A jugoszláviai holokauszt emlékezete Szerbiában – irodalmi és tudományos igényű könyvek tükrében

Author(s): György Szerbhorváth / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1/2015

David, Filip: Kuća sećanja i zaborava. Beograd, Laguna, 2014. Albahari, David: Gec i Majer. Beograd, Stubovi kulture, 2008. Almuli, Jaša: Stradanje i spasavanje srpskih Jevreja. Beograd, Zavod za udžbenike, 2010. Almuli, Jaša: Ostali su živi. Beograd, Zavod za udžbenike, 2013. Pokrajinska komisija za utvrdjivanje zločina okupatora i njihovih pomagača u Vojvodini: Zločini okupatora i njihovih pomagača u Vojvodini protiiv Jevreja (istrebljenje, deportacija, mučenje, hapšenje pljačka). Priredio dr Drago Njegovan. Novi Sad, Prometej, Malo istorijsko društvo, 2011.

Drumul spre Iad. Evreii din România de la emancipare la Holocaust.

Author(s): Liviu Neagoe / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 09/2016

Studiul structurează evoluția comunității evreiești din România în anii pre mergători Holocaustului din perspectiva a două atitudini care au marcat decisiv percepția publică asupra evreilor în perioada interbelică: antisemitismul și legionarismul. Relația dintre identitatea evreiască, antisemitism și legionarism este cercetată pe câteva paliere de analiză. Un prim palier este orientat spre analiza romanului De două mii de ani… de Mihail Sebastian și a Prefeței scrise de Nae Ionescu, pentru a pentru a înțelege felul cum comuni- tatea evreiască — prin cazul exemplar al lui Sebastian — și-a construit propriul discurs identitar într-o perioadă în care antisemitismul devenea dominant în discursul public. Un al doilea palier al cercetării este direcționat spre analiza originilor intelectuale ale anti semitismului în raport cu paradigma statului național. Prestigiul cultural al intelectualilor reprezentativi ai secolului XIX, dintre care se detașează Mihai Eminescu, a fost folosit ca sursă de legitimare pentru a justifica ultranaționalismul și antisemitismul care au susținut apariția și evoluția legionarismului. În acest sens, ideologii legionarismului au stabilit o linie de continuitate între propriile convingeri antisemite și ideile promovate de fondatorii antisemitismului românesc, pentru a scoate în evidență faptul că legionarii sunt reprezen- tanții genuini ai poporului român. Al treilea palier al cercetării investighează istoria intelec- tuală a legionarismului privit ca mișcare palingenezică centrată pe crearea „omului nou“ considerat chintesență a românității. Pe lângă teme și motive specifice teologiei ortodoxe, pe care le-a integrat în propria doctrină, legionarismul își are sursele intelectuale în discursul palingenezic al naționalismului romantic și al mesianismului istoric din prima jumătate a secolului XIX. Literatura apologetică legionară se intersectează cu textele „tinerei generații“, în proiectul comun al unei noi spiritualități, al regenerării naționale, al căutării autenticității. Intelectualii marcanți ai „tinerei generații“ s-au regăsit în fervoarea legionară, ceea ce le-a justificat critica societății românești interbelice, revoluția spirituală și regenerarea prin distrugere, antisemitismul, alimentând o ideologie a excluderii și a urii, care a făcut posibil totalitarismul de dreapta, autoritarismul antonescian, pogromurile și Holocaustul. Analiza resorturilor și implicațiilor care au stat la baza relației simbiotice dintre activismul politic al Mișcării Legionare și manifestările culturale ale „tinerei generații“ raportate la comunitatea evreiască reprezintă în ultimă instanță miza acestei cercetări.

Holocaust Experiences Through Survivors’ Eyes

Author(s): Adina Babeș / Language(s): English Issue: 09/2016

This paper investigates the survivors’ personal narratives as sources for the study and research of the Holocaust in Romania. I am interested in reviewing those documentary sources, the subjects they refer to and how these subjects are discussed and introduced to the public. I place this research within the theoretical framework of “collective memory”, being interested in bringing to the reader the manner in which these personal narratives could contribute to building the memory of the Holocaust in Romania. My study is placed in the context of historical research with a qualitative methodology of the social sciences approach. The personal narratives of the Holocaust survivors are the primary sources of this research, and the analysis focuses on the message and the sender.

Reconstructing the Memory of the Holocaust in Romania through Films

Author(s): Laura Degeratu / Language(s): English Issue: 09/2016

The current study regards films as a powerful vector of memory and aims to identify if and how the main events in the history of the Holocaust in Romania are represented in movies produced in the post-communist period or aired on Romanian televisions. Starting from the above mentioned enquiry, my aim is twofold: on one hand I am interested to identify how the Holocaust is remembered in the Romanian filmography. What is the status ascribed to the victim, perpetrator and bystander? Do we have a throughout description of these categories or some of them are eluded while others are described in a distorted manner? Where does the responsibility lie and how is the relation between the Romanian authorities and the German ally constructed in these films?

Voicing the Death of the Jews from Northern Transylvania Through Heritage and Its Social Appropriation

Author(s): Sonia Catrina / Language(s): English Issue: 09/2016

Linking our own research interest for the processes of public memory building and remembrance of difficult pasts through the lens of heritage-work, the aim of the current study is to address discourses on ‘the Holocaust issue’ and perceptions of Jews in Romania after more than two decades since the 1989 Revolution. Our focus is mainly on the perceptions of Jewish people from the city of Oradea, a territory where two thirds of about 27000 Jews were killed during WWII. By examining private initiatives of heritage-making carried out with the purpose of contributing to the preservation of the memory of those killed during WWII and comparing them with the official ones, we intend to disclose aspects of the ‘social distance’ and intercultural communication on this Romanian territory where Jews and Roma people were ghettoized, then sent directly to extermination camps (mainly to Auschwitz), where a genocide was carried out. The symbolic re-enactment of Jewish history in the public sphere through heritage-making helps remodel perceptions, attitudes, and behaviours in a multi-ethnic society by promoting moral values regarding other human beings such as tolerance and mutual respect. Therefore, our study inquires to what extent the public memory relating to the Holocaust contributed to shaping social relationships in a multi-cultural society. Our anthropological reflection on the (re-)enactment of the Jewish history during the Holocaust through heritage-making and its social appropriation offer insights into (1) discourses on the Holocaust in Romania and the way in which public memory operates, (2) perceptions of Jews among local people from Oradea and, (3) the building of identity narratives on the acknowledgment or denial of a dark side in our past.

“Balkanization” of National Memories and Identities Trauma:

Author(s): Danilo Trbojević / Language(s): English Issue: 09/2016

The politics of specific selective social/national memories in contrast with globally accepted and promoted pictures of the past happenings is always a very interesting field for anthropological research. This paper also deals with another social phenomenon — the political usage of the dead bodies, or “political lives of the dead bodies” of the Holocaust victims buried on ex-Yugoslavian territories. We will try to show and understand the process of changing political and historical context and its influence on the way Yugoslavia and, later, its independent states used history and traumatic social memory presentation to recreate new views on these happenings and, therefore, new national identities. Using this kind of analysis we will show how the “victim” and “perpetrator” identities were reconstructed and used in different ways and to different purposes. These recreated identities are supposed to be very important factors in the Euro integration, but also a part of the revisionism threat and power struggle in the Balkans today.

Simon Geissbühler, Iulie însângerat. România şi Holocaustul din vara lui 1941, Curtea Veche, Bucureşti, 2015

Author(s): Ioana Bujor / Language(s): English Issue: 09/2016

The triumph of societies, in the form in which they exist today, relies on the presence of an identity-based construction, deeply ingrained in the intimate structure of a nation. The consistency in time of this identity is guaranteed by memory, resulting from a temporal relationship between past and present.

The Sale of Confi scated Jewish Immovable Property in Serbia During World War II for Financing War Damages to Germans

Author(s): Dragan Aleksić / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

This paper describes two financial operations German occupational authorities in Serbia undertook and performed simultaneously in order to finance German war production. The first one is confiscating and selling Jewish immovable property, at first directly through German institutions, later through Serbian Državna hipotekarna banka Bank. The second one is payment of war damages to Germans in Serbia and Banat, citizens of the Reich and Kingdom of Yugoslavia, personally or to their firms, they incurred between March 27, 1941 and the end of April war.

Wiedergutmachung and its Discontents

Author(s): Adam J. Sacks / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

This paper presents and analyses critiques of the post-war West German discourse of Wiedergutmachung from an intellectual history perspective. Focused closely on suggestive remarks of Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt, these critiques are mostly concerned with the insufficient care in intentionality, psychological inadequacies and improper self-serving or nature of the process as it emerged in Cold War West Germany. This essay then charts whether any elements of these critiques from the 1960s are echoed in the most recent wave of scholarly literature on reparations. Current critiques view Wiedergutmachung as a foundation for a “communicative history” that forges shared narratives between perpetrator and victim or as the starting point for a culture of victim competition. Contemporary discourse and historiography remains incomplete with the historical acknowledgment of these early intellectual critiques of the process of reparation. The primary elements taken from these earlier critiques include the importance of intentionality, intersubjective care and reconciliation through memory, especially in cultural discourses and institutions.

The Political Role of Financial Institution

Author(s): Vesna S. Aleksić / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

The article analyses the way in which one of the largest Yugoslav banks, in the wake of WWII, gained exceptional political importance, becoming the property of Deutsche Bank and turning, right after the Nazi occupation of Serbia, into a channel for the systematic aryanization of Jewish movable property in Serbia. At the same time, the article deals with the ways in which the Germans came to accurate data on the ownership of movable property of Jews as well as the role of the Serbian Quisling government of Milan Nedić in this process.

Further Observations on the Restitution of Art, Judaica, and Other Cultural Property Plundered in Serbia

Author(s): Wesley A. Fisher / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

Following on the overview presented at the first annual Holocaust and Restitution Conference concerning what is known about the expropriation of cultural property in Serbia during World War II and where that cultural property is presently located, ways in which restitution of art, Judaica, and other cultural property might best be implemented are discussed. Serbia is encouraged to do historical research on the history of cultural plunder during World War II and on what was restituted to Serbia and within Serbia after the War, and to create a listing or database on the internet of what was taken in Serbia, noting what was subsequently returned and what is still missing. An entity should be responsible for provenance research in the country, either one that actually does the research as in Austria or one that oversees the research carried out by museums, libraries, and archives as in the Netherlands. Information should be made public over the internet of the results of such provenance research. A separate entity, as neutral and independent as possible, should be responsible for restitution decisions based on the provenance research. Serbia should pass legislation covering the return of private movable cultural property that is applicable to both Serbian and foreign citizens. Preferably there should be no deadline for claims for cultural property, whether individual or communal, since such cultural property is often not immediately identifiable. A non-bureaucratic process for filing claims should be established. Cultural property for which original owners and heirs are not identified (heirless property) should be listed on an internet site so that potential claimants can come forward. Such items should not necessarily move from their current location, but their provenance history should be publicly noted.

Restitution of Art, Judaica, and Other Cultural Property Plundered in Serbia During World War II

Author(s): Wesley A. Fisher / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2014

Restitution efforts understandably focus primarily on immovable property.Plundered artworks, books, manuscripts, archives, religious artifacts, and other unique, movable objects of cultural property are also of great importance, however. Artworks and religious artifacts plundered by the Nazis and their allies from Jewish communities and families have emotional meaning. These were communal and personal possessions valued for their beauty and cultural significance, often handed down through several generations.In many cases, these artworks or artifacts are the last personal link heirs may have to families and communities destroyed in the Holocaust.

Restitution in Serbia, February 2014

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2014

This World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) position paper reviews the current state of restitution in Serbia. It covers private property, Jewish communal property, heirless formerly-Jewish owned property, and Jewish cultural property that was confiscated or sold under duress during the Holocaust and/or subsequently nationalized under the communist regime in the area of the former Yugoslavia that is now Serbia. There is now an international consensus on the restitution of Holocaust era-property. Serbia and 46 other countries endorsed the Terezin Declaration on Holocaust Era Assets and Related Issues, establishing principles for property restitution. In 2010, 43 countries endorsed guidelines and based practices for restitution of immovable property. Serbia participated with 38 other countries in November 2012 in the immoveable property review conference, reaffirming its commitment to the ‘Terezin Declaration’ and the ‘Guidelines and Best Practices’. In this paper, WJRO urges the government of Serbia to take steps to make further progress toward meeting the international consensus on restitution. WJRO urges the Government of Serbia to address the following important issues Communal property, Private property, Heirless property, and Art, Judaica, and other cultural property.

Sudbina jevrejskog kapitala tokom nemačke okupacije Srbije 1941-1944

Author(s): Vesna S. Aleksić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 2/2014

In Serbian historiography still remained insufficiently investigated the issue of the role and significance of certain German banks in transferring Jewish capital from Serbian banks during WW II. This article to, through analysis of relevant historical sources and literature, point out very clear principles and exceptionally precise methods used by German occupation authorities, together with most important German financial institutions, while conducting so called ’racist experiment’ in Serbian banking. That experiment included targeting and takeover of Serbian bank with highest concentration of Jewish financial capital in Yugoslavia, Aryanization of personnel, detailed inventory of Jewish financial capital in banks from territory controlled by German occupation authorities in Serbia, redirection of that capital to German bank affiliation in Belgrade and, finally, its transfer to the vaults of ’Deutsche Bank’ in Germany.

Izraelský historik Otto Dov Kulka vypráví osvětimský příběh o české rodině, která nikdy neexistovala

Author(s): Anna Hájková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 47/2015

This article discusses the award-winning book by Otto Dov Kulka, Krajinymetropolesmrti. The book, which tells of the author’s childhood experience in Nazi concentration camps, depicts a family that did not exist. Kulka wrote out his older sister and first father, possibly because their mention would point to the fact that his mother had bad an extramarital relationship with the man who became his second, and adoptive, father, Erich Kulka. By analysing these omissions, I offer a close narrative reading and feminist critique, demonstrating that memoirs of famous men routinely remove important women protagonists. Moreover, I argue, the issue at hand is an uncritical, sentimentalizing reading of Holocaust history and survivors’ memoirs.

Krausova iluze autentičnosti

Author(s): Martina Halamová / Language(s): Czech Issue: 47/2015

The article is a discussion of two novels by Ota (Otto) B. Kraus (1921–2000) – Země bez Boha (Land without God, 1948) and Můj bratr dým (Brother smoke, 1993; first published in English as The Painted Wall, 1994). Both works concern the Jewish experience in the socalled ‘Theresienstadt family camp’ in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Even though both portray the same events, each is different in the strategy it uses to make for an authentic representation of reality. This authenticity adds semantic weight to the narrative in the novels. Země bez Boha can reasonably be seen as a metaphor for the incommunicability of concentration camp suffering. The narrator of Můj bratr dým, by contrast, tries to understand the suffering of the prisoners, particularly the children, in Birkenau. Although he is a witness to these events, and tries to gather many documents about the Shoah, he is unable to understand it.

Šoa očima Oty B. Krause

Author(s): Hana Hříbková / Language(s): Czech Issue: 47/2015

This article considers the theme of the Shoah in the literary works of Ota B. Kraus (1921– 2000), a distinguished Czech and Israeli writer, whose work became available to the Czech public only shortly after World War II and then not until the 1990s. The article briefly introduces the author’s main literary works set in the so-called Terezín Family Camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, BIIb – the novel Země bez Boha and Můj bratr dým. The second part of the article analyses his other novels, short stories, and poems from the point of view of the themes of the persecution of the Jews and the Shoah.

Druhá světová válka a perzekuce Židů v hrách Arnošta Goldflama

Author(s): Jiří Holý / Language(s): Czech Issue: 47/2015

Arnošt Goldflam (b. 1946), a playwright and fiction writer, has often used Jewish topics in his works. His father was born in Vienna into an assimilated Jewish family. Before the Second World War, he lived in Brno, Czechoslovakia, but in the autumn of 1939 the German authorities deported him and other Jews to a ‘Judenreservat’ (Jewish reservation) east of Nisko, on the River San, along the frontier of the ‘Generalgouvernement’ in German-occupied Poland. From Nisko, the Jews were then chased over the German-Soviet demarcation line as warning shots were fired above their heads. Here Otto Goldflam met a young Orthodox Jewish girl from Poland. Both survived the war, Goldflam as a soldier in the Czechoslovak Army who joined the Red Army in the fight against Nazi Germany, and the girl in hiding with a P olish Gentile family. After the war, they married and moved to Brno. Arnošt Goldflam was born soon after. Most of their relatives had died as a result of Nazi persecution. The Second World War as well as the Holocaust appear as topics in Goldflam’s plays and short stories. The play Sladký Theresienstadt (Sweet Theresienstadt) had its first night at the Archa Theatre, Prague, in November 1996. The Archa Theatre worked with En Garde Arts, a N ew York NGO, on a P rague production of the play. Based on documents about life in the ghetto, the play was mainly inspired by the Theresienstadt diary of Willy Otto Mahler (1909–1945, called Willy Mahner in the play), who was a journalist and a secretary of the Německý Brod football club. To protect the living, the diary has not yet been published. Mahler had a relatively privileged position among the Theresienstadt prisoners. In his diary, he describes many things, often sardonically, including his own selfish behaviour and love affairs, and the Mahner character in the play is similar. Goldflam originally wrote the play inspired only by Mahler’s diary. In the second version of the play, however, he drew on another source of inspiration: the story of the filming of a propaganda documentary in Theresienstadt. The film was made after Theresienstadt had been spruced up for a visit by a R ed Cross delegation in June 1944. The famous Jewish-German actor Kurt Gerron (Kurt Gerroldt in Goldflam’s play), who was a prisoner in Theresienstadt, was chosen as the film’s director. The film presents a completely false picture of Jewish life in Theresienstadt, portraying the ghetto as a happy, idyllic community. In Goldflam’s play, Gerroldt does not want to see that his work serves evil and lies. It is fair to consider his reference to an allegedly higher moral duty to be the broader, more general sense of Goldflam’s play. In his later play, Z Hitlerovy kuchyně (From Hitler’s kitchen, 2007), six ministories linked by the character of Adolf Hitler add up to an unorthodox picture of Hitler. Goldflam’s grotesque reconstructions of Hitler’s life and death are free of any demonic qualities and present him simply as a private, bookish, and slightly odd man. Goldflam manages to combine authenticity, tragic hopelessness, and the grotesque. The grotesque, often associated with brutality, is the third component of his plays.

Holokausztirodalom Magyarországon. Módszertani megjegyzések egy magyar holokausztirodalom-történethez

Author(s): Tamás Kisantal / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 4/2016

The paper discusses the methodological challenges of the historical study of Hungarian Holocaust literature. It mainly examines the specific methodological questions that arise when we want to historically analyze a text corpus the interpretation of which is greatly determined by a major discourse, which only emerged relatively late. As, from the 1970s, certain preconceptions as well as aesthetic and ethical norms were crystallized around the Holocaust, the entirety of which we may call Holocaust discourse. In Hungary, all this happened later, and it mostly got linked to the reception of Imre Kertész in the study of Hungarian literary developments, thus the harsh interpretation and description of the Holocaust that appears in his works influenced the reading of previous works as well. In my paper, through a case study, the examination of the reception of works published immediately after 1945, I argue in favor of the necessity of contextual analysis. At the time, these works belonged to an independent genre category within the field of literature called “experience literature”. By describing the debates about the concept of experience literature as well as the ideological and aesthetic discussions I make an attempt to explore how the discourses surrounding the contemporary descriptions of sufferings in World War II worked.

Радионицa “Paths to Survival? Yugoslav Jews and the Italian Occupation Zone 1941–1943”, Београд, Институт за новију историју Србије, 23–25. марта 2016.

Author(s): Olga Manojlović-Pintar / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 3/2016