Soundtracks of the Holocaust in East and West German Cinema:

The stolen death: About the play Hledáme strašidlo by Hanuš Hachenburg from 1943The puppet theatre play Hledame strašidlo by Hanuš Hachenburg was written in the Terezín/Theresienstadt ghetto in 1943 and over 50 years was hidden in the archive until it was presented to readers and viewers in the 1990s — but it turned out to be still surprisingly valid and cogent. The author, a 14-year-old prisoner of the ghetto, used the conventions of the puppet theatre, the carnival and the fairy tales. The mythical or fairy-tale-like “timelessness” allowed him to show the absurdity of Nazism and — yet unnamed — the Holocaust. The main character of the play, the King, captures Death itself, which soon becomes so ordinary and kitschy that no one is afraid of her. The confinement of Death — a motif known, among others, from the myth of Sisyphus — is an important theme of the theatre in Terezín; it appears also in the German-speaking opera by Peter Kien and Viktor Ullmann, Der Keiser von Atlantis Emperor of Atlantis. In this article, I show how the old themes of enslaved Death and the dance macabre between extasy and destruction become the symbols of the war, and indeed of the 20th century, which culminates in the devastating forces of the great ideologies and in which there can be found the origins of retrotopia, which is now, according to Zygmunt Bauman, the dominating point of view in East- and West-European and in American discourse. Únos smrti. O terezίnske divadelnί hře Hledáme strašidlo Hanuše Hachenburga z roku 1943Divadelní hra Hledáme strašidlo od Hanuše Hachenburga byla napsána v ghettu Terezín / Theresienstadt v roce 1943 a více než padesát let byla ukryta v archivu, aby v 90. letech si našla cestu pro své čtenáře a diváky — a ukázalo se, že je překvapivě platná a přitažlivá. Autor, čtrnáctiletý vězeň ghetta, využil konvencí loutkového divadla, karnevalu a pohádek. Mýtická nebo pohádková „nadčasovost“ mu umožnila ukázat absurditu nacismu a — tehdy ještĕ nemenovaného — holocaustu. Hlavní postava hry, Král, zachytí samotnou Smrt, která se brzy stane tak obyčejnou a kyčovitou, že se ji nikdo nebude bát. Únos smrti — motiv známý mimo jiné i z mýtu Sisyfa — je důležitým tématem divadla v Terezíně; objevuje se také v německojazyčné operě Petera Kiena a Viktora Ullmanna Der Keizer von Atlantis Císař Atlantidy. V tomto textu ukazuji, jak se staré motivy zotročené Smrti a danse macabre mezi extázi a zničení stávají symbolem války a celého dvacátého století, v který vyvrcholily ničivými sily velké ideologie a kde lze nalézt počátky retrotopie, která je podle Zygmunta Baumana dominantním hlediskem ve východním, západoevropským a americkým diskurzu.

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Jews in East and West Africa before the Holocaust

Africans and the Holocaust ◽

10.4324/9780429203015-2 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 18-43

Author(s):

Edward Kissi

Keyword(s):

West Africa ◽

The Holocaust ◽

East And West

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Legacies of Divided Memory for German Debates about the Holocaust in the 1990s

German Politics & Society ◽

10.3167/104503099782486879 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 17 (3) ◽

pp. 9-34 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Jeffrey Herf

Keyword(s):

West Germany ◽

Nazi Germany ◽

Postwar Period ◽

Half Century ◽

East And West Germany ◽

The Holocaust ◽

Political Traditions ◽

East And West

The legacies of almost a half-century of divided memory continue toinfluence commemoration of the Holocaust in unified Germany.Because these practices were decisively shaped by the multiplerestorations of past political traditions in the early postwar period, Iwill comment on the commemorations of the first two postwardecades in East and West Germany and conclude with brief remarksabout how past legacies influence recent practices. I will examinethe significance of the Holocaust in these events compared to theattention given to the suffering of Nazi Germany’s non-Jewish victims.I will also consider the extent to which distinctions were madeamong the various victims of Nazi Germany, the kind of hierarchiesthat were established among them, and the use of commemorationfor political purposes.

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Returning to Stay? Jews in East and West Germany after the Holocaust

Central European History ◽

10.1017/s0008938920000163 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 53 (2) ◽

pp. 393-413

Author(s):

Andrea A. Sinn

Keyword(s):

World War Ii ◽

West Germany ◽

Federal Republic Of Germany ◽

World War ◽

Jewish Communities ◽

East And West Germany ◽

The Holocaust ◽

Central Council ◽

East And West ◽

German Jewish

ABSTRACTTo better understand the position of Jews within Germany after the end of World War II, this article analyzes the rebuilding of Jewish communities in East and West Germany from a Jewish perspective. This approach highlights the peculiarities and sometimes sharply contrasting developments within the Jewish communities in the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, from the immediate postwar months to the official East-West separation of these increasingly politically divided communities in the early 1960s. Central to the study are the policies of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, which exemplify the process of gradual divergence in the relations between East and West German Jewish communities, that, as this article demonstrates, paralleled and mirrored the relations between non-Jewish Germans in the two countries.

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