Kategoria groteski w opisach muzyki z obozów koncentracyjnych. „Gry oświęcimskie” Szymona Laksa

Author(s): Bartosz Dąbrowski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2016

The article presents the grotesque as an autobiographical strategy of talking about the experience of concentration camps. In his autobiographical testimony, Szymon Laks describes the music in Birkenau as the part of the Nazi system of exploitation of prisoners. In his memories, music in the concentration camp is deprived of humanistic values, and becomes a symbol of the violence, hierarchy and absurdity of the camp life. For Laks, the grotesque and self‑parody become the only means of speaking about the experience of the concentration camp. Laks chooses the literary tactics of inhuman accustoming, similar to the works of such writers as Tadeusz Borowski and Piotr Rawicz.

Zagłada jako horror. Kilka uwag o literaturze polskiej 1985–2015

Author(s): Przemysław Czapliński / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2016

The author suggests that the depictions of the Holocaust in Polish literature of 1918–2014 should be categorized as horror. From the chronological perspective, Czapliński divides those thirty years into three shorter periods: 1) the initial period (from Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and Jan Błoński’s essay “The Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto” to Wilhelm Dichter’s and Michał Głowiński’s memoirs) was dominated by white horror, which presented Jews as ghosts demanding a place in the Polish memory; 2) during the second period (from Marek Bieńczyk’s Tworki and Jan Tomasz Gross’ Neighbors until the end of the 2010s) the horror poetics was used to reveal those principles of pre-war and occupation-period normality which helped the Germans conduct the Holocaust and which conditioned the exclusion of Jews from the Polish circle of ‘normal humanity’; 3) during the third period (from Gross’s Golden Harvest until now) Jews return as the undead, violating the rules of distance and obliging Poles to physically touch the disgusting topic of the Holocaust. The contact with the Holocaust as something abhorring becomes a condition for self-knowledge, purging, and establishment of a new imaginary community.

Fenomenologia zła. Kontekst bośniacko-hercegowiński

Author(s): Marinko Zekić / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2017

Muratović, Rasim, Holokaust nad Jevrejima i genocid nad Bošnjacima (Holokaust Żydów i ludobójstwo Boszniaków), Institut za istraživanje zločina protiv čovječnosti i međunarodnog prava, Univerzitet u Sarajevu, drugo izdanje (Instytut Badań Zbrodni przeciwko Ludzkości i Prawu Międzynarodowemu, Uniwersytet w Sarajewie, wydanie drugie), Sarajewo 2012, 277 s. Zbrodnia ludobójstwa oraz inne zbrodnie przeciwko ludzkości zdefiniowane przez prawo międzynarodowe stanowią część historii od najdawniejszych czasów, przy czym w najnowszej historii najgłębiej zapisało się w zbiorowej pamięci okrucieństwo II wojny światowej, podczas której w akcie ludobójstwa życie straciły miliony ludzi, co, po zakończeniu konfliktu, skłoniło państwa zwycięskie do utworzenia Organizacji Narodów Zjednoczonych (ONZ), której celem stało się utrzymanie pokoju i bezpieczeństwa na świecie, szerzenie tolerancji oraz promowanie poszanowania praw człowieka i wolności zagwarantowanych w Powszechnej Deklaracji Praw Człowieka.

Nature at Its Limits (Ecocide). Subjectivity After the Catastrophe

Author(s): Aleksandra Ubertowska / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2015

The author traces the analogy and intersections between holocaust and genocide studies and the ecocriticism, between the event of the genocide and ecocide (the devastation of the natural environment). Based on the discussion of books and articles by G. Agamben, J. Derrida, B. Latour the author offers a thesis on the shaping of a new concept of nonanthropocentric subjectivity, “empathic subject” or a subject existing in the pluriversum. The second part of the article is devoted to the analysis of literary (E. Kuryluk, W.G. Sebald) and visual (J. Morgenstern’s “Ambulans”) representations, pointing to the role of non-human factors in the post-catastrophic landscape.

Другие немцы: «Сопротивление спасателей» в Третьем рейхе

Author(s): Samson Α. Madievski / Language(s): Russian Issue: 6/2004

The monograph by S.A. Madievski is a sociological study of one type of the anti-Nazi Resistance. The people who were then called «Jews’ aiders» and today are being referred to as «helpers» and «rescuers», sabotaged, at their lives’ risk, the ideology and policy of the regime at its key point, namely, the racist theory and practice.The work covers the kinds and forms of the help provided to the Jews, examines the variants of motivation behind it and describes the repressions against those «aiding the Jews». The study also depicts different social-psychological types of rescuers and analyses their relationship to the German environment and to those persecuted as well as the relations among the rescuers themselves. The monograph offers the retrospective evaluation and self-evaluation of the rescuers’ activities. It further examines the attitude towards them in the post-war German society and the way they have been dealt with by the historiography in the FRG.The study is based on the testimonies of the contemporaries and participants of the events, the documents of the Nazi regime as well as a wide range of historical literature by the European, American and Israeli authors.

From Soviet to Post- or Anti-Soviet: Two L’viv Museums of War in Search of a New Ukrainian Narrative of World War II

Author(s): Alexandra Wachter,Ekaterina Shapiro-Obermair / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2018

While most of the historical events that took place in L’viv, Ukraine, during and after World War II are being successively researched, less attention has been paid to their representation throughout the Soviet period and its transformation afterwards. This article looks at two war museums in L’viv representing the most prominent competing historical perspectives on World War II in Ukraine today: the Soviet narrative of heroism and liberation, as put forward by the Museum of the History of the Carpathian Military District, and the Ukrainian narrative of a no less heroic fight for freedom and self-determination, as presented by the Museum of the Liberation Struggle of Ukraine. The first was the state narrative of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, is still supported by many Ukrainian citizens and politicians, and continues to influence ideas about how war should be commemorated; the promoters of the second have hoped to make it the new Ukrainian master narrative, but they encounter a variety of difficulties, which will be addressed in this article. The article examines the circumstances, motives, and goals of the museums’ creators, of the exhibitions’ narratives (and silences), and their design. The analysis is based on empirical research conducted in L’viv between August 2015 and October 2017 as part of the interdisciplinary research project “L’viv: Museum of War,” a collaboration between the artist Ekaterina Shapiro-Obermair and the historian Alexandra Wachter.

Valhala, Kalvarija i Aušvic

Author(s): Shlomo Giora Shoham / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 01+02/1988

In this work the author seeks for the explanation of the most monstrous crime in human history — the Holocaust, applying his core dialectics theory to the symbolic relationship between the Nazis and Jews. He thus claims that anti- -Semitism of the Nazis is related to the core dialectics of the German social character. The notion of »core dialectics« relates to the author’s core personality theory in which a basic distinction is made between the »separant« and »participant« personality types. This distinction is then applied to group relationships, where German social character is tabled separant and the Jewish participant. The author stresses that in accordance with their separant traits the Germans, having rejected Christianity and the characteristically Jewish participant restraints of law and morality, were liable to accept Hitler and Nazism as reincarnations of the old Germanic mythological values expressed in the amorality of the Northern Gods of war and the pagan tribal family of Aesir in which everything was permitted and where only power counted. On the other hand, a conspicuous characteristic of the Jewish social character is their tendency towards sacrificing themselves, the tendency initiated by Jesus Christ as the archetypal participant victim. The clashes between the Jews and European separant societies, which had started as early as 332. B. C. when Alexander conquered Palestine, resulted in the widest possible range of conflicts, where the Holocaust was the last and the most horrible one in the series.

A few considerations on strategies of remembrance using the world wide web: fragments of 1944

Author(s): Dan Alexandru Savoaia / Language(s): English Issue: 11/2018

In a world where the position of historians is increasingly more complex to delineate and characterize, the World Wide Web represents a medium where history and histories are being written, restored or interpreted on a daily basis. Faced with the tremendousness of this space and their intrinsic liability to infinite obliviousness, events and places of the past are still waiting to be uncovered. But how can one draw the attention to history and bring the 'voices' of the people into the digital age whilst using community-created content in a coherent manner? Given this framework, it is the aim of my paper to analyze two projects that aspire at engaging people with history: 'Yellow-star house project' and 'A mate from the past. 1944 LIVE'. My analysis is based on the interpretative structure proposed by Suzanna K. Conrad, according to which digital stories have multiple purposes. While referring to the projects' context, audience and message, the current contribution focuses on two aspects, namely outreach-activism and the practice of digital storytelling as a way of archiving history.

Excessive Masculinity: Boxer Narratives in Holocaust Literature

Author(s): Paweł Wolski / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

This article examines boxer narratives in Polish and international Holocaust literature in order to reveal the function of masculinity within the ontology of sports. Wolski uses the example of Roger Repplinger’s Leg dich, Zigeuner, a double biography of the German footballer Otto (“Tull”) Harder, member of the Waffen-SS, Wachmann and later com¬mander at the German concentration camps, and German Sinto boxer Johann “Rukeli” Trollmann, who faced discrimination on ethnic grounds and was later killed in one of the camps. The biographies of these two individuals show a marked difference in the way in which masculinity functioned within Nazi ideology. In the case of Harder, masculinity is an immanent category, while Trollmann’s masculinity appears as contingent. The boxer’s strategy of avoiding direct confrontation in the ring was perceived as “unmanly,” leading to his exclusion from the community of men.

Polscy obserwatorzy Zagłady. Studium przypadków z zakresu sztuk wizualnych – uwagi wstępne

Author(s): Luiza Nader / Language(s): Polish Issue: 14/2018

This text is devoted to selected visual records produced in the face of the Holocaust by the following artists: Felicjan Szczęsny Kowarski, Krzysztof Henisz, Aleksander Świdwiński, and Mieczysław Wejman. Vast majority of these works of art comes from the war period (1940– 1944), with a few produced immediately after the war (1946–1948). The author analyzes predominantly their referential layer as well as the modes of representation they employ, the dating of speciϐic objects, and the references to their accompanying historical framework. She also reflects on identity, motivations, and the degree of existential, ethical, and artistic engagement of the artists in the face of the Holocaust, which was happening right before their eyes, in their immediate vicinity. The central question Nader directs not only at the artists and their works, but also at the field of art history is one that Jan Tomasz Gross has asked: “What did you do/What was done to help the Jews?” bearing in mind that doing nothing was also an action with consequences. The most important conception developed in this text is the category of the artist – a close observer of the Shoah. Moreover, this question about Polish bystanders also makes her inquire about the foundations of the field of art history as such. The author postulates changing the episteme in the space of the contemporary and modern history of art in Poland as there still has been no response to the challenge posed by works produced in the face of the Holocaust and from the Holocaust.

Od radzieckiej amnezji do ukraińskiej (nie)pamięci. Zagłada w pamięci kulturowej Ukrainy 1991–2017

Author(s): Roman Romantsov / Language(s): Polish Issue: 14/2018

W artykule podejmuję próbę analizy, jaki wpływ na reprezentacje Zagłady w pamięci kulturowej społeczeństwa ukraińskiego wywiera polityka historyczna. Główną tezę badawczą stanowi twierdzenie, że polityka pamięci wpływa na obecność Zagłady w pamięci kulturowej Ukrainy. W celu szerszego przedstawienia tematu sformułowałem następujące pytania badawcze: W jaki sposób dokonywała się zmiana w postrzeganiu Zagłady w dyskursie politycznym? Jaki wpływ mają instytucje państwowe na kształtowanie pamięci o Zagładzie? Jaką rolę odgrywają instytucje niepaństwowe w reprezentacji pamięci o Zagładzie w pamięci kulturowej? Jakie miejsce pamięć o Zagładzie zajmuje w teatrze, kinie i wystawach fotograficznych? Podstawowym założeniem badawczym jest przekonanie, że polityka historyczna wobec Zagłady jest częścią państwowej polityki pamięci. Mówiąc o pamięci kulturowej, odwołuję się do koncepcji Jana Assmanna i mam na myśli rodzaj pamięci zbiorowej, który wymaga upamiętnienia w formie materialnej lub rytualnej

Upamiętnianie Zagłady w kraju multikulturalizmu. Kanada wobec spuścizny Zagłady od lat siedemdziesiątych do chwili obecnej

Author(s): Miranda Brethour / Language(s): Polish Issue: 14/2018

W rozdziale poświęconym muzeum jako instytucji pamięci Naomi Kramer utrzymuje, że „muzea i pomniki stanowią tradycyjnie publiczną formę przedstawiania historii danego społeczeństwa”. Badacze pamięci społecznej i współczesnych społeczeństw odeszli od tak zachowawczych wyobrażeń o pamięci społecznej i zbiorowej i zwrócili się ku procesom, przez które różnorodni aktorzy i różnorodne grupy uczestniczą w konstruowaniu przestrzeni pamięci i kontestowaniu prezentowanych narracji. Niemniej osoby zainteresowane upamiętnianiem Zagłady w Kanadzie powinny rozważyć przytoczony cytat z książki Kramer. Według spisu powszechnego z 2016 r. w Kanadzie mieszka obecnie ponad 35 mln ludzi należących do ponad 200 różnych grup etnicznych. Wielu Kanadyjczyków przyszło na świat i wychowało się poza granicami kraju. Nasuwa się pytanie, jak instytucje pamięci publicznej (miejsca pamięci, muzea i pomniki) mogą odpowiednio przedstawiać historię i doświadczenia tak niejednorodnego społeczeństwa? Co więcej, jaką rolę odgrywa upamiętnianie Zagłady w kanadyjskim krajobrazie pamięci? Innymi słowy, jak zróżnicowanie społeczeństwa kształtuje upamiętnienie konkretnego wydarzenia?

Tematyka Zagłady na lekcjach polskiego – szansa budowania otwartości

Author(s): Ewa Jaskółowa / Language(s): Polish Issue: 2/2018

The article author claims that Ida Fink’s „The Journey” can help attract young readers’ attention to the traumatic experiences of Jews during World War II. The analysis of the events described in the novel and, above all, the behaviour of the main character and the narrator, helps to create an understanding and empathic attitude towards the suffering of others. The article author claims that reading texts written by people who survived the Holocaust can initiate reflection that condemns racist and xenophobic behaviour and statements.

Zbrodnia z urzędu, sprawcy zza biurka. Uwagi i refleksje na marginesie lektury „Konferencja w Wannsee. Droga do «ostatecznego rozwiązania»” Petera Longericha

Author(s): Alicja Bartnicka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2018

„Hologramy Ciemności” — Paula Celana teodycea po Shoa

Author(s): Ewa Borkowska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2018

Paul Celan’s (1920–1970) poetic cartography builds on the “holograms of darkness” (thus addressed by Amy Colin, an American Celan scholar), the metaphorical constellations which map the experiences of suffering, twilight and death. The poetry “after Shoa” of the Romanian poet of Jewish descent, writing in German, constitutes a particular landscape of his musical “death fugue” in which human suffering is depicted in surrealist images that silently express of the trauma of the Holocaust. Celan’s theodicy is created as the “rhetoric of the ineffable”, a silent dialogue with the Other (Lévinas) but also the absent Other, the No one with whom the poet converses and who becomes the addressee of his “poems-prayers” or “no-poems” (noems), as he calls them. It is the absent Other the poet worships and celebrates in his “poetry of silence”. Language also experienced suffering but was “enriched by it” and now can be heard “on the other side of silence”. Celan’s poetry is firmly anchored in the memory of the Holocaust and Jewish people’s traumatic experiences. To soothe his pain, the poet constantly returns to the “Brunnenland”, his birthplace located in Bukovina where he always found the spring that fueled his poetic soul and heart. The poet’s favourite metaphor is that of the meridian which marks the reference place on the cartographic grid of all his poetic images.

Толстоизмът и обществените организации в България през първата половина на ХХ век

Author(s): Margarita Terzieva / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 3/2019

Tolstoyism as a teaching with its anti military line, with its preaching about fraternal love and unity, with its ethic religious feeling which is an upbringing tool, with the vegetarian way of life which priorities have been demonstrated by its followers, wins disciples in Bulgaria in the first decades of 20th century. A number of organizations were set up and started functioning under the influence of these ideas – Bulgarian vegetarian union, temperance societies and unions, Esperanto movement, pacific movement – which contributed to its broader social support. But Tolstoyism could not survive in the epoch of sharp political collisions because it teaches beautiful but helpless ethics. Today its ideas are subjected to analysis and discussions.

Най-ужасяващата война…

Author(s): Włodzimierz Suleja / Language(s): Bulgarian Issue: 4/2019

JUGOSLAVIJA I JEVREJSKE IZBEGLICE 1938-1941.

Author(s): Milan Ristović / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 1/1996

The geographical position of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia made it one of the principal transit stations for thousands of Jewish emigrants and refugees who passed through it from 1933 onwards and who made it their sanctuary for various lengths of time. The entire human and material resources of the small Jewish community in Yugoslavia were employed in receiving and aiding these people, with only partial assistance from international Jewish and non-Jewish humanitarian organizations. The attitude of Yugoslav authorities towards Jewish refugees and emigrants from central European countries in the period between 1938 and 1941 was largely determined by factors in foreign politics and their effect on the policy of the Yugoslav government. Changes in the system of issuing entry or transit visas for Yugoslavia depended on changes in the legislation of countries from which the emigrants, refugees and »tourists« of Jewish origin came. Pressure was exerted on the Yugoslav government, mainly by Germany, to alter the status of the domestic Jewish community. Consequently, in 1940 several regulations were introduced which seriously undermined the Jews’ equal status in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. On the other hand, demands were also made by the British to prevent the use of Yugoslav territory for the transit of Jewish emigrants going to Palestine, which was then under British rule. A part of the dilemma regarding the treatment of Jews, coming primarily from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, can be found in the work of inter-ministerial government conferences, in the statements and attitudes of the highest-ranking government authorities, of influential individuals, members of the Jewish community and representatives of some branches of trade who held a chiefly pragmatic interest in the problem of refugees (tourist organizations, transportation companies etc.) The attitudes which surfaced in discussions held at various levels regarding the issue of refugees were not uniform, their variety demonstrating the complexity of the problem. Government measures, in accordance with »solutions« whose purpose was to turn away the oncoming stream of refugees, were mostly restrictive and were applied, with varying severity, by all countries forced to serve as temporary or permanent sanctuaries to hundreds of thousands of homeless Jews. These attitudes indicate the general atmosphere of the time immediately preceding the horrors of war and the tragedy not only of several million European Jews but, likewise, of millions of non-Jews. They are also proof of the political and moral weakness of the world, which neither defied the anti-Semitic politics of Nazism nor wished to receive the victims of these politics and offer them shelter and security.

SPISAK BELOCRKVANSKIH JEVREJA ŽRTAVA FAŠISTIČKOG TERORA

Author(s): Živan Ištvanić / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 1/1995

Kratki aprilski rat 1941. godine doneo je Jevrejima u Beloj Crkvi najteži udarac od njihove pojave na belocrkvanskom tlu uopšte. To je godina najpotresnijih svedočanstava о njihovom masovnom istrebljenju, ponižavanju, pljački njihove imovine, začetak monstruoznosti jeđne ideologije, godina potpunog nestanka Jevreja i jevrejske kulture sa scene belocrkvanske istorije. Hitler je podunavskim Nemcima, pa tako i onima u Beloj Crkvi, odredio značajnu ulogu u okupaciji Banata i širenju nacizma. Podunavski Nemci su trebali da budu u prvim redovima fronta nemačkog borbenog pokreta kao predstraža Rajha koja će omogućiti nemačko osvajanje.

DENACIONALIZACIJA, ISELJAVANJE I GENOCID NA BALKANU U TOKU DRUGOG SVETSKOG RATA

Author(s): Dušan Lukač / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 1+2/1988

This supplement gives in a concise form, based on the data obtained from primary sources and abundant literature, all aspects and forms of the denationalization and genocide measures which were exercised by the enemy and domestic quislings during World War II against discriminated individuals as well as peoples in the south-east of Europe, firstly towards Jews, Serbs, Slovenes and Gypsies. The first chapter deals with the initial phase of the war, in the south-east also known as the arbitrage period in which the Axis powers, Germany and Italy, acting as judges, used the quarrels between Hungary and Rumania over the mixed inhabited Transylvania, to strengthen their influence in these two countries. The second chapter is dealing with various forms of forced emigration or rough turning out of homes of entire nationalities into other regions and countries. This system of racial purification of certain countries or regions was most roughly and massively applied in parts of Yugoslavia, especially towards Slovenes and Serbs. Stated facts bring on the conclusion that the major part of the Yugoslav citizens were, for a longer or shorter period, driven off or simply thrown out of their homes.The third chapter deals with document verified data that the German citizens also had to abandon their homesteads in especially large numbers towards the end of the war. Before the retreat of the German army in 1944, Volksdeutschers had to leave their homes and start the exodus towards the Reich. The fourth chapter is dealing with long-term measures of denationalization of certain nations: in the field of culture and education - no use of mother tongue or alphabet allowed; national schools closed down; all forms of cultural life hindered or forbidden, while the enemy's culture is forced upon the people; all forms of national tradition destroyed or erased etc; in the field of economy - confiscation of personal property; certain professions not allowed; in the field of religion - converting into the other nation's religion, as during the ,,NDH” (Independent State of Croatia) when the orthodox were converted into Roman Catholics, etc. This chapter also describes the system of race checks and administrative transferring of individuals and parts of the population into another, „higher" nation, as was done in parts of Slovenia which were included in the Reich.