scholarly journals The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust: A Study in the Manufacturing of Historical Myths

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Per A. Rudling
Keyword(s):  
Memory Management ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Security Services ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Massive Scale ◽  
Post War ◽  
Working Out ◽  
Cover Up

During the past decade, particularly under the presidency of the third Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko (2005–2010) there have been repeated attempts to turn the leading fi gures of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its armed wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) into national heroes. As these fascist organizations collaborated with the Nazi Germany, carried out ethnic cleansing and mass murder on a massive scale, they are problematic symbols for an aspiring democracy with the stated ambition to join the European Union. Under Yushchenko, several institutes of memory management and myth making were organized, a key function of which was to deny or downplay OUN-UPA atrocities. Unlike many other former Soviet republics, the Ukrainian government did not need to develop new national myths from scratch, but imported ready concepts developed in the Ukrainian diaspora. Yushchenko’s legitimizing historians presented the OUN and UPA as pluralistic and inclusive organizations, which not only rescued Jews during the Holocaust, but invited them into their ranks to fight shoulder to shoulder against Hitler and Stalin. This mythical narrative relied partly on the OUN’s own post-war forgeries, aimed at cover up the organization’s problematic past. As employees of the Ukrainian security services, working out of the offices of the old KGB, the legitimizing historians ironically dismissed scholarly criticism as Soviet myths. The present study deals with the myth-making around the OUN, the UPA, and the Holocaust, tracing their diaspora roots and following their migration back and forth across the Atlantic.

Genocide or Partition: Two Faces of the Same Coin?

Slavic Review ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 55 (4) ◽  
pp. 755-761 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan L. Woodward
Keyword(s):  
Bosnia And Herzegovina ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
Legal Standing ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Robert Hayden ◽  
Massive Scale ◽  
History Of ◽  
International War

Robert Hayden is not alone in wondering why the expulsion of Serbs from Croatia in 1991 and 1995 was labeled a population transfer and even justified by the logic of nation-states, while the expulsion of Muslims by Serbs in 1992-96 from an area of Bosnia and Herzegovina that the Serbs claim for their state was labeled genocide and justified establishing an international war crimes tribunal. Hayden wants to protect the term genocide, and its legal standing internationally, for truly exceptional instances—to wit, the Holocaust, and nothing else until, God forbid, there should be another such instance. By contrast, he argues, population transfers, even on a massive scale and forced, are not pathological. "Ethnic cleansing" of territory in the former Yugoslavia, whether of Croatia or of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is unexceptional, a normal part of the history of the twentieth century. Although final solutions are not inevitable—Hayden criticizes Croatian President Tudjman for writings that seem to have justified the Serb expulsion as such—"ethnic cleansing" is a part of the history even of states that now sit in moral condemnation of the Balkan horrors and the Bosnian Serbs.

scholarly journals NON-NIPPED MEMORY. THE HOLOCAUST IN THE SOVIET WAR MEMOIRS

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 127-188
Author(s):  
Denys Shatalov
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
New Order ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Soviet Literature ◽  
Nazi Persecution ◽  
War Memoirs ◽  
Post War

The article addresses the presentation of the mass murder of Jews during WWII in the Soviet printed production. An overall trend of ignoring the topic of the Holocaust in the Soviet media discourse is unquestioned. Yet, (non)presentation of the mass destruction of Jews in the Soviet literature, which is commonly emphasized by the researches, needs clarification. If we look at the Soviet literature on the Great Patriotic War (including fiction prose), we can trace a phenomenon described in this article through war memoirs. Alongside official ignoring of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, the whole post-war period experienced mass publishing and re-publishing of memoir books which provided direct references to the murder of Jews by the Nazis during the war. Herewith, combatants’ memoirs would often touch very briefly on the murders of Jews, but give no explanations. Such reference style implies that the authors targeted the  readers’ background awareness. Detailed descriptions of  Jewish discrimination, segregation, getthoisation and murder are found in the memoirs of former prisoners of war and partisans. The account of Nazi persecution of the Jews is an integral part of the stories of everyday life in the occupied territory, which often represents the major piece of the narrative. Under certain ideology, the mention of the murders of Jews was intentionally instrumentalized by the Soviet memoir writers seeking to demonstrate a criminal nature of Nazi collaborators. As can be inferred from the Soviet war memoirs, we are not supposed to simplify a clear-cut attitude of ignoring and should conceptualize the phenomenon of «non-nipped memory» in semi-official narratives. Soviet narratives, particularly war memoirs, did not highlight Nazi persecution of the Jews as a separate phenomenon; although described in detail, it was seen only as a part of the «new order». In the Soviet setting, we do encounter ignoring of the Holocaust (as a separate phenomenon), but at the same time, although with certain limitations, the memory of the mass murder of the Soviet Jews was quite actively reflected in war memoirs.

„Jest wielu Kainów pośród nas”. Polski wymiar sprawiedliwości a Zagłada, 1944–1956

2013 ◽  
pp. 157-172
Author(s):  
Andrew Kornbluth
Keyword(s):  
War Crimes ◽  
Local People ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
District Courts ◽  
Judicial Process ◽  
Nazi Occupation ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Post War

From 1944 to 1960, Poland held at least 32 000 trials for war crimes and collaboration; in particular, those records generated by the investigations of crimes against Jews have been the basis for ground-breaking studies of the Holocaust in Poland for over a decade now. While Poland was a society without a Quisling, these studies have shown that the country was still very much part of a pan-European continuum in which local people took part in ethnic cleansing inspired by the Nazi occupation. The question remains, then, of how effective the postwar judicial process against the collaborators was. This article makes use of the records of over 450 trials of accused collaborators, held between 1946 and 1949 at the district courts of Warsaw and Siedlce, of which about one-third are cases involving crimes against Jews. These trials are used as the starting point for a wider discussion of post-war justice in Poland.

Postcatastrophic entanglement? Contemporary Czech writers remember the holocaust and post-war ethnic cleansing

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-94
Author(s):  
Anja Tippner
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Time Frame ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
World War ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
Memory Theory ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Ethnic Germans ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Post War

The last two decades have seen a rising interest in the Holocaust and the expulsion of ethnic Germans after World War II in Czech literature. Novels by Hana Androníková, Radka Denemarková, Magdalena Platzová, Kateřina Tučková, and Jáchym Topol share a quest for a new poetics of remembrance. Informed by contemporary discussions about Czech memory politics, these novels are characterised by spectral visions of Germans and Jews alike, a dichotomy of trauma and nostalgia, and an understanding of Czech history as postcatastrophically entangled and thus calling for multidirectional forms of remembrance. In this respect, literary memorial forms compensate for the absence of other memorial forms addressing these topics through a transnational lens. The interaction of different historical points of view is achieved by a time frame extending from the war to the present day and stressing the intercultural dynamics of Czechs, Jews, and Germans retroactively. In order to illustrate this entanglement, authors make use of popular genres, such as romance, and create texts shaped by genre fluidity, memory theory, documentary practices, and concepts of transnationality.

Philosophical Reflections on Genocide and the Claim About the Uniqueness of the Holocaust

1998 ◽  
pp. 40-46
Author(s):  
Alan S. Rosenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Criminal Behavior ◽  
Jewish History ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
Black Child ◽  
Southern United States ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
Land Mine ◽  
Emotional Detachment ◽  
The Holocaust

It has been argued, and not without emotional detachment, that the Holocaust is unlike other events in world and Jewish history (and I hope to explain that the sheer numbers who perished alone are not crucial to the distinction). Those who offer such arguments also claim that comparisons between events of ethnic cleansing, mass murder and other sorts of criminal behavior are not meant to purvey a kind of moral one-upmanship. The suffering and harm in one instance is as morally repugnant as those in any other instance, whether it is a Jewish child gassed and cremated by the Nazis, a black child lynched in the southern United States, an Armenian child deliberately poisoned in a Turkish hospital, a Ukrainian child starved to death in a Stalinist blockade, a Native American child shot to death by Conquistadors, a Rwandan child hacked to death, or a Bosnian child blown to pieces by a land mine or sniper.

Holocaust, the

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven T. Katz
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
Process Theology ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
Death Of God ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Tragic Event ◽  
Second World ◽  
Working Out ◽  
Present Possibility

The specific, tragic event of the Holocaust – the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis during the Second World War – raises profound theological and philosophical problems, particularly problems about the existence of God and the meaning of Jewish existence. Among the thinkers who have tried to wrestle with the conceptual challenge posed by the destruction of European Jewry, three who have presented original arguments that can be termed, in a relatively strict sense, philosophical are Richard L. Rubenstein, Emil Fackenheim and Arthur A. Cohen. Rubenstein has formulated an argument that turns on the theological difficulties raised by the realities of the evil of Auschwitz and Treblinka in a world putatively created and ordered by a benign God. For him, such evil decisively refutes the traditional theological claim that a God possessed of goodness and power exists, and entails the conclusion that ‘there is no [traditional] God’. In working out this conceptual position, he uses an unsatisfactory empirical theory of verification concerning religious propositions and too narrow a notion of evidence, both historical and ethical, that ultimately undermines his counterclaims and ‘Death of God’ affirmations. Fackenheim seeks not to defend a religious ‘explanation’ of the Holocaust, but rather to provide a ‘response’ to it that maintains the reality of God and his continued presence in human, and particularly Jewish, history. To do so, he uses Martin Buber’s understanding of dialogical revelation, asserting that revelation is an ever-present possibility, and formulates his own moral-theological demand to the effect that after the Holocaust, Jewish survival is the ‘614th commandment’ (there are 613 commandments in classical Judaism). Fackenheim’s defence of this position, however, is philosophically problematic. Cohen provides a ‘process theology’ argument as an explanation of the Holocaust; that is, the Holocaust requires a revision in our understanding of God’s nature and action. It forces the theological conclusion that God does not possess the traditional ‘omni’ predicates; God does not intervene in human affairs in the manner taught by traditional Western theology. However, Cohen’s working out of a process theological position in relation to the Holocaust raises as many philosophical problems as it solves.

Społeczeństwo holenderskie i los Żydów: skomplikowana historia

2016 ◽  
pp. 425-434
Author(s):  
Dan Michman
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Southern Europe ◽  
Dutch Society ◽  
Nazi Occupation ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Western European ◽  
Post War ◽  
Of Greece

The percentage of victimization of Dutch Jewry during the Shoah is the highest of Western, Central and Southern Europe (except, perhaps of Greece), and close to the Polish one: 75%, more than 104.000 souls. The question of disproportion between the apparent favorable status of the Jews in society – they had acquired emancipation in 1796 - and the disastrous outcome of the Nazi occupation as compared to other countries in general and Western European in particular has haunted Dutch historiography of the Shoah. Who should be blamed for that outcome: the perpetrators, i.e. the Germans, the bystanders, i.e. the Dutch or the victims, i.e. the Dutch Jews? The article first surveys the answers given to this question since the beginnings of Dutch Holocaust historiography in the immediate post-war period until the debates of today and the factors that influenced the shaping of some basic perceptions on “Dutch society and the Jews”. It then proceeds to detailing several facts from the Holocaust period that are essential for an evaluation of gentile attitudes. The article concludes with the observation that – in spite of ongoing debates – the overall picture which has accumulated after decades of research will not essentially being altered. Although the Holocaust was initiated, planned and carried out from Berlin, and although a considerable number of Dutchmen helped and hid Jews and the majority definitely despised the Germans, considerable parts of Dutch society contributed to the disastrous outcome of the Jewish lot in the Netherlands – through a high amount of servility towards the German authorities, through indifference when Jewish fellow-citizens were persecuted, through economically benefiting from the persecution and from the disappearance of Jewish neighbors, and through actual collaboration (stemming from a variety of reasons). Consequently, the picture of the Holocaust in the Netherlands is multi-dimensional, but altogether puzzling and not favorable.

Child Survivors of the Holocaust — Strategies of Adaptation

1993 ◽  
Vol 38 (6) ◽  
pp. 384-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Krell
Keyword(s):  
Coping Strategies ◽  
Emotional Abuse ◽  
Opportunity To Learn ◽  
Distinct Group ◽  
Child Survivors ◽  
Adaptive Value ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Nazi Persecution ◽  
Post War ◽  
Over 40 Years

Child survivors have only recently been recognized as a developmentally distinct group with psychological experiences different from older survivors. The wartime circumstances of Nazi persecution caused enforced separation from family and friends, and all the survivors experienced persecution in the form of physical and emotional abuse, starvation and degradation, and were witnesses to cruelty. This paper is based on information from interviews and therapy with 25 child survivors, the majority of whom were not patients. Coping strategies are discussed in terms of their survival value in wartime and post-war adaptive value. Three themes which reverberate throughout the lives of child survivors, now adults, are discussed in greater detail: bereavement, memory and intellect. The fact that the majority of child survivors live normal and creative lives provides an opportunity to learn what factors have served them over 40 years, to provide the resilience and strength to cope after such a shattering beginning.

Remaking Education in Western Europe

2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 228-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Jones
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Education Systems ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Post War ◽  
Important Objective

This article makes a contribution to discussion on the neo-liberal reshaping of education in Western Europe. It argues for a greater attentiveness on the part of education researchers to collective social actors such as trade unions and social movements. Making use of concepts from Gramsci and from Poulantzas, it suggests that such actors had a formative role in the making of post-war education systems, and that reducing their influence is now an important objective of governments across the European Union. Focusing on educational conflict in England, France and Italy, it explores the extent to which traditions associated with post-war reform continue to possess political vitality.

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