Property of Jewish Greeks in Context of the Holocaust

Author(s): Photini Tomai Constantopoulou / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2014

The Greek Constitution, since the founding of the State, recognized only Greeks–Hellenes. Full emancipation, civil rights and full freedom of Religion and its practice were enshrined and guaranteed. No Anti– Judaic laws were ever legislated, even during the German occupation 1941–1944. The Holocaust left property owned by Jews orphaned. The puppet government during occupation entrusted these properties to the meseggiouhoi [trustees]. De jure Aryanization was never legislated. Two days before liberation of Athens (12 October 1944), Prime Minister Rallis passed a law heralding the return of the properties to their rightful owners. Post war legislation, unique universally, restituted all properties to their owners and, in cases of heirless properties, the State did not exercise its constitutional right of acquisition but, instead, endowed with these properties a newly created entity (OPAIE) whose purpose was and still is to aid the remaining Jewish Greeks.

DOWODY ZBRODNI NACJONALISTÓW UKRAIŃSKICH NA LUDNOŚCI POLSKIEJ W LATACH 1939-1947 ORAZ ICH OCENA W ŚWIETLE PRAWA KRAJOWEGO I MIĘDZYNARODOWEGO

Author(s): Bogusław Kużniar / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2015

During the Second World War, in the south Eastern Borderlands (or, in Polish Kresy Wschodnie) of the Second Polish Republic, the Ukrainian nationalists collaborated with the German and Soviet occupiers. The Third Reich and the Soviet Union were opposed to the creation of the totalitarian Ukrainian state by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). However, both the occupiers’ and the Ukrainian nationalists’ aim was the extermination of the Polish nation. The significant ideological similarity between the Ukrainian nationalism and German Nazism was unequivocally shown by the complicity on a mass scale of the Ukrainian nationalists in the Holocaust. In order to murder as many Poles in Volhynia as possible, at the beginning of 1943, the OUN started forming the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). A few months later, the UPA spread its terrorist activities also throughout the south Kresy Wschodnie. Most of the terms frequently used for crimes committed by Ukrainian nationalists, such as “slaughter” or “ethnic cleansing”, do not have legal significance. In accordance with the Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, these crimes should correctly be defined as genocide. Professor Ryszard Szawłowski finds that due to particularly drastic cruelty, the genocide committed by Ukrainian nationalists ought to be named, in Latin, genocidium atrox (“atrocious genocide”). What is more, the activities of Ukrainian nationalists, among other things, murder and subversive acts, were precisely and strictly forbidden by the Polish Criminal Code of 1932 as well as by the laws adopted in Poland by the communist authorities after the end of the German occupation. In the communist— Poland many sentences, including life-time prison or death sentences, were passed on the members of the structures of the OUN and UPA. There is no legal possibility to overturn those verdicts; and, in addition the crimes committed by Ukrainian nationalists are still prosecuted by the Institute of National Remembrance— Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation. Likewise, the pieces of evidence presented in the article, unarguably show that the activities of Ukrainian nationalists against the Polish population in the years 1939—1947, were inherently criminal.

PAUL A. SHAPIRO, The Kishinev Ghetto, 1941–1942. A Documen-tary History of the Holocaust in Romania’s Contested Borderlands. With chronology by Radu Ioanid and Brewster Chamberlin and translations by Angela Jianu. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabam

Author(s): Svetlana Suveica / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 2/2016

Кнут Флувик Туресен. У Норвешку, у смрт: српски интернирци у нацистичким логорима на северу Норвешке. Београд: Catena mundi, 2015, 183.

Author(s): Aleksandar Stojanović / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 3/2016

Prowokacja Rūty Vanagaitė

Author(s): Rimvydas Valatka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 667/2017

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.

Niemieccy okupanci w Warszawie a jawność Holokaustu

Author(s): Stephan Lehnstaedt / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2016

In several last years there have been many publications concerning the knowledge and attitudes of Germans in relation to the Holocaust. The author deals with the issue what the civilian population and the military troops stationed at that time in Warsaw knew about the Holocaust. The occupants quickly learned about the massacres of Jews. Precise information spread at a rapid pace, and consequently each of the occupants was well informed of the Holocaust. Very few Germans stationing in Warsaw condemned crimes committed against the Jews. There was consensus on the need of extermination of Jews, some reservations aroused only form in which the genocide was carrying on. Open violence intertwined with its general acceptance, which led to a progressive callousness.

„Coraz to nowe żądania, coraz to nowe grymasy” – relacja władzy i podporządkowania między Polakami a Żydami w kryjówkach po aryjskiej stronie

Author(s): Justyna Kowalska-Leder / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2016

This texts talks about three single, uneducated Polish women living alone (a dressmaker, servant, and kitchen worker), who during the war sheltered Jews in their apartments in Warsaw and Drohobych. All three of them helped the Jews for money, but – as far as we know – none of them resorted to financial blackmail or any other major abuse of a financial character. Nevertheless, the war circumstances became an opportunity for them to fulfill their emotional needs, otherwise impossible to satisfy. They derived pleasure from having power and control over another person and their actions towards the Jews they sheltered also bore traces of a class revenge. The authors analyze the relations between the helpers and helps mostly on the basis of Jerzy Feliks Urman’s diary and memoirs of Karol Rotgeber and Calek Perechodnik. Aside from the sociological theory of exchange systems, another useful tool facilitating comprehension of the Polish women’s behavior and their interactions with the Jews in hiding, which are described in those texts, is Erich Fromm’s concept of human cruelty as a highly complex phenomenon that cannot be reduced to openly violent actions.

Lista Soni Wajselfisz [Karin Ohry, Lista Soni; Agnieszka Haska, „Setki znajomych osób”. Lista z Bergen-Belsen]

Author(s): Karin Ohry,Agnieszka Haska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2016

Sonia Wajselfisz (1911–1999) in 1943 was deported from the Warsaw ghetto to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; thanks to the so-called Palestinian certificate obtained through the Hotel Polski, people managed to survive the war. Many people in the hotel at Długa 29 Street bought documents issued by South American countries, were not so lucky; on 21 October 1943, 17 May, and 23 May 1944 they were transported to Auschwitz and died there. After the war, Sonia wrote down the names she could recall; the list, found after many years, is a unique document, so one can identify at least part of more than two hundred people from these transports. The article presents a biography of Sonia, and an analysis of the document she drew up.

Demon pojednania. Dyskurs o współczesnych Sprawiedliwych w powieści popularnej

Author(s): Marta Tomczok / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2016

The author analyzes depictions of the Righteous in several Polish popular novels and the accompanying discourse on rescuing. She proves that in popular fiction such depictions dominate over the reckoning discourse, connected with the Polish shared responsibility for the Holocaust. Tomczok analyzes the reasons for that dominance, referring to the Philo-Semitic violence category described by Elżbieta Janicka and Tomasz Żukowski. She devotes special attention to Maja Wolny’s novel Czarne liście and the controversy over the presentation of the pogrom in Kielce, and, first and foremost, this book’s dependence on the scholarly achievements of the scholars affiliated with the Center for Holocaust Research.

Wszystkie procesy Eleazara Grünbauma

Author(s): Jacek Dehnel / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2016

This article talks about Eleazar Grünbaum, a son of Izaak Grünbaum – an MP, journalist, and famous Zionist activist. In 1929 Eleazar was arrested as a young communist, but thanks to his father’s connections he received a lenient prison sentence and he was released in 1931. He then went on to study in France. During the Spanish Civil War, he fought on the Republic’s side. After the outbreak of the war he joined General Sikorski’s Polish army and then became a communist underground activist. In 1941 he was arrested and then deported to Auschwitz. He became a kapo in the camp and after the war was tried for torturing his fellow inmates. Thanks to his father’s endeavors he managed to avoid punishment and immigrated to Palestine. He died in combat against the Arabs in 1948. There is still controversy in Israel as to whether he was a cruel camp tormentor or whether he simply tried to survive. According to the author, the years Grünbaum spent in camps can be regarded as a masterpiece of survival.

Zagłada Żydów w serbskim porządku pamięci

Author(s): Magdalena Bogusławska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2016

Dramatyczny proces rozpadu Jugosławii, przypieczętowany wybuchem wojny na początku lat dziewięćdziesiątych XX w., zmusił do dokonania weryfikacji i przewartościowań dotychczasowej oficjalnej wizji historii, narzucanej i kontrolowanej przez niemal półwiecze przez komunistyczne władze federacji zamieszkanej przez narody i grupy etniczne o odmiennych tradycjach kulturowych i różnych doświadczeniach dziejowych. Próby ich uzgodnienia, stanowiącego warunek konieczny koegzystencji podmiotów tworzących socjalistyczną Jugosławię, w dłuższej perspektywie czasowej okazały się porażką. Krytyce i rewizji, polegającej zasadniczo na nacjonalizacji dyskursu, został poddany przede wszystkim okres drugiej wojny światowej, której przebieg, a zwłaszcza rozstrzyg nięcie zadecydowało o losach narodów południowosłowiańskich w drugiej połowie XX stulecia.

Kinga Piotrowiak-Junkiert, Świadomość zwrócona przeciwko sobie samej. Imre Kertész wobec Zagłady

Author(s): Marta Tomczok / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2016

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.

Wystawa główna Muzeum Polin. Odpowiedź

Author(s): Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2016

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.

Potrząsnąć społeczeństwem. O znaczeniu dla Litwy książki Rūty Vanagaitė Mūsiškiai (Nasi)

Author(s): Agnieszka Stawiarska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 12/2016

Od innych prac badawczych o Zagładzie Mūsiškiai różni się przede wszystkim tym, że to bestseller. Brawurowo napisana „książka o śmierci”, wydana w styczniu tego roku, znikła z księgarń w ciągu półtora dnia. Wydawnictwo zrobiło cztery dodruki, tylko do marca sprzedano 19 tys. egzemplarzy. Zainteresowani spotkaniem z autorką na wileńskich Targach Książki nie zmieścili się w największej sali. Rozmowę poprowadził popularny dziennikarz Andrius Tapinas. Swoje opinie o Mūsiškiai wyrazili niemal wszyscy główni litewscy publicyści, wielu humanistów, dziennikarzy i blogerów.

Opscenost razumijevanja: večer sa Claudeom Lanzmannom

Author(s): Claude Lanzmann,Cathy Caruth,Shoshana Felman / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 01+02/2000

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.

ROMANIAN FASCISM DURING WORLD WAR II. THE NATIONAL-LEGIONARY GOVERNMENT (SEPTEMBER 1940 – JANUARY 1941)

Author(s): Ilarion Ţiu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2016

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.

„I will survive” – reprezentacja Holocaustu w sztuce współczesnej

Author(s): Magdalena Maciudzińska-Kamczycka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 17-18/2011

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.

Metaphorizing the Holocaust: The Ethics of Comparison

Author(s): Mark Webber / Language(s): English Issue: 15-16/2011

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.

The challenges of Holocaust instruction and remembrance - Particular and universal aspects in formal and informal interdisciplinary curricula in Israel and abroad

Author(s): Nitza Davidovich,Dan Soen,Anat Hezkelovich / Language(s): English Issue: 15-16/2011

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.

Ženi Lebl i počeci istraživanja jevrejske umetnosti u Srbiji

Author(s): Milica Rožman / Language(s): Serbian Issue: 5/2017

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.