering in the Holocaust became an object of competition and envy. Da̧browska's response to the Holocaust offers a poignant example of the impact of ideological beliefs on emotional and ethical aspects of human interaction.



2010 ◽  
pp. 227-243
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Krzywiec

The life of Julian Unszlicht (1883–1953) illustrates the case and process of the assimilation of Polish Jews. However, Unszlicht’s case is special as it shows that holding anti-Semitic views, which were to be a ticket to a Catholic society, guaranteed neither putting the roots down permanently nor gaining a new identity. The biography of a priest-convert allows to look closer at the processes of effacement and convergence of anti-Jewish rhetoric. The modern one, of the turn of 19th and 20th centuries, with Catholic anti-Judaism, which was constantly excused by religious reasons and at the same time, it often spread to the ethnic-racial mental grounds. Contrary to common definitions and distinctions, those two ways of thinking perfectly complemented and strengthened each other, both living using the other’s reasoning. The Holocaust added a tragic punch line to the embroiled story of the priest-convert



2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (SPL1) ◽  
pp. 1902-1904
Author(s):  
Lavi Arya

COVID-19 sudden outburst is declared as a serious public medical health issue worldwide by WHO, in March 2020. The first case of COVID-19 was seen officially in Wuhan City, China, in December 2019. It’s a pandemic to which all the countries has to take action in the detection of the infection and prevention of it’s spread. Despite global efforts to contain the disease spread, the outbreak is still on the rise because of the community spread pattern of this infection. Earlier the mode of transmission of the virus was seen in animal to person but now the transmission is from person to person through respiratory droplet infection the confirmed case is seen in many countries and are increasing day by day Fever, cough and cold, difficulty in breathing, tiredness can be seen in the patients suffering. The virus is affecting our health, economy, social life. Till the time we don’t have any medication at least we should try to prevent the spread of the virus. The points which can help in the prevention of the spread of the virus in the community are maintaining of hand sanitation, social distancing, Avoiding person to person contact and Quarantine. Increase in a number of testing, detecting COVID-19 positive patients will also help to reduce the spread of virus and secondary cases with strict quarantine rules.



Author(s):  
Svetlana Suleimanova ◽  
Aiman Kamzina ◽  
Tolkyn Seidimkhanova

The article considers the new time; new conditions demanded the immediate and radical revision, both the general methodology and specific methods and techniques of teaching of foreign languages. These new conditions and its prompt entry into the world community, reckless gallops of politics, economy, culture, ideology, mixture and movement of the people and languages, change of the relations between Kazakhstan citizens and foreigners, absolutely new purposes of communication—all these set the new tasks in the theory and practice of teaching of foreign language. The sudden and radical change of social life of our country, its "opening" and entry into the world community returned languages to life, making them a real means of different kinds of communication - the number of which is increasing day by day along with the growth of scientific and technical facilities of communication.     Keywords: Crossroads of cultures; Lifestyle; Socio-cultural competence; Tolerance



2021 ◽  
pp. 263300242110466
Author(s):  
Julia Reilly

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is emblematic of armed Jewish resistance to the Holocaust; it should also be emblematic of rebel organization formation and capacity building in the most extreme power asymmetry. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising happened because civilians who were directly experiencing a genocide formed rebel organizations that gained the capacity to hold territory. Drawing from video testimonies and memoirs of survivors, diaries of witnesses, and the work of historians, this study analyzes the formation and evolution of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB) to create and begin to validate a generalizable theory on how rebel organizations form in genocide, and how they create the capacity to hold territory from the genocidal opponent. The ŻOB evolved from a violent resistance organization to a rebel organization with a military infrastructure that could hold territory against the Nazis; further, it was this capacity to hold territory that allowed the ŻOB to win the survival of many Jews. These findings offer important insights on the possibility of rebel group mobilization against genocidal persecution, and can be used to understand contemporary genocide resisters.



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