scholarly journals Interpreting and translating in Nazi concentration camps during World War II

Author(s):  
Malgorzata Tryuk

This article investigates translation and interpreting in a conflict situation with reference to the Nazi concentration camps during World War II. In particular, it examines the need for such services and the duties and the tasks the translators and the interpreters were forced to execute. It is based on archival material, in particular the recollections and the statements of former inmates collected in the archives of concentration camps. The ontological narratives are compared with the cinematic figure of Marta Weiss, a camp interpreter, as presented in the docudrama “Ostatni Etap”(“The last Stage”) of 1948 by the Polish director Wanda Jakubowska, herself a former prisoner of the concentration camp. The article contributes to the discussion on the role that translators and interpreters play in extreme and violent situations when the ethics of interpreting and translation loses its power and the generally accepted norms and standards are no longer applicable.

Interpreting ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malgorzata Tryuk

This paper is based on a study of the records of prisoners in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp with the aim of uncovering as much information as possible about camp interpreters, their work and their attempts to ease the hardships of other prisoners, often risking their own lives in the process. As will be demonstrated, the generally accepted deontological norms for interpreting in community settings were not applicable to concentration camps, and different norms were adopted which were clearly justified, under the circumstances. The paper in particular investigates why interpreters were needed in the concentration camps, who they were, how they were recruited for the job, what their language combinations were, what their duties were, when the interpreters were required, and how they performed their duties as well what their roles were.


Author(s):  
Alejandro Pérez Vidal

Resumen: Esta comunicación estudia algunos aspectos de la memoria de experiencias concentracionarias en los años inmediatamente posteriores a la II Guerra Mundial. En la primera parte se centra en la historia editorial de K.L. Reich, novela de Joaquim Amat-Piniella, señalando en particular su publicación parcial en una revista del exilio y un proyecto de publicación completa en Barcelona en 1948. La segunda parte intenta explicar el limitado éxito inicial de K.L. Reich por comparación con lo que sucedió con obras parecidas en otros países europeos, y en particular con Se questo è un uomo, de Primo Levi; se intenta mostrar que el anticomunismo de la guerra fría dejaba poco espacio para la memoria pública de los campos de concentración y que fue en los ambientes de la izquierda antifascista en los que ésta tendió a cultivarse.Palabras clave: Joaquim Amat-Piniella, Primo Levi, testimonios de los campos de concentración, recepción, guerra fría.Abstract: The present study considers some aspects of the remembrance of concentration camp experiences in the years immediately following World War II. The first part focuses on the publishing history of K.L. Reich, by Joaquim Amat-Piniella, pointing out specially its partial publication in France in 1945 and a project to publish the whole novel in Barcelona in 1948. The second part seeks to explain the limited success of K.L. Reich when it was first published, by considering what happened to similar works in other European countries and, in particular, Primo Levi's Se questo è un uomo. It argues that the anti-communism of the Cold War left little room for the public remembrance of the concentration camps and that it was the anti-fascist leftists who were most inclined to keep this memory alive. Keywords: Joaquim Amat-Piniella, Primo Levi, concentration camp testimonies, reception, Cold War.


2017 ◽  
pp. 11-32
Author(s):  
Piotr Jacek Krzyżanowski

The Third Reich’s policy towards the Sinti and Roma people was based on racist theories claiming the superiority of the German nation over other nations. The rule of the National Socialists in Germany systematically eliminated the Sinti and Roma people from all areas of public life. They were regarded as a socially unassimilated group prone to criminal activity. Consequently, the Roma and Sinti people were refused the right to live and were subject to compulsory sterilisation and systematic extermination during World War II. It was in German-occupied Poland that the extermination was carried out to the greatest extent. Losses among the Roma and Sinti people have not been precisely estimated yet. Approximately at least 250,000 lost their lives in ghettos, concentration camps and outside the camps.


2020 ◽  
Vol 78 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-55
Author(s):  
Raimundo Nonato Delgado RODRIGUES

ABSTRACT The author presents a brief synopsis of the life and works of Professor Francis Rohmer, a French neurologist whose great relevance to the development of the French Neurological Society is only outshined by his humanistic role, in spite of harsh conditions, when a prisoner at the Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany, during World War II.


Author(s):  
Michael J. Bazyler ◽  
Kathryn Lee Boyd ◽  
Kristen L. Nelson ◽  
Rajika L. Shah

Cyprus was a British Crown colony during World War II. Cyprus was a haven to refugees escaping Nazi persecution during World War II, and after concentration camps in Europe were liberated, detention centers were set up on the island by the British in an effort to curtail survivors from entering British Mandate Palestine. No immovable property—private, communal, or heirless—was confiscated from Jews or other targeted groups in Cyprus during the war. As a result, no immovable property restitution laws were required. Cyprus endorsed the Terezin Declaration in 2009 and the Guidelines and Best Practices in 2010.


2011 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 373-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yufeng Mao

In the late 1930s, three groups of Sino-Muslims went on hajj trips to Mecca. Two of them represented the Republic of China, while one represented the puppet government in Japanese-occupied North China. Reflecting the political importance of the Muslim population in the Sino-Japanese struggle, each group engaged in propaganda efforts for its government. However the Sino-Muslims who participated in these missions were not merely the passive pawns of Chinese authorities. Rather, archival material and published sources in Chinese and Arabic show that Sino-Muslims actively used these missions to advance a vision of the Chinese nation in which Muslims would play an important role in domestic and foreign affairs. This vision was based on a particular understanding of global politics which allowed Sino-Muslim elites to reconcile the transnational characteristic of Islam with loyalty to the territorially bound “Chinese nation.”


2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-299 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Dejong-Lambert

This article describes the relationship between Polish geneticist Stanisław Skowron's views on eugenics during the interwar period, his experiences in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and his response to Trofim D. Lysenko's ban on genetic research in Soviet-allied states after 1948. Skowron was educated at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow and received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation to study in the United States, Italy, Denmark, and Great Britain from 1924 to 1926. His exposure to research being conducted outside of Poland made him an important figure in Polish genetics. During this time Skowron also began to believe that an understanding of biological principles of heredity could play an important role in improving Polish society and became a supporter of eugenics. In 1939 he was arrested along with other faculty members at the Jagiellonian and sent to Sachsenhausen and Dachau. In 1947 he published the first book updating Polish biologists on recent developments in genetics; however, after learning of the outcome of the 1948 session of the Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Moscow, Skowron emerged as one of the most vocal advocates for Michurinism. I argue that Skowron's conversion to Lysenkoism was motivated by more than fear or opportunism, and is better understood as the product of his need to rationalize his own support for a theory he could not possibly have believed was correct.


Author(s):  
George R. Mastroianni

Chapter 4 focuses on the considerable psychological literature devoted to the question of the role played by psychopathology in the Nazi movement and the Holocaust. Both the Nazi leaders and the German population as a whole were thought by some to exhibit signs of psychopathology. The dominant paradigm in psychology before, during, and shortly after World War II was psychoanalytic, and Freudian analyses were common. The notion that psychopathology played a significant role in either Nazism or the Holocaust has largely been abandoned. The psychological consequences of the horrific experiences to which many Holocaust survivors were subjected led to the identification of a disorder called by some “concentration camp syndrome.” Our modern-day understanding of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) owes a considerable debt to the legacy of Holocaust survivors.


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