scholarly journals Local Testimony and the (Un)Silencing of Sexual Violence in Lithuania under German Occupation during WWII

Humanities ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 129
Author(s):  
Violeta Davoliūtė
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Local Knowledge ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Communal Violence ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Conspiracy Of Silence

The memory of sexual violence in Eastern Europe under German occupation during WWII has long been silenced by the opacity of local events to outside observers, a conspiracy of silence on the issue of collaboration, and conventions on how the Holocaust should be represented. Since the collapse of the USSR, the opening of archives has stimulated the production of a large and growing literature on the nature and causes of communal violence, but with relatively limited attention to sexual violence as an aspect of genocide. Based on a qualitative analysis of select audio-visual testimonies collected from non-Jewish Lithuanians since the 1990s, this paper demonstrates that local knowledge of sexual violence has persisted for decades in the post-genocidal space. However, these testimonies have been overshadowed by politicized narratives of national martyrology, and neglected by local and international researchers alike, despite their importance to the process of historical reckoning.

scholarly journals Survivor Testimonies and the Coming to Terms with the Holocaust in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia: The Case of the Ukrainian Nationalists

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 221-240
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Western World ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Freedom Fighters ◽  
Western Ukraine ◽  
Anti Jewish

The question, if and to what extent the Ukrainian nationalists murdered Jews in Volhynia and eastern Galicia during the Holocaust, has haunted Jewish and Ukrainian communities in various countries of the Western world during the entire Cold War. It also puzzled German historians of Eastern Europe and Nazi Germany. Historians, although in theory responsible for investigating and clarifying such difficult aspects of the past, have for various reasons not investigated them or they investigated only other aspects of the Holocaust in Ukraine. This article briefly explains how factions of the Ukrainian diaspora invented a narrative that portrayed Ukrainian nationalists as anti-German and anti-Soviet freedom fighters who did not kill or harm any Jews during the German occupation of Ukraine. In the next step, it shows how testimonies and other sorts of documents left by survivors from Volhynia and eastern Galicia can help historians understand the role that ordinary Ukrainians and the OUN and UPA played in the Shoah in western Ukraine. Finally, it asks why it took Ukrainian, German, Polish, Russian, and other historians so many years to investigate and comprehend the anti-Jewish violence of the Ukrainian nationalists, if relevant documents were collected and made accessible as early as in the middle 1940s.

Le rôle de l’armée juive dans la libération de Juifs en France 1942 - 1945

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 00007
Author(s):  
B Dewi Puspitaningrum ◽  
Airin Miranda
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
World War ◽  
French Army ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Status ◽  
Jews In France ◽  
State Of Israel ◽  
Second World

<p class="Keyword">Nazi Germany used Endlösung to persecute Jews during the Second World War, leading them to the Holocaust, known as “death”. During the German occupation in France, the status of the Jews was applied. Polonski reacted to the situation by establishing a Zionist resistance, Jewish Army, in January 1942. Their first visions were to create a state of Israel and save the Jews as much as they could. Although the members of the group are not numerous, they represented Israel and played an important role in the rescue of the Jews in France, also in Europe. Using descriptive methods and three aspects of historical research, this article shows that the Jewish Army has played an important role in safeguarding Jewish children, smuggling smugglers, physical education and the safeguarding of Jews in other countries. In order to realize their visions, collaborations with other Jewish resistances and the French army itself were often created. With the feeling of belonging to France, they finally extended their vision to the liberation of France in 1945 by joining the French Forces of the Interior and allied troops.</p>

The Tropes of Jewish/Muslim Difference

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yulia Egorova
Keyword(s):  
Reference Point ◽  
Jewish Communities ◽  
Communal Violence ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The chapter explores how notions of Jewish and Muslim difference play out in the history of communal violence in independent India. In doing so it will first interrogate the way in which trajectories of anti-Muslim ideologies intersect in India with Nazi rhetoric that harks back to Hitler’s Germany, and the (lack of) the memory of the Holocaust on the subcontinent. It will then discuss how the experiences of contemporary Indian Jewish communities both mirror and contrast those of Indian Muslims and how Indian Jews and the alleged absence of anti-Semitism in India have become a reference point in the discourse of the Hindu right deployed to mask anti-Muslim and other forms of intolerance.

scholarly journals On Becoming a Non-Jewish Holocaust Writer: Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Rachel F. Brenner
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The World ◽  
Family Level ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Origins

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.

Sexual Violence before the Police and in Court

2020 ◽  
pp. 170-179
Author(s):  
Maren Röger
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Broad Spectrum ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
Forms Of Violence

This chapter analyzes how police and court dealt with sexual violence in the occupied territories. It explains that only certain crimes on the broad spectrum of sexual forms of violence were followed up during the German occupation, and that many victims did not dare to report the assaults on their own. The chapter identifies the various authorities responsible for investigating and trying sexual violence, and presents the range of punishments for German men – from admonishments to incarceration or being sent to the eastern front. The chapter then considers how the German police acted towards women complainants whom they judged on a moral level.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document