scholarly journals Telling Holocaust Jokes on German Public Television

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (20) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Armin Langer
Keyword(s):  
General Public ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Public Broadcasting ◽  
Public Television ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Talk Show ◽  
The Holocaust

Since 2015, Israeli-born German artist Shahak Shapira has initiated several satirical campaigns targeting antisemitism and racism in Germany and the country’s relation to the Holocaust. These interventions set Shapira’s career in motion, and in 2019 he landed a slot on the ZDF public broadcasting channel for the talk show Shapira Shapira. The show mocked antisemitism and far-right movements in Germany and reminded the viewers of the country’s history with Jews. His jokes about concentration camps and their contemporary perceptions proved to be especially effective. This article shows how Shahak Shapira and his show challenged the official narratives about Jews, antisemitism and the Holocaust. It argues that Shapira’s jokes might empower Jews and foster Holocaust awareness among the general public in Germany.

Dov Levin and Zvie A. Brown, The Story of an Underground: The Resistance of the Jews in Kovno in the Second World War, trans. Jessica Setbon. Jerusalem: Gefen, 2014. 496 pp.

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Armed Resistance ◽  
Second World ◽  
And Training

This chapter reviews the book The Story of an Underground: The Resistance of the Jews in Kovno in the Second World War (2014), by Dov Levin and Zvie A. Brown, translated by Jessica Setbon. The Story of an Underground is about the Jews of Kovno (Kaunas) who founded an underground movement during the Holocaust. The armed underground developed a plan to escape to the forests and join the partisans. The ghetto was liquidated in the summer of 1944. Many of the remaining Jews were sent to the Stutthof and Dachau concentration camps. The book highlights the dilemmas of Jewish armed resistance such as difficulties in obtaining weapons and training, some of the failures of the resistance, and some of the positive aspects of those who thought differently from members of the armed resistance.

Hitler, for Example: Registers of National Socialist Exemplarity in Contemporary Germany

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Nitzan Shoshan
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Life ◽  
Far Right ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Moral Exemplars ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich

Abstract This article examines whether and how the figure of Adolf Hitler in particular, and National Socialism more generally, operate as moral exemplars in today’s Germany. In conversation with similar studies about Mosely in England, Franco in Spain, and Mussolini in Italy, it seeks to advance our comparative understanding of neofascism in Europe and beyond. In Germany, legal and discursive constraints limit what can be said about the Third Reich period, while even far-right nationalists often condemn Hitler, for either the Holocaust or his military failure. Here I revise the concept of moral exemplarity as elaborated by Caroline Humphry to argue that Hitler and National Socialism do nevertheless work as contemporary exemplars, in at least three fashions: negativity, substitution, and extension. First, they stand as the most extreme markers of negative exemplarity for broad publics that understand them as illustrations of absolute moral depravity. Second, while Hitler himself is widely unpopular, Führer-substitutes such as Rudolf Hess provide alternative figures that German nationalists admire and seek to emulate. Finally, by extension to the realm of the ordinary, National Socialism introduces a cast of exemplars in the figures of loving grandfathers or anonymous fallen soldiers. The moral values for which they stand, I show, appear to be particularly significant for young nationalists. An extended, more open-ended notion of exemplarity, I conclude, can offer important insights about the lingering afterlife of fascist figures in the moral life of European nationalists today.

scholarly journals The Holocaust in Slovak Drama

2017 ◽  
pp. 197-210
Author(s):  
Dagmar Kročanová
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Rare Occurrence ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Slovak Society ◽  
Dramatic Characters ◽  
Second World

The article discusses several Slovak plays with the theme of the Holocaust; namely Ticho (Silence) by Juraj Váh, Holokaust (Holocaust) by Viliam Klimáček, and Rabínka (The Woman Rabbi) by Anna Grusková. It also briefly refers to Návrat do života (Return to Life) and Antigona a tí druhí (Antigone and Those Others) by Peter Karvaš, both mediating traumas from concentration camps. Two plays (Ticho and Návrat do života) were written and staged immediately after the Second World War. Karvaš’s Antigona is a rare occurrence of the theme in Slovak drama during the Communism (in the early 1960s), whereas Klimáček’s and Grusková’s plays are recent, both staged in 2012. The article focuses on several aspects of these five plays: on dramatic characters representing “victims”, “witnesses” and “culprits” (Panas, quoted in Gawliński 2007: 19); on references about and/or representation of the Holocaust in dramatic texts; and on the type of the conflict(s) in the plays. It also mentions specific approaches of respective authors when dealing with the theme of the Holocaust, as well as with the relevance of their reflection of the theme for Slovak society in respective periods.

scholarly journals ’PARLO…’: A CATALAN VOICE FROM THE HOLOCAUST: WRITER AND SURVIVOR OF MAUTHAUSEN JOAQUIM AMAT-PINIELLA SHATTERS FRANCOIST MANDATED SILENCE

2007 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-86
Author(s):  
Maureen Tobin Stanley
Keyword(s):  
Affective Responses ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Fictional World ◽  
Nazi Occupation ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Compensatory Damages ◽  
Sense Of Justice ◽  
Poetic Work

Following the retreat to France of half a million Spaniards in the winter of ’38/39 and as a result of the Nazi occupation, 10,000-15,000 Spaniards were deported to concentration camps. Among them was the writer Joaquim Amat-Piniella (1913-1974). His novel K.L. Reich, whose title alludes to the stamp impressed on all objects within the Nazi Reich’s concentration camps, creates a fictional world that reflects the realities within Mauthausen. That author writes in a draft (without date), that with this story his wish was not to focus on the horrors, but rather to document (“manar un record”), and to relate the historical catastrophes of “cruelty, misery, suffering, but also hope.” His poetic work Les llunyanies (The Far Away Lands) also reveals what Amat denoted as his “white hour,” an awakening of conscience and consciousness, the insistence on what is human and humane precisely because he was able to endure four and a half years of brutality. In addition to his novel and poetry, Amat-Piniella’s political efforts following his liberation promoted the reconciliarion that resulted from a sense of justice. With his poetry, this native of Manresa expressed the gamut of his affective responses to Mauthausen. With K.L. Reich, Amat-Piniella gives voice to the Republicans whose exile led to a concentrationary sentence. With his activism, he did everything possible to vindicate the ex-prisoners and obtain for them their due “indemnización” (compensatory damages) and thus overcome the obstacles imposed by the repressive forces. In spite of numerous hurdles, Amat was triumphant.

Review Essays

2002 ◽  
pp. 411-412
Keyword(s):  
General Public ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Holy See ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Second World ◽  
Seconde Guerre Mondiale

This chapter briefly discusses eleven volumes of archival material published by the Holy See’s Secretariat of State (external division) between 1965 and 1981. These volumes were entitled Actes et documents du Saint Siège relatifs à la seconde guerre mondiale (‘Records and Documents of the Holy See Relating to the Second World War’) and included very extensive correspondence, notes, and memoranda that throw much light on how the Vatican responded to the Holocaust, though this was not by any means the only theme dealt with in its pages. The documents were primarily in Italian, but also in French, German, English, and Latin. All the volumes except one had a separate introduction written in French. Though familiar to a small, select band of scholars, these volumes are not easily accessible to the general public or widely known.

The Pink Triangle

2021 ◽  
pp. 125-162
Author(s):  
Craig Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
Gay Men ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Gay Liberation ◽  
The West ◽  
German State ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nazi Persecution

This chapter is about how the memory of persecution decisively shaped 1970s homosexual politics. First, the chapter explores the ‘rediscovery’ of the Nazi persecution of homosexuals, explaining how the model of the Holocaust was sometimes appropriated as part of this process. The chapter then shows how memory of this persecution, combined with the experience of contemporary discrimination, produced a profound alienation on the part of left-wing gay men from the West German state. Following an analysis of how the pink triangle became a transnational symbol, this chapter evaluates discourses of victimhood in gay liberation. Though the pink triangle was reclaimed from its origins as a badge of shame in the concentration camps, it never became an unequivocal symbol of pride. Finally, the chapter explores how, in the late 1970s, activists of all stripes, the commercial gay press, and the first openly gay parliamentary candidates coalesced around making the history of past persecution a central plank in their efforts to insert themselves into the West German mainstream.

Do media systems matter?

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-63
Author(s):  
José Santana-Pereira
Keyword(s):  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Public Broadcasting ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Public Television ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Political Pluralism ◽  
World Association ◽  
The Press ◽  
Media Systems ◽  
The Empirical Analysis

Abstract This article reports a comparative analysis of the media’s political agenda setting capacity in 27 European media systems, aimed at testing the hypothesis that the magnitude of this phenomenon is moderated by factors such as development of the press markets, journalist professionalization, strength of public television or political pluralism. The empirical analysis relies on data collected by the expert survey European Media Systems Survey, the World Association of Newspapers, the European Audiovisual Observatory, and the research project Providing an Infrastructure for Research on Electoral Democracy in the European Union (PIREDEU). Results show that political agenda setting is perceived as more common in press markets in which newspapers work as means of horizontal communication (and are, as subsystem, politically imbalanced), but that journalist professionalization and strength of public broadcasting systems foster political agenda setting effects.

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