Rivesaltes

Author(s):  
Susan Ireland

The Camp Joffre, otherwise known as the Camp de Rivesaltes, played a role in many of the major conflicts of the twentieth century, including the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the Algerian war of independence. Originally designed as a military base, the camp was frequently reconfigured and was used for diverse purposes, often serving as an internment centre. The memorial museum, which was opened in October 2015, bears witness to the camp’s multifaceted history. As a postcolonial site of memory, Rivesaltes is primarily associated with the harkis, the Algerians who worked for the French during the war of independence and who found themselves isolated in temporary housing camps when they were repatriated to France at the end of the conflict. Emblematic of the housing camps in general, Rivesaltes figures prominently in the community’s collective memories as a symbol of their marginalization and of France’s failure to protect them.

Author(s):  
Laura Jeanne Sims

This chapter examines how the French state created a crisis through its management of the arrival and installation of the Harkis in 1962. The Harkis, Algerians of North African origin who supported the French army during the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), faced reprisal violence in Algeria at the end of the war and many were forced to migrate with their families to France. In response, French officials attempted to prevent the Harkis from escaping to France and placed some of those who succeeded in internment camps. Comparing the treatment of the Harkis with that of the Pieds-Noirs, the descendants of European settlers in Algeria who likewise fled to France in 1962, highlights the structural racism underlying French perceptions of and reactions to Harki migration. This chapter also explores the ways in which second-generation Harkis have constructed collective memories of the crisis and their attempts to hold the state responsible for its actions.


Author(s):  
Tahia Abdel Nasser

This chapter focuses on the autobiographical novels and memoirs of two important twentieth-century Arab women writers who provide models for the adaptation of the genre in colonial and postcolonial cultures: Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade and Nowhere in My Father’s House, two Francophone autobiographical novels by Algerian writer Assia Djebar, and The Search: Personal Papers, a memoir in Arabic by Egyptian writer Latifa al-Zayyat. By framing autobiographical production in anticolonial national movements, Djebar and al-Zayyat rework the genre to comment on postcolonial cultures. Both writers contest colonial formations and offer revolutionary representations of solitude in the postcolonial nation: the Francophone Algerian writer’s challenge to the French archive of the Algerian War of Independence and the Egyptian writer’s reexamination of national culture and the history of the 1940s student movement. In the chapter, solitude is read as an emancipatory opportunity when the writers rethink the language of the new nation through autobiography.


Author(s):  
Derek J. Penslar

This book is the first comprehensive and comparative look at Jewish involvement in the military and their attitudes toward war from the 1600s until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The book shows that although Jews have often been described as people who shun the army, in fact they have frequently been willing, even eager, to do military service, and only a minuscule minority have been pacifists. The book demonstrates that Israel's military ethos did not emerge from a vacuum and that long before the state's establishment, Jews had a vested interest in military affairs. Spanning Europe, North America, and the Middle East, the book discusses the myths and realities of Jewish draft dodging, how Jews reacted to facing their coreligionists in battle, the careers of Jewish officers and their reception in the Jewish community, the effects of World War I on Jewish veterans, and Jewish participation in the Spanish Civil War and World War II. The book culminates with a study of Israel's War of Independence as a Jewish world war, which drew on the military expertise and financial support of a mobilized, global Jewish community. The book considers how military service was a central issue in debates about Jewish emancipation and a primary indicator of the position of Jews in any given society. Deconstructing old stereotypes, the book radically transforms our understanding of Jews' historic relationship to war and military power.


Author(s):  
Alistair Fox

This chapter analyses the earliest of the New Zealand coming-of-age feature films, an adaptation of Ian Cross’s novel The God Boy, to demonstrate how it addresses the destructive impact on a child of the puritanical value-system that had dominated Pākehā (white) society through much of the twentieth century, being particularly strong during the interwar years, and the decade immediately following World War II. The discussion explores how dysfunction within the family and repressive religious beliefs eventuate in pressures that cause Jimmy, the protagonist, to act out transgressively, and then to turn inwards to seek refuge in the form of self-containment that makes him a prototype of the Man Alone figure that is ubiquitous in New Zealand fiction.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-254
Author(s):  
Andreu Espasa

De forma un tanto paradójica, a finales de los años treinta, las relaciones entre México y Estados Unidos sufrieron uno de los momentos de máxima tensión, para pasar, a continuación, a experimentar una notable mejoría, alcanzando el cénit en la alianza política y militar sellada durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. El episodio catalizador de la tensión y posterior reconciliación fue, sin duda, el conflicto diplomático planteado tras la nacionalización petrolera de 1938. De entre los factores que propiciaron la solución pacífica y negociada al conflicto petrolero, el presente artículo se centra en analizar dos fenómenos del momento. En primer lugar, siguiendo un orden de relevancia, se examina el papel que tuvo la Guerra Civil Española. Aunque las posturas de ambos gobiernos ante el conflicto español fueron sustancialmente distintas, las interpretaciones y las lecciones sobre sus posibles consecuencias permitieron un mayor entendimiento entre los dos países vecinos. En segundo lugar, también se analizarán las afinidades ideológicas entre el New Deal y el cardenismo en el contexto de la crisis mundial económica y política de los años treinta, con el fin de entender su papel lubricante en las relaciones bilaterales de la época. Somewhat paradoxically, at the end of the 1930s, the relationship between Mexico and the United States experienced one of its tensest moments, after which it dramatically improved, reaching its zenith in the political and military alliance cemented during World War II. The catalyst for this tension and subsequent reconciliation was, without doubt, the diplomatic conflict that arose after the oil nationalization of 1938. Of the various factors that led to a peaceful negotiated solution to the oil conflict, this article focuses on analyzing two phenomena. Firstly—in order of importance—this article examines the role that the Spanish Civil War played. Although the positions of both governments in relation to the Spanish war were significantly different, the interpretations and lessons concerning potential consequences enabled a greater understanding between the two neighboring countries. Secondly, this article also analyzes the ideological affinities between the New Deal and Cardenismo in the context of the global economic and political crisis of the thirties, seeking to understand their role in facilitating bilateral relations during that period.


Author(s):  
Emily Robins Sharpe

The Jewish Canadian writer Miriam Waddington returned repeatedly to the subject of the Spanish Civil War, searching for hope amid the ruins of Spanish democracy. The conflict, a prelude to World War II, inspired an outpouring of literature and volunteerism. My paper argues for Waddington’s unique poetic perspective, in which she represents the Holocaust as the Spanish Civil War’s outgrowth while highlighting the deeply personal repercussions of the war – consequences for women, for the earth, and for community. Waddington’s poetry connects women’s rights to human rights, Canadian peace to European war, and Jewish persecution to Spanish carnage.


Author(s):  
Pavel Gotovetsky

The article is devoted to the biography of General Pavlo Shandruk, an Ukrainian officer who served as a Polish contract officer in the interwar period and at the beginning of the World War II, and in 1945 became the organizer and commander of the Ukrainian National Army fighting alongside the Third Reich in the last months of the war. The author focuses on the symbolic event of 1961, which was the decoration of General Shandruk with the highest Polish (émigré) military decoration – the Virtuti Militari order, for his heroic military service in 1939. By describing the controversy and emotions among Poles and Ukrainians, which accompanied the award of the former Hitler's soldier, the author tries to answer the question of how the General Shandruk’s activities should be assessed in the perspective of the uneasy Twentieth-Century Polish-Ukrainian relations. Keywords: Pavlo Shandruk, Władysław Anders, Virtuti Militari, Ukrainian National Army, Ukrainian National Committee, contract officer.


Heritage ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 753-781
Author(s):  
Dirk HR Spennemann

Military terrain analysis serves as a tool to examine a battle commander’s view of a battlefield and permits to hindcast some of the rationale for actions taken. This can be augmented by physical evidence of the remains of the battle that still exist in the cultural landscape. In the case of World War II-era battlefields, such terrain analysis has to take into account the influence of aerial warfare—the interrelationship between attacking aircraft and the siting of anti-aircraft guns. This paper examines these issues using the case example of the Japanese WWII-era base on Kiska in the Aleutian Islands (Alaska).


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Duindam

Why do we attach so much value to sites of Holocaust memory, if all we ever encounter are fragments of a past that can never be fully comprehended? David Duindam examines how the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a former theater in Amsterdam used for the registration and deportation of nearly 50,000 Jews, fell into disrepair after World War II before it became the first Holocaust memorial museum of the Netherlands. Fragments of the Holocaust: The Amsterdam Hollandsche Schouwburg as a Site of Memory combines a detailed historical study of the postwar period of this site with a critical analysis of its contemporary presentation by placing it within international debates concerning memory, emotionally fraught heritage and museum studies. A case is made for the continued importance of the Hollandsche Schouwburg and other comparable sites, arguing that these will remain important in the future as indexical fragments where new generations can engage with the memory of the Holocaust on a personal and affective level.


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