scholarly journals Between or Beyond? Jewish British Short Stories in English since the 1970s

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 110
Author(s):  
Axel Stähler
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Jewish Experience ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Continuous Progress ◽  
Post War ◽  
War Experience ◽  
Second World

Looking at short stories by writers as diverse as Brian Glanville, Ruth Fainlight, Clive Sinclair, Jonathan Wilson, James Lasdun, Gabriel Josipovici, Tamar Yellin, Michelene Wandor, and Naomi Alderman, and extending from the center of Jewish British writing to its margins, this article seeks to locate the defining feature of their ‘Jewish substratum’ in conditions particular to the Jewish post-war experience, and to trace its impact across their thematic plurality which, for the most part, transcends any specifically British concerns that may also emerge, opening up an Anglophone sphere of Jewish writing. More specifically, it is argued that the unease pervading so many Jewish British short stories since the 1970s is a product of, and response to, what may very broadly be described as the Jewish experience and the precarious circumstances of Jewish existence even after the Second World War and its cataclysmic impact. It is suggested that it is prompted in particular by the persistence of the Holocaust and the anxieties the historical event continues to produce; by the confrontation with competing patterns of identification, with antisemitism, and with Israel; and by anxieties of non-belonging, of fragmentation, of dislocation, and of dissolution. Turned into literary tropes, these experiences provide the basis of a Jewish substratum whose articulation is facilitated by the expansion of Jewish British writers into the space of Anglophone Jewish writing. As a result, the Jewish British short story emerges as a multifaceted and hybrid project in continuous progress.

Stereotypes of Polish–Jewish Relations after the War: The Special Commission of the Central Committee of Polish Jews

2000 ◽  
pp. 194-205
Author(s):  
Jan Gross
Keyword(s):  
Central Committee ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Special Commission ◽  
Jewish Experience ◽  
Polish Jews ◽  
Post War ◽  
Scientific Socialism ◽  
Second World

This chapter describes stereotypes of Polish–Jewish relations after the Second World War. Even though most Polish Jews were killed during the German occupation, the stereotype of Judaeo-communism survived the war. If anything, it was reinforced by a widespread consensus that Jews assisted the Soviets in the subjugation of the Polish Kresy in 1939–41. The establishment of the Lublin government in the aftermath of the war served to perpetuate this stereotype still further. Popular sentiment attributed a nefarious role to the Jews and portrayed them as particularly zealous collaborators with the security police serving the new regime. Was it indeed the case that the dominant post-war Jewish experience in Poland was imposing scientific socialism on reluctant fellow citizens and persecuting ethnic Poles? The chapter argues that the dominant Jewish experience in Poland after the Second World War was fear. It also considers the Special Commission (Komisja Specjalna) established by the Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce (Central Committee of Jews in Poland: CKŻP).

RECEPCIJA I REPREZENTACIJA HOLOKAUSTA U ISTOČNOM BERLINU I BEOGRADU NAKON DRUGOG SVETSKOG RATA

Lipar ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (75) ◽  
pp. 163-186
Author(s):  
Milena Nešić Pavković ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
East Berlin ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
Second World

The goal of this paper is to investigate the memory of the Holocaust, i.e. the reception and representation of the suffering of the Jewish population during the rule of the Third Reich (under Nazi rule and occupation) in the capitals of the states constituted after the Second World War - in East Berlin, GDR, and Belgrade, SFRY, during the period from 1945 to 1989/1991. Relying on the achievements of memory studies and analyzing the political moods of that time and the ways of constructing official narratives about Jewish suffering in selected post-war Communist countries, the similarities and differences in the policy of representing Jewish suffering in these two countries and the memory of Jewish victims in places of remembrance and in the practices of remembrance in their capitals will be pointed out.

The Memory of Europe’s Age of Catastrophe, 1914–2014

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Mercer
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
National Narratives ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Cultural Struggle ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

The enormous death toll of the twentieth-century world wars created a cultural struggle over their meaning. States, institutions, and individuals developed conflicting memories, which shifted with the political trends of the post-war eras. After the First World War nationalist narratives promoted by states did not automatically win unanimous adherence, but the apparently apolitical language of loss and mourning was most successful where the war was least controversial or where national narratives were unavailable. While memory of the Second World War and the Holocaust has often been discussed in terms of forgetting, there was no amnesia but rather a selective appropriation of the past. Myths of victimhood and resistance proved popular across Europe and persisted despite periodic engagements with the past. Germany’s acknowledgement of the Nazi past is the most thorough, while most Europeans states now more easily remember the Second World War than their colonial heritage.

scholarly journals The wall of silence surrounding literature and remembrance: Varlam Shalamov’s “Artificial Limbs”, Etc. as a metaphor of the soviet empire

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-25
Author(s):  
Marcin Kępiński
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Artificial Limbs ◽  
World War ◽  
Special Significance ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The World ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
Second World

Literature of an autobiographical character acquires a special significance in the world of the bloody tragic events of the 20th century, i.e. the Holocaust, the Second World War, the realities of the Nazi and Soviet totalitarianisms, death camps, and forced labour. Those are the recollections of experienced trauma which shatters identity, and of existential experiences of a borderline nature, of which Shalamov, a witness to the epoch, felt an obligation to talk. An anthropological analysis of Varlam Shalamov’s short story titled Artificial Limbs, Etc. enables one to grasp the role of memory and autobiographical testimony as a kind of cultural and literary antidote to silence and memory distorted by the Soviet totalitarianism. The author of Kolyma Tales offered a faithful description of a world outside the‘human’ world, one which was almost impossible to describe due to its inherent moral void, level of violence, and fear of the authorities who made people forget about the crimes, victims, and oppressors.

scholarly journals Historical Context in the Latest Lithuanian Music: Contemporary Tensions

Menotyra ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1-2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jūratė Landsbergytė
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Visual Space ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
80Th Anniversary ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Post War ◽  
Language Of Music ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Second World

The historical context opens its unresolved issues inside contemporary cultural consciousness. It gives the language of music a specific dimension of dramatic tensions. Here, composers’ propositions acquire a coded imagery close to the aesthetics of modernist catastrophe. The musical text becomes highly contextual and filled with the knowledge arisen from history. It is like an encrypted message about the current transformation of history. The texture of the work becomes an expression of the signs incorporating also non-musical sounds or visual space. Semantics play a crucial role in soundscapes. In this sense, we can talk about the war and post-war semantics, which is making its comeback into Lithuanian music. Here, the aesthetic poles of tension or the dramaturgy of conflict arise and are realised through the spectra of hum or expression of identities. In this context, two recent works by Lithuanian composers should be mentioned: they accurately respond to the tensions and wounds of the Second World War that continue to bleed inside the identity consciousness of the Lithuanian nation. These wounds are the Holocaust and the post-war partisan struggle against the Soviet occupation. The topic of ‘war after war’ acquires its musical task in Vytautas Germanavičius’s (b.1969) work Red Trees (2018) for flute, cello, and organ dedicated to the partisan commander Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas. It is important to stress that Vanagas has been recognised as a de facto leader of the state and, thanks to sustained efforts of historians and archaeologists, his remains, which were discovered in the Vilnius Orphans’ Cemetery, were reburied in the Pantheon of State Leaders. All this forms an exceptional historical dimension, which finds an original reflection in Germanavičius’s work. Meanwhile, the Holocaust theme connects vividly with the 80th anniversary (late in 2020), of the deed of Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese diplomat who saved over 6,000 Jews in 1940. Algirdas Martinaitis (b.1950) work Visa for Life (2020) for two flutes, oboe, and organ is dedicated to Chiune Sugihara. Here, the composer combines, in a unique way, the worlds of the Japanese, the European tradition and Jewish music. His musical expression is based on the dramaturgy of transformation (the constant running of the toccata). In this way, each composer voices the context of the past: its tension transforms the language of music. It should be noted that both works bring back the catastrophe of the Second World War and the post-war period, which is a painful drama of the history of the Baltic States and not yet sufficiently understood in the world. As a result, the former meditative face of Baltic music identity changes accordingly.

scholarly journals Unrecognizable, abandoned, unnamed, avoided places: On the murders committed against Jews in Poland in the period after the Second World War and their commemoration

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-147
Author(s):  
Andrzej Rykała
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
Second World

The fall of the Third Reich, turning the “most tragic page” in the history of the Jewish nation, i .e . the Second World War, did not mean the end of the tragedy for Jews on Polish soil. Even before the end of the greatest confl in the history of humankind, in the areas liberated from Nazi Germany occupation, many survivors of the Holocaust experienced acts of ruthless violence. However, very few of the numerous victims of the post-war anti-Jewish terror have been commemorated in public space. To a very small extent the form of public commemoration also covered earlier wartime cases of collective murders committed against Jews by Polish Christians. Even if the sites of the dramatic events which occurred in the shadow of the Holocaust were marked, the complete truth about their course was not restored everywhere.

scholarly journals Katherine Mansfield in Slovene translations

2001 ◽  
Vol 34 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 39-57
Author(s):  
Andrej Podbrežnik
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Short Story ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Katherine Mansfield ◽  
Reading Public ◽  
World War ◽  
Short Life ◽  
Second World

During her short life Katherine Mansfield wrote numerous short stories, which place her among the best authors of this genre in world literature. The au thor of this paper tries to establish the reception of Mansfield's work and the critics' response in Slovenia. First translations of her stories were published in various Slovene magazines and reviews after the Second World War. However, the most complete and artistically successful presentation of her work was prepared in 1963 when Jože Udovič published twenty-eight short stories written by this author under the title Katherine Mansfield: The Garden Party. Udovič also contributed the introduction about the author and her work. The book was very well received in Slovenia not only by the reading public, but also by critics, who praised Mansfield and Udovič's translation as well. After that more than twenty years passed, before Katarina Mahnič translated Katherine Mansfield's short story "The Singing Lesson" in 1988. We can conclude that hopefully some new translations of Katherine Mansfield's stories will appear soon.

scholarly journals Back for good: melodrama and the returning soldier in post-war Italian cinema

Modern Italy ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine O’Rawe
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Italian Cinema ◽  
World War ◽  
Familial Relations ◽  
To Come ◽  
Post War ◽  
War Experience ◽  
Second World ◽  
Alternative Ethics

Italian neorealism is conventionally read as the authoritative cinematic chronicle of Italy’s experience of the Second World War and the Resistance. However, this article argues that viewing this period of Italian cinema solely through the lens of neorealism has obscured the importance of the affective charge of melodrama in constituting an alternative ethics of representation in the late 1940s and early 1950s in Italy, one that worked via an appeal to the emotions. It posits that the traumas of Fascism, war, occupation, and Resistance were worked through by Italian cinema after the war in a range of genres and modes, principally melodrama.By focusing on the figure of the returning soldier orreduce, and the films’ representation of a return to domestic disruption, the article examines how this domestic or romantic disruption stands in for what cannot be narrated, which is the ideological chaos of the Fascist and post-Fascist period. The article argues that the disturbance caused by thereduceto familial relations speaks to the Italian struggle to come to terms with aspects of its repressed war experience, particularly that of the Italian soldiers imprisoned abroad.

Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry Volume 20

2007 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
World War ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

Although the reconciliation of Jewish and Polish memories of the Holocaust is the central issue in contemporary Polish–Jewish relations, this is the first attempt to examine these divisive memories in a comprehensive way. Until 1989, Polish consciousness of the Second World War subsumed the destruction of Polish Jewry within a communist narrative of Polish martyrdom and heroism. Post-war Jewish memory, by contrast, has been concerned mostly with Jewish martyrdom and heroism. Since the 1980s, however, a significant number of Jews and Poles have sought to identify a common ground and have met with partial but increasing success, notwithstanding the new debates that have emerged in recent years concerning Polish behaviour during the Nazi genocide of the Jews that Poles had ignored for half a century. This volume considers these contentious issues from different angles. Among the topics covered are Jewish memorial projects, both in Poland and beyond its borders, the Polish approach to Holocaust memory under communist rule, and post-communist efforts both to retrieve the Jewish dimension to Polish wartime memory and to reckon with the dark side of the Polish national past. An interview with Henryk Grynberg touches on many of these issues, as do the three poems by Grynberg reproduced here. The 'New Views' section features innovative research in other areas of Polish–Jewish studies. A special section is devoted to research concerning the New Synagogue in Poznan, built in 1907, which is still standing only because the Nazis turned it into a swimming pool.

In the Shadow of the Holocaust

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Fleming
Keyword(s):  
War Crimes ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
Polish Government ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

In the midst of the Second World War, the Allies acknowledged Germany's ongoing programme of extermination. In the Shadow of the Holocaust examines the struggle to attain post-war justice and prosecution. Focusing on Poland's engagement with the United Nations War Crimes Commission, it analyses the different ways that the Polish Government in Exile (based in London from 1940) agitated for an Allied response to German atrocities. Michael Fleming shows that jurists associated with the Government in Exile made significant contributions to legal debates on war crimes and, along with others, paid attention to German crimes against Jews. By exploring the relationship between the UNWCC and the Polish War Crimes Office under the authority of the Polish Government in Exile and later, from the summer of 1945, the Polish Government in Warsaw, Fleming provides a new lens through which to examine the early stages of the Cold War.

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