Jazz Fiction and the Holocaust: Reading History for Clues in the Novels of John A. Williams and Esi Edugyan

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 206-224
Author(s):  
Sarah Phillips Casteel
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
Memory Culture ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Nazi Persecution ◽  
Reading History

Abstract This article draws attention to a body of fiction that expands our understanding of the Holocaust by imaginatively reconstructing the neglected experiences of Black victims of Nazi persecution. Two key examples are John A. Williams’ Clifford’s Blues (1999) and Esi Edugyan’s Half-Blood Blues (2011), both of which recall the Black jazz musicians in wartime Europe caught up in the Nazis’ genocidal campaign. Seeking to integrate their stories into the collective memory of World War II, Williams and Edugyan combine Holocaust fiction’s documentary effect with characteristic thematic and formal strategies of jazz fiction. Williams adopts the solitary voice of the troubled bluesman, while Edugyan embraces jazz’s polyvocality. Notwithstanding the risks of Holocaust analogies that Clifford’s Blues in particular exposes, both novels illustrate the capacity of jazz fiction to produce revisionary historical narratives and intervene in memory culture.

scholarly journals Remembering Sugihara, Re-framing Japan in Europe: Holocaust Era Altruism and the Politics of Cultural Memory

2006 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 13-26
Author(s):  
Jane Marie Law
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
World War ◽  
Cornell University ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
Jewish Diaspora ◽  
The Holocaust

Cornell University This paper is a comparison of two museums dedicated to the Japanese diplomat to Lithuania during World War II, Sugihara Chiune. Credited with having written over 6,000 visas to save the lives of Jews fleeing German occupied Poland into Lithuania, Sugihara is regarded in Europe, in Japan, and within the Jewish community as a whole as an altruistic person. This study is not an inquiry into the merits of Sugihara’s action, but rather astudy of how the process of memorializing, narrativizing and celebrating the life of Sugihara in two vastly different museums is part of a larger project of selective cultural memory on the part of various Japanese organizations and institutions. This paper situates the themes of altruism and heroism in the larger process of cultural memory, to see how such themes operate to advance other projects of collective memory. The case of Sugihara is fascinating precisely because the vastly differing processes of cultural memory of the Holocaust―in Lithuania, in Japan, and in a wider post-World War II, post Holocaust Jewish Diaspora each have different ways of constructing, disseminating and consuming narratives of altruism. This paper is based on fieldwork in Kaunas and Vilnius, Lithuania, in 2003, 2004 and again in 2005 and in Japan in 2005.

Popular Understandings of the Past

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kees Ribbens
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Graphic Novels ◽  
First Century ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
Comic Strips ◽  
Young Readers ◽  
Sensitive Topics ◽  
The Holocaust

This chapter presents an overview of the development of historical narratives combining visual and textual elements in comic strips and graphic novels. History comics developed strongly during the 1940s and 1950s and became popular, in particular among young readers in Western Europe and North America. Having gained increased cultural respectability, comics more recently also obtained an adult audience. Two internationally renowned educational comics from the Anne Frank House, published in the first decade of the twenty-first century, illustrate how comics are nowadays capable of representing sensitive topics from recent history, in particular World War II and the Holocaust. Yet, combining fact and fiction requires a balanced way of (re)presenting, involving discussions among historians and others on what may be possible and desirable in this specific war of making history public.

Resistance

Ordinary Jews ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evgeny Finkel
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
Survival Strategy ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Standing Up ◽  
Jewish Resistance ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nazi Persecution ◽  
Resistance Organizations

This chapter examines resistance as a Jewish survival strategy during the Holocaust. Jewish resistance has historically been of interest to Holocaust scholars, mainly due to the desire to counter accusations that Jews were passive, complacent, and went “like lambs to the slaughter.” Holocaust historians, especially those based in Israel, have explored the Jews' resistance to Nazi persecution. They argue that armed resistance was infrequent, but equating resistance with violence is unnecessarily restrictive, and that the Jews had almost unanimously engaged in amidah (“standing up against” in Hebrew), or unarmed resistance. The chapter looks at Jewish resistance organizations in the ghettos of Minsk, Kraków, and Białystok and suggests that people with a history of pre–World War II political activism were significantly overrepresented in the resistance. It explains why some resistance groups failed early on, while others managed to put up a sustained fight.

scholarly journals PROCESSES OF COLLECTIVE MEMORY IN CULTURALLY HETEROGENEOUS CITIES ON THE EXAMPLES OF BIAŁYSTOK AND LUBLIN / KOLEKTYVINĖS ATMINTIES PROCESAI KULTŪRIŠKAI HETEROGENIŠKUOSE MIESTUOSE: BALSTOGĖS IR LIUBLINO ATVEJAI

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-25
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Sztop-Rutkowska ◽  
Maciej Białous
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
World War ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Post War ◽  
The City

The article presents the results of empirical research concerning the collective memory in Białystok and Lublin – two largest cities in the Eastern Poland. Before World War II they were multi-ethnic cities with big and important communities of Poles, Jews, Germans, Ukrainians and Belarusians. Their contemporary ethnic structure was formed as a result of World War II, in particular the Holocaust, post-war border shifts and intense migration from the countryside to the city in the next decades. Both Białystok and Lublin are an example of the typical cities in Central and Eastern Europe, which after World War II the memory politics was built on in the completely new political and social circumstances. We aim to confront the contemporary official memory of the cities, transmitted by major public institutions and the vernacular memories of their present inhabitants. Straipsnyje pristatomi Balstogės ir Liublino – dviejų didžiausių Rytų Lenkijos miestų kolektyvinės atminties empirinio tyrimo rezultatai. Prieš Antrąjį pasaulinį karą tai buvo daugiaetniniai miestai, turintys dideles ir svarbias lenkų, žydų, vokiečių, ukrainiečių ir baltarusių bendruomenes. Šių miestų šiuolaikinė struktūra susiformavo kaip Antrojo pasaulinio karo, ypač holokausto, sienų persislinkimų pokario metu ir vėlesniais dešimtmečiais vykusios intensyvios migracijos iš kaimo į miestus, rezultatas. Tiek Balstogė, tiek Liublinas yra tipiški Vidurio ir Rytų Europos miestų pavyzdžiai, kurių atminties politika po Antrojo pasaulinio karo buvo kuriama visiškai naujomis politinėmis ir socialinėmis aplinkybėmis. Straipsnyje siekiama palyginti šiuolaikinę oficialią šių miestų atmintį, kurios reguliavimas perduotas pagrindinėms viešosioms institucijoms, ir dabartinių miestų gyventojų vietines atmintis.

scholarly journals Urynkowione znaki pamięci

Politeja ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (2(65)) ◽  
pp. 205-217
Author(s):  
Sławomir Doległo
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
World War ◽  
Communicative Practices ◽  
The Past ◽  
Visual Identification ◽  
Memory Culture ◽  
Historical Culture ◽  
Resistance Movement

Commodified Memory Emblems. Historical Culture in the (Post)Consumptional Culture Postmodernist consumption, developed by the order of self-realisation, increasingly shapes current historical awareness. Consequently, contemporary collective memory is composed not of dates and historical facts but of visual identification, slogans and varied communicative practices, so the components of popular brands which stimulate people’s consumable attitudes. The symbols of the Polish Resistance Movement during World War II as well as national colours and emblem move from historical and commemorative sphere to the sphere of pop culture. They commonly appear on T-shirts, tattoos, murals, social media profiles and political banners and are used to clarify the present day through the prism of the past, to articulate people’s ideas, concerns and affinities. The ‘language’ of memory boom surprisingly corresponds to the rhetoric of present global cultural industry, which is the ‘natural environment’ of communication for Millennials and Post-Millennials. The article is an attempt to summarise the most influential academic perspectives of current memory culture, dominated by media and consumable practices.

Managing the difficult past: Ukrainian collective memory and public debates on history

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (5) ◽  
pp. 780-797 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Wylegała
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
The Status ◽  
Limited Degree ◽  
The Common ◽  
Russian Identity

This article analyzes the status of difficult historic events in Ukrainian collective memory. Difficult elements of collective memory are defined as those which divide society on basic matters, such as identity and national cohesion, and events which are being actively forgotten because of the role of Ukrainians as perpetrators. Three such issues were analyzed: World War II and the role of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the Holocaust, and the ethnic purge of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia in 1943–1945. Utilizing data from quantitative and qualitative studies, the author showcases the significance of these issues for contemporary Ukrainian identity and Ukraine's relations with its neighbors. In particular, the evaluation of World War II and the role of the UPA in Ukrainian history polarizes Ukrainian society to a great degree. At the same time, this element of national history is used to construct a common, anti-Russian identity. The difficulty of relating to the memory of the Holocaust and the ethnic purge in Volhynia is of a different character. These events are problematic for Ukrainian collective memory because they demand a painful settling of accounts with the past. At present, only Ukrainian elites are willing to work on these subjects, and only to a limited degree, while the common consciousness either denies or ignores them altogether.

The Suffering of the Perpetrators: The Ethics of Traumatic German Historicity in Karen Bass's Young Adult World War II Novels

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-77
Author(s):  
Doris Wolf
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Childhood Studies ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
World War ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adult World ◽  
The Public Sphere

This paper examines two young adult novels, Run Like Jäger (2008) and Summer of Fire (2009), by Canadian writer Karen Bass, which centre on the experiences of so-called ordinary German teenagers in World War II. Although guilt and perpetration are themes addressed in these books, their focus is primarily on the ways in which Germans suffered at the hands of the Allied forces. These books thus participate in the increasingly widespread but still controversial subject of the suffering of the perpetrators. Bringing work in childhood studies to bear on contemporary representations of German wartime suffering in the public sphere, I explore how Bass's novels, through the liminal figure of the adolescent, participate in a culture of self-victimisation that downplays guilt rather than more ethically contextualises suffering within guilt. These historical narratives are framed by contemporary narratives which centre on troubled teen protagonists who need the stories of the past for their own individualisation in the present. In their evacuation of crucial historical contexts, both Run Like Jäger and Summer of Fire support optimistic and gendered narratives of individualism that ultimately refuse complicated understandings of adolescent agency in the past or present.

Painted Memories

2007 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 26-29
Author(s):  
mayer kirshenblatt ◽  
barbara kirshenblatt-gimblett
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War ◽  
Daily Diet ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Yom Kippur ◽  
Root Vegetables

Mayer Kirshenblatt remembers in words and paintings the daily diet of Jews in Poland before the Holocaust. Born in 1916 in Opatóów (Apt in Yiddish), a small Polish city, this self-taught artist describes and paints how women bought chickens from the peasants and brought them to the shoykhet (ritual slaughterer), where they plucked the feathers; the custom of shlogn kapores (transferring one's sins to a chicken) before Yom Kippur; and the role of herring and root vegetables in the diet, especially during the winter. Mayer describes how his family planted and harvested potatoes on leased land, stored them in a root cellar, and the variety of dishes prepared from this important staple, as well as how to make a kratsborsht or scratch borsht from the milt (semen sack) of a herring. In the course of a forty-year conversation with his daughter, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, who also interviewed Mayer's mother, a picture emerges of the daily, weekly, seasonal, and holiday cuisine of Jews who lived in southeastern Poland before World War II.

“The heart above the ruins”: Miriam Waddington’s Poetry, the Spanish Civil War, and Jewish Canadian Literature

1969 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Robins Sharpe
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
World War ◽  
Canadian Literature ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Subject ◽  
War Consequences

The Jewish Canadian writer Miriam Waddington returned repeatedly to the subject of the Spanish Civil War, searching for hope amid the ruins of Spanish democracy. The conflict, a prelude to World War II, inspired an outpouring of literature and volunteerism. My paper argues for Waddington’s unique poetic perspective, in which she represents the Holocaust as the Spanish Civil War’s outgrowth while highlighting the deeply personal repercussions of the war – consequences for women, for the earth, and for community. Waddington’s poetry connects women’s rights to human rights, Canadian peace to European war, and Jewish persecution to Spanish carnage.

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