scholarly journals Returning to the Past: The Germans as a Historical Trauma in Contemporary Czech Prose

Porównania ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-76
Author(s):  
Alena Šidáková Fialová
Keyword(s):  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Family Saga ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Second World

This study describes reflections of wartime and postwar historical trauma in contemporary Czech prose, taking into account the issues surrounding Central Europe, which entirely overlap with the traditional confrontation between the Czechs and Germans. It also includes the changing reflections on Germany and the Germans, the Second World War and the subsequent expulsion found in the prose work of the new millennium, the unifying topic being deemed to be the issue of the ambiguous national identification of the protagonists, the detabooization of previously hushed-up subjects and the subject of the Holocaust, particularly in the family saga genre. It also takes into account groups of texts focusing on reflections of anti-German resistance activities, both in the genre of the novel (with detective elements) and in output on the boundaries between fiction and factographic prose.

scholarly journals Discourse of the postgeneration: Remembrance and identity of the descendants of the perpetrators and the victims of the holocaust

2012 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 78-90
Author(s):  
Julija Matejic
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Temporal Distance ◽  
World War ◽  
Professional Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Family ◽  
Perpetrators And Victims ◽  
Second World

By analyzing the role of the family in the process of inter/transgenerational inheritance of trauma and memory (remembrance), the paper is an attempt at providing an answer to how the un-experienced past affects the lives of the descendants of the direct perpetrators and victims of the Holocaust, or rather, how it affects the identity forming of the so-called postgeneration. As the temporal distance from the Second World War increases, and as the number of those with immediate experiences and memories decreases, the expressions like memory and remembrance begin to lose their conventional meaning. As the research shows, even with the lack of first-hand experience, the descendents of those who survived mass traumatic events are subjectively deeply attached to the memory of the previous generation (so much so that they label that attachment as remembrance, and they feel their parents? traumas as their own). Given the fact that it is not possible to physically transfer the trauma and memory to descendants, the paper analyzes and compares the terminology that the professional literature has adopted so far, i.e. secondary traumatization (in case of a child), tertian traumatization (in case of a grandchild), as well as echoes of the trauma and postmemory. The main thesis of this paper is that echoes of the memory and echoes of the trauma cause the so-called identity crisis of the Holocaust postgeneration, that is, only facing the past leads to postgeneration?s coming to terms with it.

scholarly journals Polska literatura najnowsza i Holokaust – edukacyjny potencjał fikcji?

2020 ◽  
pp. 372-388
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Czyżak
Keyword(s):  
Mental Hospital ◽  
Main Part ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

The article contains considerations regarding memory of the Holocaust in Polish contemporary prose and analyses the arguments for and against fictitious representations of theShoah. The author discusses the changes in treating fiction which narrates the history of Jewish people during the Second World War – from works of fiction published after the war (e.g. Wielki Tydzień by Jerzy Andrzejewski) to popular thrillers written in the 21st century. The main part of this article is devoted to a novel Tworki written by Marek Bieńczyk in 1999, telling a story of young people – Poles and Jews – employed in a mental hospital during German occupation. The novel was at the centre stage of discussion about relationship between fiction and the Shoah theme, yet the author of the article argues that it may serve as an important stepping stone in exemplifying history. This literary vision of the Holocaust (defined as “pastoral thriller”) shows educational possibilities of fiction.

scholarly journals THE HOLOCAUST AS AN ETERNAL LESSON FOR MANKIND (Education of resistance to racism and xenophobia on the basis of contemporary foreign fiction and cinema)

2018 ◽  
pp. 84-94
Author(s):  
Olha Nikolenko
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Main Role ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Second World

The theme of the Second World War and the Holocaust is one of the topical themes of contemporary fiction and cinema. Outstanding writers and directors of our time are turning to the embodiment of this tragic topic. They set themselves the task of comprehending the past and giving the third millennium generation spiritual experience that will help young people combat the manifestations of racism and xenophobia in the modern world. The article deals with the novel “Schindler’s Ark” by Th. Keneally, “The Children of Noah” by E.-E. Schmitt, “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” by J. Boyne, “The Book Tief” by M. Zuzak and movies that are based on these books. In the genres of a historic novel and psychological story based on the documents, the writers revealed the complicated social processes in Europe during 1930-1940. The writers described the historic events within the life of ordinary people who lived in the terrible circumstances of the totalitarian system. The symbols playedthe main role in revealing the subject of the Holocaust in the novels and films about the Second World War and the Holocaust. Thomas Keneally continued the traditions of romantic irony and added to it some social, psychological and philosophical meanings. The irony in the novel by Thomas Keneally “Schindler’s Ark” plays an important role in the investigation of European society in the tragic period of the 20thcentury. In the novels by Thomas Keneally irony takes place on the different levels such as plot, composition, imagology, time and space, style and language. T. Keneally broadens the meaning of irony and its function in the documentary and historic novel. The irony in the novel “Schindler’s Ark” maintains some main functions: social for explaining the anti-humanistic essence of fascism, war, racial hatred, research in investigating the tragedy of the Holocaust and its consequences, psychological in revealing the psychology of people of different social class, philosophical in discussing the important issues of human life in the word, axiological dealing with the values of mercy, morality, the ability to resist violence. T. Kenealy represents different forms of irony such as the irony of the narrator, the irony of the author, the combination of controversial documentary facts, the contradiction of phenomenon and notions, the comparison of the different points of view, self-irony, irony as inner enlightenment, catharsis. In the novel “Schindler’s Ark” by T. Kenealy the author of the article analyzed the traditions of world literature such as B. Brecht within the motive of personal financial profit from the war, N. Gogol within the motive of buying and selling the dead souls. The writer represented these motives in his own way as the events took place during the real historic time, and he found the inner power in people of past century to keep their life, humanity and culture on the Earth. The irony is a unique feature of T. Keneally’s individual style and it enriched the genre of novel.

scholarly journals Looking Forwards through the Past: Bukovina’s “Return to Europe” after 1989–1991

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 196-217 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaëlle Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
German Language ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
World War ◽  
Travel And Tourism ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Cultural Connections ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
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. Over the course of the 1990s, the region of Bukovina, once the easternmost province of the Austrian half of the Habsburg Empire, gained unprecedented visibility abroad. This was the case in German-language space in particular. There, Bukovina became the subject of newspaper articles, books, films, and exhibitions; travel and tourism to the area developed; political agreements and partnerships were even established between German or Austrian and “Bukovinian” regions. These initiatives, across “East and West,” across the former Iron Curtain, were meant to bridge the former divide. But many were based on proclaimed historical and cultural connections: as the widespread slogan read, Bukovina “returned to Europe.” In the process, historical Bukovina, by then split between Romania and a newly independent Ukraine, was not so much rediscovered as resurrected, reconstructed, and reinvented on the basis of existing ideas and assumptions. This raises a range of questions: why Bukovina, why in these countries, and why then? In this article, I identify different groups of actors, trends, and phases in the popular resurgence of Bukovina after 1989–1991 and highlight their origins, differences, and interactions. By tracing the activities and narratives of some of the key actors of the reinvention of the region after 1989–1991, this article explores the tensions between visions of the past and visions of the future in Germany, Austria, and Europe after 1989. It thereby also contributes to a critical reflection on the meaning of the wider “return to Europe” of Central and Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War.

scholarly journals The Struggle of a Geisha in Maintaining Her Pride as Seen in Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-13
Author(s):  
Ramiyati Handriyani ◽  
Amelia Yuli Astuti
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Structural Theory ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Female Character ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Basic Ideas ◽  
Second World

This thesis is entitled "The Struggle of Geisha in Maintaining Her Pride as seen in Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha" seen from the perspective of structuralism. This research is limited on basic ideas that relate to the observation into three questions as follow: (1) how is geisha’s life before World War II (2) how was the geisha struggle after World War II, and (3) how is geisha maintaining her  pride before and after second world war. The objectives of this research were (1) to analyze Sayuri’s life before World War II (2) to explain Sayuri's life after World War II, and (3) to study and explain the types of struggles in maintaining her pride by Sayuri as the main female character , to oppose and think of Sayuri's struggle to fight exploitation and significant meaning, and to find out and explain the depiction of Sayuri's struggle. The theory used is from Gough and Gautam about the structural analysis used to answer the purpose of this research. For the method of data analysis, the author uses systematic procedures with novel understanding and structural theory. Data collection techniques use documentation techniques in finding data that is relevant to the subject of analysis. The object of this research is a novel entitled Memoirs of a Geisha written by Arthur Golden in 1997 and the data are sentences related to the struggle of a woman found in the novel. Sayuri as the main female character in the novel represents women in general who can gain their independence and have a smart and brave attitude to take the important decisions in their life.

What if a girl in the Holocaust had Instagram? Éva’s Story as a case of indirect translation

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayelet Kohn ◽  
Rachel Weissbrod
Keyword(s):  
General Framework ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Unique Case ◽  
Written Text ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Second World

This article deals with the adaptation of a written text – the diary of 13-year-old Éva Heyman who died in the Holocaust – into a series of Instagram stories, joined to create a 50-minute film. We employ translation studies and the concept of ‘indirect translation’ to investigate this unique case in which a genre characterized by its ephemerality is used to commemorate and perpetuate the past. The project, which caused a furore because Instagram was considered inappropriate for dealing with such a grave subject, was motivated by the desire to transmit the diary to contemporary audiences and retain its relevance for them. We have found that the diary served as a general framework, but its contents and the character of Éva that emerges from it were overshadowed by two factors: turning Éva into a contemporary youngster, so as to attract today’s youth; and relying on Hollywood traditions of filming the Second World War and the Holocaust.

Ari Folman’s Other War

2017 ◽  
pp. 77-92
Author(s):  
Giulia Miller
Keyword(s):  
Second Generation ◽  
Holocaust Survivors ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Children Of Holocaust Survivors ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Israeli Cinema ◽  
Film Making ◽  
Second World

This chapter looks at Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir within the context of the Holocaust. It recounts the 1980s and 1990s that marked the emergence of second-generation Israeli cinema that was specifically produced by the children of Holocaust survivors. It also reviews the second-generation Israel films that address the subject of war and critique the Zionist project, which intimates that it had simply replaced the trauma of the Holocaust with a new and different kind of Israeli trauma. It also mentions Ari Folman, a child of survivors, who began making films during the period of second-generation Israeli cinema. The chapter describes Waltz with Bashir as an example of second-generation film-making and as a film that explicitly deals with Lebanon, but implicitly engages with events of the Second World War. It analyzes the function of the Holocaust in greater detail within the context of Israeli cinema of the early millennium and the cinema of second-generation film-makers.

The Memory of Europe’s Age of Catastrophe, 1914–2014

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Mercer
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Cultural Struggle ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

The enormous death toll of the twentieth-century world wars created a cultural struggle over their meaning. States, institutions, and individuals developed conflicting memories, which shifted with the political trends of the post-war eras. After the First World War nationalist narratives promoted by states did not automatically win unanimous adherence, but the apparently apolitical language of loss and mourning was most successful where the war was least controversial or where national narratives were unavailable. While memory of the Second World War and the Holocaust has often been discussed in terms of forgetting, there was no amnesia but rather a selective appropriation of the past. Myths of victimhood and resistance proved popular across Europe and persisted despite periodic engagements with the past. Germany’s acknowledgement of the Nazi past is the most thorough, while most Europeans states now more easily remember the Second World War than their colonial heritage.

scholarly journals “The human suffering unmapped”. Joanna Bator’s prose on Wałbrzych in the context of Polish post-resettlement literature of the 1990–2010s

2021 ◽  
pp. 275-295
Author(s):  
Irina E. Adelgeym ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Second Phase ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Literary Geography ◽  
Second World

The article is devoted to the depiction of Wałbrzych in the prose of the modern Polish writer Joanna Bator (b. 1968), referring to the generation of children of migrants to the Returned Territories. Driven by the need to re-root in the space of childhood from the perspective of post-memory, they turned to the fate of their ancestors and of former inhabitants of these territories, significantly enriching and expanding the literary geography of Poland. The historical trauma, to the therapy of which the work of these writers serves, is in fact a delayed trauma of migration. It is the experience of the children of people who built their homes on the ruins of lives (both their own and others’) and whose everyday life constantly revealed traces of the expelled Other. In other words, it was the experience of the Second World War. It was lived through not in reality, but in the form of destructive consequences for the psyche and identity. For various reasons, genuine artistic comprehension and realization of the autopsychotherapeutic potential of the unique space of the Returned Territories became possible only after 1989. J. Bator’s prose belongs to the second phase of this process, when the perspective of a nostalgic archaeologist who carefully searches, reads and glorifies the traces of the past (both German and Polish), is devoid of idealization and replaced by the perspective of rigid reflection on the doubling of historical trauma in the space of the Returned Territories.

scholarly journals Debating the Greek 1940s: histories and memories of a conflicting past since the end of the Second World War

HISTOREIN ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 8
Author(s):  
Manos Avgeridis
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
First Century ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Politics Of History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Core Issue ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Second World

The article examines aspects of the long history of a major field of public debate in the second half of the twentieth century, that of the Greek 1940s, taking as its starting point the recent “history war” in Greece. It attempts to trace histories and memories from the immediate postwar years and to place them within a broader process: the historisation of the Second World War in Europe. In that context, the article begins by exploring one part of the initial efforts to form a European history of the resistance, from the perspective of the Greek case. Then, the focus is transferred to Greece, and to the mapping of a constellation of different memory and history communities, and the practices of history of the same period: the activities of veteran partisans and eye-witnesses with regard to their contribution to the formation of the first narratives on the war is a core issue at this level. Last, by following the developments in the academy and the politics of history during the Metapolitefsi, the focus returns to the current discussion, attempting a first approach to the subject through the strings that connect it with the past and, at the same time, as a debate of the twenty-first century. 

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