The Prosecution of Anti-Jewish Crimes in Bulgaria: Fashioning a Master Narrative of the Second World War (1944–1945)

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 941-975
Author(s):  
Nadège Ragaru
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
World War ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
Sentencing Policy ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
Second World

Bulgaria was amongst the first states in Europe to hold trials with an exclusive focus on anti-Jewish persecutions during the Second World War. On 24 November 1944, a chamber solely dedicated to the prosecution of anti-Jewish crimes was established within the People’s Courts (1944–1945). This judicial action thus constitutes a unique experiment in the qualification of crimes, the use of material/testimonial evidence, the establishment of proof, and the devising of sentencing policy. Seen as a stage on which several contenders fought over the reading of the recent past and the present in the making, the Court also offers a lens on the complex interplay between the prosecution of war crimes and the crafting of revolutionary changes as well as on the relations between Jews and non-Jews at the end of the war. Drawing on a diversity of archival records (accusation files and protocols of the hearings among others), the article will underline two paradoxes. First, the chamber established to prosecute anti-Jewish crimes ended up building a master narrative of “collective innocence” centered on the “rescue of the Bulgarian Jews,” which has remained dominant in Bulgarian public discourse to this day. Second, the communist Jews who had fought for the recognition of Jewish suffering ultimately took part in the euphemization of Jewish experiences of the war. In resorting to justice, they hoped to convince the local Jewry to stay in Bulgaria and build socialism there. For that purpose, they had to prove that the wartime policies were the deeds of a handful of “fascists.” Henceforth, they embraced the official discourse of interethnic solidarity in combat and sorrow, thus downplaying the specificity of the Jewish predicament.

JEWISH IDENTITY IN THE FACE OF ANTI-SEMITISM

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 895-900
Author(s):  
ELISABETH ALBANIS
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
Second World

A history of the Jews in the English-speaking world: Great Britain. By W. D. Rubinstein, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996. Pp. viii+539. ISBN 0-312-12542-9. £65.00.Pogroms: anti-Jewish violence in modern Russian history. Edited by John D. Klier and Shlomo Lambroza. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xx+393. ISBN 0-521-40532-7. £55.00.Western Jewry and the Zionist project, 1914–1933. By Michael Berkowitz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xvi+305. ISBN 0-521-47087-0. £35.00.Three books under review deal from different perspectives with the responses of Jews in Western and Eastern Europe to the increasing and more or less violent outbursts of anti-Semitism which they encountered in the years from 1880 to the Second World War. The first two titles consider how deep-rooted anti-Semitism was in Britain and Russia and in what sections of society it was most conspicuous, whereas the third asks how Western Jewry became motivated to support the Zionist project of settlement in Palestine; all three approach the question of how isolated or intergrated diaspora Jews were in their respective countries.

Religion and the Search For Meaning, 1945–1990

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Ziemann
Keyword(s):  
German Society ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Search For Meaning ◽  
World War ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Postwar Germany ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
International Authority ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
Second World

This article encapsulates some of the problems that rampaged Germany apart from politics. The ongoing relevance of religion in the search for meaning in postwar Germany, amidst growing discontent with the churches as organized bodies and their professional representatives; the ways in which their lack of resistance against the anti-Jewish policies of the Nazi regime haunted the Christian churches after 1945. Amidst the rubble of the society of the immediate postwar period, bishops, priests, and theologians of both Christian churches agreed that a rebuilding of the moral and political order could only succeed through a reaffirmation of Christian values. Rebuilding the moral compass and the international authority of the Germans would, hence, require a rechristianization of society. Statistics showing that people rejoined the churches in droves seemed to support these claims for a rechristianization of German society. This article analyses the culmination of religions within the German society post Second World War.

Rethinking the Place of the Second World War in the Contemporary History of Albania

Südosteuropa ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gentiana Kera
Keyword(s):  
Military History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
Master Narrative ◽  
World War ◽  
History Writing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Previous State ◽  
Second World ◽  
State Socialist

AbstractThe Second World War in Albania was a central topic of socialist historiography because of the importance laid upon the National Liberation War for the legitimation of the establishment of communist rule in 1944. History writing was a very centralized process, controlled by party institutions responsible for safeguarding the implementation of Marxist‒Leninist principles and party lines. Since the 1990s, the history of the Second World War has been revised in the framework of a general revision of Albanian national history. History writing developed as an open process and now included historians from countries other than Albania, as opposed to the previous state socialist isolation. The extent to which the war history had been distorted and manipulated during socialism has influenced the subsequent process of rewriting that first focused on adjusting the existing narratives. Thus, despite an increasing variety of research topics, the historiography on wartime Albania has remained dominated by political and military history, and by the national master narrative.

Europe’s Civil Wars, 1941–1949

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aviel Roshwald
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Second World War ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Frames Of Reference ◽  
World War ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
Second World ◽  
Best Fit

A number of the conflicts that wracked European countries under Axis-power occupation during the Second World War can be understood as civil wars. This analytical prism should be seen as complementing rather than replacing the more conventional pairing of collaboration and resistance. The three European cases from this period that best fit conventional notions of civil war in terms of the intensity and duration of fighting among co-nationals are Greece, Yugoslavia, and Italy. A comparative analysis can yield insights into the complex interplay of historical continuities and ruptures, and of nationalist and internationalist frames of reference, in shaping the agendas and choices of participants in these violent struggles.

scholarly journals A lost war in living memory: Japan’s Second World War

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 573-593 ◽  
Author(s):  
HARUKO TAYA COOK ◽  
THEODORE F. COOK
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Second World

We examine the strata of memory in Japan’s recollections of the wartime experience and explore the shaping and releasing of memory in Japan, seeking to penetrate and recover individual Japanese experience. Individual memories that seemed tightly contained, when released were told with great emotional intensity and authenticity. That there has been little public discourse does not mean that individual Japanese have forgotten that war, but that the conflict – a war with no generally accepted name or firmly fixed start or end – seems disconnected from the private memories of the wartime generation. Japan was defeated thoroughly and completely, and in the history of memory we see no well-established narrative form for telling the tale of the defeated. In Japan's public memory of the war, War itself is often the enemy, and the Japanese its victims. Such a view is ahistorical and unsatisfactory to nations and peoples throughout Asia and the Pacific. The prevailing myths during Japan's war, developed and fostered over 15 years of conflict, and the overwhelming weight of more than three million war dead on the memories of the living forged a link between a desire to honour and cherish those lost and the ways the war is recalled in the public sphere. Enforced and encouraged by government policies and private associations, protecting the dead has become a means of avoiding a full discussion of the war. The memorials and monuments to the Dead that have been created throughout Japan, Asia, and the Pacific stand silent sentry to a Legend of the war. This must be challenged by the release into the public sphere of living memories of the War in all their ambiguity, complexity, and contradiction without which Japan’s Memory can have no historical veracity. Moreover, the memories of the Second World War of other peoples can never be complete without Japan’s story.

The Pattern of Administrative Reforms in the Closing Years of Dutch Rule in Indonesia

1966 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 589-605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harry J. Benda
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Students ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
World War ◽  
Nationalist Movement ◽  
Administrative Reforms ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
Second World

The history of Indonesia in the last two or three decades of Dutch colonial rule still has to be written, and it can only be written when the abundant archival materials for this period, both in Indonesia and in the Netherlands, come to be opened up for scholarly investigation. Scholars who, since the Second World War, have turned their attention to modern Indonesian history have tended to focus on the development of Indonesian nationalism, and for understandable reasons. The Indonesian Revolution, crowned by the attainment of Indonesian independence in 1949, rendered an understanding of the Indonesian nationalist movement in colonial times imperative not only to Indonesian historians attempting to come to grips with their country's recent past but also to an ever-increasing number of foreign students. Welcome as this ongoing re-examination of Indonesian nationalism is, it, too, must remain incomplete until documentary evidence, whether archival or (auto)-biographical, can substantially enrich it.

scholarly journals “Historical Falsification” as a Master Trope in the Official Discourse on History Education in Putin’s Russia

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-135
Author(s):  
Julie Fedor
Keyword(s):  
History Education ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Second World War ◽  
State Control ◽  
World War ◽  
History Teachers ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
Official Discourse ◽  
Second World ◽  
Scholarly Attention

This article explores a key claim underpinning Russian official memory politics, namely, the notion that Russia’s past (and especially the role it played in the Second World War) is the object of a campaign of “historical falsification” aimed at, among other things, undermining Russian sovereignty, especially by distorting young people’s historical consciousness. Although “historical falsification” is an important keyword in the Kremlin’s discourse, it has received little scholarly attention. Via an analysis of official rhetoric and methodological literature aimed at history teachers, I investigate the ideological functions performed by the concept of “historical falsification.” I show how it serves to reinforce a conspiratorial vision of Russia as a nation under siege, while simultaneously justifying the drive toward greater state control over history education.

scholarly journals Świat wynalazków i odkryć naukowych w dwudziestoleciu międzywojennym — wybrane strategie dyskursu popularnonaukowego w prasie

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 131-150
Author(s):  
Marcin Poprawa
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Plain Language ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
Persuasive Strategies ◽  
Popularization Of Science ◽  
Second World

World of scientific discoveries in Polish popular press 1918–1939. The main strategies of popularization of knowledge in media discourseThe author of the article has two research objectives. The first one is to describe and analyse main strategies of popularization of science in Polish press 1918–1939. The article also highlights some aspects, tendencies and reception of media text media discourse: picture of the world of science and achievements, strategies used by journalists to write about difficult topics e.g. translating difficult problems into easier stylistic form, used by them rules of “Plain Language”. The second purpose of the article is to overview historical, cultural context and hidden implications persuasive strategies in the public discourse about the role of science in Poland before the Second World War.

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