Ethics and aesthetics of World War II memory: The case of David Foenkinos, Charlotte

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Bracher
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Original Work ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
First Century ◽  
World War ◽  
The South ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Key Questions

Winner of the 2014 Renaudot prize, David Foenkinos’s novel Charlotte recounts the tragic life and highly original work of the German Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon, arrested in the south of France and deported to her death at Auschwitz in the fall of 1943. As is often the case in twenty-first-century narratives, Foenkinos engages in a highly personal mode of narration that plunges back into the most momentous aspects of World War II and the Holocaust. Charlotte thus links the quandaries of the narrator’s own life and times to those of this protagonist in ways that lead us to face key questions of ethics and aesthetics. These concern not only the destiny of Charlotte Salomon, but also our own manner of approaching and remembering the most momentous events of the twentieth century through the medium of the literary text.

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

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.

Overview: Toward a Better World for Our Grandchildren

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Hamburg ◽  
Beatrix A. Hamburg
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
First Century ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
The Internet ◽  
World War ◽  
Small Arms ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Killing Fields ◽  
The World ◽  
Prime Problem

The growing destructive capacities of humanity make this the prime problem of the twenty-first century. How we cope with this problem will have a profound bearing on the world of our grandchildren. The twentieth century was the bloodiest ever. World War II caused at least 50 million deaths. Six million died in the Holocaust. At Hiroshima, one bomb caused 100,000 deaths. Now thousands of such bombs (smaller and more conveniently transportable tactical bombs) are housed in Russia. Many are poorly guarded, susceptible to theft and bribery. Others may be made elsewhere. Danger increases with the number of such weapons existing in the world.Why? There is a greater chance of error, theft, and bribery—and ultimately their use in war or terrorism. Therefore, we should diminish the numbers as much as we can and secure responsible stewardship for those that remain. Moreover, there are still thousands of nuclear weapons that are far more powerful than the smaller tactical weapons. Biological and chemical weapons are easier to make than nuclear warheads and therefore have special appeal to terrorists. Small arms and light weapons now cover the world wall-to-wall. They include highly lethal machine guns, mortars, automatic rifles, and rocket launchers. Altogether, the destructive capacity of humanity is almost beyond imagination. Moreover, there is an exciting effect of today’s vast weapons on political demagogues, religious fanatics, and ethnic haters—and plenty of them exist in the world. Incitement to hatred and violence can occur with radio, TV, the Internet, and many other media. Thus, we can more powerfully incite violence, utilize more lethal weapons, and do much more damage than ever imaginable before. No group is so small or so far away as to prevent it from doing immense damage anywhere. The time has come to move beyond complacency, fatalism, denial, and avoidance. We must urgently seek to understand and strengthen an array of institutions and organizations that have the capacity to use tools and strategies to prevent deadly conflict. The first author (D.A.H.) considered many such possibilities in his recent book, No More Killing Fields: Preventing Deadly Conflict. Overall, this gives humanity a greater range of possibilities than ever before for building a system for preventing war and genocide. It will not be easy.

scholarly journals Review Article: The Vanished Ghosts in Two Hungarian Family Memoirs. Farkas, Charles. 2013. Vanished by the Danube: Peace, War, Revolution, and Flight to the West (Introduction by Margaret McMullan). Albany: Excelsior Editions, State University of New York Press. 472 pp. Illus; and Barlay, Nick. 2013. Scattered Ghosts: One Family's Survival through War, Holocaust and Revolution. London and New York: I. B. Tauris. 240 pp. Illus.

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 11-20
Author(s):  
Ruth G. Biro
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Review Article ◽  
State University ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Hungarian Revolution ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Visual Artifacts

Recent personal documentary works about major historical events of the twentieth century, e.g., World War II, the Holocaust and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, offer their readers a rich and multifaceted narrative, or a history that is also "his story," "her story" and that of entire families, cohorts and communities. Often, these works are accompanied by visual artifacts such as photographs, family tress, maps etc., or supported by concise historical surveys. Thus these memoirs complete the work of historians with the lived experiences of the few that represent many. Such is the case with two 2013 books by Charles Farkas and Nick Barlay depicting their mid-twentieth century Hungarian families, one Christian and one Jewish, through two World Wars and the anti-communist uprising, culminating in their escape to the West and in the two authors looking back upon the Hungarian past of their families.

From Propagandistic Exploitation to Post-Communist Sensationalism: Beethoven Reception in Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Romania

2021 ◽  
Vol 61 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 113-128
Author(s):  
Florinela Popa
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Political Regimes ◽  
World War ◽  
Adolf Hitler ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Way

This paper mainly investigates the way Beethoven’s image was turned, during the totalitarian political regimes of twentieth-century Romania, into a tool of propaganda. Two such ideological annexations are striking: one took place in the period when Romania, as Germany’s ally during World War II and led by Marshall Ion Antonescu, who was loyal to Adolf Hitler, to a certain extent copied the Nazi model (1940–1944); the other, much longer, began when Communists took power in 1947 and lasted until 1989, with some inevitable continuations. The beginnings of contemporary Romanian capitalism in the 1990s brought, in addition to an attempt to depoliticize Beethoven by means of professional, responsible musicological enquiries, no longer grounded in Fascist or Communist ideologies, another type of approach: sensationalist, related to the “identification” of some of Beethoven’s love interests who reportedly lived on the territory of present-day Romania.

Past Non-Dependency in the Twenty-first Century

2019 ◽  
pp. 107-119
Author(s):  
Anastassia V. Obydenkova ◽  
Alexander Libman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Governance Structure ◽  
Political Islam ◽  
First Century ◽  
World War ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
Twenty First Century

This chapter aims to provide a different approach to the development of regional IOs since World War II, by singling out non-democratic tendencies in regionalism from a historical perspective. It explores differences between the functioning of DROs and NDROs over the last 70 years—from coerced organizations such as COMECON to modern alliances of autocrats. The chapter argues that the twenty-first-century NDROs (e.g. SCO) are different from those of the last half of the twentieth century (e.g. COMECON) in terms of membership composition, governance structure, and the characteristics discussed in earlier chapters. While historical NDROs were driven by ideologies such as Communism, in the main modern NDROs lack an ideological foundation (with the exception of ALBA and the Islamic world). The ideological foundation of Islamic ROs has changed—from pan-Arabism in the 1940s and 1950s to the dominance of various forms of political Islam and a focus on specific political institutions (e.g. the conservative rule of Gulf monarchies in the GCC).

Popular Understandings of the Past

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kees Ribbens
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
Comic Strips ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
Sensitive Topics ◽  
The Holocaust

This chapter presents an overview of the development of historical narratives combining visual and textual elements in comic strips and graphic novels. History comics developed strongly during the 1940s and 1950s and became popular, in particular among young readers in Western Europe and North America. Having gained increased cultural respectability, comics more recently also obtained an adult audience. Two internationally renowned educational comics from the Anne Frank House, published in the first decade of the twenty-first century, illustrate how comics are nowadays capable of representing sensitive topics from recent history, in particular World War II and the Holocaust. Yet, combining fact and fiction requires a balanced way of (re)presenting, involving discussions among historians and others on what may be possible and desirable in this specific war of making history public.

scholarly journals Review Article: Souls, Hearts and Heritage: Passing from the Danube to the Hudson. Szegedy-Maszák, Marianne. 2013. I Kiss Your Hands Many Times – Hearts, Souls and Wars in Hungary. New York: Spiegel & Grau, Random House. 345 pp; and Griesz, Katherine. 2012. From the Danube to the Hudson. Seattle, WA: CreateSpace Independent Publishing. 482 pp.

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 21-27
Author(s):  
Evi Blaikie
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Review Article ◽  
World War ◽  
Independent Publishing ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Rich

How did the rich and the super-rich Hungarian Jews in Budapest fare during the 1930s, World War II and the Holocaust, and beyond? Two new books deal with their stories: Marianne Szegedy-Maszák's "I Kiss Your Hands Many Times" and Katherine Griesz's "From the Danube to the Hudson". Szegedy-Maszák was able to use her journalist's profession and skills to explore and vividly present her family's story in a work that can likewise satisfy the historians, the romantics and all those who like a “good read.” Griesz’s epic family memoir encompasses the same time period and topic as Szegedy-Maszák's book in its portrayal of a multi-generational Hungarian Jewish family's fate in the crisis -full mid-twentieth century, as seen and interpreted by its female descendant decades later.

scholarly journals Hungarian Cookbooks for Israeli Readers: A Comparative Literary-Cultural Analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 131-141
Author(s):  
Ilana Rosen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Cultural Analysis ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Hebrew Language ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth

How long and how strong is Diasporic memory? How many generations can it encompass? How deeply can generations that never lived in the old country relate to its landscape, language, colors and tastes? In the case of Israelis of Hungarian origin, these questions inevitably have to do with the history of Hungarian Jews in the late nineteenth- and early-to-mid twentieth-century, with a focus placed more acutely upon World War II and the Holocaust. Written by a female Israeli researcher of folk and documentary culture who belongs to the second-generation of Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivors, the present article strives to deal with the foregoing and other relevant questions through a comparative literary-cultural analysis of the only two presently existing Hebrew-language Hungarian cookbooks. These two cookbooks were published in Israel in 1987 and 2009, respectively, by two male cultural celebrities, the first by a Hungarian-born journalist, author and politician and the second by an Israeli-born gastronomer and grandson of Hungarian-Israelis.

Returning to Stay? Jews in East and West Germany after the Holocaust

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 393-413
Author(s):  
Andrea A. Sinn
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
World War ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
East And West Germany ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Central Council ◽  
East And West ◽  
German Jewish

ABSTRACTTo better understand the position of Jews within Germany after the end of World War II, this article analyzes the rebuilding of Jewish communities in East and West Germany from a Jewish perspective. This approach highlights the peculiarities and sometimes sharply contrasting developments within the Jewish communities in the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, from the immediate postwar months to the official East-West separation of these increasingly politically divided communities in the early 1960s. Central to the study are the policies of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, which exemplify the process of gradual divergence in the relations between East and West German Jewish communities, that, as this article demonstrates, paralleled and mirrored the relations between non-Jewish Germans in the two countries.

scholarly journals "You've Never Seen this Kind of Poverty": Facing Class and Gender in Shoah Representations

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marion Gerlind
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Life Histories ◽  
Literary Representations ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Inequities ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Third Person ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
And Gender

In researchers' reconstructions of the Holocaust, also called the Shoah, the lives of ordinary people l lives more impoverished and constrained than those of middle- and upper-class individuals - have been largely overlooked. Rarely have the ways in which gender <em>and</em> class enter into accounts of death and survival been examined. Integrating feminist gender analyzes with class theories, I explore differences between working- and middle-class Jewish women's representations in terms of multiple oppressions. Literary representations often contain class biases because they rely, almost exclusively, on investigations of middle-class, and urban Jews. Combining textual analysis with oral history methods, I conducted audio-taped interviews with survivors, researched videotaped testimonies as well as unpublished third-person narratives and examined the influence of socioeconomic status on Polish- and German-Jewish women's everyday lives in the interwar years (1919-38) and during World War II. My goals are first, to record life histories of marginalized survivors, and second, to demonstrate that social class must be conceptually central to Holocaust analysis, and finally, to contribute to an interdisciplinary discourse on class and gender. By interpreting testimonies at risk of being lost and de-stigmatizing poverty and manual labor, we expose social inequities, and thus can add breadth and depth to our understanding of the Shoah.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document