scholarly journals The power of memory and the heritage of the World War Two in When You Return by Anna Mitgutsch

2021 ◽  
Vol 145 ◽  
pp. 45-62
Author(s):  
Aneta Jurzysta

The article is devoted to the image of World War Two in When You Return (Wenn du wiederkommst) (2010) by Anna Mitgutsch, a moving story of love, trust and betrayal, devoted to the protagonist’s response to the sudden death of her Jewish-American ex-husband Jerome. The article discusses the attitude to Jewish roots and the problem of remembering past events, especially memories of World War Two. In her novel the author combines family history with the history of the country, refers to the issue of cultural and collective memory, and especially to the specific Austrian memory of the events of the Holocaust and the long-standing tendency to diminish the guilt and to negate the participation of Austrians in war crimes.

Prospects ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 429-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Mazzenga

September 1945 saw comic-strip star “Orphan Annie” engaged in a debate over popular media with “Professor Pollyanna.” The Professor and his spouse, known to Annie as “Uncle George” and “Aunt Sonja,” were one of many adult couples that took the eleven-year-old orphan into their home throughout the history of the comic strip Little Orphan Annie. Temporary guardians like Uncle George and Aunt Sonja moved in and out of the strip on a regular basis, functioning as a foil for young Annie, the spokeschild of her creator Harold Gray, to express her opinions about the world. In this episode, Annie was puzzled by Uncle George's distaste for the tabloid-style newspaper fare she herself devotedly consumed daily. He “never reads th' funnies — or anything 'bout crime or sin or war horrors!” Annie observes incredulously. Professor Pollyanna, it seemed, only read editorials and, in Annie's mocking terms, “sweetness and light stories.” Annie later mulls over the matter with a sympathetic Aunt Sonja in an attempt to understand his views further. But Aunt Sonja could muster only the lamest of analyses: “Oh, probably George lives in a sort of dream world … but he's happy” (see Figure 1).


Author(s):  
S. S. Khodyachikh

The article analyzes the circumstances and conditions that led to the successful escape from the Auschwitz concentration camp of a group of Polish prisoners of war under the leadership of Leonard Zawacki, prisoner 13390. The escape was carried out on September 28, 1944 by a group of six prisoners of war, two of whom changed into SS uniforms and “escorted” four glaziers to work outside the camp. Zawacki’s memoirs, published in Poland in the form of a short-run pamphlet, as well as many hours of interviews in which he talked about his traumatic experience, life in imprisonment, partisan unit, and the very escape, are introduced into scientific circulation. Zawacki’s memoirs are a valuable source not only about the history of the World War II and the Holocaust, but also the deep experiences of a man who went through the hell of Auschwitz and survived against all odds.


Text Matters ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 307-329
Author(s):  
David Allen ◽  
Agata Handley

The playwright Edward Bond has recalled the impact of seeing photographs of Nazi atrocities at the end of World War Two: “It was the ground zero of the human soul.” He argues we need a different kind of drama, based in “a new interpretation of what it means to be human.” He has developed an extensive body of theoretical writings to set alongside his plays. Arguably, his own reflections on “what it means to be human” are based in his reaction to the Holocaust, and his attempt to confront “the totality of evil.”Bond argues we are born “radically innocent.” There is a “pre-psychological” state of being. The neonate does not “read” ideology; it has to use its own imagination to make sense of the world. To enter society, however, the child must be corrupted; its imagination is “ideologized.” Bond claims that “radical innocence” can never wholly be lost. Through drama, we can escape “ideology” and recover our “autonomy.” It leads us to confront extreme situations, and to define for ourselves “what it means to be human.” The terms of Bond’s theory are Manichean (innocent-corrupt, autonomous-ideologized etc.). His arguments are based in the assumption that there is a fundamental “humanity” that exists prior to socialization. In fact, the process of socialization begins at birth. As an account of child development, “radical innocence” does not stand up to close scrutiny. Arguably, however, Bond’s work escapes the confines of his own theory. It can be read, not in terms of the “ideologized” vs. the “autonomous” mind, but rather, in terms of “conscious” and “unconscious.” In Coffee (2000), Bond takes character of Nold on a journey into the Dantean hell of his own unconscious. He does not recover his “innocence,” but, rather, he has to face the darkness of both history and the psyche.


2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-41
Author(s):  
Maftuna Sanoqulova ◽  

This article consists of the politics which connected with oil in Saudi Arabia after the World war II , the relations of economical cooperations on this matter and the place of oil in the history of world economics


1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-126
Author(s):  
Hans Levy

The focus of this paper is on the oldest international Jewish organization founded in 1843, B’nai B’rith. The paper presents a chronicle of B’nai B’rith in Continental Europe after the Second World War and the history of the organization in Scandinavia. In the 1970's the Order of B'nai B'rith became B'nai B'rith international. B'nai B'rith worked for Jewish unity and was supportive of the state of Israel.


2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 69-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam MCFARLAND ◽  
Katarzyna HAMER

Raphael Lemkin is hardly known to a Polish audiences. One of the most honored Poles of theXX century, forever revered in the history of human rights, nominated six times for the Nobel PeacePrize, Lemkin sacrificed his entire life to make a real change in the world: the creation of the term“genocide” and making it a crime under international law. How long was his struggle to establishwhat we now take as obvious, what we now take for granted?This paper offers his short biography, showing his long road from realizing that the killing oneperson was considered a murder but that under international law in 1930s the killing a million wasnot. Through coining the term “genocide” in 1944, he helped make genocide a criminal charge atthe Nuremburg war crimes trials of Nazi leaders in late 1945, although there the crime of genocidedid not cover killing whole tribes when committed on inhabitants of the same country nor when notduring war. He next lobbied the new United Nations to adopt a resolution that genocide is a crimeunder international law, which it adopted on 11 December, 1946. Although not a U.N. delegate – hewas “Totally Unofficial,” the title of his autobiography – Lemkin then led the U.N. in creating theConvention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted 9 December, 1948.Until his death in 1958, Lemkin lobbied tirelessly to get other U.N. states to ratify the Convention.His legacy is that, as of 2015, 147 U.N. states have done so, 46 still on hold. His tomb inscriptionreads simply, “Dr. Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959), Father of the Genocide Convention”. Without himthe world as we know it, would not be possible.


Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Rachel F. Brenner

To appraise Martel’s non-Jewish perspective of Holocaust thematic, it is important to assess it in the context of the Jewish relations with the Holocaust. Even though the Jewish claim to the uniqueness of the Holocaust has been disputed since the end of the war especially in Eastern Europe, the Jewish response determined to a large extent the reception of the disaster on the global scene. On a family level, the children of survivors have identified themselves as the legitimate heirs of the unknowable experience of their parents. On a collective level, the decree of Jewish annihilation constructed a Jewish identity that imposed an obligation to keep the Holocaust memory in the consciousness of the world. Martel proposes to supersede the history of the Holocaust with a story which would downplay the Jewish filiation with the Holocaust, elicit an affiliative response to the event of the non-Jewish writer and consequently integrate it into the memory of humanity at large. However, the Holocaust theme of Beatrice and Virgil refuses to assimilate within the general memory of humanity; rather, the consciousness of the event, which pervades the post-Holocaust world, insists on its constant presence. The omnipresence of the Holocaust blurs the distinctions between the filiative (Jewish) and affiliative (non-Jewish) attitudes toward the Jewish tragedy, gripping the writer in its transcendent horror. Disregarding his ethnic or religious origins, the Holocaust takes over the writer’s personal life and determines his story.


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