scholarly journals Testimoniality: A lexicon of witnesses of Holocaust non-sites of memory in Poland

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 25-35
Author(s):  
Maria Kobielska ◽  
Aleksandra Szczepan
Keyword(s):  
Material Objects ◽  
Research Project ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
International Scholarship ◽  
Post War ◽  
Human Actors ◽  
Bear Witness

The authors analyse grassroots modalities of the figure of witness in the communities living in the vicinity of uncommemorated sites of past violence. Testimoniality, understood as the disposition to bear witness, i.e. both the willingness to testify and the ability to provide important information, is discussed in relation to complex, heterogenic and dynamic assemblages that form around the sites in question, comprising both human (neighbours, wardens) and non-human actors (the landscape and biotope, material objects), diverse practices, performative gestures, and relations. The analysis is placed in the context of the debate on the complicated status of the “witness” as a category in the Polish post-war culture of memory, as well as of new relevant categories emerging in both Polish and international scholarship on the Holocaust. The authors conceptually systematise testimonial situations and propose a lexicon of testimonial positions, practices and objects that are grounded in the material gathered in fieldwork during the research project on unmemorialised sites of genocide in Poland. They distinguish: the crown witness, the trustee, the volunteer, the official and the contingent witness, and discuss categories of testimonial gesture, testimonial performance, testimonial object, and testimonial words.

Społeczeństwo holenderskie i los Żydów: skomplikowana historia

2016 ◽  
pp. 425-434
Author(s):  
Dan Michman
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Southern Europe ◽  
Dutch Society ◽  
Nazi Occupation ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Western European ◽  
Post War ◽  
Of Greece

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.

Child Survivors of the Holocaust — Strategies of Adaptation

1993 ◽  
Vol 38 (6) ◽  
pp. 384-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Krell
Keyword(s):  
Coping Strategies ◽  
Emotional Abuse ◽  
Opportunity To Learn ◽  
Distinct Group ◽  
Child Survivors ◽  
Adaptive Value ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Nazi Persecution ◽  
Post War ◽  
Over 40 Years

Child survivors have only recently been recognized as a developmentally distinct group with psychological experiences different from older survivors. The wartime circumstances of Nazi persecution caused enforced separation from family and friends, and all the survivors experienced persecution in the form of physical and emotional abuse, starvation and degradation, and were witnesses to cruelty. This paper is based on information from interviews and therapy with 25 child survivors, the majority of whom were not patients. Coping strategies are discussed in terms of their survival value in wartime and post-war adaptive value. Three themes which reverberate throughout the lives of child survivors, now adults, are discussed in greater detail: bereavement, memory and intellect. The fact that the majority of child survivors live normal and creative lives provides an opportunity to learn what factors have served them over 40 years, to provide the resilience and strength to cope after such a shattering beginning.

scholarly journals Ceremonial events at non-sites of memory: Seven framings of a difficult past

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 55-61
Author(s):  
Maria Kobielska
Keyword(s):  
Memory Devices ◽  
Burial Site ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Social Responses ◽  
Local Memory ◽  
Detailed Case ◽  
Memory Culture ◽  
The Holocaust

Abstract: The author discusses uncommemorated and under-remembered sites of past violence in terms of the conditions of their transformation into memory sites. Commemorative ceremonies, which may be staged at non-sites of memory, are presented as affective media of memory and identity, demonstrating social responses to the sites, as well as placing the local past in the context of supra-local memory forms. The argument is grounded in the material gathered from fieldwork during the research project on uncommemorated sites of genocide in Poland and, predominantly, in a detailed case study of a ceremony witnessed by the author in 2016 in Radecznica (Lublin Voivodship) at a burial site of victims of the “Holocaust by bullets”. In the article the discourse of speeches delivered during the ceremony is analyzed, on the assumption that they can reveal rules of national Polish memory culture dictating what may be commemorated and how cultural mechanisms have a power to hinder commemoration. As a result, seven distinctive framings of past events that kept returning in subsequent speeches were identified and interpreted as “memory devices” that enable and facilitate recollection, but also mark out the limits of what can be remembered and passed on.

Dance Britannia: The Impact of Global Shifts on Dance in Britain

2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Christy Adair ◽  
Ramsay Burt
Keyword(s):  
African Diaspora ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Global Circulation ◽  
Black British ◽  
New Approaches ◽  
Conceptual Problems ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Impact

The music and dance of African Diasporan artists has impacted current dance practice in Britain, and their legacies are testament to the global circulation of artistic ideas. This paper discusses the British Dance and the African Diaspora research project which seeks to write Black British dance artists and their legacies back into history. It aims to understand the nexus of aesthetic, institutional, and conceptual problems that have rendered these dancers invisible.Since the 1970s, a number of black British-based dancers has been teaching and producing performance work in a variety of dance styles. It was influenced by the context of anti-colonialism and the struggle for independence, which has been the motivation for the post-war generation of Caribbean and Asian artists who migrated to Britain. These historical and cultural contexts form the basis for our argument for new approaches to frameworks for analysis of the work of black British dance artists.

An Ordinary Polish Town: The Homecoming of Holocaust Survivors to Kalisz in the Immediate Aftermath of the War

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-112
Author(s):  
Lukasz Krzyzanowski
Keyword(s):  
Holocaust Survivors ◽  
Communal Life ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Industrial Town ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Economic Reality ◽  
Post War ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
Second World

The rapidly growing historiography on the aftermath of the Holocaust in Poland has focused primarily on post-war anti-Semitism. Scholars have traditionally concentrated on the post-war death, community destruction and emigration of Holocaust survivors rather than their attempts to return to their former homes. This article explores who these survivors were and what their return was like. Using the medium-sized industrial town of Kalisz in western Poland as a case study, the article argues that the composition of survivors' communities and the difficulty of adapting to the new economic reality, together with the already well-researched anti-Jewish violence, played a significant role in preventing a revival of Jewish communal life in provincial Poland in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.

Rediscovering Traces of Memory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Webber ◽  
Chris Schwarz ◽  
Jason Francisco
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Life ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Local People ◽  
Jewish Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Jewish Heritage ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Bear Witness

The present-day traces of the Jewish past in Poland are complex. Jewish life lay in ruins after the Holocaust. Much evidence of ruin remains, but there are also widespread traces that bear witness to the elaborate Jewish culture that once flourished there, even in villages and small towns. One also sees places where Jews were murdered by the Germans in the war: not only in death camps and ghettos, but also in fields, forests, rivers, and cemeteries. After the war, forty years of communism suppressed even the memory of the destroyed Jewish heritage. Today, by contrast, the historic Jewish culture of Poland is increasingly being memorialized, by local Poles as well as by foreign Jews. Synagogues and cemeteries are being renovated, monuments and museums are being set up. There are festivals of Jewish culture, hasidic pilgrims, and Jewish tourists; and local people who rescued Jews during the war are being honoured. In rediscovering the traces of memory one also finds clear signs of a local Jewish revival. This extensively revised second edition includes forty-five new photographs and updated explanatory texts. Together they suggest how to make sense of the past and discover its relevance for the present. This book will appeal to everyone concerned with questions of history, memory, and identity.

Heidelberg, February 6, 1988

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Hans-Georg Gadamer ◽  
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
Keyword(s):  
The Public ◽  
Deep Knowledge ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Press ◽  
Post War

The three philosophers gather in a restaurant in Heidelberg to take questions from the public, while members of the press cover the event. The first question concerns the notion of responsibility, which becomes the leading motif of the entire discussion: Heidegger’s responsibility as a thinker who gravely compromised himself politically; his readers’ responsibility with regard to their own deep knowledge of this compromise in relation to other aspects of Heidegger’s work; the responsibility of philosophy itself, both intellectually and ethically. Questions are posed as well on Heidegger’s post-war silence on the Holocaust and his refusal to retract his own statements and actions in favor of Nazism in 1933.

Ann Charney Dobryd

2002 ◽  
pp. 509-512
Author(s):  
Anna Petrov Bumble
Keyword(s):  
Family Members ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Jewish Family ◽  
Three Generations ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Inner World ◽  
Post War

This chapter considers Ann Charney’s Dobryd, a memoir with a profound treatment of the aftermath of the Holocaust. Reported from a child’s point of view, the narrative provides a glimpse into the deepest workings of Charney’s psyche from the age of 3 until the age of 10. Though not a feminist fable, Dobryd is a story in which all the protagonists — Charney, her mother, and her aunt — are women who struggle and succeed on their own during the war and in the chaos of post-war Poland. Named after a Polish town near Lviv, the memoir encompasses the lives of members of three generations of a Jewish family as they and their community suffer through the horrors of the Holocaust. The story follows family members over a period of about forty years, penetrating deep into their inner world.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document