scholarly journals Hungarian Women’s Holocaust Life Writing in the Context of the Nation’s Divided Social Memory, 1944-2014

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 54-81
Author(s):  
Louise O. Vasvári
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Intergenerational Transmission ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
Mothers And Daughters ◽  
Child Survivors ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Holocaust Narratives

In this paper, in commemoration of the seventieth anniversary year of 1944 in Hungary, I explore selected women’s Holocaust diaries, memoirs, letters, and other less studied documents, such as recipe books, all written during the war, which can provide invaluable resources for understanding the experiences of the victims of war, by personalizing the events and helping to write the obscure into history. At the same time, such documents allow historical voices of the period to provide testimony in the context of the divided social memory of the Holocaust in Hungary today.  I will first discuss several Hungarian diaries and “immediate memoirs” written right after liberation, among others, that of Éva Heyman who began writing her diary in 1944 on her thirteenth birthday and wrote until two days before her deportation to Auschwitz, where she perished. I will then discuss two recently published volumes, the Szakácskönyv a túlélélésért (2013), which contains the collected recipes that five Hungarian women wrote in a concentration camp in Austria, along with an oral history of the life of Hedwig Weiss, who redacted the collection. Finally, I will refer to the postmemory anthology, Lányok és anyák. Elmeséletlen történetek [‘Mothers and Daughters: Untold Stories’] (2013), where thirty five Hungarian women, some themselves child survivors, others daughters of survivors, write Holocaust narratives in which their mothers’ lives become the intersubject in their own autobiographies, underscoring the risks of intergenerational transmission, where traumatic memory can be transmitted (or silenced) to be repeated and reenacted, rather than worked through.

scholarly journals Zapiski z „Miasta Umarłych”. Obóz koncentracyjny Jasenovac i Stara Gradiška w literackich narracjach tanatologicznych i dyskursie pamięci obszaru postjugosłowianskiego

2019 ◽  
Vol 168 ◽  
pp. 507-520
Author(s):  
Ewa Szperlik
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Independent State ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western Civilisation ◽  
Holocaust Narratives ◽  
The City

Notes from “the city of the dead”: Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška concentration camps in thanatological narratives and in the memory discourse of the post-Yugoslav areaThis paper discusses selected Holocaust narratives of the post-Yugoslav area, which were set in the history of Hitler’s Europe due to the establishment of the pro-Nazi Pavelić regime The Independent State of Croatia. They were also set in the context of the concealment policy, when both places and events related to concentration camps, Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška, were ousted from collective memory by the authorities of communist Yugoslavia. Concentration camp memoirs and records — autothanatographies J. Derrida, A. Ubertowska — reflecting on the post-Yugoslav area of Tito’s epoch had been a tabooed realm of unsolicited truths S. Buryła for a few decades due to political reasons and have recently been reintroduced into official discourse of memory. They also address the questions of the end of Western civilisation, the topos of the concentration camp as the territory of the reign of death and struggle for survival. The five selected thanatological testimonies present the Holocaust and the nightmare of World War II as an essential part of reflection on the human condition H. Arendt and they also show the phenomenon of collective trauma D. LaCapra.  Bilješke iz „Grada Mrtvih”. Konclogor Jasenovac i Stara Gradiška u književnim tanatološkim naracijama i u diskursu kolektivnog pamćenja na području bivše JugoslavijePredmet razmatranja u ovom tekstu su odabrani autobiografski zapisi o Holokaustu sa područja bivše Jugoslavije, stavljene u vizuru povijesti hitlerove Europe povodom osnivanja režima Ante Pavelića kakva je bila NDH. Istodobno vrlo je važan u ovoj analizi kontekst politike prešućivanja te brisanja iz kolektivnog pamćenja mjesta i dogaᵭaja vezanih uz logore smrti: Jasenovac i Stara Gradiška koje su vlasti komunističke Jugoslavije nakon II svjestkog rata uspješno poricale. Vraćene u zadnje vrijeme javnom pamćenju sjećanja i uspomene na logor – „autotanatografije J. Derrida, A. Ubertowska – bile su nekoliko decenija prešućivane ili od javnosti skrivane u Titovoj državi te zbog političkih razloga spadale su u zonu nepoželjnih istina S. Buryła. Zabilježena vlastita sjećanja na konclogora – kasnije proskribiranih autora/svjedoka – bave se univerzalnom temom smrti, rušenja civilizacije zapadnog kruga, konclogora kao područja svevladajuće smrti, istrebljivanja i životnjske borbe za preživljavanje zatočenika. Pet odabranih logorskih testimonija prikazuje traumu II svjestkog rata D. LaCapra te govori o stanju čovječanstva u postratnom razdoblju H. Arendt.

Case Study: “Above all, we need the WITNESS”: The Oral History of Holocaust Survivor

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Wiederhorn
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Holocaust Survivor ◽  
Holocaust Studies ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Research And Education ◽  
Holocaust Narratives ◽  
Second World

Holocaust survivor and witness accounts began long before the Second World War ended. Diaries, journals, letters, notes hidden, buried, and stuffed into jars or between floor boards were mostly lost and destroyed, but those that have been recovered express desperation to tell, to document, to bear witness, and to commemorate. This article records the oral history of holocaust survivors. Together with the countless thousands of testimonies that would be recorded during the next sixty years, these eyewitness accounts would change the face of research and education, not only in the field of Holocaust studies but across academic boundaries. Together with the countless thousands of testimonies that would be recorded during the next sixty years, these eyewitness accounts would change the face of research and education, not only in the field of Holocaust studies but across academic boundaries. The second half of the twentieth century saw a renewed interest in holocaust narratives.

From Ravensbrück to Berlin: Will Lammert’s Monument to the Deported Jews 1957/1985

Images ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-163
Author(s):  
Natasha Goldman
Keyword(s):  
East Germany ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
East Berlin ◽  
Western Art ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Deutsche Demokratische Republik ◽  
Changing Attitudes ◽  
Art Style

In 1985 one of the earliest memorials dedicated to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust was installed in East Berlin. The Monument to the Deported Jews was an arrangement of thirteen bronze figures in expressionist style. Will Lammert, the artist, originally designed the figures for the base of his monument for Ravensbrück in 1957. The artist died in 1957, however, before finalizing his design for the monument. Only two figures on a pylon were installed at the concentration camp in 1959. The figures meant for the base of the Ravensbrück memorial were unfinished, but were nonetheless cast in bronze by the artist’s family. Thirteen of those figures were installed on the Große Hamburger Straße in 1985 by the artist’s grandson, Mark Lammert. This essay analyzes the Große Hamburger Straße monument in three ways: first, it returns to the literature on the Ravensbrück memorial in order to better understand the role that the unfinished figures would have played, had they been installed. I argue that they originally were most likely meant to depict “Strafestehen”—or torture by standing—at Ravensbrück. Secondly, it aims to explain why and how Lammert’s seemingly expressionist memorial would have been acceptable to East Germany in 1959. While Western art historical attitudes toward East Germany up until the 1990s assumed that Soviet socialist realism was the de facto art style of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR), some elements of expressionism were being theorized in the late 1950s, at precisely the time when Lammert designed the Ravensbrück monument. Finally, I analyze the role that a monument for Ravensbrück plays in this particular neighborhood of Mitte, Berlin: standing silently, they are no longer legible as women being tortured by standing. Instead, the sculptures signify, at the same time, the deported Jews of Berlin and the harrowing aftermath of their deportations, the improbable return of the deported Jews, and the changing attitudes toward the history of the neighborhood in which the sculptural group is located.

It’s Still There

boundary 2 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-143
Author(s):  
Paula Rabinowitz
Keyword(s):  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Georges Perec ◽  
Visual Examination ◽  
Nazi Concentration Camp ◽  
Alain Resnais ◽  
Television Shows ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Chantal Akerman ◽  
History Of

Daniel Blaufuks’s video Als Ob/As If formally interrogates the history of Holocaust imagery using a close visual examination of the 1944 “Staged Nazi Film” shot in Thereseinstadt. Layering his footage from present-day Terezín with a number of earlier films and television shows shot at or about the Nazi concentration camp, he contemplates the role of the image, both still and moving, in the creation of memory and history of the Holocaust. His video and phototextual book connect to literary explorations of the Czech concentration camp—by Georges Perec, W. G. Sebald, and Jiří Weil—as well as cinematic documentaries about the Nazi murder of European Jews by Alain Resnais, Claude Lanzmann, and Jean-Luc Godard. By focusing on contemporary Terezín, Blaufuks also brings to light aspects of memorialization within post-totalitarian societies investigated by filmmakers Petra Epperlein and Chantal Akerman, as well as by scholars of the Holocaust and post-Soviet Eastern Europe.

scholarly journals SOVIET PERIOD OF HISTORY AND HOLOCAUST IN ORAL HISTORY STUDIES: BETWEEN OFFICIAL AND PERSONAL MEMORY

2021 ◽  
pp. 121-138
Author(s):  
Victoria Vengerska ◽  
Oleksandr Zhukovskyi
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Social History ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
Soviet Period ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Individual Memory ◽  
History Of ◽  
Independence Era ◽  
Historical Memories ◽  
The Mind

The aim of this paper is to examine the mechanisms of action of individual and collective memory on the features of remembering/ forgetting / interpreting complex pages of history. The use of oral historical memories has allowed to trace the level of influence of stereotypes and dominant (official) historical narratives that were formed both in the Soviet period and in the independence era. The methodological basis of the study is the tools of oral, social history and the history of everyday life. Scientific novelty. The article is written on the basis of oral historical evidence. The article focuses on the issues that break stereotypes about Jews formed during the Soviet period. The collected evidence constitutes an important source of information that explains the peculiarities of the formation of social memory and political factors that determine the agenda of historical policy in a given period.  Conclusions. The article considers several blocks of problems that reflect the most typical stereotypes, fixed at the level of consciousness, behavioral attitudes, partially presented (or omitted) facts from history, which to some extent destroy them. The memoirs used in the article, which were collected in the framework of the project "Voices" in 2020 in Zhytomyr region (in which the author has participated), reflect the similarity of general ideas, assessments, tone, and memory stereotypes about anti-Semitism, the legitimacy of the Holodomor’s status of the genocide directed exclusively against ethnic Ukrainians, the role and place of Jews in the victory over Nazism, the peculiarities of evacuation, and the issues of preserving and honoring the memory of those killed during the Holocaust. At the same time, those memoirs demonstrate the differences between collective and individual memory, which preserves plots that to some extent destroy stereotypical attitudes that have long been ingrained in the mind and, accordingly, influenced the formation of social memory. The analysis of the interviews shows that oral history has significant source potential for studying various issues and sections of Soviet and modern history that await their researchers.

scholarly journals Lived experience and the Holocaust: spaces, senses and emotions in Auschwitz

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 27-58
Author(s):  
Nikolaus Wachsmann
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Construction Sites ◽  
Nazi Concentration Camp ◽  
Spatial History ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of

This article examines lived experience during the Holocaust, focusing on Auschwitz, the most lethal Nazi concentration camp. It draws on spatial history, as well as the history of senses and emotions, to explore subjective being in Auschwitz. The article suggests that a more explicit engagement with individual spaces�prisoner bunks, barracks, latrines, crematoria, construction sites, SS offices�and their emotional and sensory dimension, can reveal elements of lived experience that have remained peripheral on the edges of historical visibility. Such an approach can deepen understanding of Auschwitz, by making the camp more recognisable and by contributing to wider historiographical debates about the nature of Nazi terror.

scholarly journals Podzielona czy zróżnicowana? Jeszcze raz o pamięci społecznej na Ukrainie (z tożsamością w tle)

2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-116
Author(s):  
Anna Wylegała
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Social Memory ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Public Opinion Surveys ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Potential Factor ◽  
Second World

The aim of this text is to present the internal differentiation of Ukrainian social memory. The author concentrates on vernacular memory of three issues that are essential in regard to Ukrainian identity: the Second World War and the conflict between the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Soviet authorities, Holodomor, and the Holocaust. Her analysis is based on her own research conducted in Galicia and Central Ukraine, searches in oral history sources, and also on the published and unpublished results of qualitative research by other researchers and public opinion surveys. Her main conclusions involve the unconsonant nature of different memories with differentiations of regional populations, the unifying nature of memory of the Holodomor, the strongly polarizing memory of the UIA as a potential factor of social conflict, and the problematic nature of memory of the Holocaust.

scholarly journals ESCAPE FROM THE DEATH CAMP, OR LUCKY BREAK OF PRISONER 13390 (BASED ON THE MEMOIRS OF LEONARD ZAWACKI)

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 687-694
Author(s):  
S. S. Khodyachikh
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
World War ◽  
Death Camp ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The World ◽  
Short Run ◽  
History Of

The article analyzes the circumstances and conditions that led to the successful escape from the Auschwitz concentration camp of a group of Polish prisoners of war under the leadership of Leonard Zawacki, prisoner 13390. The escape was carried out on September 28, 1944 by a group of six prisoners of war, two of whom changed into SS uniforms and “escorted” four glaziers to work outside the camp. Zawacki’s memoirs, published in Poland in the form of a short-run pamphlet, as well as many hours of interviews in which he talked about his traumatic experience, life in imprisonment, partisan unit, and the very escape, are introduced into scientific circulation. Zawacki’s memoirs are a valuable source not only about the history of the World War II and the Holocaust, but also the deep experiences of a man who went through the hell of Auschwitz and survived against all odds.

The Journeys of Child Refugees, Lost and Rediscovered

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Kushner
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
William Wordsworth ◽  
Place Identity ◽  
Holocaust Survivor ◽  
Child Survivors ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Usa ◽  
History Of ◽  
First World

Using the concept of place, this chapter explores the child survivors who came to Britain after the end of the war and initially settled in the Lake District. It explores how the heritage of the area, which is dominated by William Wordsworth, both excluded but has recently managed to include the experiences of these children as ‘Wandering Jews’. It provides a longer term history of such child refugees by incorporating the experiences of Serbian refugees who were sent to British schools in the First World War and how and why they have subsequently been forgotten. The experiences of the Holocaust survivor children is explored, especially with regard to place identity. Finally the chapter concludes by considering contemporary child migrants with the focus on those who attempt to reach the USA from central America and why concepts such as children’s rights has not impacted on their negative treatment,

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