Władysław Szpilman’s Post-War Career in Poland

Author(s):  
Filip Mazurczak

This chapter draws attention to Władysław Szpilman, who was the focus of Roman Polanski's critically acclaimed and commercially successful 2002 film adaptation of the bestselling memoir Smierc miasta. It looks into Szpilman's harrowing portrayal of the cruelty of the Holocaust and the German occupation of Warsaw, including his inspiring depiction of human kindness amidst absolute evil. It also discusses Szpilman's key role in Polish classical and popular music after the war, in which he's considered as one of the most important figures in twentieth-century Polish music. The chapter provides an overview of Szpilman's contribution to Polish music, with a particular focus on the period beginning in 1945. It reviews archival and secondary sources and interviews with Szpilman's widow and son, which brings to light the enormous contribution of the man dubbed the “Polish Gershwin” and the “Polish Cole Porter” by leading composers.

Author(s):  
Simon Unger-Alvi

Abstract This collection of essays evaluates the relations between Eugenio Pacelli and Germany from the beginning of his career as a papal nuncio in Munich in 1917 until his pontificate during the wartime and post-war periods. The contributions to this volume do not provide a complete overview of this topic. Instead, they should be understood as case studies on certain aspects of Vatican-German history. At the core of this work are the complexities and ambiguities of papal politics between four political systems from the Kaiserreich to the West German Federal Republic. Ultimately, this volume thus touches upon very diverse subjects ranging from Pacelli’s ‚concordat diplomacy‘ in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich to his silence during the Holocaust and the German occupation of Italy, the anti-communism of the Cold War, and the Vatican’s path towards reform in the post-war period.


2020 ◽  
pp. 153-180
Author(s):  
Yurii Kaparulin

The Holocaust in Southern Ukraine: The Response of Survived Jews of Kalinindorf District after the German OccupationBased on archival documents and published and unpublished materials of oral history, the paper offers an overview of the Holocaust in the Kalinindorf district (territories of modern-day Kherson and Mykolaiv Oblast, Ukraine) and the reaction of survived Jews after their return from evacuation and the front. Through particular cases, the paper shows the variants of behaviour and adaptation of Jews to post-war living conditions. The mid-1940s serves as the historical background; it was a period when antisemitic attitudes strengthened in society and in the party leadership. The article indicates how the Jews returned to the pre-war lifestyle in rural areas, but also their rejection of new conditions and changes in the place where they lived. It also investigates the formation of the Jewish community’s tradition of commemorative practices in places of mass executions of Jews.  Holokaust na Ukrainie Południowej. Reakcje ocalałych Żydów dystryktu Kalinindorf po niemieckiej okupacjiArtykuł bazuje na dokumentacji archiwalnej, opublikowanych i nieopublikowanych relacjiach historii mówionej, i stanowi zarys problemu Holokaustu w dystrykcie Kalinindorf (terytorium dzisiejszych obwodów chersońskiego i mikołajowskiego); ukazuje również reakcje ocalałych  Żydów po powrocie z frontu i ewakuacji. Na przykładzie poszczególnych przypadków artykuł prezentuje różne zachowania i typy adaptacji Żydów do życia w powojennych warunkach. Tło historyczne stanowi połowa lat 40. XX wieku, jako okres wzmocnienia nastrojów antysemickich w społeczeństwie i wśród przywódców partyjnych. Artykuł opisuje zarówno powrót Żydów do przedwojennego sposobu życia na terenach wiejskich, jak i ich niechęć do nowych warunków i nowego miejsca osiedlenia. Prezentuje również badania nad kształtowaniem się wśród społeczności żydowskich tradycji praktyk upamiętniających w miejscach masowej eksterminacji.


2016 ◽  
pp. 425-434
Author(s):  
Dan Michman

The percentage of victimization of Dutch Jewry during the Shoah is the highest of Western, Central and Southern Europe (except, perhaps of Greece), and close to the Polish one: 75%, more than 104.000 souls. The question of disproportion between the apparent favorable status of the Jews in society – they had acquired emancipation in 1796 - and the disastrous outcome of the Nazi occupation as compared to other countries in general and Western European in particular has haunted Dutch historiography of the Shoah. Who should be blamed for that outcome: the perpetrators, i.e. the Germans, the bystanders, i.e. the Dutch or the victims, i.e. the Dutch Jews? The article first surveys the answers given to this question since the beginnings of Dutch Holocaust historiography in the immediate post-war period until the debates of today and the factors that influenced the shaping of some basic perceptions on “Dutch society and the Jews”. It then proceeds to detailing several facts from the Holocaust period that are essential for an evaluation of gentile attitudes. The article concludes with the observation that – in spite of ongoing debates – the overall picture which has accumulated after decades of research will not essentially being altered. Although the Holocaust was initiated, planned and carried out from Berlin, and although a considerable number of Dutchmen helped and hid Jews and the majority definitely despised the Germans, considerable parts of Dutch society contributed to the disastrous outcome of the Jewish lot in the Netherlands – through a high amount of servility towards the German authorities, through indifference when Jewish fellow-citizens were persecuted, through economically benefiting from the persecution and from the disappearance of Jewish neighbors, and through actual collaboration (stemming from a variety of reasons). Consequently, the picture of the Holocaust in the Netherlands is multi-dimensional, but altogether puzzling and not favorable.


Paragraph ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-44
Author(s):  
Christopher Johnson

The work of French ethnologist and prehistorian André Leroi-Gourhan (1911–86) represents an important episode in twentieth-century intellectual history. This essay follows the development of Leroi-Gourhan's relationship to the discipline of ethnology from his early work on Arctic Circle cultures to his post-war texts on the place of ethnology in the human sciences. It shows how in the pre-war period there is already a conscious attempt to articulate a more comprehensive form of ethnology including the facts of natural environment and material culture. The essay also indicates the biographical importance of Leroi-Gourhan's mission to Japan as a decisive and formative experience of ethnographic fieldwork, combining the learning of a language with extended immersion in a distinctive material and mental culture. Finally, it explores how in the post-war period Leroi-Gourhan's more explicit meta-commentaries on the scope of ethnology argue for an extension of the discipline's more traditional domains of study to include the relatively neglected areas of language, technology and aesthetics.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 00007
Author(s):  
B Dewi Puspitaningrum ◽  
Airin Miranda

<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>


Author(s):  
Chris Forster

This chapter compares the reception of Joyce’s 1922 Ulysses with that of Joseph Strick’s 1967 film adaptation of the novel. Although Ulysses had been legally publishable in England for decades, Strick’s film still encountered censorship from the British Board of Film Censors. The chapter argues that Joyce’s novel, for all its obscenity and provocation, mitigated its threat by foregrounding its own printedness, allying its fate to the waning power of print as a bearer of obscenity. Strick’s film, by contrast, activated the perceived power of film. The contrast of the two versions of Ulysses, which are often identical in language, thus offers a valuable window on how obscenity changed across media through the twentieth century. In making this argument, the chapter surveys print strategies of censorship, including the asterisk, and how these strategies operated in a range of works.


Author(s):  
Piero Ignazi

Chapter 3 investigates the process of party formation in France, Germany, Great Britain, and Italy, and demonstrates the important role of cultural and societal premises for the development of political parties in the nineteenth century. Particular attention is paid in this context to the conditions in which the two mass parties, socialists and Christian democrats, were established. A larger set of Western European countries included in this analysis is thoroughly scrutinized. Despite discontent among traditional liberal-conservative elites, full endorsement of the political party was achieved at the beginning of the twentieth century. Particular attention is paid to the emergence of the interwar totalitarian party, especially under the guise of Italian and German fascism, when ‘the party’ attained its most dominant influence as the sole source and locus of power. The chapter concludes by suggesting hidden and unaccounted heritages of that experience in post-war politics.


Author(s):  
Laurence Maslon

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the first way that the imprimatur of Broadway reached consumers was through the immense distribution of colorful and tuneful sheet music. Early music publishers learned quickly that associating a song with a Broadway show such as the Ziegfeld Follies, Broadway personalities such as Al Jolson and Fanny Brice, or Broadway composers such as Victor Herbert gave that tune a special identity that increased its popularity. In addition, music publishers, such as Max Dreyfus, were major power brokers in the popular music industry, yielding the ability to make a song into a hit, and continued to be influential through the first half of the twentieth century.


Author(s):  
Michaela Belejkaničová

AbstractIn his Heretical Essays, Jan Patočka introduces the concept of the solidarity of the shaken. He argues that it emerges in the conditions of political violence—the frontline experience (Fronterlebnis). Moreover, Patočka brings into discussion the puzzling concepts of day, night, metanoia and sacrifice, which only further problematise the idea. Researching how other thinkers have examined the phenomenon of the frontline experience, it becomes obvious that Patočka did not invent the obscure vocabulary ex nihilo. Concepts such as frontline experience, sacrifice and the metaphors of the day and night were commonly used by thinkers in the inter-war and post-war eras in their examination of community (Gemeinschaft). This study aims to reconstruct the idea of the solidarity of the shaken as contextualized within a broader scholarly debate on the concept of community (Gemeinschaft). Through the critical dialogue between Patočka’s works and the works of Ernst Jünger and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, this study will portray how Patočka, in his discourse on the frontline experience, follows the usual pattern of overcoming one’s individuality, transcending and opening up to the constitution of solidarity. This paper will argue that Patočka defined the solidarity of the shaken in an attempt to revive the positive aspects of a community and break with the regressive (if not sinister) uses to which it was put in the twentieth century.


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