Ireland has rejected the Treaty of Lisbon. More than six years after the start of the constitutional process, the work and effort of the European Union seems to have been in vain. The intention was to make the com-munity more effective and far more democratic. All that remains is a feel-ing of helplessness. What, if anything, can European policymakers do in this situation?
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Keywords: Second World War; Holocaust; Western Europe; forced emigration; Jewish refugees; Jewish responses (agency); Belgium; Netherlands; France
The refuge movements of Jews in the German-occupied Western Europe, in particular after the beginning of the deportations from France, the Netherlands and Belgium in the summer of 1942, are a lacuna of historical scholarship. This article focuses on Belgium as a transit country for Jewish refugees, examining the flights from the Netherlands and Belgium to the occupied part of France, further over the demarcation line to free France. While these flights cannot be compared with the organised forms of emigration, it is to be understood as a forced migration in the times of a genocide. We argue that these flights were a mass “individual survival strategy”, an expression of Jewish agency face a face to the annihilation.
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Keywords: Grosse Hamburger Strasse; transit camp; Stapoleitstelle Berlin; German Jews; Holocaust; Theresienstadt; Gestapo; trials; Deportation; old people’s home; Dobberke; Bovensiepen
This article focuses on the history of the time-honoured Jewish Old People’s Home at the Grosse Hamburger Strasse 26 in Berlin, the deportation of its inhabitants in June 1942 and the transformation of the building into a collection centre during the Nazi deportations. Furthermore it discusses the history and the structure of the camp and the transports to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz prepared here. Finally it takes a look at the Gestapo staff working both in the camp and the Berlin Judenreferat of the local Gestapo office (Stapoleitstelle Berlin) and their (failed) prosecution after the end of the war.
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Keywords: women and National Socialism; debate about perpetrators an victims; perpetrators; Western Germany; Historikerinnenstreit
Which part did women play in constructing and maintaining the criminal National Socialist system of government? Could they be seen as victims, as perpetrators, as neither or as both? From the early 1970s until today German feminist social scientists have tried to answer these questions and were faced with the challenge of tracing the contribution of women to the Na-tional Socialist system. A contentiously conducted exchange arose which centred on the issue of the role taken by women in National Socialism. This exchange will be outlined below and at the same time embedded in the adjacent discussion around feminist theorising.
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Keywords: Media; humor; anti-Semitism; radio propaganda; Nazism; Czech Radio; World War II; Czech Nazi collaboration
This article focuses on political humor as a Nazi propaganda weapon against the Czech public. After charting the ever-increasing influence of Nazi ideology on Czech Radio in the period 1939-41 and BBC’s responses to it, the author examines the launch of the so-called “political sketches” by a group of Nazi collaborators installed at Czech Radio. The author describes the main goals, and motifs of the propaganda while illuminating the scandal-ridden milieu, in which the sketches were created. Analysis of original broadcast texts portrays the level of humor they provided through to liberation in May 1945. A post-war epilogue is included.
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Keywords: Auschwitz; German prisoners; prisoner functionaries; liberation; Holocaust; German Jews
At Auschwitz, Germans were not only perpetrators, as public perception holds. A considerable part of the victims had German citizenship: Jews, Sinti, Roma, and “Aryans.” The article tries to give an estimate of the number of German victims of Auschwitz, analyzes the relatively privileged position German prisoners enjoyed there, the resulting conflicts along national cleavages, particularly between Germans and Poles, and finally, the fate of German prisoners towards the end of the war, on liberation and in its aftermath, when in many instances citizenship, not “race,” decided on the fate of a former German Auschwitz prisoner.
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Keywords: mothers; Holocaust; Jewish women; gender studies; family
The perspective of mothers and motherhood during the Holocaust presents an important aspect of the tragedy of the Jewish individual and the community. It relates to the history of the family during the Holocaust, to issues of gender and the cultural role of women, wives, and mothers in Jewish societies. The article studies the concept of Motherhood in Jewish tradition and modernity and its complexity during holocaust; it considers mothers of different classes in the ghettos, the difficulties of separation and rescue before and after war start, and the disability of mothers to care for their children under starvation and want.
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Keywords: Holocaust; bystanders; knowledge about the Final Solution; Czechoslovak Government-in-exile; Arnost Frischer; Rescue and relief during World War 2; Allies; Exiles; Theresienstadt; Concentration camp
Arnošt Frischer was the only ethnically Jewish member in the London based Czechoslovak exiled parliament. The main purpose is to document his diplomatic efforts on behalf of the Jews living in the Nazi-occupied Europe. The description follows Frischer’s proposals to ease the plight of the Jews from their initiations, but examines whether they were executed or not. Hence the presented article also touches the issues of the western democracies’ and exiled governments’ humanitarian policies during the War and their responses to the Nazi extermination campaign against the Jews.
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Keywords: Archive; testimonies; Theresienstadt; Jacques Presser; Ruth Klüger; narratives
The Holocaust problematizes the fundament of historiography, the archive. Therefore, the early testimonies of Holocaust survivors as recorded by the NIOD are of vital relevance. The narratological analysis of these testimonies reveals a referential rupture between interviewer and interviewee. Although these testimonies obviously allow a historiography of the Holocaust, as carried out by e.g. Jacques Presser, they fail to create a general system of statements (Foucault). Nevertheless these early documents shape both historiographical writing and later testimonies like Ruth Klüger’s autobiography. This effect becomes apparent concerning the continuous structuring of testimonies along place names or the uncertain positioning of Theresienstadt.
More...Keywords: language death; minority languages; Istro-Romanian; Megleno-Romanian; language shift; Aromanian
Ein Großteil der heute noch gesprochenen Sprachen und Dialekte wird im Laufe des laufenden Jahrhunderts aussterben. Auch wenn sich in einzelnen peripheren Räumen Europas Minderheitensprachen haben halten können, ist letztendlich keine Sprechergemeinschaft vor dem Einfluss verschiedener Faktoren, die Sprachschwund und Sprachensterben beschleunigen können, sicher. Der Beitrag analysiert verschiedene solcher Faktoren (Kap. 1) und geht auf die Situation der südosteuropäischen Romanität (Kap. 2) ein. Bereits im Laufe des 17., 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts ist die südosteuropäische Romanität um mehrere Sprachen wie das Morlakische und das Dalmatische ärmer geworden. Während das Rumänische als Staatssprache innerhalb Rumäniens heute nicht gefährdet ist, bedarf es als Minderheitensprache in den Nachbarländern (Moldau, Ukraine, Ungarn, Serbien, Bulgarien) intensiven Schutzes. Sprachschwund lässt sich vor allem dort beobachten, wo die Sprechergemeinschaften kein Interesse an der Pflege ihrer Sprache haben oder ihnen aus wirtschaftlichen Gründen keine spracherhaltenden Maßnahmen möglich sind. Der Sonderfall des Aromunischen (Kap. 3) zeigt, dass der Ideenstreit um seinen Status für seine Bewahrung ausgesprochen kontraproduktiv ist. Unter den diskutierten Lösungsansätzen (Kap. 3.1. – 3.4.) scheint am wichtigsten zu sein, das öffentliche Ansehen der Minderheitensprache sowie das Selbstbewusstsein der Sprecher zu heben, die gefährdete Sprache oder Mundart in schriftlicher Form zu lehren, politische und kulturelle Zielsetzungen voneinander zu trennen und Energien nicht mit unlösbaren Streitpunkten zu vergeuden.
More...Keywords: the “College de Sociologie”; Roger Caillois; Jean Paulhan
The author analyzes the correspondence, centered on the “Collège de Sociologie”, between Roger Caillois and Jean Paulhan during 1935-1951 and distinguishes between an epistolary Prologue, two main sections entitled respectively Le Collège de Sociologie and Les Collèges de Sociologie and dealing with the Parisian avantgarde movement and later on with both the Collège in Paris and the one in Latin America, where Caillois found himself during WWII, as well as three epistolary Codas. The examination of the letters demonstrates that Paulhan initiated the six episodes composing the Prologue and the Collège parts, while Caillois was the initiator of the four episodes composing the Collèges part and the Codas. The terms “hollow” (‘creux’) and “dull” (‘terne’) correspond to the abrupt ways in which Caillois and Paulhan defined themselves to each other in their letters, while it was Bataille who characterized the Collège de Sociologie as a “Sphinx”
More...Keywords: national languages; dialects; minority languages
Generally speaking, language is regarded as an identity characteristic of each ethnic group. A language community without its own country is called a diaspora, and while creating some well-known problems, it also emphasizes the role of the mother tongue. A recent conference on Romanian language and literature, taking place at the “Alexandru Phillipide” Institute in Jassy/Iasi, addressed the topic of language care and promotion of the Romanian culture in the world. Speakers from the neighbouring Republic of Moldova spoke enthusiastically about “Romanianism” and the “sweet Romanian language”. Almost simultaneously, Slovenian speakers complained at the 10th Workshop for Bavarian-Austrian Dialectology in Klagenfurt about the linguistic and cultural oppression of their minority in Carinthia, and called for the creation of a comprehensive encyclopedia of their ethnic group. On the other hand, it sounds strange when linguists and politicians assume that - given the global lingua franca, namely the aggressively-advancing American English – all national languages must revert into some kind of dialects for home use, and that existing dialects and minority languages must disappear. It is known that German is being flooded with unnecessary Americanisms, and we have to ask ourselves whether the flood has already reached to its neck, and what happens after the breaking tsunami?
More...Keywords: Dan Mănucă; Dicţionarului literaturii române de la origini pînă la 1900 (The Dictionary of the Romanian Language from its Origins till 1900).
Mănucă aparţine principalilor artizani ai Dicţionarului literaturii române de la origini pînă la 1900, care – prin lărgimea perspectivei, excelenţa documentării arhivistice şi bibliografice, gestionarea plauzibilă a spaţiului acordat autorilor, publicaţiilor, curentelor de idei, caracterul ponderat al judecăţilor – a oferit prima şi deocamdată cea mai reprezentativă imagine a literaturii vechi şi a începuturilor literaturii noastre moderne. Cărţile lui despre critica junimistă, Sadoveanu, Rebreanu, romanul românesc de început, ca şi studiile publicate în reviste au adus totdeauna lucruri noi.
More...Keywords: Creole languages; French West Indies and Guiana
The scale of the public debate on creole in the French West Indies and Guiana stresses the tensions which are perceptible in those societies around the question of the viability of a written creole. Indeed the modality of the writing system of this language but also the criteria of its generalization in the educative institutions is still provoking interrogations. This article has the ambition to question the links existing between the formal research on creole linguistic system and the public space in the creolophone French West Indies.
More...Keywords: journalistic discourse; dialogicality; pragmatics; Romanian journals „Jurnalul naţional”; „Evenimentul zilei”; „Dilema veche”
The analytical framework of my research is based on analyzing the journalistic discourse. My investigation is grounded in a corpus of titles from the journalistic area. Titles are ways of interacting and claim to be dialogical. Dialogicality is the degree to which other discourses, voices, positions, representatives of other groups of people and interests are present in the journalistic discourse in a form of interaction which is undistorted. Reading journalistic texts, one can notice that the titles in the journalistic discourse disguise an oscillation between informing and persuading (or between telling and selling).
More...Keywords: Ana Blandiana; Mircea Eliade; poetry; fantastic
Ana Blandiana entre poésie et prose fantastique: fragment d’un essai plus vaste consacré aux contes fantastiques de la poétesse Ana Blandiana; on y analyse la poétique et les différentes modalitées d’écriture par rapport à la poésie, à l’histoire du genre et au contexte historique et culturel.
More...Keywords: diary; Mircea Eliade; The Portuguese Diary; autobiography
Le Journal portugais de Mircea Eliade – dont la parution a été attendue avec impatience – propose l’image nue, sans maquillage, de l’homme et de l’écrivain Eliade, du savant en cours de transformation, prise entre les miroirs parallèles des modèles spirituels et humains, la rèalitè affreuse de l’histoire personnelle et la tragédie de l’histoire grande, aussi que les hypostases qui comnposent, au niveau de l’écriture, le profil idéalisé de l’individu. A la recherche de l’équilibre intérieur, menacé par la dissolution, le moi de l’écrivain se recompose constamment des miettes de son autobiographie tragique, toujours avec l’ambition du projet épistémologique et humain total.
More...Keywords: Dan Mănucă; "Convorbiri literare"; literary theory; literary histrory and criticism
Profesorul Dan Mănucă este un spirit german, ce se face remarcat prin rigurozitatea, meticulozitatea şi profunzimea gândirii sale şi a cercetărilor efectuate zeci de ani la rând. Şi e firesc să fie aşa, deoarece domnia sa este un bucovinean get-beget. Mai întâi prin faptul că e născut în sudul Bucovinei tradiţionale. Apoi prin educaţia aleasă primită de mic într-o familie de intelectuali. I-au fost decernate multe distincţii: OrdinulMeritul Cultural în grad de Comandor (2004) şi medalia 150 de ani de la naşterea lui Mihai Eminescu (2000), premiile B.P. Hasdeu (1975) şi T. Cipariu (1979, ex aequo) ale Academiei Române, Premiul Asociaţiei Scriitorilor din Iaşi (1999), premiile revistelor literare „Ateneu” şi „Convorbiri literare” ş.a.
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