Archiwum Ringelbluma: słowa i rzeczy

Author(s): Teresa Fazan,Andrzej Frączysty / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 14/2018

Ontologia archiwum odsłania przed nami trudną do oswojenia ambiwalencję. Dokument znaleziony w archiwum jest z jednej strony żywą tkanką przeszłości przeszczepioną w tu i teraz, z drugiej ucieleśnieniem utraty – dowodem śmierci i nieobecności. Gdy jednak zwracamy się ku przeszłości, ambiwalencja ta staje się stanem koniecznym: jesteśmy dosłownie skazani na archiwum. Konfrontacja okazuje się tym trudniejsza i bardziej zobowiązująca, gdy o odpowiedź upomina się archiwum Zagłady. Przed zadaniami opracowania i upowszechnienia cudem odnalezionych po wojnie dokumentów zgromadzonych przez grupę „Oneg Szabat” stanął zespół badawczy Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego (ŻIH).

Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Rebellious Consul: A Case Study

Author(s): Daniel Silva Perdigão / Language(s): English / Issue: 09/2016

It is the intention of this article to objectively present the motifs and the out standing socio-cultural climate during the first years of the World War II, which determined the Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, Aristides Sousa Mendes, a Righteous Among the Nations, to disobey the Portuguese Ministry of Foreign Affairs regulations by issuing thousands of visas, free of charge, to mainly Jewish war refugees in order to facilitate their flight from Nazi occupied Europe, using Lisbon as their departure harbor.

Arnošt Lustig a ti druzí

Author(s): Jiří Holý / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 1/2018

This article examines changes in the Holocaust/Shoah presentation in literature throughout the several past decades. According to Alvin H. Rosenfeld, the Holocaust is not percieved as an authentic historical event these days and slowly becomes a shared symbol of evil or entertainment. Rosenfeld warns about the possible “end of the Holocaust” in public consciousness. Short stories and novels by Arnošt Lustig are good examples of these changes. Later books by the author accentuate the harsher side of life in the camps (violence, brutality, hetero- and homosexual prostitution, lack of unity among the prisoners etc.). He often records stories of young Jewish girls and women. Their beauty and youth form a moving contrast to the horrors of the Shoah. In the novelette Colette, for instance, many conventional images are used in the narrative. Credibility of presented figures disappears very often, they are “omnipresent” and “omniscient” almost like the famous Forrest Gump. By using various information and statements reproduced by these characters, the author constructs a kind of Auschwitz-Birkenau encyclopedia. The result of this is the loss of authenticity. At the same time, though, a lot of data of this “encyclopedia” is inaccurate. Lustig uses elements of thriller and romance. In works by other well-known authors who write about the Holocaust, various elements can be found: elements of thriller (Jonathan Littell), fantasy, comics, horror as well as porn films (Igor Ostachowicz). Literary texts by both Littel and Ostachowicz are full of violence, brutality and sexual scenes. Like Lustig, Jonathan Littell has created an encyclopedia of Nazi crimes during the WWII with implausible characters and situations in his novel The Kindly Ones. In contrast to Lustig and Littell, Night of the Living Jews by Ostachowicz is more original and impressive. It also brings actual questions concerning the past and relations between Poles and Jews.

Arnošt Rosin és Czesław Mordowicz 1944-es szökése az auschwitz-birkenau koncentrációs táborból Szlovákiába

Kísérlet a magyarországi zsidók 1944. évi deportálásának megakadályozására

Author(s): Eduard Nižňanský / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 1/2018

There were two couples of Jewish people who managed to escape from the Auschwitz–Birkenau concentration camp, all the four had successfully managed to get to Slovakia in 1944. The story of Alfréd Wetzler and Rudof Vrba is well known. But, on the contrary, the escape of Rosin and Mordowicz is for the wide audience, in essence, unknown. The fleeing of the Slovak Arnošt Rosin and the Polish Czesław Mordowicz together was not only an attempt to change their fate, but they also wanted to let the world know how the killer Auschwitz–Birkenau concentration camp operates. They believed that the information they shared could terminate the deportation of Jews from Hungary in 1944. But their reports could not halt the tragedy.

Around the Bloc: Ethnocosmology, Beekeeping Museum Beckon Tourists to Lithuania

Author(s): TOL TOL / Language(s): English / Issue: 04/10/2018

Meanwhile, genocide museum in Vilnius is criticized for failing to present the Holocaust in an appropriate way.

Around the Bloc: Far-Right Croats Commemorate Bleiburg Massacre

Author(s): TOL TOL / Language(s): English / Issue: 05/15/2018

Some say that the event, which the Croatian parliament sponsors, has become the largest annual gathering of neo-Nazis in Europe.

Around the Bloc: Former Lithuanian Holocaust Site Now a Wedding Venue

Author(s): TOL TOL / Language(s): English / Issue: 08/02/2016

Critics say the local NGO running the complex has to do a much better job of marking the past of the former concentration camp.

Around the Bloc: Hundreds Protest Planned Statue of Hungarian Anti-Semite

Author(s): TOL TOL / Language(s): English / Issue: 12/15/2015

Private group behind the statue, which includes people linked to the far-right Jobbik party, got state and municipal funding.

Around the Bloc: Poland’s ‘Death Camp’ Bill Outrages Israel

Author(s): TOL TOL / Language(s): English / Issue: 02/06/2018

Two sides agree to talk about controversial legislation Warsaw says is necessary to counter fake history about the role of Poles in the Holocaust.

Artistic Memorialization of the Roma Holocaust in Romania

Rendering Visible the Historical Trauma and Documenting the Suffering

Author(s): Caterina Preda / Language(s): English / Issue: 12/2019

Although the Roma Holocaust in Romania has been documented, and there is an officialpolicy to recall this historical fact, its memory is marginal in contemporary Romaniansociety. This article analyzes four recent examples of art of memorialization of the RomaHolocaust in Romania and argues these artistic forms of memory play an important role inthe building of a more comprehensive public memory of the Porrajmos. The analysis usesan interdisciplinary approach, which combines theoretical resources that belong to the studyof cultural memory with a focus on artistic memory, and the analysis of the relationshipbetween art, politics, and memory. The examples of artistic memorialization have two aims:to render visible the historical trauma through the use of testimonies of the survivors and toprovide further documentary sources of this historical trauma.

Artysta w l'univers concentractionaire. "Kornblumenblau" Leszka Wosiewicza jako traktat o sztuce

Author(s): Katarzyna Mąka-Malatyńska / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 13-14/2009

The author of the essay considers Leszek Wosiewicz’s Kornblumenblau as a film about art and focuses on the self reflexive elements present in the film, particularly those referring to film conventions. This analysis examines the film in the context of the reflections about the meaning of art in totalitarian systems and situation of the artist in the reality of the concentration camp. Kornblumenblau depicts degenerated art as depriving of freedom and rescue, becoming another tool of oppression. Dehumanizing power of this art points at the final decay of man in the epoch of gas chambers.

Atitudinea autorităţilor române în anii ’70 faţă de victimele Holocaustului în contextul despăgubirilor germane

Author(s): Petre Matei / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: 55/2016

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.

Atrocity and Aesthetics. The Politics of Remembering and Representing the Holocaust in Polish Contemporary Art: Zbigniew Libera’s “Lego Concentration Camp”

Author(s): Ewa Janisz / Language(s): English / Issue: 6/2015

This paper discusses the politics of remembering and the representation of the Holocaust in Polish contemporary art referring to the Lego Concentration Camp (1996) by Zbigniew Libera. The paper presents the ways in which Libera’s work challenges the traditional ways of representing the Holocaust and how it engages with issues such as the relation between atrocity and aesthetics. The associations brought to this mode of representation by the notions of game and toys and whether theatricality and play are in dialogue with or violate the historical experience of the Holocaust is also discussed. The paper investigates the specificity of the Polish context in the way the Holocaust is approached and the reactions these artistic attempts raise in the public. Do the unconventional and shocking representations help understand the Holocaust or do they create the opposite effect of misguided and trivialised reading of history?

Auf dem Weg zum Holocaust? - Der slowakische Antisemitismus in der Ersten Tschechoslowakischen Republik

Author(s): Miloslav Szabó / Language(s): German / Issue: 2/2015

Older Research either hardly paid any attention to Slovak antisemitism in the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938) or regarded as a kind of preliminary stage to the Holocaust. In contrast, it is the intention of the present study to historicise the Slovak antisemitism of the interwar period. Therefore it aspires a sophisticated treatment, which focuses both on the political radicalisation of the Catholic as well as fascist milieus and the latent antisemitism of the Slovak society, respectively the ambivalent responses to antisemitism of the Czechoslovvak judiciary and administrative organs. In this respect, the increasing invocation of the ,Jewish Question‘ since the end of the 1920s appears to be a symptom of the condition of Slovak politics and society (and by trend also of the Czechoslovak State), albeit it could fully unfold its destructive impact only after the annihilation of Czechoslovakia in an altered political context.

Auschwitz i nowoczesność

Author(s): Bartłomiej Krupa / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 18/2012

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.

Auschwitz jest metaforą wszystkiego. Przypadek „Oświęcimków” Wojciecha Albińskiego

Author(s): Joanna Nazimek / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 2/2016

The object of analysis in this article is the short prose collection entitled “Oświęcimki” (2014). Wojciech Albiński’s pieces reveal how strongly war and Holocaust clichés are rooted in the dictionary, gestures and collective bodily memory of contemporary generations. These texts can be also read as the critiques of the pop‑cultural infantilisation of the Shoah and the signs of tiredness due to the excess of traumatising testimonies on the events of World War II. As the author endeavours to demonstrate, Albiński’s texts reveal the empathetic unease and the real needs of approaching the past, understanding it, and searching for sense in it. “Oświęcimki” are analysed in the context of the issues connected with the functioning of the Holocaust in the permanently changing collective memory.

Auschwitz, Holocaust-Denial, and the Irving Trial

Author(s): Robert Jan van Pelt / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2014

Since the 1970s, Holocaust deniers have focused their attention especially on the issue of crematoria in Auschwitz, thinking that questioning the existence of these would enable them to deny the Holocaust itself. The Holocaust deniers’ attacks against the evidence of the Auschwitz crematoria reached a dramatic apex during the infamous London court case David Irving against Deborah Lipstadt in the year 2000. Court-ordered expert Robert Jan van Pelt defended his 700 page report under cross examination for five days – the outcome was pathetic for David Irving. The Dutch architectural historian’s lecture in English focused on the background and developments of this historical court case.

Auschwitz-tekercs

A pokol szívében

Author(s): Anikó Polgár / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 1/2017

Zalmen­ Gradowski:­ Auschwitz-tekercs.­ A pokol szívében.­ Fordította,­ szerkesztette­ és­ az­ előszót­ írta­ Hunyadi Zsombor.­ Budapest,­ Múlt­ és Jövő,­ 2016,­ 164­ p.

Autonómia Slovenska 1938 – 1939: Počiatočná fáza holokaustu a perzekúcií (Úvod)

Author(s): Martina Fiamová,Michala Lônčíková / Language(s): Slovak / Issue: 1/2019

The end of the 1930s was critical for the democratic regime of the Czechoslovak Republic and the international situation after the signature of the Munich agreement on 29th September 1938. The movement for autonomy for Slovakia resulted in the declaration of Slovak autonomy on 6th October 1938. The Hlinka´s Slovak People‘s Party (HSĽS) immediately started to establish a single ruling party system. During this relatively short 6-month period, until the declaration of the Slovak State in March 1939, significant political changes were dramatically implemented. The conservative, nationalist, and Christian regime of the HSĽS initiated the process of forming a “new” Slovakia under the protective umbrella of Nazi Germany, including the struggle against its enemies – real and also fictitious. The move to Slovak Autonomy represented a significant transition period when the planning and organisation of the initial phase of the Holocaust and the persecution of other potential opponents was begun by political representatives.

Az architektúrától az ellenállástörténetig

Author(s): Béla Révész / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 2/2019

Szelke László: A Gresham a nácik ellen. Az ellenzék, az embermentés és az ellenállás hálózatai. Jaffa Kiadó, Budapest, 2016. 230 oldal