scholarly journals Is the Unspeakable Singable? The Ethics of Holocaust Representation and the Reception of Górecki's Symphony no.3

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Moore
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Musical Language ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Holocaust Representation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Second World ◽  
New Hypothesis

Debates about Holocaust representation have long been haunted by the idea that the enormity and intensity of human suffering in the events of World War Two are ‘unspeakable’. In many such statements the capacity for cognition and the ethical dimension of aestheticisation are blurred – the Holocaust is ‘unspeakable’ both in the sense of being impossible to imagine in its full horror, but also morally inappropriate as the subject of artistic production. But do all forms of cultural representation of the Holocaust fail in the same way as words or to the same degree, in the eyes of those who would judge their merits according the tenet of unspeakability? This paper considers one particularly renowned work Henryk Górecki’s symphony no. 3 (Symfonia pieśni żałosnych) of 1976, discussing how it mediated both the global politics of Holocaust representation and the recuperation of victimhood in postcommunist Poland. Górecki claimed a subjectivity of failure in response to the challenge of representing the events of World War Two and has insisted that the symphony is not about war but about sorrow. The vocal lyrics are nonetheless profoundly thematised around war suffering, and the Second World War in particular - events he approached with a musical language of epic, pathos and redemption. In framing the subject of his work, he emphasised a Polish national suffering that both eschewed mention of specifically targeted groups of victims, and beckoned to Polish folk and catholic traditions. This article presents a new hypothesis about the success of Górecki’s work by considering it in relation to the ethical debates about Holocaust empathic response that have occurred in relation to historiographic, literary and filmic representation.

Ari Folman’s Other War

2017 ◽  
pp. 77-92
Author(s):  
Giulia Miller
Keyword(s):  
Second Generation ◽  
Holocaust Survivors ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Children Of Holocaust Survivors ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Israeli Cinema ◽  
Film Making ◽  
Second World

This chapter looks at Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir within the context of the Holocaust. It recounts the 1980s and 1990s that marked the emergence of second-generation Israeli cinema that was specifically produced by the children of Holocaust survivors. It also reviews the second-generation Israel films that address the subject of war and critique the Zionist project, which intimates that it had simply replaced the trauma of the Holocaust with a new and different kind of Israeli trauma. It also mentions Ari Folman, a child of survivors, who began making films during the period of second-generation Israeli cinema. The chapter describes Waltz with Bashir as an example of second-generation film-making and as a film that explicitly deals with Lebanon, but implicitly engages with events of the Second World War. It analyzes the function of the Holocaust in greater detail within the context of Israeli cinema of the early millennium and the cinema of second-generation film-makers.

scholarly journals Returning to the Past: The Germans as a Historical Trauma in Contemporary Czech Prose

Porównania ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 59-76
Author(s):  
Alena Šidáková Fialová
Keyword(s):  
Historical Trauma ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Family Saga ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Family ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Second World

This study describes reflections of wartime and postwar historical trauma in contemporary Czech prose, taking into account the issues surrounding Central Europe, which entirely overlap with the traditional confrontation between the Czechs and Germans. It also includes the changing reflections on Germany and the Germans, the Second World War and the subsequent expulsion found in the prose work of the new millennium, the unifying topic being deemed to be the issue of the ambiguous national identification of the protagonists, the detabooization of previously hushed-up subjects and the subject of the Holocaust, particularly in the family saga genre. It also takes into account groups of texts focusing on reflections of anti-German resistance activities, both in the genre of the novel (with detective elements) and in output on the boundaries between fiction and factographic prose.

Le rôle de l’armée juive dans la libération de Juifs en France 1942 - 1945

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 00007
Author(s):  
B Dewi Puspitaningrum ◽  
Airin Miranda
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
World War ◽  
French Army ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Status ◽  
Jews In France ◽  
State Of Israel ◽  
Second World

<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>

B'nai B'rith on the European continent after World War Two

1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-126
Author(s):  
Hans Levy
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
The State ◽  
Jewish Organization ◽  
World War Two ◽  
World War ◽  
European Continent ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Of Israel ◽  
Second World

The focus of this paper is on the oldest international Jewish organization founded in 1843, B’nai B’rith. The paper presents a chronicle of B’nai B’rith in Continental Europe after the Second World War and the history of the organization in Scandinavia. In the 1970's the Order of B'nai B'rith became B'nai B'rith international. B'nai B'rith worked for Jewish unity and was supportive of the state of Israel.

Hendrik Draye, tegenstander van de uitvoering van de doodstraf

2006 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 134-152
Author(s):  
Luc Vandeweyer
Keyword(s):  
Death Penalty ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Penal Policy ◽  
Catholic University ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The University ◽  
Second World ◽  
Young Professor

Hendrik Draye, opponent of the carrying out of the death penaltyIn this annotated and extensively contextualised source edition, Luc Vandeweyer deals with the period of repression after the Second World War. In June 1948, after the execution of two hundred collaboration-suspects in Belgium, the relatively young linguistics professor at the Catholic University of Leuven, Hendrik Draye, proposed, on humanitarian grounds, a Manifesto against the carrying out of the death penalty. Some colleagues, as well as some influential personalities outside the university, reacted positively; some colleagues were rather hesitant; most of them rejected the text. In the end, the initiative foundered because of the emphatic dissuasion by the head of university, who wanted to protect his university and, arguably, the young professor Draeye. The general public’s demand for revenge had not yet abated by then; moreover, the unstable government at that time planned a reorientation of the penal policy, which made a polarization undesirable. Nevertheless, Luc Vandeweyer concludes, "the opportunity for an important debate on the subject had been missed".

Dov Levin and Zvie A. Brown, The Story of an Underground: The Resistance of the Jews in Kovno in the Second World War, trans. Jessica Setbon. Jerusalem: Gefen, 2014. 496 pp.

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Armed Resistance ◽  
Second World ◽  
And Training

This chapter reviews the book The Story of an Underground: The Resistance of the Jews in Kovno in the Second World War (2014), by Dov Levin and Zvie A. Brown, translated by Jessica Setbon. The Story of an Underground is about the Jews of Kovno (Kaunas) who founded an underground movement during the Holocaust. The armed underground developed a plan to escape to the forests and join the partisans. The ghetto was liquidated in the summer of 1944. Many of the remaining Jews were sent to the Stutthof and Dachau concentration camps. The book highlights the dilemmas of Jewish armed resistance such as difficulties in obtaining weapons and training, some of the failures of the resistance, and some of the positive aspects of those who thought differently from members of the armed resistance.

scholarly journals Per Ravenna trecentesca: nuove proposte per l’assetto architettonico di Santa Maria in Porto Fuori

2019 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-31
Author(s):  
Fabio Massaccesi
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Subject ◽  
First Time ◽  
Santa Maria ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Church

Abstract This contribution intends to draw attention to one of the most significant monuments of medieval Ravenna: the church of Santa Maria in Porto Fuori, which was destroyed during the Second World War. Until now, scholars have focused on the pictorial cycle known through photographs and attributed to the painter Pietro da Rimini. However, the architecture of the building has not been the subject of systematic studies. For the first time, this essay reconstructs the fourteenth-century architectural structure of the church, the apse of which was rebuilt by 1314. The data that led to the virtual restitution of the choir and the related rood screen are the basis for new reflections on the accesses to the apse area, on the pilgrimage flows, and on the view of the frescoes.

Entangled Memories: Complicating the Memory of Area Bombing Through the Haunted Ruins of Anhalter Bahnhof

2021 ◽  
pp. 153270862199758
Author(s):  
Eloise Florence
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Second World War ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
World War ◽  
Train Station ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Normative Models ◽  
German Cities ◽  
Second World

This article investigates the possibilities for experiential encounters with ruins in Berlin to complicate the dominant articulations of the cultural memory of Allied bombing attacks on German cities during the Second World War. Building on works that seek to disrupt normative models of cultural memory of the bombings, and entangling them with existing literature that uses new materialism to engage the sensorial nature of memory site-encounters, I examine my own fieldwork visits the ruins of Anhalter Bahnhof—a former train station—as an entanglement of both. Specifically, I investigate how encountering Anhalter through this entangled method allows the site to emerge as haunted. Encountering Anhalter as haunted might complicate the linear temporality that underpins enduring the narrative that the Allies’ actions during the war were completely ethical because they are largely framed as a response to— ergo following—the Holocaust.

scholarly journals Agency and Analogy in African History: the Contribution of Extra-Mural Studies in Ghana

2007 ◽  
Vol 34 ◽  
pp. 273-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Skinner
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
African History ◽  
World War ◽  
Significant Extent ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Autobiographical Texts ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Second World

As the pioneering generation of postwar British academics retired, some produced autobiographical texts which revealed the personal circumstances and intellectual influences that brought them to the study of Africa. Edited volumes have also provided broader reflections on the academic disciplines, methodologies, and institutions through which these scholars engaged with the continent. In one such text, Christopher Clapham and Richard Hodder-Williams noted the special relationship between extramural studies (also known as university adult education) and the academic study of Africa's mass nationalist movements:The impetus for this study came to a remarkable degree from a tiny group of men and women who pioneered university extra-mural studies in the Gold Coast immediately after the [Second World War], and to a significant extent established the parameters for subsequent study of the subject [African politics]. Gathered together under the aegis of Thomas Hodgkin […], they were led by David Kimble […], and included among the tutors Dennis Austin, Lalage Bown and Bill Tordoff, all of whom were to play a major role in African studies in the United Kingdom over the next forty years.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document