Postpamiętanie, postciało. O działaniach artystycznych Patrycji Dołowy na terenie byłego getta warszawskiego

Author(s): Sylwia Chutnik / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2015

The article has to do with an analysis of the artistic activity in the sphere of cultural and individual memory which refers to the area of the Warsaw Ghetto. On the basis of Patrycja Dołowy’s works and a drama piece which she co-wrote the author examines the extent to which the strategies of individual memory are not intellectual in a fundamental way. They do, however, constitute a collection of memories, concepts and interpretations which preclude objectivisation – so much expected in reference to the national memory whose aim is to establish the foundation of the identity of the nation. In her article the author introduces an innovative term, “Jewish fiction”, construed as the making up or combining in a collage manner of Jewish stories in order to situate them in the collective imaginarium as a new chapter of post-memory activities.

Sexual Abuse and Deviancy: Women Holocaust Survivors in Israeli Feature Films

Author(s): Liat Steir-Livny / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

Israeli feature films in the first decades of Israel were dominated by ideological considerations and focused on the importance of establishing a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. As part of this process, Holocaust survivors werereduced to a homogeneous negative entity, broken in body and in spirit that, according to the films, can be changed only in Israel. This paper analyzes the sexual stereotypes of women Holocaust survivors from the 1940s until the present.It shows how from the 1940s-1980s women Holocaust survivors were portrayed through negative sexual stereotypes:they were accused of prostitution in order to survive, and were transformed in the films from indecent Jewish womento virtuous Israeli mothers. The paper argues that even though, from the 1970s, the hold of Zionist ideology graduallybegan to weaken in Israeli society, the cinematic negative sexual stereotype didn’t dissolve but expended. From the1980s women Holocaust survivors in Israeli feature films don’t undergo a change and are represented in the Israelisphere as seductive & destructive prostitute, Lilith or deviant femme fatale.

An Immovable Property Restitution Legislation Database

Author(s): Kristen Nelson,Rajika L. Shah / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

The 2009 Terezin Declaration reflects the will of 47 nations to continue to enhance their efforts to right the wrongs committed against groups persecuted during World War II. These commitments are not only important with respect to bringing justice to those affected by persecution during the Holocaust, but also are important from the standpoint of transitional justice as now understood, including as a way of reducing the likelihood of future genocides or mass atrocities. The European Shoah Legacy Institute (ESLI) was established to monitor progress and advocate for the principles enshrined in the Terezin Declaration, in particular that of immovable (real) property restitution. ESLI’s latest project – the immovable property database initiative – will provide a much needed and long overdue dynamic tool for claimants, heirs, scholars, governments, NGOs – any stakeholder – to help navigate current property restitution issues by confronting the path through the past which brought us to current state of affairs.. When completed, the online database will be a user-friendly, public-access comparative repository of legislation and international and domestic case law (both past and present) from every country that has endorsed the Terezin Declaration. Using the online database to examine the often thorny and emotionally charged issue of heirless property, in particular, is emblematic of how the content can be used to drive the conversation for solutions forward and possibly give rise to intertwined policy-related questions.

Nacionalizacija, konfiskacija i restitucija

Author(s): Nikola Samardžić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 2/2014

Restitution is not just a return to a previous state. We cannot revive the past, and that is not really a point. Restitution is a new opportunity for our future, for everybody with the exception of corrupt pockets of society and state. Memory and attention are priority in the process, in relation to the pure material satisfaction of the damaged or descendants. Broadly socially based capitalism and transparent ownership structure should be the stronghold of our democratic future, the path that respects the wrongdoing victims in the past, assuming the wartime aggression and the Holocaust. I also suppose that descendants of the victims are not responsible for the actions of their ancestors. A very unique burden for Serbia and Yugoslavia is the Donauschwaben destiny. Such controversies may be oversimplified only with a presumption that a new totalitarian order performed the liberation from Nazism and Fascism, with complex and long-term consequences related to the whole of the Eastern Europe, which Yugoslavia was a special and particularly complicated case. Confiscation and nationalization have drastically altered the structure of ownership and general legal framework. Conflict with the previous political system involved a conflict with the wealthier urban and rural social circles. Already during the last months of enduring war a new ruling class has emerged entering into other’s villas, houses, flats, beds and slippers. New ruling class gradually assumed both social function and lifestyle of those defeated. Moreover, eventually was established a tacit consensus of winners and losers, as Yugoslavia was approaching Western influences and opening the borders, faced with the disastrous results of post-war transition and economic policy. From the late sixties intellectuals were increasingly challenging Tito’s regime and value system, but only from the extreme left or nationalist platforms. Already during the seventies was permanently prevented eventual general Yugoslav consensus on democracy, the rule of law and transition to the capitalism. Confiscation and nationalization were significantly impeding modernization process, devastation of villages and ruralisation of the cities. Yugoslav and Serbian society was deprived of the dynamics, ethics, and driving force of capitalism. Gradual destruction of the private property culture, and state promoted, populist self-management kept the economic activity at the margins of profitability and market logic. Traditional urban classes were pauperized and intimidated. Post-war Sovietization and nationalism have transformed Serbia into failed state and futile economy. Despite all its controversies, restitution can be considered as an important reform process with deep and painful historical and ethical background: socialist revolution and Sovietization, the Holocaust and its relapse in nationalization and official hostility to Israel, on the other side of history the fate of the „Donauschwaben”, and, generally, crushing the backbones of modernization and democratization in both urban and rural development. That is why we decided to establish this permanent conference as the restitution process deserves the public and scientific attention and open, brave and transparent debate. I suppose that the priorities should be the ethic aspects of restitution, including the moral dilemmas, and all the benefits of our future economic, political and cultural development. Mutual rapprochement between the peoples originating from our former homeland should be implied. I am deeply convinced that the restitution should lead to a new moral consensus that will be referred to all aspects and consequences of the Holocaust. Negation of the idea of restitution, regardless of to whom it concerns, meaning individual nationality or national group, is implicit denial of the Holocaust, as post-war confiscation and nationalization concealed elements of deliberate and organized terror. But we need to discuss the collective reprisals against Donauschwaben. We need to recognize our own, Serbian victims. And we should be even more practical. There is no democracy without the rule of law. And there is no capitalism without legally protected private property. There is no capitalism outside democratic world. Perhaps democracy is the best of all poor political systems. Maybe capitalism is the price we pay to human nature, driven predominantly by market constraints, and just exceptionally by entrepreneurial spirit and work ethic.

Stan badań nad Zagładą na Węgrzech

Author(s): Kinga Piotrowiak-Junkiert / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2016

Węgierscy badacze podejmowali dotąd zagadnienia związane z kulturą żydowską i konsekwencjami jej unicestwienia z kilku perspektyw.

Angelika Benz, Handlanger der SS. Die Rolle der Trawniki-Männer im Holocaust

Author(s): Katharina Friedla / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2016

The review of: Angelika Benz, Handlanger der SS. Die Rolle der Trawniki-Männer im Holocaust, Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2015, 309 s.

Archeologia zbrodni

Author(s): Elżbieta Cajzer / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2016

Wszystko zaczęło się od kilkunastominutowego filmu. W roku 1967 Wytwórnia Filmów Oświatowych we współpracy z Polską Akademią Nauk zrealizowała krótki film dokumentalny pod tytułem Archeologia. Miał on stanowić materiał dotyczący z metodyki prowadzenia badań archeologicznych. Jako miejsce prac wykopaliskowych wybrano niewielki obszar zlokalizowany w pobliżu krematorium nr III w Birkenau. Decyzja o wytypowaniu tego miejsca została podjęta prawdopodobnie po wcześniejszej wizji lokalnej i przeprowadzeniu wstępnych prac sondażowych. Niestety, nie udało mi się dotrzeć do dokumentacji dotyczącej sondaży i ich wyników, można natomiast przypuszczać, że ilość nagromadzonego materiału historycznego w miejscu przeprowadzenia sondaży pozwoliła na dokładne określenie obszaru przyszłych wykopalisk.

Israeli Youth Pilgrimages to Poland. Rationale and Polemics

Author(s): Nitza Davidovich / Language(s): English Issue: 17-18/2011

The article, which was written based on material collected as part of a project evaluating the pilgrimage trips to Poland by Israeli adolescents as part of the Holocaust curriculum, attempted to provide the reader with the background for these trips. In this context, the authors discussed the evolving national agenda in Israel, and the transition from experiencing independence to experiencing the Holocaust. It was explained that this process began with the Eichmann trial in 1961, but became far more intense after the political upheaval in 1977, when the Labor Party, which had been in power since the 1920's, lost the election. The authors of the article stressed that in the wake of the profound social changes that took place in Israeli society, the memory of the Holocaust gained new significance among the country’s national priorities. While a policy known as “the great silence” regarding the Holocaust prevailed among the first generation after statehood, the Holocaust has now become a factor that shaped the national ethos. In 1979, for the first time, the Ministry of Education commissioned two curricula dealing exclusively with the Holocaust. It was this new attitude to the sources of Israeli identity that led to the commencement of trips to Poland by adolescents in the 1980's. Since the trips began, in 1988, over 300,000 adolescents have traveled to Poland. These journeys have become a sort of rite de passage for the relevant age group (high school juniors and seniors). They can be compared to backpacking by young adults who travel abroad to “clear their heads” after completing their army service, on trips lasting anywhere from a few months to two years. The authors noted that nevertheless, only 25-30% of Israeli adolescents actually take part in these journeys. Inter alia, the article reviewed the evolving goals of the trips defined by the MOE, in accordance with the worldview of the minister in office, and noted that, in accordance with the spirit of the times, there were sometimes differences in the main nuances along the particularism-universality axis. The article further stated that apart from the terms in office of ministers Rubinstein and Aloni, the assimilation of the humanistic, moral, universal and anti-totalitarian lessons of the Holocaust during the trips was minor. The article includes a fairly extensive discussion of the dispute on this issue in Israeli discourse. The article noted that the Holocaust and its lessons can be examined from three different perspectives: The first perspective focuses on presenting the universal significance of the Holocaust and perceiving it as parallel to other cases of genocide (such as the murder of the Armenians by the Turks, the genocide in Rwanda and so on). The second perspective focuses on presenting the national significance of the Holocaust as a unique and unparalleled case of the Jewish People. The perception held by this approach is actually “the whole world is against us.” The third perspective is a synthesis of these two approaches. In this article, the authors noted that the longstanding debate in Israeli society over the various methods for instilling the Holocaust and the journeys to Poland by adolescents expresses these three perspectives. The speakers and writers interviewed in the field research each represent one of these perspectives. The article contains many direct quotations from authors, teachers, academics and others, which support the points made by the authors.

Tabloidyzacja Holocaustu w kulturze popularnej

Author(s): Justyna Czaja / Language(s): Polish Issue: 15-16/2011

The text is an attempt to answer the question about the effects of the collision of Holocaust, recognized as a historical fact, with the mechanism of popular culture and how particular aspects of Holocaust, such as sex, violence and death, are used.

Однос Градског поглаварства у Шапцу према имовини шабачких Јевреја и Јевреја из кладовског транспорта 1941–1944.

Author(s): Sanja Petrović Todosijević / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 2/2017

This paper aims to highlight the role of the Municipal Authorities in Šabac, headed by Branko Petrović, the wartime mayor of Šabac which were a part of the collaborationist administration embodied in Milan Aćimović’s Commissariat Administration and Milan Nedić’s Government, in the process of usurping the property of the Jewish people from Šabac and the Kladovo Transport, initially through the Committee for Registration and Evaluation of Jewish Property, and later through the Commissariat for Jewish Property, headed by Jefta Kujundžić.

W cieniu Holocaustu

Author(s): Konrad Szocik / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2017

The anti-Semitic patterns and beliefs in the history of the Roman Catholic Church were determined by non-religious conditions and were not the consequence of the religion itself. The possible correlation between the cultural policy of the Church and anti-Semitism is commonly discussed and interpreted in various ways. Some scholars suggest that the Church is responsible for anti-Semitism and even for the Holocaust because the long practice of anti-Semitic pedagogy in the Christian Europe. However, this kind of causal relation cannot be confirmed. Of course, there were some cases of anti-Semitic practices and beliefs in the practice and teaching of the Church. Nevertheless, the author suggests that they were not affected by the religion itself, but caused by non-religious cultural, social and political contexts. The article contains several examples of anti-Semitic and anti-Judaic practices and beliefs in the history of the Church. The author rejects the causal relation between them and the Holocaust.

Pregled psihoanalitičkih pristupa holokaustu uz primjer tumačenja Devetog kruga

Author(s): Željka Matijašević / Language(s): Croatian Issue: 12/2017

Matijašević Željka, Pregled psihoanalitičkih pristupa holokaustu uz primjer tumačenja Devetog kruga (The Review of the Psychoanalytic Approaches to the Holocaust, on the Example of the Ninth Circle Interpretation). “Poznańskie Studia Slawistyczne” 12. Poznań 2017. Publishing House of the Poznań Society for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences, pp. 211–224. ISSN 2084-3011. The essay is an overview of the most notable psychoanalytic approaches to the trauma of the Holocaust, in the works of the Frankfurt school authors, and in the works of Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub. The last part of the article represents an attempt to interpret the film Ninth Circle by France Štiglic, and in this respect the article reviews and applies the concepts of Viktor Frankl’s school of logotherapy, while it also relies on Frankl’s autobiographical account of the Holocaust trauma.

Conventions of Radka Denemarková’s Novel Peníze od Hitlera (Money from Hitler) along with its Reception

Author(s): Jiří Holý / Language(s): English Issue: 12/2017

Holý Jiří, Conventions of Radka Denemarková’s Novel Peníze od Hitlera (Money from Hitler) along with its Reception. “Poznańskie Studia Slawistyczne” 12. Poznań 2017. Publishing House of the Poznań Society for the Advancement of the Arts and Sciences, pp. 371–379. ISSN 2084-3011. Radka Denemarková’s Peníze od Hitlera (Money from Hitler), edited in 2006, is a succesful novel. It has been perceived by critics as a significant work and traslated into ten languages. Despite this positive response, it is my belief that the novel is not an outstanding work. The construction of the text is full of stereotypes. It uses well-worn narrative procedures, conventional images and symbols as well as banal metaphors. That is why the credibility of the characters and situations presented in Peníze od Hitlera disappears very often. There is also a preexisting model of this novel, the play Der Besuch der alten Dame (1956, The Visit of the Old Lady), written by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Unlike Dürrenmat, Denemarková emphasizes the dark scenes and the melodramatic emotionality of her novel. Therefore, her work is close to conventional clichés.

My, świadkowie

Author(s): Ryszard Nycz / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2018

Nycz presents the perspective offered by studies on witnesses and testimonies in relation to a particular model of subjectivity – a model that assumes a basic “sociality” as well as a primitive “us” that gives rise to a relational and dependent subjectivity-on-account-of-another. This model of a witness-subject or subject-witness functions on several levels: individual identity, the collective subject and the philosophical concept of universal subjectivity. Initiated by witnesses of the Holocaust, this model of subjectivity is becoming more and more important in contemporary culture.

Europejski wymiar Zagłady w książkach niemieckich historyków, czyli jak pisać o przemocy wobec Żydów wymierzonej nie przez Niemców

Author(s): Daniel Logemann / Language(s): Polish Issue: 14/2018

1. Review of: Götz Aly, "Europa gegen die Juden 1880–1945", Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2017, 431 s.; 2. Review of: Christian Gerlach, "Der Mord an den europäischen Juden" Ursachen, Ereignisse, Dimensionen, München: C.H. Beck, 2017, 576 s.; by: Daniel Logemann

Memory images: Holocaust memory in Balkan cinema(s)

Author(s): Nevena Daković / Language(s): English Issue: 32/2018

The aim of this paper is to analyse the shift of the representational and narrative paradigms of Holocaust memory in the Balkan films that belong to two genres - of melodrama and historical fiction. The hybrid format positons the Holocaust (hi)stories - already caught between forgetting and remembrance - on the unstable ground between trauma and nostalgia; between history and memory; or facts and fiction. The “regained visibility of the Holocaust grant us access” to Balkan past and present and oblige us to investigate the convergence of the history and the memory into Holocaust master narrative of the Holocaust. “Bringing the dark past to light” in cinema has manifold effect. First, the Balkan wave of Holocaust films, with its mixed generic performances, offers new answers to the traditional issues of, both, the ethics of memory and the ethics of representation. Second, the analysis of five films reveals that the trauma from the past - resisting the closure - has the potential to powerfully resonate in the present day political crises. Re-dressing the trauma of the past, the films present the future violence while fulfilling “the Holocaust dictum ‘never forget’”. Eventually, new representational paradigm gives consistency to the Balkan (hi)stories of the past and coherence to the identity in the present.

International School for Young Scholars «Overcoming socio-cultural threats in historical dynamics: an experience of studying anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and genocides». Participant’s review

Author(s): Nikolay Kuznetsov / Language(s): English Issue: 03/2018

Between the 23rd and 26th of October 2017, in Moscow and Golitsino (Moscow Province) International Educational and Research Centre of the Holocaust and Genocides History of the Russian State University for the Humanities (RSUH) organized the International School of Young Scientists «Overcoming socio-cultural threats in historical dynamics: an experience of studying anti-Semitism, the Holocaust and genocides», dedicated to Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Entgrenzung der Erinnerung. Digitale Erinnerungskultur an den Holocaust

Author(s): Ewa Turkowska / Language(s): German Issue: 1/2017

The article presents the digital memory culture of the Holocaust as an example of various processes and phenomena of the erasure of borders that occur in today’s cultural and media landscape. In the theoretical section, the phases in remembrance of the Holocaust in Germany and Poland are presented. Next, the web formats of digital memory culture are discussed. Then, eight types of remembrance projects are distinguished and briefly presented. The investigation section in Part 3 presents three remembrance projects which reflect the various phenomena of the erasure of borders. Part 4 contains general conclusions.

The Holocaust in Eastern Europe: At the Epicenter of the Final Solution (Waitman Wade Beorn)

Author(s): Daniel-Valeriu Boboc / Language(s): English Issue: 12/2019

THE SYMBOLIC APPROACH TO THE HOLOCAUST IN THE PROSE OF BERNARD MALAMUD

Author(s): Shpetim Madani / Language(s): English Issue: 6/2012

Bernard Malamud (1914-1986) is one the best known writers of Jewish American literature, which reached its peak in the 1950s. This paper tries to throw light on the treatment of the Holocaust, as one of the most grievous tragedies of the Jewish and world’s history. The paper makes a brief introduction to the Holocaust itself, and how it influenced Malamud. Then the article focuses on two novels and two short stories in which the Holocaust is treated symbolically.