scholarly journals The Absent Parent Figure as a Representation of Post-trauma in Contemporary British-Jewish Novels

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 21-32
Author(s):  
Anita Chmielewska ◽  

A missing parent is an element that is often found in contemporary British-Jewish novels. These are mainly texts written by granddaughters of those who lived through World War II. The novels analyzed herein tend to be very similar in their depiction of parent figures, who appear to represent the remaining presence of post-trauma from the World War II era. The concept of survival during the Shoah may include various experiences but is mostly associated with those who directly experienced the Holocaust. Yet, British Jews are often those who fled the Jewish extermination before it happened and, as a result, are frequently excluded from the discussion of World War II survivorship

Author(s):  
David A. Hamburg ◽  
Beatrix A. Hamburg

The growing destructive capacities of humanity make this the prime problem of the twenty-first century. How we cope with this problem will have a profound bearing on the world of our grandchildren. The twentieth century was the bloodiest ever. World War II caused at least 50 million deaths. Six million died in the Holocaust. At Hiroshima, one bomb caused 100,000 deaths. Now thousands of such bombs (smaller and more conveniently transportable tactical bombs) are housed in Russia. Many are poorly guarded, susceptible to theft and bribery. Others may be made elsewhere. Danger increases with the number of such weapons existing in the world.Why? There is a greater chance of error, theft, and bribery—and ultimately their use in war or terrorism. Therefore, we should diminish the numbers as much as we can and secure responsible stewardship for those that remain. Moreover, there are still thousands of nuclear weapons that are far more powerful than the smaller tactical weapons. Biological and chemical weapons are easier to make than nuclear warheads and therefore have special appeal to terrorists. Small arms and light weapons now cover the world wall-to-wall. They include highly lethal machine guns, mortars, automatic rifles, and rocket launchers. Altogether, the destructive capacity of humanity is almost beyond imagination. Moreover, there is an exciting effect of today’s vast weapons on political demagogues, religious fanatics, and ethnic haters—and plenty of them exist in the world. Incitement to hatred and violence can occur with radio, TV, the Internet, and many other media. Thus, we can more powerfully incite violence, utilize more lethal weapons, and do much more damage than ever imaginable before. No group is so small or so far away as to prevent it from doing immense damage anywhere. The time has come to move beyond complacency, fatalism, denial, and avoidance. We must urgently seek to understand and strengthen an array of institutions and organizations that have the capacity to use tools and strategies to prevent deadly conflict. The first author (D.A.H.) considered many such possibilities in his recent book, No More Killing Fields: Preventing Deadly Conflict. Overall, this gives humanity a greater range of possibilities than ever before for building a system for preventing war and genocide. It will not be easy.


2006 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 17-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
John-Paul Himka

Sixty years after its conclusion, World War II still fills the world's memory. Massive demonstrations in China last winter recalled Japanese atrocities during the war, while just over a month ago the world marked the sixtieth anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Monuments and museums continue to be erected to commemorate the Holocaust. And films on the war, as the recent success of Downfall demonstrates, continue to attract viewers. Some of the things that happened during World War II seem to us to be unforgettable.


2010 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 122-162
Author(s):  
Tina Hamrin-Dahl

This story is about a kind of pilgrimage, which is connected to the course of events which occurred in Częstochowa on 22 September 1942. In the morning, the German Captain Degenhardt lined up around 8,000 Jews and commanded them to step either to the left or to the right. This efficient judge from the police force in Leipzig was rapid in his decisions and he thus settled the destinies of thousands of people. After the Polish Defensive War of 1939, the town (renamed Tschenstochau) had been occupied by Nazi Germany, and incorporated into the General Government. The Nazis marched into Częstochowa on Sunday, 3 September 1939, two days after they invaded Poland. The next day, which became known as Bloody Monday, approximately 150 Jews were shot deadby the Germans. On 9 April 1941, a ghetto for Jews was created. During World War II about 45,000 of the Częstochowa Jews were killed by the Germans; almost the entire Jewish community living there.The late Swedish Professor of Oncology, Jerzy Einhorn (1925–2000), lived in the borderhouse Aleja 14, and heard of the terrible horrors; a ghastliness that was elucidated and concretized by all the stories told around him. Jerzy Einhorn survived the ghetto, but was detained at the Hasag-Palcery concentration camp between June 1943 and January 1945. In June 2009, his son Stefan made a bus tour between former camps, together with Jewish men and women, who were on this pilgrimage for a variety of reasons. The trip took place on 22–28 June 2009 and was named ‘A journey in the tracks of the Holocaust’. Those on the Holocaust tour represented different ‘pilgrim-modes’. The focus in this article is on two distinct differences when it comes to creed, or conceptions of the world: ‘this-worldliness’ and ‘other- worldliness’. And for the pilgrims maybe such distinctions are over-schematic, though, since ‘sacral fulfilment’ can be seen ‘at work in all modern constructions of travel, including anthropology and tourism’.


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.


Author(s):  
Václava Bakešová

Because of the Holocaust, World War II is the focal point for capturing spiritual experience in the 20th-century literature. How did the transformation of French spiritual literature from the poet Marie Noël in the 1st half of the century to the novelist Sylvie Germain at its end come about? Using examples from their work, this paper shows both authors’ sources of inspiration and highlights the means of expressing spirituality of a person going through an inner struggle. Although the authors describe a dark night, both of them they have a desire to overcome it, to reconcile with God, with the world and with themselves.


Nasledje ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 177-190
Author(s):  
Davor Stipić

In their wish to preserve the memory to the compatriots who lost their lives in the Holocaust, the Jewish community in Yugoslavia started erecting monuments to Jewish civil victims and fallen soldiers as early as the first few post-WWII years. The Monument to the Fallen Jewish Soldiers and Victims of Fascism put up in the Sephardi cemetery in Belgrade in 1952, potent with artistic and political significance, stood out from the rest of the monuments of the period. It was dedicated to all the Jews from the Socialist Republic of Serbia who lost their lives in the World War II. The purpose of this article is to analyse the competition for the design of the monument by examining the documents from the Archives of the Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade, thus making a contribution to the research of the culture of Holocaust remembrance in the Yugoslav Socialism, but also to show artistic, social and ideological aspirations of the time when, after the Cominform schism, Yugoslavia was at political crossroads. By exploring the symbolism and aesthetic values of this work, the research presented in this paper attempts to enhance the understanding of architect Bogdan Bogdanović's early creative efforts.


2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-168
Author(s):  
Stephen H Norwood ◽  
Eunice G Pollack

Abstract This article explores how the American white far right—including the Christian Front, Christian Mobilizers, and Gerald L. K. Smith—helped shape the Nation of Islam’s (NOI) antisemitism during the 1930s and 1940s. It also examines the strong influence of Harlem’s pro-Axis Black Fuehrers on the NOI during World War II. Nation of Islam and white far-right propaganda were remarkably similar. Both embraced the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, denied or minimized the Holocaust, and were virulently anti-Zionist. After elaborating on the context within which the Nation of Islam created its ideology, the article explores how the NOI, which originally identified whites, Christians and Jews as devils, adopted an almost singular emphasis on Jews as agents of Satan, the Star of David replacing the cross as the symbol of iniquity. Jews were not victims, but Blacks’ major victimizers; never slaves, but dominant enslavers; not progressives, but those who impeded Blacks’ advance. Instead of giving the world Hebrew Scripture, they converted it into the “Poison Book,” from the beginning crafting a “dirty religion,” which blessed the subjugation of black people, and denied God’s promise to the “Real Children of Israel.” These “imposter Jews” concealed that the Hebrew Bible was a prophecy about “the so-called Negroes of America”—the true “Chosen of God”—who would be in bondage for 400 years, strangers in a strange land.


2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 94-106
Author(s):  
Magdalena Howorus-Czajka

The World War II has left an emotional wound, and its direct victims as well as new generations have to cope with it. The main subject of my presentation will be an analysis of methods for presenting World War II history in against the background of a theory of memory and postmemory of war’s trauma through the example of picturebooks which were published in Poland during the first two decades of the XXI century. I would like to discuss the main trends in presenting the issues pertaining to the war. The transcription of the Second World War memory into picturebooks is especially interesting for me as a historian of art. I analyse the artistic styles adapted by the artists to express difficult topics, such as the holocaust, the horror of concentrations camps, hunger, fear, loss of family, death. Composition, artistic techniques, colour, vocabulary, typography – these are the tools in the hands of artists through which they can not only tell the story, but also stir up emotions and shape the personality. The picturebook, like other types of art, operates through the language of fiction to tell the truth. Art is one of the languages of historical narration


2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 26-29
Author(s):  
mayer kirshenblatt ◽  
barbara kirshenblatt-gimblett

Mayer Kirshenblatt remembers in words and paintings the daily diet of Jews in Poland before the Holocaust. Born in 1916 in Opatóów (Apt in Yiddish), a small Polish city, this self-taught artist describes and paints how women bought chickens from the peasants and brought them to the shoykhet (ritual slaughterer), where they plucked the feathers; the custom of shlogn kapores (transferring one's sins to a chicken) before Yom Kippur; and the role of herring and root vegetables in the diet, especially during the winter. Mayer describes how his family planted and harvested potatoes on leased land, stored them in a root cellar, and the variety of dishes prepared from this important staple, as well as how to make a kratsborsht or scratch borsht from the milt (semen sack) of a herring. In the course of a forty-year conversation with his daughter, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, who also interviewed Mayer's mother, a picture emerges of the daily, weekly, seasonal, and holiday cuisine of Jews who lived in southeastern Poland before World War II.


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