scholarly journals Historical Memory of World War II Refugees: Overcoming Cultural Trauma

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 97-100
Author(s):  
Marina N. Potemkina ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 142-156
Author(s):  
A. Yu. Timofeev

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.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 17-50
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Y. Aleshina ◽  
Mark Y. Blokh ◽  
Tatiana A. Razuvaeva ◽  
Hedwig Wagner ◽  
Anton V. Kompleev

The article is devoted to an overview of studies on the discursive embodiment of historical memory, particularly, in the media. The research is aimed at the overview and systematization of, predominantly, international and Russian concepts of historical memory in academic literature. The scientific significance of research results is determined by the possibility of clarifying the definitions of historical memory in the process of systematizing the existing overseas and domestic studies. With that, the “starting point” of historical memory in this research are global political conflicts, particularly, World War I and World War II. The focus of research interest is the memory of the world wars which is discursively expressed in modern media space with various pragmatic tasks. Analysis of media materials allows for revealing the mechanisms of using historical memory as a tool for creating assessment and images while covering World War I and World War II. The research makes it possible to obtain a general discursive picture of the mass consciousness and, what is especially, important, to get specific data on the linguistic “content” of historical memory reflected in online media. The article is addressed to researchers in various fields of the Humanities, journalists and a wide circle of readers who are interested in the problem.


Menotyra ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalia Vasiliūnienė

The newly identified goldsmiths’ works of East Prussia are presented in the article: a chalice from Kaunas St. Cross Church forged by Otto Schwerdfeger, a master in Königsberg, in 1704 (?), a ciborium from Vilnius St. Apostles Peter and Paul Church made by goldsmith Johann Kownatzky in Tilsit in the 1760–80s, and a monstrance from Valakbūdis Church made by Michael Greiffenhagen II, a master from Tilsit, in 1795 (?). After the World War II, East Prussia was annexed by the Soviet Union. Destruction of the region and its historical memory and enormous losses of the cultural heritage partly resulted in knowledge gaps in Lithuania about the goldsmithing in this region. For the knowledge of goldsmith history in East Prussia, works by Eugen von Czihak, a German scientist, based on the information collected before the First and Second World Wars are very important. The goldsmithing of Eastern Prussia is pretty seldom mentioned in the Lithuanian historiography. Only sparsely survived works by Königsberg, Tilsit and Klaipėda (Memel) masters from the 17th – 19th century have been published. On the contrary, the context of Lithuanian goldsmith history is described based on data provided by the German writings. According to our knowledge, the goldsmith heritage from Königsberg predominates in Lithuania. Not a few goldsmith works from Tilsit were also identified in Lithuania. The works of Eastern Prussian goldsmiths are of particular value. Because of the dramatic fate of Königsberg region, the survived number of goldsmith works throughout Europe is relatively low.


2020 ◽  
pp. 205-228
Author(s):  
Karen Westphal Eriksen

This article has as its topic the Danish artist Dan Sterup-Hansen (1918–1995) and his paintings and prints on the subject of blind people with canes as well as works related to these. Sterup-Hansen was active as an artist from a young to an old age, but made a significant artistic contribution in the decades following World War II. During this period, he explored a number of themes related to cold war anxiety and the cultural trauma of the World War II. These themes centre on the human body and a phenomenological perception of the world. They are humanitarian in spirit and are related to Sterup-Hansen’s left-wing political views of solidarity, humanism, and advocacy for change and reconstruction after the World War II.


Author(s):  
Hannah Pollin-Galay

This book reassesses contemporary Holocaust testimony, focusing on the power of language and place to shape personal narrative. Oral histories of Lithuanian Jews serve as the textual base for this exploration. Comparing the remembrances of Holocaust victims who remained in Lithuania with those who resettled in Israel and North America after World War II, the analysis reveals meaningful differences based on where they chose to live out their postwar lives and whether their language of testimony was Yiddish, English, or Hebrew. The differences between their testimonies relate to notions of love, justice, community—and how the Holocaust did violence to these aspects of the self. The argument illuminates the multiple places that the Holocaust can fill in Jewish historical memory. Beyond the particular Jewish case, the book raises fundamental questions about how people draw from their linguistic and physical environments in order to understand their own suffering. The analysis challenges the assumption of a universal vocabulary for describing and healing human pain.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-41
Author(s):  
Mirosław Chałubiński

The aim of the article is to recall and present the political and intellectual figure of J. Hochfeld (1911–1966) against the background of the contemporary – often ahistorical – attempts to reconstruct historical memory in Poland, totally condemning the period of the Polish People’s Republic. My objective is to use the example of J. Hochfeld to demonstrate the complexity of lives and choices of those who as the members of the non-communist left were active in the interwar period, during World War II and the Polish People’s Republic. This article also presents Hochfeld’s theoretical organizational contribution to the development of the Polish post-war sociology, as well as topicality of the issues he tackled, e.g. political sociology, the contemporaneity of the idea of historical materialism and social-democratic socialism.


2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-84
Author(s):  
Susan Corbesero

AbstractDuring the troublous post-war and post-Soviet periods, the iconography of Stalin has served as a powerful interpreter of the past. Since World War II, portraits and attendant mass reproductions of the notorious Soviet leader have conveyed a historical memory that fused the triumphalist mythology of the Second World War and the cult of Stalin. Appropriated for political, national, nostalgic and commercial purposes, these iconic vehicles have functioned as integral “vectors of memory” in times of political change. In that vein, this article traces the remarkably dynamic and influential life of Aleksandr Laktionov's Portrait of I. V. Stalin (1949) in order to illuminate how its meaning and use, past and present, reflects and refracts the political landscape that deploys it.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (14) ◽  
pp. 243-247
Author(s):  
Natal'ya Savchuk ◽  
Maksim Velichko ◽  
Roman Istratov

The article deals with the events of international politics in Europe in the 1930th. The article analyzes the position of the States of the USSR, Poland and Germany on the issues of conclud-ing non-aggression treaties on the eve of world war II. The research is based on the analysis of pub-lished secret materials of Russian archives. It is concluded that in the modern period, in order to pre-serve historical memory, strengthen cooperation and mutual understanding between peoples, it is nec-essary to further publish archival documents of all States, discuss controversial issues, and avoid ideological stereotypes.


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