Metonyms of destruction: Death, ruination, and the bombing of Rotterdam in the Second World War

The German and Allied bombing of Rotterdam in the Second World War caused thousands of dead and hundreds of missing, and severely damaged the Dutch port city. The joint destruction of people and their built environment made the ruins and rubble stand metonymically for the dead when they could not be mentioned in the censored press. The contiguity of ruins, rubble, corpses and human remains was not only semantic but also material because of the intermingling and even amalgamation of organic and inorganic remains into anthropomineral debris. The hybrid matter was dumped in rivers and canals to create broad avenues and a modern city centre. This article argues that Rotterdam’s semantic and material metonyms of destruction were generated by the contiguity, entanglement, and post-mortem and post-ruination agencies of the dead and the destroyed city centre. This analysis provides insight into the interaction and co-constitution of human and material remains in war.

Restoring the Memory of the Forgotten Dutch Embroidery Designer Nellie van Rijsoort

Costume ◽

10.3366/cost.2021.0183 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 55 (1) ◽

pp. 74-96

Author(s):

Marta Kargól

Keyword(s):

Middle Class ◽

The Netherlands ◽

Second World War ◽

World War ◽

History Of ◽

And Function ◽

Second World ◽

In 1932, Nellie van Rijsoort (1910–1996), the Dutch embroidery maker and designer, opened her atelier in Rotterdam. Among her clients were prestigious fashion stores in the Netherlands as well as wealthy middle-class customers. After the Second World War, van Rijsoort left Rotterdam and continued her career in Melbourne in the rapidly developing fashion network of Australia. Today, samples of embroidered fabrics and fashion drawings by Nellie van Rijsoort are part of the collections of the Museum Rotterdam and the National Trust of Australia in Melbourne. These collections provide insight into half a century of history of embroidered fabrics. This article illustrates the largely forgotten career of the embroidery designer. The first part of the article outlines the position and meaning of van Rijsoort's atelier in the fashion networks of the Netherlands and Australia, while the second part provides an analysis of embroidery samples and drawings, which reveal the place and function of embroideries as dress decorations.

Interpreting Buddhist Influences in Kawamoto’s Puppet Animation

Animating the Spirited ◽

10.14325/mississippi/9781496826268.003.0010 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 137-150

Author(s):

Masao Yokota

Keyword(s):

Second World War ◽

Personal Life ◽

Historical Evolution ◽

World War ◽

Japanese People ◽

Life Crisis ◽

The Dead ◽

Book Of The Dead ◽

In the field of Japanese independent animation, the late Kawamoto Kihachiro (1925-2010) made tremendous contributions. This chapter discusses in particular his puppet animations which are steeped with Japanese native beliefs and elements of Buddhist thought. From a clinical psychologist’s perspective, the author analyzes the spiritual dimensions of his work, particularly highlighting the native traditions and assimilated foreign thought systems that are encased within his creations. Specifically, The Book of The Dead (2005) is examined in the essay as it was created when Kawamoto was eighty years old. Issues like mid-life crisis, death, and other related matters are explored as the author surveys the creative and personal life of the master-animator. The author’s interpretation posits that Kawamoto’s puppet animation essentially tried to express the concepts of suffering and enlightenment, and that his work is related to his profound connections to the Japanese people and the historical evolution of a new Japan after the Second World War.

From Both Sides of the Atlantic: Black German Adoptee Searches in William Gage’s Geborener Deutscher (Born German)

Genealogy ◽

10.3390/genealogy2040040 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 2 (4) ◽

pp. 40

Author(s):

Rosemarie Peña

Keyword(s):

Community Development ◽

Community Support ◽

The United States ◽

Second World War ◽

World War ◽

Small Children ◽

The Us ◽

Post War ◽

Second World ◽

William Gage’s Geborener Deutscher, a print newsletter distributed by traditional mail from the late 1980s until 2003, and the eponymous Internet forum Gage established in 2000 on Yahoo Groups, provide search resources and community support specifically for German born adoptees. The archived newsletters and conversations offer early insight into the search and reunion activities of many who were transnationally adopted to the United States as infants and small children in the wake of the Second World War. Among Gage’s mailing list and Yahoo Group subscribers are members of the post-war cohort of Black German Americans living in Germany and in the US. Gage’s archive provides a unique opportunity to begin to explore Black German adoptee search, reunion, and community development over nearly a two-decade span.

The New Ju-Ju: Ijo Masquerades and the Office of War Information in Second World War Nigeria

Journal of Contemporary History ◽

10.1177/0022009420914719 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 002200942091471

Author(s):

Caroline Angle

Keyword(s):

Indigenous Communities ◽

Second World War ◽

West African ◽

Indigenous Community ◽

Spiritual Power ◽

World War ◽

Model Aircraft ◽

Societal Changes ◽

Second World ◽

In May and June 1943, a photographer with the American Office of War Information (OWI) photographed West African men who he identified as ‘witch doctors’ engaging in masquerade dances dedicated to water spirits. However, rather than the typical aquatic-themed headgear, these ‘witch doctors’ wore model planes – reproductions of British, French, and American aircraft. The photographs and their captions constructed a narrative of a ‘new ju-ju’, in which an indigenous community incorporated model aircraft into their traditional masquerades in order to reflect upon and support the power of Allied armies, which had supplanted their previous notions of spiritual power. However, despite their absurd and over-contrived captions, these photos were never published, demonstrating that the narrative of ‘new ju-ju’ was too complex to fit within the standard propagandistic narrative of widespread Allied support. This fascinating story provides insight into how indigenous communities in Nigeria coped with massive societal changes throughout the Second World War period, reveals the constructed narratives of American wartime propaganda, and, overall, demonstrates the uncontrollable nature of photographs as sources that insist upon revealing distinctive forms of agency and telling their own stories.

Valuing the dead: death, burial, and the body in Second World War Britain

Critical Military Studies ◽

10.1080/23337486.2019.1663683 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 224-242

Author(s):

Lucy Noakes

Keyword(s):

Second World War ◽

The Body ◽

World War ◽

The Dead ◽

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

European Review ◽

10.1017/s1062798703000498 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 11 (4) ◽

pp. 573-593 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

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 ◽

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.

«Så godt det lar sig gjøre» – kommenterade krigstidsbrev adresserade till Arthur Nordén från norska kollegor 1940–1945

Viking ◽

10.5617/viking.7120 ◽

1970 ◽

Vol 82 ◽

Author(s):

Joakim Goldhahn

Keyword(s):

Personal Experience ◽

Second World War ◽

World War ◽

Complex Issue ◽

Nazi Occupation ◽

History Of ◽

Nuanced Understanding ◽

The Relationship ◽

Second World ◽

«As good as it can be done» – commented war letters from Norwegian colleagues to Arthur Nordén 1940–1945 This article is based on letters addressed to Arthur Nordén (1891–1965), from his Norwegian colleagues Anton Willhelm Brøgger (1884–1951) and Sverre Marstrander (1910–1986) during the Nazi occupation of Norway, which lasted from 9 April 1940 to 8 May 1945. The letters provide unique historical insights into Brøgger's and Marstrander's activities during the war and reveal how they were engaging with Swedish archaeological colleagues during the Nazi occupation of Norway. While there is no doubt the relationship between archaeology and Nazism during the Second World War is a complex issue, and one that has been addressed by a number of researchers (e.g. Nordenborg Myhre 1984, 2002; Hagen 2002), these letters reflect particular solidarity between Swedish and Norwegian colleagues. They act as aging photographs capturing unique insight into personal experience and agencies. The expressed solidarity in words and actions strengthened existing collegiality and friendships. The letters add to a more nuanced understanding of the history of our discipline.

Those Who Left and Those Who Arrived

History in flux ◽

10.32728/flux.2021.3.5 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 3 (3) ◽

pp. 107-129

Author(s):

Francesca Rolandi

Keyword(s):

Second World War ◽

Living Standards ◽

World War ◽

Population Movements ◽

Final Destination ◽

Good Living ◽

The City ◽

Second World ◽

In the years after the Second World War, the city of Rijeka found itself caught in the middle of various migratory trajectories. The departure of locals who self-identified as Italians and opted for Italian citizenship occurred simultaneously with other population movements that drained the city of inhabitants and brought in newcomers. Many locals defected and traveled to Italy, which was either their final destination or a country they transited through before being resettled elsewhere. Furthermore, after the war ended, workers from other Yugoslav areas started arriving in the city. A flourishing economy proved capable of attracting migrants with promises of good living standards; however, political reasons also motivated many to move to this Adriatic city. The latter was the case for former economic emigrants who decided to return to join the new socialist homeland and for Italian workers who symbolically sided with the socialist Yugoslavia. Rijeka was not simply a destination for many migrants—it was also a springboard for individuals from all over the Yugoslav Federation to reach the Western Bloc. This article argues that examining these intertwining patterns together rather than separately offers new insight into the challenges the city experienced during its postwar transition.

Machseh Lajesoumim

10.5117/9789463726955 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Jaap Focke

Keyword(s):

The Netherlands ◽

Young Woman ◽

Second World War ◽

City Centre ◽

World War ◽

Front Cover ◽

The Holocaust ◽

The Many ◽

Second World ◽

Wednesday Evening

The Jewish Orphanage in Leiden was the last one of 8 such care homes to open its doors in The Netherlands before the Second World War. After spending almost 39 years in an old and utterly inadequate building in Leiden’s city centre, the inauguration in 1929 of a brand-new building, shown on the front cover, was the start of a remarkably productive and prosperous period. The building still stands there, proudly but sadly, to this day: the relatively happy period lasted less than 14 years. On Wednesday evening, 17th March 1943, the Leiden Police, under German instructions, closed down the Orphanage and delivered 50 children and 9 staff to the Leiden railway station, from where they were brought to Transit Camp Westerbork in the Northeast of the country. Two boys were released from Westerbork thanks to tireless efforts of a neighbour in Leiden; one young woman survived Auschwitz, and one young girl escaped to Palestine via Bergen-Belsen. The 55 others were deported to Sobibor, not one of them survived. Some 168 children lived in the new building at one time or another between August 1929 and March 1943. This book reconstructs life in the orphanage based on the many stories and photographs which they left us. It is dedicated to the memory of those who perished in the holocaust, but also to those who survived. Without them this book could not have been written.

Hollywood’s Last Lonely Places

Hard-Boiled Hollywood ◽

10.1525/california/9780520284319.003.0005 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Jon Lewis

Keyword(s):

Young Women ◽

Second World War ◽

Dead Body ◽

World War ◽

Movie Stars ◽

Marilyn Monroe ◽

The Dead ◽

Mixed Blessing ◽

Transition-era Hollywood began with the dead body of Elizabeth Short and ended with two more discarded young women, Barbara Payton and Marilyn Monroe, two more casualties found at the crossroads between a dreamed-of life in the sunny city of angels and the reality lived by so many naïve arrivals after the Second World War. Payton and Monroe were glamorous movie stars who began their careers at the very moment Short ended hers. The Black Dahlia murder maybe did not register much with them. Or maybe it did and they figured a shot at movie celebrity was worth the risk. Payton and Monroe believed they were going to be different. They believed in what men had for years been whispering in their ears: “you’re so pretty you should be in pictures.” They were (pretty that is)… and they did (appear in pictures). But movie-land success was for them a mixed blessing at best, their dreamed-of Hollywood celebrity hopelessly complicated by a new breed of industry middlemen, gangsters, and gossip, their lives cut short before their fortieth birthdays.