Postcatastrophic entanglement? Contemporary Czech writers remember the holocaust and post-war ethnic cleansing

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-94
Author(s):  
Anja Tippner
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
World War ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
Memory Theory ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Ethnic Germans ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Post War

The last two decades have seen a rising interest in the Holocaust and the expulsion of ethnic Germans after World War II in Czech literature. Novels by Hana Androníková, Radka Denemarková, Magdalena Platzová, Kateřina Tučková, and Jáchym Topol share a quest for a new poetics of remembrance. Informed by contemporary discussions about Czech memory politics, these novels are characterised by spectral visions of Germans and Jews alike, a dichotomy of trauma and nostalgia, and an understanding of Czech history as postcatastrophically entangled and thus calling for multidirectional forms of remembrance. In this respect, literary memorial forms compensate for the absence of other memorial forms addressing these topics through a transnational lens. The interaction of different historical points of view is achieved by a time frame extending from the war to the present day and stressing the intercultural dynamics of Czechs, Jews, and Germans retroactively. In order to illustrate this entanglement, authors make use of popular genres, such as romance, and create texts shaped by genre fluidity, memory theory, documentary practices, and concepts of transnationality.

scholarly journals PROCESSES OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY IN CULTURALLY HETEROGENEOUS CITIES ON THE EXAMPLES OF BIAŁYSTOK AND LUBLIN / KOLEKTYVINĖS ATMINTIES PROCESAI KULTŪRIŠKAI HETEROGENIŠKUOSE MIESTUOSE: BALSTOGĖS IR LIUBLINO ATVEJAI

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-25
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Sztop-Rutkowska ◽  
Maciej Białous
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
World War ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Post War ◽  
The City

The article presents the results of empirical research concerning the collective memory in Białystok and Lublin – two largest cities in the Eastern Poland. Before World War II they were multi-ethnic cities with big and important communities of Poles, Jews, Germans, Ukrainians and Belarusians. Their contemporary ethnic structure was formed as a result of World War II, in particular the Holocaust, post-war border shifts and intense migration from the countryside to the city in the next decades. Both Białystok and Lublin are an example of the typical cities in Central and Eastern Europe, which after World War II the memory politics was built on in the completely new political and social circumstances. We aim to confront the contemporary official memory of the cities, transmitted by major public institutions and the vernacular memories of their present inhabitants. Straipsnyje pristatomi Balstogės ir Liublino – dviejų didžiausių Rytų Lenkijos miestų kolektyvinės atminties empirinio tyrimo rezultatai. Prieš Antrąjį pasaulinį karą tai buvo daugiaetniniai miestai, turintys dideles ir svarbias lenkų, žydų, vokiečių, ukrainiečių ir baltarusių bendruomenes. Šių miestų šiuolaikinė struktūra susiformavo kaip Antrojo pasaulinio karo, ypač holokausto, sienų persislinkimų pokario metu ir vėlesniais dešimtmečiais vykusios intensyvios migracijos iš kaimo į miestus, rezultatas. Tiek Balstogė, tiek Liublinas yra tipiški Vidurio ir Rytų Europos miestų pavyzdžiai, kurių atminties politika po Antrojo pasaulinio karo buvo kuriama visiškai naujomis politinėmis ir socialinėmis aplinkybėmis. Straipsnyje siekiama palyginti šiuolaikinę oficialią šių miestų atmintį, kurios reguliavimas perduotas pagrindinėms viešosioms institucijoms, ir dabartinių miestų gyventojų vietines atmintis.

“To Resolve the Ukrainian Problem Once and for All”: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ukrainians in Poland, 1943–1947

1999 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 86-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Snyder
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Post War

The complicated and violent interactions between Ukrainians and Poles during and after World War II have been the subject of competing Ukrainian and Polish historical interpretations. This article sifts through the historical evidence to determine why Ukrainian and Polish memories of that period are so much at odds. The fate of the contested territories of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia was decided ultimately by the Soviet Union, which imposed new borders on Poland. Once those borders had been established, the transfer of Poles from the newly enlarged Soviet Ukraine and the forced removal of Ukrainians from eastern Poland consolidated an “ethnically cleansed” post-war order.

scholarly journals Entangled Bystanders: Multidimensional Trauma of Ethnic Cleansing and Mass Violence in Eastern Galicia

2021 ◽  
pp. 119-148
Author(s):  
Anna Wylegała
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Exceptional Case ◽  
Ethnic Violence ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
World War ◽  
Mass Violence ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Mass Killings

AbstractThis chapter focuses on the multidimensional trauma of witnesses to mass ethnic violence. The author analyzes the personal experiences of civilians during World War II in Eastern Galicia (once a multi-ethnic borderland region: before 1939 in Poland, now in Ukraine). What makes Galicia an exceptional case study is the continuity of mass violence of different kinds and against different groups of the population: Soviet repression and mass killings, the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing of Poles committed by Ukrainian nationalists, and conflict between Soviet authorities and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Drawing on existing concepts from the field of bystanders’ studies, for example, Michael Rothberg’s implicated subject and Omer Bartov’s communal genocide, the author proposes to understand the trauma of Galician bystanders as a complex and multidimensional experience, psychological as well as collective and communal.

The memorial’s arc: Between Berlin’s Denkmal and New York City’s 9/11 Memorial

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E Young
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Vietnam Veterans ◽  
World War ◽  
Ground Zero ◽  
Vietnam Veterans Memorial ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Post War ◽  
Negative Form

Without direct reference to the Holocaust or its contemporary “counter-monuments,” Michael Arad’s design for the National 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero is nonetheless inflected by an entire post-war generation’s formal preoccupation with loss, absence, and regeneration. This is also a preoccupation they share with post-Holocaust poets, philosophers, artists, and composers: how to articulate a void without filling it in? How to formalize irreparable loss without seeming to repair it? In this article, I imagine an arc of memorial forms over the last 70 years or so and how, in fact, post-World War I and World War II memorials have evolved along a discernible path, all with visual and conceptual echoes of their predecessors. As Maya Lin’s design for the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial was informed by earlier World War I and even World War II memorial vernaculars, her design also broke the mold that made Holocaust counter-memorials and other negative-form memorials possible.

scholarly journals EXISTENTIAL MOTIFS IN SLOVAK LITERATURE WITH THE ISSUE OF THE SHOAH

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-17
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
World War ◽  
Lost Generation ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Post War ◽  
Selection Of

The study deals with existential motifs in selected fiction and memoir works of Slovak literature, which thematically focus on World War II. and the Holocaust of the Slovak Jewish minority. As we considered the fact that many works of Slovak provenance with this issue were published (especially after 1989), we focused only on a selection of those works, which contains fiction and non-fiction literature and memoir works written by surviving Jews, in which they gave valuable testimony about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism of the war-torn Slovak state and post-war society. Based on the interpretation and analysis of Shoah-themed works, we detect recurring existential motifs: degradation of human dignity, feelings of guilt for one's own survival, Auschwitz traumas, and the motif of The Lost Generation.

Physically absent, visually present: Joachim Schumacher’s photographs of Germany’s Ruhr Valley

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 392-410
Author(s):  
Frances Guerin
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
International Context ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
New Topographics ◽  
Post War ◽  
Ruhr Region ◽  
Ruhr Valley

This article examines the photographs of Joachim Schumacher for their vision of a landscape haunted by the forgotten, the silenced and the increasingly invisible lives erased by the re-articulation of Germany’s Ruhr region. The article places Schumacher’s work in relationship to post-war German photography, both that which imagines the memories of World War II and the Holocaust, as well as the 1980s urban photographs of the Düsseldorf School photographers. Within this context, Schumacher’s photographs are understood for their location of place and history on the revitalized Ruhr landscape. In addition, the article considers the photographs in relationship to the New Topographics to demonstrate their simultaneous placelessness. In this international context, Schumacher’s photographs can be seen as indicative of a European placelessness that has emerged in the wake of the closure of mining and industry.

scholarly journals The psychiatric after-effects of the Holocaust on the second generation

1998 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 755-760 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. LEVAV ◽  
R. KOHN ◽  
S. SCHWARTZ
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Community Settings ◽  
World War ◽  
After Effects ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Mediating Mechanisms ◽  
Separation Phase ◽  
Post War ◽  
Past Experiences

Numerous studies conducted in clinical and community settings by researchers from different countries over a period of almost five decades, have conclusively shown protracted and disabling psychiatric effects among World War II Holocaust victims, formerly known as the concentration camp syndrome (e.g. Matussek, 1975; Eitinger & Krell, 1985; Eitinger & Major, 1993; Levav, 1998). The multiple and brutal trauma endured by the survivors during the war years were further compounded by earlier systematic discrimination, and by exhausting socio-political events and pogroms that followed liberation by the Allies. In this latter period survivors had to learn the fate of their spouses, children, parents, other relatives and friends. Hastily contracted post-war marriages were likely intended both to cope with feelings of extreme loneliness and to recreate a social support group that would buttress survival.Given the above, many observers hypothesized that, among other impaired abilities, survivors would evidence a deficit in their parenting functions. As one author noted 25 years ago: ‘Survivors are now beginning to bring their children to our clinics. In retrospect one should not be surprised at this because of the nature and severity of the psychological effects of the persecution, and because the emotional state of the parents has some bearing on the development of the child …’ (Sigal, 1971). Several mediating mechanisms that affected the survivors' family as a functioning unit were postulated by the examining clinicians, such as over-involvement, withdrawal, inability to exert control, parental affective unavailability, undue degree of preoccupation with past experiences, and an inability to cope with mourning and bereavement (Klein, 1973; Levine, 1982; Sigal & Weinfeld, 1989). Other imputed mechanisms referred to psychological processes taking place during child development, such as difficulties in the individuation-separation phase (Freyberg, 1980).

Anti-Jewish Incidents in the Lublin Region in the Early Years after World War II

2008 ◽  
pp. 177-205
Author(s):  
Adam Kopciowski
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Jewish Population ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Early Years ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Condition ◽  
Ritual Murder ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
Post War ◽  
Anti Jewish

In the early years following World War II, the Lublin region was one of the most important centres of Jewish life. At the same time, during 1944-1946 it was the scene of anti-Jewish incidents: from anti-Semitic propaganda, accusation of ritual murder, economic boycott, to cases of individual or collective murder. The wave of anti-Jewish that lasted until autumn of 1946 resulted in a lengthy and, no doubt incomplete, list of 118 murdered Jews. Escalating anti-Jewish violence in the immediate post-war years was one of the main factors, albeit not the only one, to affect the demography (mass emigration) and the socio-political condition of the Jewish population in the Lublin region

The Unassailable Self: Freud's Image Among Post-war American Intellectuals

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Jenness
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
External Force ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Human Being ◽  
World War ◽  
The Us ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Way

This paper explores the way American intellectuals depicted Sigmund Freud during the peak of popularity and prestige of psychoanalysis in the US, roughly the decade and a half following World War II. These intellectuals insisted upon the unassailability of Freud's mind and personality. He was depicted as unsusceptible to any external force or influence, a trait which was thought to account for Freud's admirable comportment as a scientist, colleague and human being. This post-war image of Freud was shaped in part by the Cold War anxiety that modern individuality was imperilled by totalitarian forces, which could only be resisted by the most rugged of selves. It was also shaped by the unique situation of the intellectuals themselves, who were eager to position themselves, like the Freud they imagined, as steadfastly independent and critical thinkers who would, through the very clarity of their thought, lead America to a more robust democracy.

Painted Memories

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 26-29
Author(s):  
mayer kirshenblatt ◽  
barbara kirshenblatt-gimblett
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
Daily Diet ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Yom Kippur ◽  
Root Vegetables

Mayer Kirshenblatt remembers in words and paintings the daily diet of Jews in Poland before the Holocaust. Born in 1916 in Opatóów (Apt in Yiddish), a small Polish city, this self-taught artist describes and paints how women bought chickens from the peasants and brought them to the shoykhet (ritual slaughterer), where they plucked the feathers; the custom of shlogn kapores (transferring one's sins to a chicken) before Yom Kippur; and the role of herring and root vegetables in the diet, especially during the winter. Mayer describes how his family planted and harvested potatoes on leased land, stored them in a root cellar, and the variety of dishes prepared from this important staple, as well as how to make a kratsborsht or scratch borsht from the milt (semen sack) of a herring. In the course of a forty-year conversation with his daughter, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, who also interviewed Mayer's mother, a picture emerges of the daily, weekly, seasonal, and holiday cuisine of Jews who lived in southeastern Poland before World War II.

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