Conceptualizations of the Holocaust in Soviet and Post-Soviet Ukraine and Belarus: Public Debates and Historiography

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 241-260
Author(s):  
Olga Baranova
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Museum Exhibitions ◽  
Second World ◽  
Soviet Historiography

This article belongs to a forthcoming special section, ‘Conceptualizations of the Holocaust in Germany, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine since the 1990s’ guest edited by Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe. This article investigates how the Holocaust was recollected, presented, and interpreted in Ukraine and Belarus during the Soviet era. It further examines the changes that have taken place in the representation of the Holocaust in Ukraine and Belarus in the post-communist period. First, the article aims to explain the ideological reasons why the Jewish origin of many Nazi victims was largely played down or ignored in the Soviet historiography. Second, it investigates the new political dynamics in independent post-communist Ukraine and Belarus that have influenced public discourse and historiographical reflections on various issues of the Second World War, including the persecution of the Jews. As well as historiography, the article investigates the developments that have taken place in contemporary Ukraine and Belarus regarding commemorative practices, monuments, museum exhibitions, and education initiatives to honor the victims of the Holocaust and to promote knowledge about this event.

Holocaust Research in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia. An Inventory

Südosteuropa ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marija Vulesica
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Holocaust Studies ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mass Killings ◽  
Second World

AbstractThe Holocaust and other mass killings committed during the Second World War in the Yugoslav territories play a more significant role in current public debates than they do in education and research. 85% of Yugoslavia’s Jews were annihilated in the period between 1941 and 1945. In socialist Yugoslavia, it was Holocaust survivors in particular who collected materials that documented the execution of exterminist policies. How has the examination of the Holocaust changed since the dissolution of Yugoslavia; and how have the newly established states of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as Serbia coped with this part of their history? The author asks whether an exclusive exploration of Jewish suffering is possible—or even desirable—in today’s post-Yugoslav societies. She gives an overview of the evolution of a specific ‘Yugoslav’ approach to the history of the Holocaust, and depicts recent Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbian efforts in this field. Furthermore, she looks at what kind of attention the Holocaust in Yugoslavia has received in international Holocaust Studies.

Railway workers in Second World War: Towards a reconciliation in historiography?

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Noëlle Polino
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
New Developments ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Historical Investigation ◽  
Railway Workers ◽  
Second World

New developments in research about the role of railway workers in the holocaust reopen the historical discussion and the public debates on the responsibility of agencies and individuals in the deportation of the Jews during Second World War. The role of French railway employees is central in the controversy. This paper, focusing on new publications regarding the case of France, aims to summarize the debate and offers two main questions, which still ask for more historical investigation.

Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 20

2007 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
World War ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

Although the reconciliation of Jewish and Polish memories of the Holocaust is the central issue in contemporary Polish–Jewish relations, this is the first attempt to examine these divisive memories in a comprehensive way. Until 1989, Polish consciousness of the Second World War subsumed the destruction of Polish Jewry within a communist narrative of Polish martyrdom and heroism. Post-war Jewish memory, by contrast, has been concerned mostly with Jewish martyrdom and heroism. Since the 1980s, however, a significant number of Jews and Poles have sought to identify a common ground and have met with partial but increasing success, notwithstanding the new debates that have emerged in recent years concerning Polish behaviour during the Nazi genocide of the Jews that Poles had ignored for half a century. This volume considers these contentious issues from different angles. Among the topics covered are Jewish memorial projects, both in Poland and beyond its borders, the Polish approach to Holocaust memory under communist rule, and post-communist efforts both to retrieve the Jewish dimension to Polish wartime memory and to reckon with the dark side of the Polish national past. An interview with Henryk Grynberg touches on many of these issues, as do the three poems by Grynberg reproduced here. The 'New Views' section features innovative research in other areas of Polish–Jewish studies. A special section is devoted to research concerning the New Synagogue in Poznan, built in 1907, which is still standing only because the Nazis turned it into a swimming pool.

Le rôle de l’armée juive dans la libération de Juifs en France 1942 - 1945

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 00007
Author(s):  
B Dewi Puspitaningrum ◽  
Airin Miranda
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
World War ◽  
French Army ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Status ◽  
Jews In France ◽  
State Of Israel ◽  
Second World

<p class="Keyword">Nazi Germany used Endlösung to persecute Jews during the Second World War, leading them to the Holocaust, known as “death”. During the German occupation in France, the status of the Jews was applied. Polonski reacted to the situation by establishing a Zionist resistance, Jewish Army, in January 1942. Their first visions were to create a state of Israel and save the Jews as much as they could. Although the members of the group are not numerous, they represented Israel and played an important role in the rescue of the Jews in France, also in Europe. Using descriptive methods and three aspects of historical research, this article shows that the Jewish Army has played an important role in safeguarding Jewish children, smuggling smugglers, physical education and the safeguarding of Jews in other countries. In order to realize their visions, collaborations with other Jewish resistances and the French army itself were often created. With the feeling of belonging to France, they finally extended their vision to the liberation of France in 1945 by joining the French Forces of the Interior and allied troops.</p>

Dov Levin and Zvie A. Brown, The Story of an Underground: The Resistance of the Jews in Kovno in the Second World War, trans. Jessica Setbon. Jerusalem: Gefen, 2014. 496 pp.

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Armed Resistance ◽  
Second World ◽  
And Training

This chapter reviews the book The Story of an Underground: The Resistance of the Jews in Kovno in the Second World War (2014), by Dov Levin and Zvie A. Brown, translated by Jessica Setbon. The Story of an Underground is about the Jews of Kovno (Kaunas) who founded an underground movement during the Holocaust. The armed underground developed a plan to escape to the forests and join the partisans. The ghetto was liquidated in the summer of 1944. Many of the remaining Jews were sent to the Stutthof and Dachau concentration camps. The book highlights the dilemmas of Jewish armed resistance such as difficulties in obtaining weapons and training, some of the failures of the resistance, and some of the positive aspects of those who thought differently from members of the armed resistance.

Entangled Memories: Complicating the Memory of Area Bombing Through the Haunted Ruins of Anhalter Bahnhof

2021 ◽  
pp. 153270862199758
Author(s):  
Eloise Florence
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Second World War ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
World War ◽  
Train Station ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Normative Models ◽  
German Cities ◽  
Second World

This article investigates the possibilities for experiential encounters with ruins in Berlin to complicate the dominant articulations of the cultural memory of Allied bombing attacks on German cities during the Second World War. Building on works that seek to disrupt normative models of cultural memory of the bombings, and entangling them with existing literature that uses new materialism to engage the sensorial nature of memory site-encounters, I examine my own fieldwork visits the ruins of Anhalter Bahnhof—a former train station—as an entanglement of both. Specifically, I investigate how encountering Anhalter through this entangled method allows the site to emerge as haunted. Encountering Anhalter as haunted might complicate the linear temporality that underpins enduring the narrative that the Allies’ actions during the war were completely ethical because they are largely framed as a response to— ergo following—the Holocaust.

scholarly journals The Holocaust in Slovak Drama

2017 ◽  
pp. 197-210
Author(s):  
Dagmar Kročanová
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Rare Occurrence ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Slovak Society ◽  
Dramatic Characters ◽  
Second World

The article discusses several Slovak plays with the theme of the Holocaust; namely Ticho (Silence) by Juraj Váh, Holokaust (Holocaust) by Viliam Klimáček, and Rabínka (The Woman Rabbi) by Anna Grusková. It also briefly refers to Návrat do života (Return to Life) and Antigona a tí druhí (Antigone and Those Others) by Peter Karvaš, both mediating traumas from concentration camps. Two plays (Ticho and Návrat do života) were written and staged immediately after the Second World War. Karvaš’s Antigona is a rare occurrence of the theme in Slovak drama during the Communism (in the early 1960s), whereas Klimáček’s and Grusková’s plays are recent, both staged in 2012. The article focuses on several aspects of these five plays: on dramatic characters representing “victims”, “witnesses” and “culprits” (Panas, quoted in Gawliński 2007: 19); on references about and/or representation of the Holocaust in dramatic texts; and on the type of the conflict(s) in the plays. It also mentions specific approaches of respective authors when dealing with the theme of the Holocaust, as well as with the relevance of their reflection of the theme for Slovak society in respective periods.

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.

On the group matrix and the morality of the nuclear deterrent: The worldview of Gregory van der Kleij

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 368-376
Author(s):  
Harold Behr
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Moral Dilemma ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Group Matrix ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Nuclear Arms Race ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second World

This article presents the writings of Gregory van der Kleij, group analyst and Catholic priest, whose experiences of the holocaust during the Second World War shaped his thinking, not only as a therapist but also as a campaigner against the nuclear arms race. The author re-visits two significant articles on the group matrix published in this journal in the 1980s and introduces the reader to a little-known monograph addressed to the Catholic community which examines the moral dilemma faced by Christians during the Cold War. The monograph contains an exhortation to rise up in protest against what Gregory considers to be ‘the madness’ of high-level thinking on the morality of the nuclear deterrent.

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