Modern Greece and the Sephardim of Salonica an Overview

Belleten ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 64 (239) ◽  
pp. 161-186
Author(s):  
Albert De Vıdas
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Greek Population ◽  
World War ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Basic Facts ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

The first encounter between Greece and tha Spanish and Portuguese Jews (the Sephardim) in modern times started in 1821 during the Greek rebellion against the Sultan. From the beginning this encounter would follow a rocky path because of three basic facts; the faithfulness of the Sephardim to the Ottoman Empire, the traditional religious anti-Semitism of the Greek population and the economic rivalry between Jews and Greeks in the Eastern Mediterranean. Nowhere would the antagonism of the Greek population and government towards the Sephardim be more intense than in the city of Salonica, the Sephardic metropolis which Greece occupied in 1912. With over two-thirds of the population being Sephardi and with Spanish being the everyday language of the population, Salonica, under the liberal rule of the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire had flourished economically and had become the center of the Sephardic Nation within the Empire. Greek policy would be one of constant antagonism from the time of the occupation until the extermination of the Sephardim by the Germans and their loal collaborators during the Second World War. Every effort would be made by the Greek government to diminish the influence of the Sephardim in the city and to reduce their presence and economic wellbeing. The 70,000 Sephardim of Salonica at the time of the Greek occupation would see their numbers diminished by emigration. Those who remained would be reduced to a frightened minority in a city that had been theirs for over 400 years.

The Diner Versus the Ducat

1973 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jere L. Bacharach
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Eastern Mediterranean ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Gold Coin ◽  
George Washington ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
International Trading ◽  
Venetian Republic ◽  
Second World

Since the Second World War, United States currency has been accepted in almost every country in the world, and in many locations the ‘George Washington’ dollar has been in greater demand than local monies. In ancient, medieval and modern times, other currencies have had a similar success. Examples of this phenomenon are the ancient Athenian silver ‘owl’, theByzantinegoldsolidus, the Florentine gold florin, and the Maria Theresa silver taler. In the late fourteenth century A.D. the florin was replaced by the gold coin of Venice, the ducat, as the ‘dollar of the Middle Ages’; that is, the international currencypar excellence. The position of the ducat was associated with the international trading position of Venice as well as the fact that ‘the Venetianducato, which was first coined in 1284, kept both its weight and fineness remarkably intact up to the end of the Venetian Republic’. The ducat's domination of the Eastern Mediterranean money market led to the appearance of a series of imitations, including Islamic imitations which were produced in response to the introduction of ducats into the internal economy of Mamluk Egypt. All the accounts based on Arabic sources date the domination of the ducat in the Mamluk market froma.h.801/a.d.1399. These same sources describe the various attempts by Mamluk sultans to meet the challenge of the ducat by coining imitations. Their efforts culminated in the ashrafî, first issued in 829/1425, which successfully replaced the ducat as the principal gold currency of the Mamluk Empire until the Ottoman conquest of 922/1517.

Anti-Semitism and Urban Development in France in the Second World War: The Case of Îlot 16 in Paris

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
ISABELLE BACKOUCHE ◽  
SARAH GENSBURGER
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Second World War ◽  
City Council ◽  
Town Planning ◽  
World War ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Housing Area ◽  
Planning Decision ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

AbstractExamining an ordinary town-planning decision made during an extraordinary period, this article highlights the interaction between the local urban redevelopment policy and the state policy of racial persecution in 1941. However, it argues that this interaction was far more complex than the implementation of an anti-Semitic ideology by two separate administrations to which it is usually reduced. Instead of trying to assess the ‘reality’ of the ‘representation’ of the housing area (îlot) as a ‘Jewish quarter’ the article takes as fact the notion that representations are realities, and vice versa, and attempts to understand if, and by what mechanisms, an ethno-religious characterisation of the îlot played a role in the redevelopment operations under consideration here.In 1921 a memo from the Seine prefecture had been presented to the city council, identifying seventeen insanitary îlots in Paris as having above-average mortality rates from tuberculosis. These îlots were to be razed to the ground and rebuilt. The sixteenth îlot on the list was located in the southern section of the fourth arrondissement. This ‘îlot 16’ was apparently known as an area where the majority of its inhabitants were foreign Jews. In October 1941, when the persecution of the Jews was at its height, the Seine prefecture began a massive redevelopment of this urban space. The issue of areas of bad housing had been nagging at officials since the beginning of the century: but how are the actions of the Seine prefecture to be explained from 1941 onwards? Why, during the Second World War, were city officials so determined to prioritise, indeed to focus exclusively on, îlot 16? Why was it that a Paris construction project of a scale not seen since Baron Haussmann's time was planned at this point, when the actors themselves described the economic and political situation as unfavourable?

Jozef Duysans gevecht met den engel. Schermutselingen rond het graf van Paul Van Ostaijen

2012 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 299-328
Author(s):  
Armand Van Nimmen
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Nineteen Thirties ◽  
Public Monuments ◽  
Deep Waters ◽  
Original Idea ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

Deze bijdrage handelt over de perikelen in de jaren dertig rond het plan om het lichamelijk overschot van de Vlaamse dichter Paul Van Ostaijen over te brengen uit het klein Waals dorp waar hij in vergetelheid begraven lag onder een houten kruis naar zijn geboortestad Antwerpen. Daar zou hij herbegraven worden op de stedelijke begraafplaats Schoonselhof onder een gepaste denksteen. Zoals meermaals het geval is bij het oprichten van publieke monumenten, verliepen – wegens onderling gekibbel en gebrek aan financiële middelen – meer dan zes jaren vooraleer de oorspronkelijke idee kon verwezenlijkt worden.Aandacht in dit artikel gaat naar Jozef Duysan, bewonderaar van de dichter en uitgesproken flamingant, die een cruciale rol speelde in de conceptie en uitvoering van het initiatief. Ten slotte beschrijft het artikel hoe deze nu bijna totaal vergeten man tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog in het vaarwater geraakte van de collaboratie, fungeerde als directeur van het Arbeidsamt in Antwerpen, na de oorlog veroordeeld werd en jaren lang ondergedoken leefde in die stad.________Jozef Duysan’s battle with the angel: Skirmishes around the tomb of Paul Van OstaijenThis contribution reports the vicissitudes concerning the plan dating from the nineteen thirties to transfer the mortal remains of the Flemish poet Paul Van Ostaijen from the small Walloon village where he was buried in oblivion under a wooden cross to Antwerp, the city of his birth. He was to be reburied there on the municipal cemetery Schoonselhof under a fitting memorial headstone. As frequently happens on the occasion of creating public monuments, more than six years passed before the original idea could be carried out – because of internal bickering and lack of financial means. This article focuses on Jozef Duysan, an admirer of the poet and an explicit Flemish militant, who played a crucial role in the concept and realisation of the initiative. In conclusion the article recounts how this man who has been practically completely forgotten now,  ventured into the deep waters of the collaboration during the Second World War, how he acted as director of the Arbeidsamt in Antwerp and how he was convicted after the war and lived for many years in hiding in that city.

Urban commemoration and literature in post-Soviet L'viv: a comparative analysis with the Polish experience

2014 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 637-654 ◽  
Author(s):  
Uilleam Blacker
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Diverse Range ◽  
Memory Culture ◽  
Polish Experience ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

This article analyzes how the Poles and Jews who disappeared from the western Ukrainian city of L'viv as a result of the Second World War are remembered in the city today. It examines a range of commemorative practices, from monuments and museums to themed cafes and literature, and analyzes how these practices interact to produce competing mnemonic narratives. In this respect, the article argues for an understanding of the city as a complex text consisting of a diverse range of mutually interdependent mnemonic media produced by a range of actors. The article focuses in particular on the ways in which Ukrainian nationalist narratives interact with the memory of the city's “lost others.” The article also seeks to understand L'viv‘s memory culture through comparison with a range of Polish cities that have faced similar problems with commemorating vanished communities, but have witnessed a deeper recognition of these communities than has been the case in L'viv. The article proposes reasons for the divergences between the memory cultures of L'viv and that found in Polish cities, and attempts to outline the gradual processes by which L'viv‘s Polish and Jewish pasts might become more widely integrated into the city's memory culture.

JEWISH IDENTITY IN THE FACE OF ANTI-SEMITISM

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 895-900
Author(s):  
ELISABETH ALBANIS
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
English Speaking World ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
Second World

A history of the Jews in the English-speaking world: Great Britain. By W. D. Rubinstein, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996. Pp. viii+539. ISBN 0-312-12542-9. £65.00.Pogroms: anti-Jewish violence in modern Russian history. Edited by John D. Klier and Shlomo Lambroza. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xx+393. ISBN 0-521-40532-7. £55.00.Western Jewry and the Zionist project, 1914–1933. By Michael Berkowitz. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xvi+305. ISBN 0-521-47087-0. £35.00.Three books under review deal from different perspectives with the responses of Jews in Western and Eastern Europe to the increasing and more or less violent outbursts of anti-Semitism which they encountered in the years from 1880 to the Second World War. The first two titles consider how deep-rooted anti-Semitism was in Britain and Russia and in what sections of society it was most conspicuous, whereas the third asks how Western Jewry became motivated to support the Zionist project of settlement in Palestine; all three approach the question of how isolated or intergrated diaspora Jews were in their respective countries.

Roman Inscriptions in the City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

1976 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 28-43
Author(s):  
J. J. Wilkes
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Art Gallery ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Small Collection ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

The nineteen stones described below form a small collection of Latin inscriptions now housed in the City of Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. They have been acquired since the Second World War from older collections assembled at various places in the United Kingdom. With the exception of two, all are recorded as found in Rome and sixteen have been published in volume VI of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (CIL). The findspot of one (no. 6) is not recorded, while that of another (no. 13), although not attested, was almost certainly Rome. The publications in CIL were based in most cases on manuscript copies made between the fifteenth and ninetenth centuries; in the case of eight stones this republication (nos. 2, 3, 5, 9, 11, 12, 17 and 18) provides corrections or amendments to the relevant entries in CIL. All measurements are metric.

Bar-Dancing, Palm Wine, and Letters

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-154
Author(s):  
Danielle Porter Sanchez
Keyword(s):  
Alcohol Consumption ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Sense Of Control ◽  
World War ◽  
Palm Wine ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

Abstract This article focuses on the militarization of social life and leisure in Brazzaville during the Second World War and argues that efforts to instill a sense of control over the city could only suppress life so much, as many Congolese people were unwilling to completely succumb to the will of the administration in a war that seemed to offer very little to their communities or their city as a whole. Furthermore, drinking and dancing served as opportunities to engage with issues of class and race in the wartime capital of Afrique Française Libre. The history of alcohol consumption in Brazzaville is not simply the story of choosing whether or not to drink (or allow others to drink); rather, it is one of many stories of colonial control, exploitation, and racism that plagued Europe’s colonies in Africa during the Second World War.

scholarly journals “Making Nonsense of the Little Categories”: Slaughterhouse-Five and The Memoirs of a Survivor as autobiographical science fiction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Georgia Hight
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Living Room ◽  
World War ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Traumatic Memories ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
Southern Rhodesia ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World

<p>Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) and Doris Lessing’s The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974) are both novels that blend autobiography with science fiction. In a review of Vonnegut’s Mother Night, Lessing writes that he “makes nonsense of the little categories”. The same applies to Lessing. These two novels live in the porous borders between genre—between fiction and non-fiction.  Vonnegut writes that he can’t remember much of his experiences in the firebombing of Dresden in the Second World War. The war novel he writes about them has a protagonist who is “unstuck in time”. I frame my discussion of Slaughterhouse around problems of temporal and narrative ordering. Through use of fractured time, repetitions, and the chronotope, Vonnegut finds a way to express his missing and traumatic memories of the war.  Lessing’s memories are of her early childhood in Persia and Southern Rhodesia. These memories are warped, claustrophobic, and difficult to articulate. Like Slaughterhouse, Memoirs fractures time and space. I organise my discussion of Lessing’s novel around the latter, focusing on a literalised porous border: her dissolving living room wall. Borders and portals between spaces in Memoirs blend the dystopian, science-fiction world of the city with the world of Lessing’s memories; dreams with reality; and the static with the dynamic.  I pose several answers to the question of why science fiction and autobiography. A shared occupation of the two authors was a concern for the madness and dissolution of society, and science fiction engages in a tradition of expressing these concerns. Additionally, Vonnegut and Lessing use the tools of a genre in which it is acceptable for time and space to be warped or fractured. These tools not only allow for the expression of memories that are fragmented, difficult, and half forgotten, but produce worlds that mirror the form of these personal memories.</p>

scholarly journals Pedagogic Alternatives in Italy after the Second World War: the Experience of the Movimento di Cooperazione Educativa and Bruno Ciari’s New School in Bologna

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirella D’Ascenzo
Keyword(s):  
Educational Innovation ◽  
Teaching Profession ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
New School ◽  
School Renewal ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City ◽  
Second World ◽  
And Training

This contribution explores the historical and educational context in Italy after the Second World War, focusing on the pedagogical and educational innovation of the Movimento di Cooperazione Educativa (Educational Cooperation Movement, MCE), founded to promote the techniques of Freinet, and in particular Bruno Ciari, teacher, politician and driving force behind national school renewal in Italy. Using printed sources and archives from the period, the paper looks at the social and pedagogical experiment developed by Bruno Ciari between 1966 and 1970 and promoted in the city of Bologna through «Pedagogic Februaries»; these involved a series of events, conferences and training initiatives, organised with the cooperation of key universities, targeting teachers and families in order to develop an innovative, shared school culture. From the egodocuments of a preschool teacher who worked with Bruno Ciari in the city of Bologna, we enter the heart of the renewal of teaching practices, highlighting the tormented process of change in the teaching profession, in favour of a school that would be a true alternative to the traditional model and open to the democratic demands of all society. 

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