Povestea copiilor spărgători. Fotografii din dosarele Securităţii: cazul Templului Coral (20 septembrie 1963)

Author(s): Anca Tudorancea (Ciuciu) / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1/2011

The fact that the devastation from 1963 of the Choral Temple – the most important Jewish temple in Bucharest – took place before the celebration in the temple of Rosh Hashanah, Jewish New Year 5723, an event which all the community must participate in, makes us think that this was a message of intimidation intended not only for Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen, who became too vocal in his last visits in America and Israel, but also for Romanian Jewish community whose members were thinking to emigrate into the Free World. Images of the investigation from 1963 are very close to the images of the devastation during the Legionary pogrom on January 21-23, 1941 (including the desecration of the Holly Scrolls, prayer books and destruction of the religious symbols), an event still very present in the memory of the parishioners, as the surveillance documents states. For many it was a strong signal to emigrate from a place where religious Jews were no longer desirable. The phenomenon of children robbers, a generalized official explanation about the cases of vandalism of synagogues, indicates the lack of consequences and of interest to investigate them.

Historical Context and the Information Age: the Diaspora of Holocaust Archives

Author(s): Raymund Schütz / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2010

Antisemitismul românesc la sfârşitul secolului al XIX-lea – scurtă privire critică

Author(s): Liviu Neagoe / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 18/2015

This paper analyses the evolution and the features of Romanian anti-Semitism from the point of political and institutional modernization of a country who aspires to an European role. The political and institutional modernization of Romania can not avoid the captious problem of the „Jewish issue” as it was recorded in the constitutional debates and public discourse of the second half of the 19th century. International recognition of Romanian independence, stipulated during the Congress of Berlin from 1878, was conditioned by the political emancipation of the Jewish population. The huge international pressure was perceived by the intellectual and political Romanian elites as an intrusion into the internal affairs of a sovereign state. The revision of the article 7 of the Constitution from 1866 related to naturalization has generated a strong dispute. Finally, a politically solution was found: Jews could gain political emancipation only on individual basis. But until the end of the 19th century only a small part of the Jewish population achieved to obtain Romanian citizenship. The Romanian model of citizenship as it was implemented during the nineteenth century was influenced by the romantic ethno-cultural conception about nation. The juridical Romanian tradition has consecrated the jus sanguinis principle, of the “community of descendants”, in granting the citizenship instead of the humanistic and generous principle of jus soli. This particularity in defining of citizenship was decisive in understanding the intricate relationship between Romanians and Jews and the Anti-Semitic factor of the Romanian internal policy. The „Jewish issue” was finally a question of political choice. It was the choice of Romanian political and intellectual elites to „solve” the „Jewish issue” in the Antisemitism formula and to integrate the Jews according to the principle jus sanguinis of „community od descendants”. The bureaucratic Antisemitism from the late Nineteenth century was clearly different but inspirational for the radical Antisemitism from the interwar period. There is a fact that the Anti-Semitic discourse from the second half of the 19th century was not the main discourse of the political and intellectual Romanian elites. But is also a fact that the modern Romanian history can not be properly understood outside of the delicate „Jewish issue”.

Mihail Sebastian și „cestiunea evreiască”

Author(s): Bogdan Constantin Diţă / Language(s): Issue: 1-2/2015

The interwar period in Romania was a rich period for the Romanian culture. Many of the most important writers and thinkers of Romania such as: Mircea Eliade, Emil Cioran, Eugen Ionescu, Constantin Noica, Mihail Sebastian, Mircea Vulcanescu made their debut in this period. It was a time of ideas, of changes, but also a time markedby fanatic nationalism. Even if the country was changing in a good way, there were many issues that needed a solution. One of the most important problems, alongside the worsening situation of the agriculture after the reform, was the fact that the young peoplewho finished their academic studies weren't able to find employment. This issue, especially, increased the simphaty of people for the extrem right-wing parties and pro-fascist parties such as The Iron Guard. These parties were very popular because their ideology was based on defending the national traditions, the national culture, the religion, which were threatened by the foreigners, especially by Jews, who were blamed for all the country's problems. In this period before the World War II, many young people, mostly intellectuals, joined the Iron Guard Party. All the governing parties of the interwar period had a tendency towards antisemitic lawmaking, limiting the civil rights of the jewish population: the jews weren't allowed to marry romanians, jews didn't have political rights until 1923, some newspapers were prohibited, some plays written or directed by jews were interdicted. In the 40's, with a few years before WWII, in Romania began a process of jew extermination. Many jews where killed in the streets, in public places. We can see all these things through the eyes of a jew, in this case, through the eyes of the writer Mihail Sebastian. In his journal, Mihail Sebastian offers us lots of information and details about what happened then.

The biopolitics of violence: Instances of Anti-Semitism in interwar Romania

Author(s): Mihai Adrian Panu / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2015

The primacy of totalitarian ideologies in interwar Europe represents even nowadays a major historiographical challenge due to its multicausal character and various forms of appearance. This paper attempts to analyze the anti-Semitic phenomenon in interwar Romania primarily by taking into account its determinant factors. We assume that the emergence of radical ideologies in Central and Eastern Europe can optimally be understood if both regional and systemic causes are properly highlighted. The regional causes include local societal predispositions, ethno-cultural cleavages and specific political movements. On the other hand the systemic causes imply predominantly geopolitical factors and the repartition of power in the international system. Moreover we assume that the emergence and manifestations of extremism can be considered a direct result of political disputes between ethno-cultural groups which were systematically exposed to ideological and propaganda pressure.

„Pamiątka, Zabawka, Talizman” czyli Żydzi fantomowi

Author(s): Wojciech Wilczyk / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3-4/2015

The exhibition Souvenir, Talisman, Toy, prepared by Erica Lehrer and shown in Cracow’s Ethnographic Museum in Summer 2013, deals with the phenomena of Jew figures production and currently extremely popular the "Jew with a coin" image. The phenomenon bears full characteristics of folk art. However, it is Holocaust that took place in Poland during the German occupation that should be its valid reference. This historical context that results in, for example, stereotypical way of portraying the exterminated neighbours (this way is often perceived as intentionally anti-Semitic), is not fully analysed or worked through at the exhibition. The rich ethnographic material shown in Cracow is calling for a comment that would include scientific descriptions of Polish-Jewish relations that are being formulated at, for example, the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research. The phenomena of the evoked images production, which became more intense in the last twenty or thirty years, has all the qualities of "phantom memory" or post-memory, which character, as well origins, should be thoroughly analysed.

„Pamiątka, Zabawka, Talizman / Souvenir, Talisman, Toy” (wystawa w Muzeum Etnograficznym w Krakowie, 2013 rok, kuratorka: Erica Lehrer)

Author(s): Alina Cała / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3-4/2015

The article is a review of the exhibition Pamiątka, Zabawka, Talizman / Souvenir, Toy, Talisman, which opened at the Seweryn Udziela Ethnographic Museum in Cracow on 30 June 2013, during the Jewish Culture Festival. The exhibition was curated by Erica Lehrer.

Wieża Babel. Świadectwa Holokaustu a etyka przekładu

Author(s): Dorota Głowacka / Language(s): Polish Issue: 29/2014

This article considers Holocaust testimonies and the question of translation, understood here as both exchanges between languages within a text and renditions of a text into another language. According to Imre Kertész, Holocaust has no language that could express its meaning, and no national language has been able to coin words and expressions capable of conveying its catastrophic dimension. Since Holocaust survivors must express themselves in one of the national languages, Holocaust testimony is always a form of translation, even in the case of writers who wrote their memoirs in their native tongues (such as Kertész, Primo Levi, Jean Améry, Paul Celan, Ida Fink, and Hanna Krall, whose work is discussed here). The choice of language in which survivors’ memoirs (as well as other literary forms) were written had a profound impact on their authors’ sense of self-identity, their ability to heal, and the way they remembered the past. The largest number of memoirs appeared in English, the survivors’ second tongue, whose neutrality enabled them to overcome associations with the language in which they experienced traumatic events. Others, such as Elie Wiesel and Isabella Leitner, translated their initial accounts written in their native tongues (Yiddish and Hungarian, respectively) into smoothed-out versions in the languages of their adopted country (France and the United States).

A document of Securitate about the Iaşi (Jassy) Anti-Jews Pogrom (26-29 June 1941)

Author(s): Corvin Lupu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2016

The author brings in attention a declaration given after the Second World War by Traian Borcescu, one of the most important heads of the Romanian Secret Service (S.S.I.) about the circumstances of the murder of thousands of Jews in Iași, on 26-29-th of June 1941. Traian Borcescu is an important memorialist in this case because he was one of those chiefs of the Secret Service who knew and encouraged the complot against the Chief of State, Ion Antonescu. So he is not one of those memorialists who tried to exculpate marshal Antonescu. The document shows a memorialist who tried to tell the truth, after many years after the Second World War, after many years of detension, in a perioad of his life in which he had nothing to win or to lose telling the truth. Explaining the whole context of the event, Traian Borcescu brings important arguments that the murder of the Jews in Iași was planned by the German SS officers and brings their ”arguments” to do these crimes.

Jedan neuspio pokušaj antisemitske propagande – na primjeru lista Svoj svome

Author(s): Eli Tauber / Language(s): Bosnian Issue: 1-2/2015

Antisemitizam u predratnoj Jugoslaviji ni izdaleka nije poprimio razmjere kao u nekim drugim zemljama Evrope. Kod nas je antisemitizam tvorevina novijeg doba. Naime, pojavom fašizma, a naročito od dolaska Hitlera na vlast, dolazi do pojave antisemitizma u Kraljevini Jugoslaviji, kao popratne pojave nastojanja hitlerizma, odnosno fašizma, da zavlada svijetom i da mu nametne svoju ideologiju, baziranu na rasističkim osnovama, a lišenu svih ljudskih atributa. Poznato je, naime, da je jedna od komponenata njemačkog nacizma bila i borba protiv Jevreja. Fašizam je usvojio antisemitizam kao sredstvo vladajućih klasa, vjekovima isprobano da se pažnja širokih narodnih masa odvrati od stvarnih teškoća do kojih je dolazilo krivicom samog društvenog sistema.

Identity, Collective Memory and Antisemitism

Author(s): Peter Dan / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2018

There is an ongoing right-wing populist revolution in Western democratic societies. Revolution is by definition a period of upheaval. The premise of this paper is that the right-wing populist regimes try to find a level of stability by doubling down on the antiestablishment resentment, authoritarianism and nativism which characterize them. This is achieved through the manipulation of collective identity and collective memory. The present paper analyses the manner in which populist politics are validated, maintained and reinforced by modifying collective memory. For the purpose of this paper, collective memory will be considered as a group identity narrative, a consensual convention which allows for the integration of recalled events in a manner consistent with it and the rejection of events not consistent with it. The increased emphasis on nationalism affects both collective identity and collective memory, leading to the repositioning of the Overton window and causing the re-emergence of previously unacceptable antisemitic attitudes. The present revival of antisemitism is seen as the necessary consequence of the changes caused by the shift toward right-wing populism and authoritarianism.

Los diplomáticos españoles ante el Holocausto

Author(s): Małgorzata Nalewajko / Language(s): Spanish Issue: 1/2021

The article aims at presenting both the activities of Spanish diplomats on behalf of Jews, especially Sephardic, in some countries occupied by Germans during the Second World War, and the recent debate on the merits of these activities. The question is if the Spanish diplomats serving in France, Greece, Rumania, Bulgaria and Hungary helped Jews following Spanish official policy, as some recent publications seem to suggest, or on their own initiative and their own risk. Among other examples, the case of the Duke of Parcent, Spanish representative in Warsaw, who had limited possibilities to act but testified to the extermination, is examined. His diplomatic reports and personal accounts as well as actual studies on diplomats’ commitment are used as sources. The analysis of the texts reveals that an attempt at burnishing the image of Franco’s policy towards Jews has been made and it shows that the controversy between those who consider Franco a “savior of hundreds of thousands of Jews” and those who accuse him of “complicity in the Holocaust” has not been resolved.

Student years of the Spanish photographer Nicolas Muller (Miklós Müller) at the University of Szeged

Author(s): Natasa Fizel / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2023

During my research, I compared Miklós Müller’s recollection called „Életem” (My Life), and the artist’s memories from life interviews with the historical and legal background, contemporary primary sources, articles, statistics, official reports of the university, examining the events of the 1930s from an objective and subjective point of view. Miklós Müller (1913-2000), who later became one of the most well-known socio-photographers of the 20th century in Spain (as Nicolas Muller), had been a law student at the University of Szeged between 1931 and 1936. During this period, the Szegedi Fiatalok Művészeti Kollégiuma (Szeged Youth College of Art), which was an artistic and scientific group, was also operating in Szeged, and it was composed of Jewish, Catholic, and Reformed students. It was an example of successful co-existence and common creation. The group also dealt with regional research, this was when Müller became a real socio-photographer. In 1938, after the Anschluss, he left the country and first lived in Paris, then moved to Tanger via Lisbon. He received several state assignments to make Spanish albums, his photos have been exhibited in many major cities around the world. In his hometown, a museum was named after him.

"Itt nagyon szépen fogadtak, (...) nagy volt az összetartás"

Author(s): Ildikó Bajcsi / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 4/2023

The study is part of a larger research project, the main aim of which is to examine, using the oral history method, identity changes, multiple attachments, and deeper aspects of integration strategies of Jews who migrated from South Slovakia to Israel. The paper develops the life story of Yehudit Cohen (née Judit Grünfeld) on the basis of a biographical interview conducted in Israel. Judit's family is one of those Jews from Dunaszerdahely (Dunajská Streda) who were born in Czechoslovakia, but in the 1960s they too immigrated to Israel, i.e. made Aliyah. During the life history interview, the interviewee tells of her parents' destiny events leading up to the period of the Holocaust. Both of them were deported, but they were among the few Jews who returned to Dunaszerdahely. Anti-Semitism continued to be present in Czechoslovakia during the party-state years, so the family moved to Israel (made aliyah) in 1963 in the hope of a better future. The paper describes the difficulties of the initial years in Israel, the most problematic of which was learning Hebrew. It also shows how relatives and acquaintances coming from Czechoslovakia, especially from Dunaszerdahely, helped each other a great deal after the Aliyah. The study also highlights Judit's multiple identities, mainly through her multiple language skills and her preparation of Central European dishes, within which her Israeli identity dominates.

Az elkobzott, örökös nélkül maradt vagy vissza nem követelt észak-erdélyi zsidó vagyonokra vonatkozó második világháború utáni jogszabályok sajtóbeli reprezentációja

Author(s): Enikő Orsolya Nagyi / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 4/2023

During the Second World War, the Jews from Northern Transylvania also became victims of the Hungarian anti-Jewish laws. Under the laws in force since 1938, the Hungarian state deprived the Jewish population of all movable and immovable property, and during the ghettoization process, their remaining personal belongings and jewellery were confiscated as well, which resulted the complete economic plundering of the Jews within just a few years. In this research, we examined the legislation adopted by the Romanian and Hungarian states immediately after the war regarding Jewish property from Northern Transylvania. We analysed press publications from that period in order to explore the extent to which Hungarian language newspapers of Northern Transylvania informed their readers about the issue and what they actually reported.

SYMBOLE PAMIĘCI I PRAWA PAMIĘCI W IZRAELU

Author(s): Aleksandra Gliszczyńska-Grabias / Language(s): Polish Issue: 3/2023

The governance over collective memory and narratives about the past is an element of the mem-ory policy of the majority of states in the world. This policy is carried out by means of variousinstruments, including those belonging to the catalogue of legal measures and often manifestingthemselves in the form of mnemonic constitutionalism. In the case of Israel, the memory policyhas a special character, however. It is focused on the crime of the Holocaust, established not onlyas a universal symbol of ultimate evil and genocide, but also as a cornerstone of the emergence ofthe Israeli statehood. The reference to the Holocaust in Israel is also a determinant of the attitudeof the state – and the law – to Palestinian collective historical memory and attempts to regulateit. In the view of the lasting conflict, it also seems necessary to consider this aspect of mnemonicpolicy. The aim of the scholarly reflection in the present article is to analyse the measures, andin particular the legal measures, by which Israel has built and continues to shape its identity, aswell as the most controversial methods of creating this identity, including legal ones. This articleattempts to present the role of the Holocaust in the Israeli mnemonic policy and constitutional-ism, with particular focus placed on the context of the permanent crisis in the Palestinian-Israelirelations, or more broadly, Arab-Israeli relations. The analysis carried out leads to the conclusionthat, although Israel’s motives in pursuing a particular policy of remembrance remain largelyunderstandable and legitimate, their implementation sometimes causes not only violations ofcertain standards of human rights protection, but are also used to the detriment of an alreadyfragile, if not currently broken, peace process.

Wizualna historia getta warszawskiego – montaże

Author(s): Anna Duńczyk-Szulc,Agnieszka Kajczyk,Katarzyna Bojarska / Language(s): Polish Issue: 36/2023

Interview with the editors of the volume Anthology of Gazes. Warsaw Ghetto - photographs and films, Jewish Historical Institute E. Ringelblum, Muzeum Warszawy Warszawa 2023 on visual sources from the Warsaw Ghetto, work on the selection of photographs and frames, and ways of looking at the ghetto.

Antysemityzm na Uniwersytecie Stefana Batorego w Wilnie

Author(s): Maciej Michalski / Language(s): Polish Issue: 4/2023

The text relates to Natalia Judzinska's book On the Left Side of the Hall. The bench ghetto in inter-interwar Vilnius1, based on her doctoral thesis entitled. “The process of institutionalizing thenalization process of the “bench ghetto” at the Stefan Batory University in Vilnius in the two-interwar period,” defended in 2022, and written under the guidance of prof.Prof. Anna Engelking and Dr. (now Ph.D.) Elżbieta Janicka at the Institute of Slavic Studies of thePolish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw2. The author is known for her articles on anti-Semitism at theStefan Batory University in Vilnius3, popular science venturespromoting knowledge of Polish-Jewish relations in the inter-and from her activism in the collective Researchers and Researchers on the Border4. The book was published byKrytyka Polityczna Publishing House in the historical series, which previously published such authors as.by such authors as Andrzej Friszke, Krzysztof Król and Piotr M. Majewski.

“I Don’t Know if They Really Hated Us or if It Was for Fun”: Memories of Anti-Jewish Violence Perpetrated by Students of the Catholic University of Lublin in Oral Histories from the Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre Centre

Author(s): Magdalena Dziaczkowska / Language(s): English Issue: 53/2024

This article explores the narratives describing the interactions between students of the Catholic University of Lublin and the local Jewish population. It analyzes oral histories from the “Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre” archive using the theoretical framework of intergroup contact theory, intersectionality, and the concept of contact zone. The study presents the accounts thematically, according to the circumstances of the violent behavior, and notes its gendered nature— it was perpetrated mostly by Catholic men. Moreover, it seeks an explanation for these situations and, finally, points to the theory of memory of meanings as a helpful interpretative tool.

The German concept of “self-cleansing actions” (Selbstreinigungsaktionen) – formulation, implementation, oblivion, and suppression

Author(s): Hubert Kuberski / Language(s): English Issue: Sp./2023

Over a quarter of a century has passed since film documentary director Agnieszka Arnold discovered previously unknown information on the “self-cleansing action” in Jedwabne. The brief period of interest taken in this subject by the media and historians did not bring a thorough explanation of the “Jedwabne complex”. We still know little of how the Germans and Austrians forming part of Einsatzgruppen instigated and implemented, or instead inspired, genocidal Selbstrenigungsaktionen taking place in the rear area of all German army groups (Heeresgruppen). The Romanians adopted a slightly different strategy, although it, too, resulted in the extermination of the Jewish population in the territories recovered after their seizure by the Soviets in 1940. In popular understanding of the issue, the so-called pogroms (although this is not a correct term) occurred only in Podlasie/Podlachia/Podlachien region, Kovno/Kauen/Kaunas, and Lvov/Lemberg/Lviv. In reality, their scope spanned the entirety of the “Bloodlands”, from the General Government to the Caucasus. It is important to note that the term Selbstrenigungsaktionen is practically absent from scholarly discourse (suffice it to type it in an Internet search engine). It is worrying that this genocidal episode of the Shoah goes nearly unstudied – of course, as part of international research initiatives free from accusations of biased exploration.