Izolacja a obóz koncentracyjny. Prolegomena

Everyone is created to live in a herd, a group of people with whom they build a community. The community may be the family home, friends, acquaintances from work, the backyard or eventhe street. We feel better when we meet other people. When modern man speaks of isolation, he thinks only of closing himself off at home, peace and quiet, lack of contact with his family or going off into the unknown. He does not think of the forced isolation that prevailed among people in wartime. It determined everyday life, changed people’s values and dehumanised them. The worst was the camp isolation, which took people by surprise. No one expected that someone could deprive people of their lives, away from family and friends. Isolation can be divided into sectors: internal and external. With time it is possible to get out of it. A person’s attitude and the presence of other helpful people can help. People in the camp escaped isolation in different ways. The longing for love, the touch of another human being, tenderness and a smile had different faces. One of the themes of camp life was children going to slaughter. They did not realise that they would disappear from the face of the earth together with their parents. Smiling, carefree children were not afraid of anything, they felt no fear or exclusion. International cooperation was the order of the day in many camps. Although the women did not know the language, they used gestures, similar expressions. Each of the women prisoners sensed their fate and therefore needed each other’s help. No matter what country the prisoners came from, no matter what part of Europe, they all fought to survive. For many of them the camp became a home, where relationships proved beneficial. The escape from camp “happiness” was all-day work outside the camp. Prisoners would go out on purpose to do hard work in the fi elds, digging pits, in order not to see what was going on in the camp. The variety of isolation is beyond comparison. It is possible to live in isolation, to have contact with others, but to be well aware that one day normality will return. The people in the camp also had hope, but they knew that this hope could end rather quickly for them — in the crematorium.

Życie kobiet — więźniarek w obozie Auschwitz-Birkenau

The book by Halina Rusek Koleżanki z Birkenau. Esej o pamiętaniu [Friends from Birkenau: An essay on remembering] published by the University of Silesia is a kind of diary about the life of women in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The author describes the fate of her mother and her friends confined in one of the most horrific war camps. This publication, apart from descriptions and memories of female prisoners, contains original letters and photographs collected by families, which allows the reader to refer to the past more directly. The book was divided by the author into chapters which intensify the women’s experiences: from pre-war times through the war period to regaining freedom and returning to their family homes. Reading the book, one gets to know the early life of young girls who were unexpectedly captured and transported to the concentration camp. Their fates are intertwined with the struggle for existence, forced labour, camp experiences and the anticipated freedom. Important throughout the book is the documentation collected by the families of the prisoners. Post-war letters, mutual contacts, feelings and family memories make the reader feel close to the characters. The author tries to describe the lives of girls coming from different regions of Poland, whose fates were intertwined with each other. The book shows different ways in which the female prisoners were treated, based on their nationalities. In an attempt to make camp life more real for the reader, the author refers to prison correspondence. Halina Rusek’s publication shows young readers how important it is to remember the past and what concentration camps were.

Dramatyczność kolorów historii

The drama of Katyń. The theory of colors, Julia Holewińska based on Józef Czapski’s Old Bielsko Memories, although largely processed. The protagonist of the play is Józef Czapski, a painter-capist, writer, intellectual, prisoner of Starobielsk, Pawliszczew Boru, Griazowiec, who builds his paintings in the performance with colors. The setting for these events is Kozielsk, where the artist was not held, which proves that this is not Czapski’s biography, nor is it a documentary account of camp life. The playwright, on the basis of a harsh and humiliating reality, showed human sensitivity. In Holewińska’s drama, Czapski acts as a guide through the camp experience through the eyes of a colorist. In each sequence, the artist expresses his view of color in art. There are two more allegorical characters in the drama: Our Lady of Kazan, who embodies three beings: Our Lady of Kazan (The Blessed Virgin of Kazan) – as the sacred, the real pilot Janina Lewandowska, and femininity in general. The second allegorical figure is the great Katyń liar, who personifies the whole apparatus of repression and oppression of the NKVD. The background for the conversations between these characters is a two-person choir – one out of a thousand and the Second of thousand. Art of Katyń. The theory of colors is devoted to painful historical events, despite the fact that it is subject to various playwriting procedures, it is moving in its meaning.

Vietnamese refugees in Britain: Language, translation, and the politics of protection in camp life and beyond

Through the lens of assemblage thinking and “territorialisation,” this article examines the operationalisation of language support by the voluntary sector in the Thorney Island and Sopley camps, which temporarily accommodated Vietnamese refugee arrivals in Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Drawing on archival sources, the role and agency of interpreters are foregrounded in an analysis of the relationships between the materiality of the camps, camp practices, and their impact on refugee experience. A post-camp initiative to train refugees as parasocial workers (a role that included interpreting) reveals a more person-centred approach, in contrast to what we have termed a solutionist approach to interpreting observed in the camps.

Multi-vocal voices of refugees: A case study of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh

The inflow of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar experiencing trauma and torture is a major global issue. This article explores relationships with local communities as they are represented in the multi-vocal voices of Rohingya refugees. Interviews and focus groups were conducted with a group of Rohingya refugees based in the Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh along with observations of camp life. Twenty participants were interviewed. The observations provide insights into the feelings of anxiety among the Rohingya refugees. Yet, the findings also suggest that the refugees hold out hope that in Bangladesh they will find a sense of belonging. The study draws on Bakhtin’s notion of heteroglossia as positioned through sociological discourse, to reflect the social experiences of refugee young people and their families. The intent of the article is to open up, rather than to close off engagement with the issue – furthering awareness and possible actions to be taken.

‘Min Al-Mukhayyam’ (‘From the Camp’)

This article examines the implications of long-term encampment and exile for the meaning of Palestinian identity amongst refugees. It shows how the conditions of Palestinian camps in Jordan function as a key marker of social difference between refugees of the camps and the city. Whereas camp refugees see the hardships of camp life as conditions to be confronted, urban refugees take them as constitutive features of a socially distinct refugee. As I argue, the distinctions between camp and city refugees illustrate how the refugee category and the humanitarian camp exceed the ideology and function of humanitarianism. They demonstrate how, in protracted refugee situations, the refugee label and the historical context of the camp can become socially significant and contested features of identity.