scholarly journals Foibe literature: documentation or victimhood narrative?

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Zamparutti
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
World War ◽  
European Public Sphere ◽  
European Public ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Selection Of

This essay analyses the literature on the foibe to illustrate a political use of human remains. The foibe are the deep karstic pits in Istria and around Trieste where Yugoslavian Communist troops disposed of Italians they executed en masse during World War II. By comparing contemporary literature on the foibe to a selection of archival reports of foibe exhumation processes it will be argued that the foibe literature popular in Italy today serves a political rather than informational purpose. Counterpublic theory will be applied to examine how the recent increase in popular foibe literature brought the identity of the esuli, one of Italy‘s subaltern counterpublics, to the national stage. The paper argues that by employing the narrative structure of the Holocaust, contemporary literature on the foibe attempts to recast Italy as a counterpublic in the wider European public sphere, presenting Italy as an unrecognised victim in World War II.

scholarly journals Holocaust Representation and Graphical Strangeness in Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale: “Funny Animals,” Constellations, and Traumatic Memory

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-75
Author(s):  
Ana-Maria Gavrilă
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Pulitzer Prize ◽  
Traumatic Memory ◽  
Holocaust Literature ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Cultural Connotations

Abstract Art Spiegelman’s MAUS, a Pulitzer-prize-winning two-volume graphic novel, zooms into wartime Poland, interweaving young Vladek’s – the author’s father – experiences of World War II and the present day through uncanny visual and verbal representational strategies characteristic of the comics medium. “I’m literally giving a form to my father’s words and narrative”, Spiegelman remarks on MAUS, “and that form for me has to do with panel size, panel rhythms, and visual structures of the page”. The risky artistic strategies and the “strangeness” of its form, to use Harold Bloom’s term, are essential to how the author represents the horrors of the Holocaust: by means of anthropomorphic caricatures and stereotypes depicting Germans as cats, Jewish people as mice, Poles as pigs, and so on. Readings of MAUS often focus on the cultural connotations in the context of postmodernism and in the Holocaust literature tradition, diminishing the importance of its hybrid narrative form in portraying honest, even devastating events. Using this idea as a point of departure, along with a theoretical approach to traumatic memory and the oppressed survivor’s story, I will cover three main topics: the “bleeding” and re-building of history, in an excruciating obsession to save his father’s – a survivor of Auschwitz – story for posterity and to mend their alienating relationship and inability to relate; the connection between past and present, the traumatic subject, and the vulnerability it assumes in drawing and writing about life during the Holocaust as well as the unusual visual and narrative structure of the text. The key element of my study, as I analyse a range of sections of the book, focuses on the profound and astonishing strangeness of the work itself, which consequently assured MAUS a canonical status in the comics’ tradition.

scholarly journals EXISTENTIAL MOTIFS IN SLOVAK LITERATURE WITH THE ISSUE OF THE SHOAH

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-17
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
World War ◽  
Lost Generation ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Non Fiction ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Post War ◽  
Selection Of

The study deals with existential motifs in selected fiction and memoir works of Slovak literature, which thematically focus on World War II. and the Holocaust of the Slovak Jewish minority. As we considered the fact that many works of Slovak provenance with this issue were published (especially after 1989), we focused only on a selection of those works, which contains fiction and non-fiction literature and memoir works written by surviving Jews, in which they gave valuable testimony about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism of the war-torn Slovak state and post-war society. Based on the interpretation and analysis of Shoah-themed works, we detect recurring existential motifs: degradation of human dignity, feelings of guilt for one's own survival, Auschwitz traumas, and the motif of The Lost Generation.

scholarly journals Songea Mbano and the ‘halfway dead’ of the Majimaji War (1905–7) in memory and theatre

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-22
Author(s):  
Yann LeGall
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Post Mortem ◽  
The South ◽  
European Public Sphere ◽  
European Public ◽  
Theatre Production ◽  
The Future ◽  
Transnational Memory ◽  
Colonial Violence

Debates on the relevance of repatriation of indigenous human remains are water under the bridge today. Yet, a genuine will for dialogue to work through colonial violence is found lacking in the European public sphere. Looking at local remembrance of the Majimaji War (1905–7) in the south of Tanzania and a German–Tanzanian theatre production, it seems that the spectre of colonial headhunting stands at the heart of claims for repatriation and acknowledgement of this anti-colonial movement. The missing head of Ngoni leader Songea Mbano haunts the future of German–Tanzanian relations in heritage and culture. By staging the act of post-mortem dismemberment and foregrounding the perspective of descendants, the theatre production Maji Maji Flava offers an honest proposal for dealing with stories of sheer colonial violence in transnational memory.

The Suffering of the Perpetrators: The Ethics of Traumatic German Historicity in Karen Bass's Young Adult World War II Novels

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adult World ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.

Painted Memories

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 26-29
Author(s):  
mayer kirshenblatt ◽  
barbara kirshenblatt-gimblett
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
Daily Diet ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Yom Kippur ◽  
Root Vegetables

Mayer Kirshenblatt remembers in words and paintings the daily diet of Jews in Poland before the Holocaust. Born in 1916 in Opatóów (Apt in Yiddish), a small Polish city, this self-taught artist describes and paints how women bought chickens from the peasants and brought them to the shoykhet (ritual slaughterer), where they plucked the feathers; the custom of shlogn kapores (transferring one's sins to a chicken) before Yom Kippur; and the role of herring and root vegetables in the diet, especially during the winter. Mayer describes how his family planted and harvested potatoes on leased land, stored them in a root cellar, and the variety of dishes prepared from this important staple, as well as how to make a kratsborsht or scratch borsht from the milt (semen sack) of a herring. In the course of a forty-year conversation with his daughter, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, who also interviewed Mayer's mother, a picture emerges of the daily, weekly, seasonal, and holiday cuisine of Jews who lived in southeastern Poland before World War II.

“The heart above the ruins”: Miriam Waddington’s Poetry, the Spanish Civil War, and Jewish Canadian Literature

1969 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Robins Sharpe
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
World War ◽  
Canadian Literature ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Subject ◽  
War Consequences

The Jewish Canadian writer Miriam Waddington returned repeatedly to the subject of the Spanish Civil War, searching for hope amid the ruins of Spanish democracy. The conflict, a prelude to World War II, inspired an outpouring of literature and volunteerism. My paper argues for Waddington’s unique poetic perspective, in which she represents the Holocaust as the Spanish Civil War’s outgrowth while highlighting the deeply personal repercussions of the war – consequences for women, for the earth, and for community. Waddington’s poetry connects women’s rights to human rights, Canadian peace to European war, and Jewish persecution to Spanish carnage.

Dynamics of Immigration: From Humanitarianism to Securitization

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reumah Suhail
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Host Country ◽  
Country Of Origin ◽  
Immigration Policies ◽  
World War ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
Immigration Process ◽  
History Of ◽  
Selection Of

The paper addresses the different aspects of the politics of immigration, the underlying factors that motivate, force or pressurize people to move from their country of origin to new abodes in foreign nations. In the introduction the paper discusses different theories playing their due role in the immigration process, namely Realism and Constructivism. The paper examines the history of immigration and post-World War II resettlement followed by an analysis of how immigration policies are now centered towards securitization as opposed to humanitarianism after 9/11, within the scenario of globalization. Muslim migrant issues and more stringent immigration policies are also weighed in on, followed by a look at immigration in regions which are not hotspot settlement destinations. Lastly an analysis is presented about the selection of a host country a person opts for when contemplating relocation; a new concept is also discussed and determined whereby an individual can opt for “citizenship by investment” and if such a plan is an accepted means of taking on a new nationality.

Fragments of the Holocaust

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Duindam
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Museum Studies ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
World War ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Holocaust Memorial ◽  
Memorial Museum ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
A Site

Why do we attach so much value to sites of Holocaust memory, if all we ever encounter are fragments of a past that can never be fully comprehended? David Duindam examines how the Hollandsche Schouwburg, a former theater in Amsterdam used for the registration and deportation of nearly 50,000 Jews, fell into disrepair after World War II before it became the first Holocaust memorial museum of the Netherlands. Fragments of the Holocaust: The Amsterdam Hollandsche Schouwburg as a Site of Memory combines a detailed historical study of the postwar period of this site with a critical analysis of its contemporary presentation by placing it within international debates concerning memory, emotionally fraught heritage and museum studies. A case is made for the continued importance of the Hollandsche Schouwburg and other comparable sites, arguing that these will remain important in the future as indexical fragments where new generations can engage with the memory of the Holocaust on a personal and affective level.

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