A day of unfinished mourning: Historicizing commemorative practices of Bleiburg among the Croatian diaspora in Argentina

The Croatian post-Second World War diaspora in Argentina developed a specific identity due to the historical context of its exile (the war defeat of the Nazi-aligned Independent State of Croatia, the postwar killings of the defeated troops and the civilians at Bleiburg, Austria, with subsequent death marches in 1945—commonly referred to as “Bleiburg,” and the eventual forced migration) that served as a baseline of its identity across generations. While in Communist Yugoslavia Bleiburg was practically a taboo, the efforts to preserve its memory were carried out by the Croatian political exiles in Argentina as of 1947. This article explores historical memory practices of Bleiburg among the Croatian diaspora in Argentina. Based on an analysis of written, photographic, and audiovisual material, as well as personal testimonies, the study identifies five major periods of memory of the Croatian diaspora in Argentina from 1947 until today. The results of the study show a tendency of double and cumulative victimization: while the first generation was framed as victims of the postwar killings and exile, the post-memory generation also perceives itself as long-term victims of Tito’s Yugoslavia because of being born in Argentina. There is an intergenerational transmission of memory throughout the described five periods, and the real change of generations occurs when the survivors perish and new memory entrepreneurs take over the commemorations. The post-memory generation framed commemorations in such a way that they serve to reinforce their identity and enable them to resignify their community history, while maintaining their sense of uniqueness toward both the country where they were born and the country their grandparents were forced to leave.

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Producing Outside the Box: Creative Strategies in the Work of Betty E. Box, 1957–64

Journal of British Cinema and Television ◽

10.3366/jbctv.2020.0533 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 17 (3) ◽

pp. 355-374

Author(s):

John D. Ayres

Keyword(s):

Second World War ◽

Film Production ◽

World War ◽

E Box ◽

Film Producer ◽

British Cinema ◽

Working Practices ◽

Location Shooting ◽

Second World

This article considers the working practices of British cinema's only major female film producer during the early-to-mid post-Second World War era, Betty E. Box (1915–99). Via reference to her extensive archive at the British Film Institute and the films Campbell's Kingdom (1957), The Wind Cannot Read (1958) and Hot Enough for June (1964), the article charts how Box initially envisaged multi-generational casting for roles that were eventually taken by long-term collaborator Dirk Bogarde. It considers the manner in which she approached the diplomatic complexities of location shooting, with particular focus on Ralph Thomas's military romance The Wind Cannot Read, the first British film to be shot in India for twenty years at the time of its production. The reasoning for Box's ongoing absence, as a female creative figure, from scholarship addressing British cinema, and film production more generally, will also be addressed.

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Metamorphoses of memory of the the Russian-Serbian Brotherhood of War in Modern Serbia

MGIMO Review of International Relations ◽

10.24833/2071-8160-2020-4-73-142-156 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 13 (4) ◽

pp. 142-156

Author(s):

A. Yu. Timofeev

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

Civil War ◽

Party System ◽

Historical Memory ◽

Civil Conflict ◽

Second World War ◽

World War ◽

Post War ◽

The Stability ◽

Second World

The article considers the perception of World War II in modern Serbian society. Despite the stability of Serbian-Russian shared historical memory, the attitudes of both countries towards World wars differ. There is a huge contrast in the perception of the First and Second World War in Russian and Serbian societies. For the Serbs the events of World War II are obscured by the memories of the Civil War, which broke out in the country immediately after the occupation in 1941 and continued several years after 1945. Over 70% of Yugoslavs killed during the Second World War were slaughtered by the citizens of former Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The terror unleashed by Tito in the first postwar decade in 1944-1954 was proportionally bloodier than Stalin repressions in the postwar USSR. The number of emigrants from Yugoslavia after the establishment of the Tito's dictatorship was proportionally equal to the number of refugees from Russia after the Civil War (1,5-2% of prewar population). In the post-war years, open manipulations with the obvious facts of World War II took place in Tito's Yugoslavia. In the 1990s the memories repressed during the communist years were set free and publicly debated. After the fall of the one-party system the memory of World War II was devalued. The memory of the Russian-Serbian military fraternity forged during the World War II began to revive in Serbia due to the foreign policy changes in 2008. In October 2008 the President of Russia paid a visit to Serbia which began the process of (re) construction of World War II in Serbian historical memory. According to the public opinion surveys, a positive attitude towards Russia and Russians in Serbia strengthens the memories on general resistance to Nazism with memories of fratricide during the civil conflict events of 1941-1945 still dominating in Serbian society.

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The Imperial Army Project

10.1093/oso/9780198704461.001.0001 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Douglas E. Delaney

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

British Empire ◽

Second World War ◽

World War ◽

Archival Research ◽

Military Cooperation ◽

High Point ◽

The Military ◽

Second World

How did British authorities manage to secure the commitment of large dominion and Indian armies that could plan, fight, shoot, communicate, and sustain themselves, in concert with the British Army and with each other, during the era of the two world wars? This is the primary line of inquiry for this study, which begs a couple of supporting questions. What did the British want from the dominion and Indian armies and how did they go about trying to get it? How successful were they in the end? Answering these questions requires a long-term perspective—one that begins with efforts to fix the armies of the British Empire in the aftermath of their desultory performance in South Africa (1899–1903) and follows through to the high point of imperial military cooperation during the Second World War. Based on multi-archival research conducted in six different countries on four continents, Douglas E. Delaney argues that the military compatibility of the British Empire armies was the product of a deliberate and enduring imperial army project, one that aimed at ‘Lego-piecing’ the armies of the empire, while, at the same time, accommodating the burgeoning autonomy of the dominions and even India. At its core, this book is really about how a military coalition worked.

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Contextualizing Discrimination of Religious and Linguistic Minorities in South Thailand

Muslim World Journal of Human Rights ◽

10.1515/mwjhr-2020-0025 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 0 (0) ◽

Author(s):

Christopher Mark Joll

Keyword(s):

High Tide ◽

Historical Context ◽

Historical Analysis ◽

Second World War ◽

Evidence Based ◽

Relative Importance ◽

World War ◽

Intractable Conflict ◽

Comparative Historical Analysis ◽

Second World

Abstract This article explores how scholarship can be put to work by specialists penning evidence-based policies seeking peaceful resolutions to long-standing, complex, and so-far intractable conflict in the Malay-Muslim dominated provinces of South Thailand. I contend that more is required than mere empirical data, and that the existing analysis of this conflict often lacks theoretical ballast and overlooks the wider historical context in which Bangkok pursued policies impacting its ethnolinguistically, and ethnoreligiously diverse citizens. I demonstrate the utility of both interacting with what social theorists have written about what “religion” and language do—and do not—have in common, and the relative importance of both in sub-national conflicts, and comparative historical analysis. The case studies that this article critically introduces compare chapters of ethnolinguistic and ethnoreligious chauvinism against a range of minorities, including Malay-Muslim citizens concentrated in the southern provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat. These include Buddhist ethnolinguistic minorities in Thailand’s Northeast, and Catholic communities during the second world war widely referred to as the high tide of Thai ethno-nationalism. I argue that these revealing aspects of the southern Malay experience need to be contextualized—even de-exceptionalized.

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The Spaces of Nostalgia(s) and the Politics of Belonging in Contemporary Chernivtsi, Western Ukraine

East European Politics and Societies and Cultures ◽

10.1177/0888325418777060 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 33 (1) ◽

pp. 218-237 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Karolina Koziura

Keyword(s):

Cultural Practices ◽

Second World War ◽

City Center ◽

Symbolic Resources ◽

The Social ◽

Western Ukraine ◽

The City ◽

Second World

This article is part of the special cluster titled Bukovina and Bukovinians after the Second World War: (Re)shaping and (re)thinking a region after genocide and ‘ethnic unmixing’, guest edited by Gaëlle Fisher and Maren Röger. This article explores ways in which Habsburg nostalgia has become an important factor in contemporary place-making strategies in the city of Chernivtsi, Western Ukraine. Through the analysis of diasporic homecomings, city center revitalization, and nationalist rhetoric surrounding the politics of monuments, I explore hybrid and diverse ways in which Habsburg nostalgia operates in a given setting. Rather than a static and homogenous form of place attachment, in Chernivtsi different cultural practices associated with Habsburg nostalgia coexist with each other and depending on the political context as well as the social position of the “nostalgic agents” manifest themselves differently. Drawing from my long-term ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that in order to fully understand individuals’ attachment to space, it is necessary to grasp both the subtle emotional ways in which the city is experienced by individuals as well as problematize the role of the built environment in the visualization of collective memory and emotions of particular groups. The focus on changing manifestations of the Habsburg nostalgia can bring then a better understanding of the range and scope of the city’s symbolic resources that might be mobilized for various purposes.

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Mobilising Canada: The National Resources Mobilization Act, the Department of National Defence, and Compulsory Military Service in Canada, 1940-1945

Journal of the Canadian Historical Association ◽

10.7202/031107ar ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

pp. 175-203 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Daniel Byers

Keyword(s):

Military Service ◽

Military Training ◽

Second World War ◽

Training System ◽

Compulsory Military Service ◽

Political Events ◽

Department Of National Defence ◽

Mackenzie King ◽

Second World

Abstract Compulsory military service took on the most organized, long-term form it has ever had in Canada during the Second World War. But few historians look beyond the politics of conscription to study the creation, administration or impact of a training system that affected more than 150,000 people. Faced with the Mackenzie King government's policy of conscripting manpower only for home defence, and their own need for overseas volunteers, Army leaders used conscripts raised under the National Resources Mobilization Act to meet both purposes. This paper explores the Army's role in creating and administering the compulsory military training system during the war, the pressures put on conscripts to volunteer for overseas service, and the increased resistance to volunteering that resulted by 1944. The consequences of the Army's management of conscription came very much to shape the political events that took place in 1944, and cannot be fully understood outside that context.

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Graduates and students of the Riga Polytechnicum / Riga Polytechnic Institute ‒ participants of the Proclamation of independent Republic of Latvia

History of Engineering Sciences and Institutions of Higher Education ◽

10.7250/hesihe.2018.002 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 2 ◽

pp. 12-23

Author(s):

Alīda Zigmunde ◽

Alvars Baldiņš

Keyword(s):

Second World War ◽

Polytechnic Institute ◽

World War ◽

Independent State ◽

Native Land ◽

The Republic ◽

Second World

In 2018, Latvia celebrates a hundred years since it became an independent state. One hundred years ago, on 18 November 1918, 38 members of the People’s Council of Latvia (further in the text ‒ the People’s Council) took part in the proclamation of Latvia. None of them experienced the restoration of the Republic of Latvia, and most of them died before the end of the Second World War. There were seven graduates of the Riga Polytechnicum (RP) / Riga Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and one student who did not receive a diploma from the institute among the participants in the founding act of the Republic of Latvia. Of the seven graduates four suffered repressions in 1941 and were taken to Siberia, two after the Second World War went into exile, one died in 1924. Some of the participants of the Proclamation of the Republic of Latvia have left written testimonies about the beginnings of the state’s foundation. All members of the People’s Council were reputable Latvian citizens, some of them were awarded the Order of Three Stars for meritorious service to native land.

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Antisemitism and the Historical Memory of the Second World War

Recovering a Voice ◽

10.2307/j.ctvhn0914.10 ◽

2015 ◽

pp. 181-237

Keyword(s):

Historical Memory ◽

Second World War ◽

World War ◽

Second World

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Rivalries Redoubled: Americans in the Levant

The Claims of Culture at Empire's End ◽

10.5871/bacad/9780197264478.003.0009 ◽

2010 ◽

Author(s):

Jennifer M. Dueck

Keyword(s):

Direct Contact ◽

Local Population ◽

Second World War ◽

World War ◽

American Government ◽

Grass Roots ◽

The Usa ◽

Cultural Networks ◽

Second World

This chapter considers American involvement during the war years. Unlike Britain, the USA had a sizeable social and cultural network in Syria and Lebanon, owing mainly to the work of American Protestant missions. This strong educational presence provided the American government with an institutional framework around which to develop stable long-term cultural networks. Moreover, the USA's reputation for political disinterestedness and anti-imperialism endeared it to much of the local population. Where the British used direct contact between their military officials and the French teaching establishments to hinder French cultural activities, American influence on education took place through grass-roots activism and diplomatic intervention. The ties that American educators had fostered with the local population for decades provided a foundation for powerful bilateral exchanges during the Second World War.

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