scholarly journals This-worldly and other-worldly: a holocaust pilgrimage

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 122-162
Author(s):  
Tina Hamrin-Dahl

This story is about a kind of pilgrimage, which is connected to the course of events which occurred in Częstochowa on 22 September 1942. In the morning, the German Captain Degenhardt lined up around 8,000 Jews and commanded them to step either to the left or to the right. This efficient judge from the police force in Leipzig was rapid in his decisions and he thus settled the destinies of thousands of people. After the Polish Defensive War of 1939, the town (renamed Tschenstochau) had been occupied by Nazi Germany, and incorporated into the General Government. The Nazis marched into Częstochowa on Sunday, 3 September 1939, two days after they invaded Poland. The next day, which became known as Bloody Monday, approximately 150 Jews were shot deadby the Germans. On 9 April 1941, a ghetto for Jews was created. During World War II about 45,000 of the Częstochowa Jews were killed by the Germans; almost the entire Jewish community living there.The late Swedish Professor of Oncology, Jerzy Einhorn (1925–2000), lived in the borderhouse Aleja 14, and heard of the terrible horrors; a ghastliness that was elucidated and concretized by all the stories told around him. Jerzy Einhorn survived the ghetto, but was detained at the Hasag-Palcery concentration camp between June 1943 and January 1945. In June 2009, his son Stefan made a bus tour between former camps, together with Jewish men and women, who were on this pilgrimage for a variety of reasons. The trip took place on 22–28 June 2009 and was named ‘A journey in the tracks of the Holocaust’. Those on the Holocaust tour represented different ‘pilgrim-modes’. The focus in this article is on two distinct differences when it comes to creed, or conceptions of the world: ‘this-worldliness’ and ‘other- worldliness’. And for the pilgrims maybe such distinctions are over-schematic, though, since ‘sacral fulfilment’ can be seen ‘at work in all modern constructions of travel, including anthropology and tourism’.

Author(s):  
S. S. Khodyachikh

The article analyzes the circumstances and conditions that led to the successful escape from the Auschwitz concentration camp of a group of Polish prisoners of war under the leadership of Leonard Zawacki, prisoner 13390. The escape was carried out on September 28, 1944 by a group of six prisoners of war, two of whom changed into SS uniforms and “escorted” four glaziers to work outside the camp. Zawacki’s memoirs, published in Poland in the form of a short-run pamphlet, as well as many hours of interviews in which he talked about his traumatic experience, life in imprisonment, partisan unit, and the very escape, are introduced into scientific circulation. Zawacki’s memoirs are a valuable source not only about the history of the World War II and the Holocaust, but also the deep experiences of a man who went through the hell of Auschwitz and survived against all odds.


Nasledje ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 177-190
Author(s):  
Davor Stipić

In their wish to preserve the memory to the compatriots who lost their lives in the Holocaust, the Jewish community in Yugoslavia started erecting monuments to Jewish civil victims and fallen soldiers as early as the first few post-WWII years. The Monument to the Fallen Jewish Soldiers and Victims of Fascism put up in the Sephardi cemetery in Belgrade in 1952, potent with artistic and political significance, stood out from the rest of the monuments of the period. It was dedicated to all the Jews from the Socialist Republic of Serbia who lost their lives in the World War II. The purpose of this article is to analyse the competition for the design of the monument by examining the documents from the Archives of the Jewish Historical Museum in Belgrade, thus making a contribution to the research of the culture of Holocaust remembrance in the Yugoslav Socialism, but also to show artistic, social and ideological aspirations of the time when, after the Cominform schism, Yugoslavia was at political crossroads. By exploring the symbolism and aesthetic values of this work, the research presented in this paper attempts to enhance the understanding of architect Bogdan Bogdanović's early creative efforts.


Author(s):  
David A. Hamburg ◽  
Beatrix A. Hamburg

The growing destructive capacities of humanity make this the prime problem of the twenty-first century. How we cope with this problem will have a profound bearing on the world of our grandchildren. The twentieth century was the bloodiest ever. World War II caused at least 50 million deaths. Six million died in the Holocaust. At Hiroshima, one bomb caused 100,000 deaths. Now thousands of such bombs (smaller and more conveniently transportable tactical bombs) are housed in Russia. Many are poorly guarded, susceptible to theft and bribery. Others may be made elsewhere. Danger increases with the number of such weapons existing in the world.Why? There is a greater chance of error, theft, and bribery—and ultimately their use in war or terrorism. Therefore, we should diminish the numbers as much as we can and secure responsible stewardship for those that remain. Moreover, there are still thousands of nuclear weapons that are far more powerful than the smaller tactical weapons. Biological and chemical weapons are easier to make than nuclear warheads and therefore have special appeal to terrorists. Small arms and light weapons now cover the world wall-to-wall. They include highly lethal machine guns, mortars, automatic rifles, and rocket launchers. Altogether, the destructive capacity of humanity is almost beyond imagination. Moreover, there is an exciting effect of today’s vast weapons on political demagogues, religious fanatics, and ethnic haters—and plenty of them exist in the world. Incitement to hatred and violence can occur with radio, TV, the Internet, and many other media. Thus, we can more powerfully incite violence, utilize more lethal weapons, and do much more damage than ever imaginable before. No group is so small or so far away as to prevent it from doing immense damage anywhere. The time has come to move beyond complacency, fatalism, denial, and avoidance. We must urgently seek to understand and strengthen an array of institutions and organizations that have the capacity to use tools and strategies to prevent deadly conflict. The first author (D.A.H.) considered many such possibilities in his recent book, No More Killing Fields: Preventing Deadly Conflict. Overall, this gives humanity a greater range of possibilities than ever before for building a system for preventing war and genocide. It will not be easy.


Author(s):  
George R. Mastroianni

Chapter 4 focuses on the considerable psychological literature devoted to the question of the role played by psychopathology in the Nazi movement and the Holocaust. Both the Nazi leaders and the German population as a whole were thought by some to exhibit signs of psychopathology. The dominant paradigm in psychology before, during, and shortly after World War II was psychoanalytic, and Freudian analyses were common. The notion that psychopathology played a significant role in either Nazism or the Holocaust has largely been abandoned. The psychological consequences of the horrific experiences to which many Holocaust survivors were subjected led to the identification of a disorder called by some “concentration camp syndrome.” Our modern-day understanding of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) owes a considerable debt to the legacy of Holocaust survivors.


1956 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 472-476 ◽  

The eighth session of the Conference of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was held in Rome from November 4 through 25, 1955 under the chairmanship of the Right Honorable K. J. Holyoake (New Zealand). The Conference had accepted the proposals submitted by the FAO Council on the organization of the eighth session, and consequently established various commissions to deal with agenda items pertaining to program trends and policy questions in food and agriculture, constitutional and legal questions, and administrative and financial questions. During its discussion of the world food and agricultural situation, the Conference noted that world per capita agricultural production, which had decreased by ten to fifteen percent at the end of World War II, had regained its pre-war level in spite of an increase of nearly 25 percent in population. However, agricultural production had increased more rapidly in advanced countries than in economically under-developed ones, so that per capita production in Asia and Latin America was still below pre-war levels, while surpluses had built up in the more advanced countries. The Conference felt that this situation was due to a failure to expand effective demand for farm products as rapidly as technical developments made it possible to expand production. Although the Conference noted that surplus agricultural commodities had increased more slowly in 1954–1955 than in the two preceding years, it felt that this had been due at least as much to poor crops in some countries as to increased consumption or to a planned reduction of output.


2006 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 13-26
Author(s):  
Jane Marie Law

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.


2019 ◽  
pp. 105-134
Author(s):  
John P. Enyeart

At the end of World War II, Louis Adamic joined other antifascists in arguing that although the Axis Powers would be defeated, its fascist ethic would live on. A true democratic victory included committing to racial and ethnic justice at home and abroad, expanding workers’ rights, and establishing the right of nations to self-determination. Adamic attempted to advance his beliefs by working on former vice president Henry Wallace’s 1948 bid for president on the Progressive party ticket, going on lecture tours with Paul Robeson, and battling anticommunists, especially Catholics. Adamic’s ties to Josip Broz Tito and W. E. B. DuBois as well as his broader anticolonialist outlook, which included his view that white supremacy threatened the world, are key features of this chapter.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2/2021 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-57
Author(s):  
Sławomir Pastuszka

The article draws attention to the burial sites and tombstones at the Jewish cemetery in Tarnów from the period after World War II, which until have not been a significant object of interest among historians and epigraphists. They are a very valuable and tangible source of information about the fate of the Jewish community in Tarnów and its vicinity, which was reborn after the Holocaust, and — due to emigration and extinction — gradually disappeared years later.


2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-111
Author(s):  
Radenka Cvetić

Initially the paper recalls that the apartment/condominium ownership is a complex legal construct, which, as a special form of ownership, is the legal institute of modern age. Thereupon, the reasons underlying its legal recognition and widespread use have been indicated, taking into account its deviations from the general ownership regime. Complexity of the apartment/condominium ownership stems from its specific object. Namely, three components of this legal construct: the right on the separate unite of the building (which could be in the the exclusive ownership, co-ownership or in joint ownership), the right on the joint parts of the building (in joint ownership of apartment owners), and the right on the land on which the building is located (in co-ownership of apartment owners), should be normatively shaped and systematically coordinated. Special attention has been paid to the right on the land, from the viewpoint of its peculiarity during the development of a legal system in Serbia after the World War II. The process of conversion, i.e. transformation of the right of use into the right of ownership in Serbia has begun in 2009 by entering into force of the still applicable Planning and Building Act. Evolution of the regulation of the rights of apartment/condominium owners on the land on which the building was erected (including the land which serves for its regular use), from 2009 to 2020, has been examined in detail in the light of its adequacy and capacity to contribute to the (re)establishing of the legal unity of the immovable property, as well as to the prevention of contentious situations.


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