Prowokacja Rūty Vanagaitė
The review of: - Musiškiai by Rūta Vanagait;, Alma Litera, Vilnius 2016, 296 s. - Nasi. Podróżując z wrogiem, tłum by Rūta Vanagaite and Efraim Zuroff; Krzysztof Mazurek, Czarna Owca, Warszawa 2017, 328 s.
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The review of: - Musiškiai by Rūta Vanagait;, Alma Litera, Vilnius 2016, 296 s. - Nasi. Podróżując z wrogiem, tłum by Rūta Vanagaite and Efraim Zuroff; Krzysztof Mazurek, Czarna Owca, Warszawa 2017, 328 s.
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The review of: Kinga Piotrowiak-Junkiert, Świadomość zwrócona przeciwko sobie samej. Imre Kertész wobec Zagłady, Warszawa: Instytut Badań Literackich Polskiej Akademii Nauk i Stowarzyszenie Pro Cultura Litteraria, 2014, 318 s.
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Ocenianie wystawy głównej Muzeum Polin w odniesieniu do jej założeń jako multimedialnej wystawy narracyjnej jest czymś całkiem innym niż zarzucanie jej, że nie jest wystawą innego typu, opartą na obiektach oryginalnych. Rzekoma analiza krytyczna naszej wystawy głównej tak naprawdę oznacza odrzucenie jej założeń; brakuje jednak krytycznej oceny założeń owej analizy, a mianowicie że na skutek braku obiektów oryginalnych multimedialna wystawa narracyjna to de facto „simulakrum”. Punkt wyjścia wystawy głównej Muzeum Polin stanowi opowieść, a wybrane przez nas podejście to „teatr historii” – opowieść snuta w trójwymiarowej przestrzeni, której wątki rozwijają się wraz z kolejnymi krokami zwiedzających. Dążymy do stworzenia Gesamtkunstwerk – totalnego dzieła sztuki, całości większej niż suma jej elementów.
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Tekst koji slijedi predstavlja književnu zabilješku jednog događaja, provokativnog i kontraverznog nastupa Claudea Lanzmanna na sastanku Western N ew England Institute for Psychoanalysis (W NEIPA) u aprilu 1990. godine. Specifične okolnosti Lanzmannovog nastupa, kao i diskusija koja je nakon njega uslijedila, postavljaju na jedan vrlo oštar način pitanje izuzetno kompleksnih dilema u vezi sa prirodom razumijevanja i komunikacijom tema iz holokausta. Govor gospodina Lanzmanna i razmjena mišljenja koju je on izazvao demonstriraju kroz jedan jedini susret između režisera filma Shoah i njegove psihoanalitičke publike - kontradiktorne uloge koje može imati razumijevanje u pokušaju da se pristup i traumatskim iskustvima.
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In the summer of 1940, the Greater Romania disintegrated by successive territorial concessions to the revisionist neighbouring states (USSR – June, Hungary – August and Bulgaria – September). The dictator King Carol II abdicated on 6 September 1940 and a government supported by Nazi Germany was formed. It was made up of military and local allies of the Nazis – Legionnaires. The two governmental camps did not get along and between Legionnaires and General Ion Antonescu (Head of government) a power struggle started. The legionnaires were less concerned about the government, using its power to take revenge on former political adversaries. There were murders, robberies on private property and pogroms against the Jews. The National Legionary government ended in violent activity, by a street battle with the army in January 1941.
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Jane Korman, a Jewish artist, filmed the video „Dancing Auschwitz” on a trip to former concentration camps with her three children and her father, Adolek Kohn, who is a Holocaust survivor. The film shows three generations of an Jewish family dancing to the Gloria Gaynor song “I Will Survive” in front of Holocaust land marks in Poland, including infamous rail tracks and “Arbeit Macht Frei” sign and a memorial in Łódź, where Adolek Kohn and his wife spent most of his youth during World War II. This video is a demonstration of the will to survive. Moreover, Korman’film shows other places in Poland like The Main Market Square in Kraków, a Polish synagogue or one of the bus station from eastern Poland. These places may represent the sites and the traces of the History in the contemporary Polish reality which has been radically transformed after Auschwitz. Memories are a way to remain connected to the past. The great power of the images, the clichés of the unimaginable trauma of the Holocaust, is still in our imagination and in the landscape of Polish cities. In my presentation I will not only try to explain the above-mentioned case but I will focus also on some others examples of the idea. One of the Polish projects that bring about associations with the Holocaust and the memory of Nazi camps is „Swimming Pool” („Pływalnia”, 2003) by Rafał Jakubowicz (projection, two videos, postcard). By projecting the Hebrew equivalent of the word „swimming pool” on the wall of the former synagogue (in 1940 the Nazis converted synagogue into a swimming pool for the Wehrmacht), the artist managed to reactivate this place, to revive its memory and transform it into a living monument. In his video, entitled „Swimming Pool”(13 min.), Jakubowicz is showing the interior of the building that provokes the associations with the concentration camps.
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This paper focuses on the ethics of metaphor and other forms of comparison that invoke National Socialism and the Holocaust. It seeks to answer the question: Are there criteria on the basis of which we can judge whether metaphors and associated tropes “use” the Holocaust appropriately? In analyzing the thrust and workings of such comparisons, the paper also seeks to identify and clarify the terminology and concepts that allow productive discussion. In line with its conception of metaphor that is also rhetorical praxis, the paper focuses on specific controversies involving the metaphorization of the Holocaust, primarily in Germany and Austria. The paper develops its argument through the following process. First, it examines the rhetorical/political contexts in which claims of the Holocaust’s comparability (or incomparability) have been raised. Second, it presents a review (and view) of the nature of metaphor, metonymy, and synecdoche. It applies this framework to (a) comparisons of Saddam Hussein with Hitler in Germany in 1991; (b) the controversies surrounding the 2004 poster exhibition “The Holocaust on Your Plate” in Germany and Austria, with particular emphasis on the arguments and decisions in cases before the courts in those countries; and (c) the invocation of “Auschwitz” as metonym and synecdoche. These examples provide the basis for a discussion of the ethics of comparison. In its third and final section the paper argues that metaphor is by nature duplicitous, but that ethical practice involving Holocaust comparisons is possible if one is self-aware and sensitive to the necessity of seeing the “other” as oneself. The ethical framework proposed by the paper provides the basis for evaluating the specific cases adduced.
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The present article examines Holocaust instruction in Israel and in France, addressing formal and informal aspects of teaching practices. Specifically, the article examines whether Holocaust instruction constitutes a unifying factor that stresses what is common to human beings, among adolescents at schools in Israel and abroad, or whether it is a continuation of the methodic axis of the general model of the school and its credo. The study was conducted as part of a large-scale project evaluating 20 years of journeys to Poland by Israeli youth. It is based on a qualitative research apporoach that included analysis of interviews with policymakers, representatives of Holocaust institutes and foundations, teachers, students and guides. It also made use of field observations and official documents. The qualitative analysis revealed that that the dominant didactic models in Israel and France differ from one another in the importance that they attribute to universal versus the particular elements. Each of the models was built based on a didactic foundation of educational and teaching activity at the school in general, and Holocaust instruction in particular. The study findings indicate that in general, the Holocaust instruction in Israel continues to emphasize the particular. It serves as a tool for strengthening the unique values of the event, and stresses Israeliness, Zionism, and Jewishness. The climax of the modal is an eight-day journey to Poland, centering on a visit to Auschwitz. In contrast, Holocaust instruction in France emphasizes the universal. The curriculum positions the journey as the climax of the scholastic experience but, unlike the Israeli curriculum, it emphasizes the historical and universal aspects of the Holocaust and represses the singularity of the event in the context of the Jewish people. A comparison of the two countries underlines the substantive differences separating the two different educational systems, which have adopted different sets of values.
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The beginnings of the research of Jewish art in Serbia are inextricably linked with the name Ženi Lebl. She researched the history of Jewish people in the former Yugoslavia, particularly in Serbia and Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. As a result of years of research in archives and libraries the following monographs dedicated to Jewish people in Serbia were created: To„the final solution” Jewish people in Belgrade 1521-1942, To „the final solution” Jewish people in Serbia and Jewish people in Pirot. The first part of the two-volume work To “the final solution”, is dedicated to the Jewish people in Belgrade. In this monograph Ž. Lebl covered the period from 1521 to 1942, thus giving one of the most complete overview of the history of Jewish people in Belgrade, from their immigration to their suffering in the Holocaust. In addition to the historical context that is unavoidable in the research of Jewish visual culture in Serbia, she covered other contexts, such as religious, cultural, political and funeral, and which are very important for the study of Jewish art in a view of visual culture. The second part of the two-volume work To“the final solution” is dedicated to the Jewish people in Serbia, where Serbia after the Balkan wars is covered. This book along with the previous one of the Jewish people in Belgrade represents an entire unit, and all the major cities in Serbia where the Jewish community lived are covered in it. Finally, Pirot, like Belgrade, was the subject of the specific research which Ženi Lebl covered in the monograph dedicated to Jewish people in Pirot. Based on the published archival materials and visual material on Jewish mahala, synagogue, mikvah and a cemetery, valuable data for the research of Jewish art in Pirot are provided. Considering the monographs that were created as a result of many years of research in archives and libraries, we can conclude that they represent one of the most complete edition of the history and fate of the Jewish people, based on the contemporary methodological research, that are based on a multidisciplinary method and contribute to studies of visual culture. Although Ženi Lebl primarily covered the history of Jewish people in these monographs, she also covered other phenomena and contexts, such as religious, cultural and funeral, which are very important for the study and understanding of Jewish art in Serbia in a view of visual culture.
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This article discuses the international legal aspect of Jasenovac concentration camp. Jasenovac was the largest concentration camp in occupied Yugoslavia during Second World War and has functioned since its establishment in August 1941 until its closure in April 1945. This camp was also known as death camp because most of the inmates died due to murdering them or from various diseases and illness since the conditions in the concentration camp were terrible. The number of killed inmates in Jasenovac concentration camp, that consisted of Serbs, Jews, Romani, anti-fascists and other persons who did not accept the Ustasha’s government, was never precisely determined. Estimates differ depending upon the authors but total number of inmates that died in Jasenovac concentration camp was not less than 600,000. We believe that Jasenovac concentration camp is not enough treated in our literature from international legal aspect so that is one of the reasons, beside the above mentioned that we wrote this article. The primary responsibility for the existence of concentration camps in Croatia have Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy that have committed aggression against Kingdom of Yugoslavia and occupation of Kingdom Yugoslavia, and formed in the occupied territory quisling state of so-called Independent State of Croatia. By these acts they severely violated number of international conventions on the laws of war. Independent State of Croatia issued a series of racist and Nazi laws and decrees on the basis of which the physical liquidation of Serbs, Jews, Romani, antifascists and those who did not accept the Ustasha government was executed. In this article were applied historical legal method, comparative legal method and positive legal method. Since there is an obvious attempt of the defeated Nazi and Fascist parties on the revision of the Second World War, including the minimization of status and victims of Jasenovac, the aim of this article is besides other issues to oppose such a position from international legal aspects.This is important and significant for the younger generation who are not familiar with this issue, so this is an opportunity to learn about this issue from international legal aspect.
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The truth about the disappearance and death of the heroic Swedish diplomat is shrouded in bureaucratic fog.
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Critics say that teaching on the subject has been far too little, partly because of the sensitivity of discussing the atrocities committed by the Romanian fascist state.
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‘We are talking here about huge sums,’ ruling party boss warns.
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The article concerns “Jewish” topics in the writings of G. Herling-Grudziński. It contains a record of almost all his remarks on the Holocaust, anti-Semitism and Judaism (always introduced in connection with Christianity) in dealing with this subject essays and diary records. It shows refl ections in what form the issues came to the stories and short novels author of A World Apart: A Memoir of the Gulag. The collected material provides no basis for predication that sensitivity to the Jewish question indirectly reveals relationships with this part of the writer’s biography, which is associated with his concealed Jewish origins.
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This article concerns the influence of the most famous Polish poem for children: Lokomotywa by Julian Tuwim, particularly in three “Holocaust” paraphrases of this work, written by children in the ghetto and the concentration camps – the poems Lokomotywa by Jerzy Ogórek, Pociągu świst by Jerzy Orłowski, and especially Bełżec by Janka Hescheles.
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Although the Holocaust was neglected and minimized in communist Romania, starting with 1967 (restoration of diplomatic relations between Romania and West-Germany) the Romanian authorities made efforts to obtain compensations from West-Germany for the victims of Nazi persecutions. However, this meant no real change in the way Romania dealt with its own recent past (the anti-Semitic and anti-Roma measures during WWII taken by the Romanian authorities), which tended to be ignored. It was considered more profitable for Romania to externalize its own guilt by blaming exclusively West Germany, from which they hoped to obtain hard currency. The Romanian secret services played an important role in organizing this process. According to the way the Romanian authorities acted, the process had two phases: 1) 1967-1970 - unofficial phase (through intermediaries); 2) since March 1970 –official phase (the Romanian government decided to negotiate directly with the West-German authorities). Within a year, on March 2, 1971, more than 155.000 compensation claims were submitted (mostly for Jewish and Roma victims). In May 1971, fearing a domino effect, the German government decided to refuse any compensation payments to Romania and other communist states.
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Review: Magdalena Sacha, ‘Gdyście w obóz przybyć już raczyli…’. Obraz kultury lagrowej w świadectwach więźniów Buchenwaldu 1937-1945 [‘When You Deign Come to the Camp…’: The Image of Camp Culture in the Testimonies of Buchenwald Prisoners 1937-1945]; Bydgoszcz/Gdańsk: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej. Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2014.
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This article explores the issue of postmemory and secondary witnessing as dealt with in Tadeusz Różewicz’s 2002 poem The Professor’s Little Knife. The paper presents two photographs which refer to the problem of the Holocaust’s representation and its limits. The first picture comes from the collection of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; however, the author concealed its origins and changed its appearance so that it resembled a retro nude photograph. The second one is a raw, non-stylized picture of a knife that belonged to Professor Porębski during imprisonment in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. By using various interpretation methods, such as the deconstruction of an image or empathic reading, the author of this article examines the limits and consequences of treating a photograph as “spectral evidence”.
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The text examines the relationship between the two categories – Auschwitz and modernity, in recognition of Jean Améry and Zygmunt Bauman, taking also into account the voice of the latter polemicists. In the first place is reconstructed Améry’s positive view on modernity with respect for the truth of the victims of Auschwitz. Then Bauman's critical position is discussed, indicating the modern provenance of the Holocaust and risk of recurrence of the Holocaust. Next the voices of Bauman’s opponents are presented. Yehuda Bauer, Henryk Grynberg, Andrzej Szahaj and Stefan Morawski pointed to the key role of ideology and irrational aspects of Nazism. At the end the common ground of Améry and Bauman is indicated – both turn to take the perspective of the victims.
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The article Body and Gender in Nazi Concentration Camps is an attempt to discuss difficult issues of human sexuality and sexually marked behaviors in the context of the concentration camps, and their descriptions in the memoirs of the survivors. Using notions and concepts of the so called "black American feminism" the author (referring extensively to books by Stanisław Grzesiuk and Zofia Romanowiczowa) shows how in the concentration camp the human body became the only space of a relative privacy of the prisoner. At the same time the body becomes a territory on which all - both biological and socially constructed - human fates cross.
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