scholarly journals Shame on me? Shame on you! Emotional reactions to cinematic portrayals of the Holocaust

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-395 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Kopf-Beck ◽  
Felix Gaisbauer ◽  
Susanne Dengler
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Defensive Strategies ◽  
Past Injustice ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
Holocaust Film ◽  
Post War ◽  
Constructive Engagement

The media are playing an increasingly important role in teaching the public about the history of the Holocaust. In Germany, however, Holocaust documentaries have been criticized for eliciting unintended, adverse reactions among the viewers, such as distancing from the victims or calling for closing the books on the past. This criticism stems from the concern that such reactions pose an obstacle to critical-constructive engagement and coming to terms with history. This study examines the interplay between cinematic representation of the Holocaust, film-induced defensive strategies, and group-based emotions of shame. Based on a content analysis of six different film excerpts, we investigated the mediating effects of four defensiveness strategies (distancing from victims, victim blaming, closeness to perpetrators, and rejection of the relevance of the Holocaust) on group-based shame in a sample of 224 pupils from Germany’s third post-war generation in a quasi-experimental field study. The results reveal the complexity of film-portrayals which can foster as well as hinder group-based shame and thus, a constructive dealing with past injustice.

scholarly journals Konspiratorzy w Policji Polskiej i Polskiej Policji Kryminalnej w Krakowie w latach 1939‒1945

2020 ◽  
Vol 147 (3) ◽  
pp. 597-618
Author(s):  
Michał Chlipała
Keyword(s):  
Communist Regime ◽  
General Government ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
Post War ◽  
Polish Government ◽  
Popular Image

Conspirators in the Polish Blue Police and Polish Criminal Police in Kraków during 1939‒1945 The article describes the history of Polish pre-war policemen who were forced to continue their service in the Polish Police in the General Government (the so-called Blue Police), created by German occupying authorities. Many of these policemen, faithful to the oath they had made before the war, worked for the Polish Underground State. In Kraków, the capital of the General Government, in the Autumn of 1939, Polish policemen began to create conspiracy structures, which gradually became one of the most effective Polish intelligence networks. Thanks to them, the Home Army, subordinated to the Polish Government-in-exile in London, could learn the secrets of the Kraków Gestapo and the German police. Despite the enormous efforts of the German counter-intelligence machine and the losses among the conspirators, they worked out the exact structure of the German forces in Kraków, helped the persecuted population and infiltrated secret German institutions. In post-war Poland, many of them experienced persecution at the hands of the communist regime. Most of them preferred to keep their wartime experiences secret. To this day their activities are poorly known, being suppressed by the popular image of a Polish policeman-collaborator created by the media.

scholarly journals The Invisible Institution? Reconstructing the History of BAFTA and the 1958 Merger of the British Film Academy with the Guild of Television Producers and Directors

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 449-472
Author(s):  
Emma Pett ◽  
Helen Warner
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
Creative Industries ◽  
British Society ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
Post War ◽  
Training Schemes ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Television Producers

As a cultural institution of national and global significance, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) is notably absent from existing scholarship on the media industries. More importantly, BAFTA's role as an independent arts charity set up by the industry to support and develop new talent is often overlooked. Instead, references to BAFTA made by media and film scholars most frequently take the form of footnotes or digressions that detail particular awards or nominations. Drawing on a range of archival sources, including BAFTA's own records, we address this significant omission within existing scholarship on the British cultural and creative industries. In particular, we examine the period 1947–68, focusing on the 1958 merger of the British Film Academy with the Guild of Television Producers and Directors to form a new institution, known as the Society of Film and Television Arts (SFTA, later renamed BAFTA). This was achieved despite the well-documented tensions existing between the two industries throughout the period, which we identify and analyse within this historical context. We argue that a crucial factor driving the 1958 merger was the desire to develop quality training schemes across both industries. This, in turn, was partly enabled by an egalitarian turn in post-war British society towards the development of greater social equality and mobility. In reconstructing these events, we therefore interrogate and reassess the role played by this key national institution on the development of the creative and cultural industries, offering an expansion and revision of scholarship on media histories of post-war Britain.

scholarly journals Book Review: The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge by Ilan Pappe

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-31
Author(s):  
Kiani Bismillah
Keyword(s):  
Political Ideology ◽  
National Liberation ◽  
Liberation Movement ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
National Liberation Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
Cultural Tensions

This book review examines The Idea of Israel: A History of Power and Knowledge by Ilan Pappe. As a “new historian” Pappe challenges traditional versions of Israeli history. He illustrates Israel’s creation as a colonial conquest rather than the prevailing national liberation movement. In particular, he examines the role that Zionism has played in shaping dominant political ideology in Israel. Pappe critically evaluates the evolution of Zionism narratives from classical, post-Zionism to neo-Zionism. He successfully illustrates the importance Zionism has played throughout the genesis of Israel by highlighting examples such as the 1947 UN partition resolution, the Holocaust, it’s role in furthering cultural tensions between Israelis and Arabs inhabitants, and presence in the media.

scholarly journals Sexualization of Female Perpetration in Fictional Holocaust Films: A Case Study of The Reader (2008)

Genealogy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Sabine Elisabeth Aretz
Keyword(s):  
Female Victims ◽  
Female Perpetration ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Female Perpetrators ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Holocaust Film ◽  
Holocaust Films ◽  
The One

The publication of Bernhard Schlink’s novel The Reader (1995) sparked conversation and controversy about sexuality, female perpetrators and the complexity of guilt regarding the Holocaust. The screen adaptation of the book (Daldry 2008) amplified these discussions on an international scale. Fictional Holocaust films have a history of being met with skepticism or even reject on the one hand and great acclaim on the other hand. As this paper will outline, the focus has often been on male perpetrators and female victims. The portrayal of female perpetration reveals dichotomous stereotypes, often neglecting the complexity of the subject matter. This paper focuses on the ways in which sexualization is used specifically to portray female perpetrators in The Reader, as a fictional Holocaust film. An assessment of Hanna’s relationship to Michael and her autonomous sexuality and her later inferior, victimized portrayal as an ambiguous perpetrator is the focus of my paper. Hanna’s sexuality is structurally separated from her role as a perpetrator. Hanna’s perpetration is, through the dichotomous motif of sexuality throughout the film, characterized by a feminization. However, this feminization entails a relativization of Hanna’s culpability, revealing a pejorative of her depiction as a perpetrator. Consequently, I argue that Hanna’s sexualized female body is constructed as a central part of the revelation of her perpetration.

The age of innocence? Child narratives and Italian Holocaust films

Modern Italy ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 197-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giacomo Lichtner
Keyword(s):  
Historical Film ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Child Narratives ◽  
The Age Of Innocence ◽  
Holocaust Film ◽  
Holocaust Films ◽  
Post War ◽  
Humanitarian Values ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Relationship

This article critically assesses the use of children as narrators in two recent Italian Holocaust films: Roberto Benigni's La Vita é Bella (1997) and Ettore Scola's Concorrenza Sleale (2001). The analysis places the films and their choice of narrator in the context of the child in European Holocaust film and argues that the child's perspective, often used to qualify the actions of adult characters and cast a questioning or even accusatory gaze on them, is used in these Italian films to perform the opposite function. Focusing on cinema as a site of memory and as a site of emotions, the article suggests that Italian filmmakers use children to infantilise the audience, induce pity rather than reflection, and discuss Italy's role in the Holocaust while reassuring audiences of the life-affirming, democratic and humanitarian values of post-war Italians. This political and historiographical use of the child's emotions not only reinforces the need to insist on the revision of the brava gente myth, but also invites a thorough reconsideration of the complexity of the relationship between the historical film and the emotions.

scholarly journals Mur i okno. Gruz getta warszawskiego jako przestrzeń narracyjna Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN [Wall and window: the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto as the narrative space of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews]

2016 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
Konrad Matyjaszek
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Narrative Space ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
Design Structure ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Polish Jews ◽  
Post War

Wall and window: the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto as the narrative space of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish JewsOpened in 2013, the Warsaw-based POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews is situated in the center of the former Nazi Warsaw ghetto, which was destroyed during its liquidation in 1943. The museum is also located opposite to the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes and Martyrs, built in 1948, as well as in between of the area of the former 19th-century Jewish district, and of the post-war modernist residential district of Muranów, designed as a district-memorial of the destroyed ghetto. Constructed on such site, the Museum was however narrated as a “museum of life”, telling the “thousand-year old history” of Polish Jews, and not focused directly on the history of the Holocaust or the history of Polish antisemitism.The paper offers a critical analysis of the curatorial and architectural strategies assumed by the Museum’s designers in the process of employing the urban location of the Museum in the narratives communicated by the building and its main exhibition. In this analysis, two key architectural interiors are examined in detail in terms of their correspondence with the context of the site: the Museum’s entrance lobby and the space of the “Jewish street,” incorporated into the main exhibition’s sub-galleries presenting the interwar period of Polish-Jewish history and the history of the Holocaust. The analysis of the design structure of these two interiors allows to raise a research question about physical and symbolic role of the material substance of the destroyed ghetto in construction of a historical narrative that is separated from the history of the destruction, as well as one about the designers’ responsibilities arising from the decision to present a given history on the physical site where it took place.Mur i okno. Gruz getta warszawskiego jako przestrzeń narracyjna Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLINOtwarte w 2013 roku warszawskie Muzeum Historii Żydów Polskich POLIN stanęło pośrodku terenu dawnego nazistowskiego getta warszawskiego, zburzonego podczas jego likwidacji w 1943 roku, naprzeciwko powstałego w roku 1948 Pomnika Bohaterów i Męczenników Getta; jednocześnie pośrodku obszaru dawnej, dziewiętnastowiecznej warszawskiej dzielnicy żydowskiej i powojennego modernistycznego osied­la Muranów, zaplanowanego jako osiedle-pomnik zburzonego getta. Zlokalizowane w takim miejscu Muzeum przedstawia się jako „muzeum życia”, opowiadające „tysiącletnią historię” polskich Żydów, niebędące insty­tucją skoncentrowaną na historii Zagłady Żydów i historii polskiego antysemityzmu.Artykuł zawiera krytyczną analizę kuratorskich i architektonicznych strategii przyjętych przez twórców Mu­zeum w procesie umieszczania środowiska miejskiego w roli elementu narracji historycznej, komunikowanej przez budynek Muzeum i przez jego wystawę główną. Szczegółowej analizie poddawane są dwa kluczowe dla projektu Muzeum wnętrza architektoniczne: główny hall wejściowy oraz przestrzeń „żydowskiej ulicy” stanowiąca fragment dwóch galerii wystawy głównej, poświęconych historii Żydów w Polsce międzywojen­nej oraz historii Zagłady. Analiza struktury projektowej tych dwóch wnętrz służy próbie sformułowania od­powiedzi na pytanie badawcze dotyczące właściwości fizyczno-symbolicznych materialnej substancji znisz­czonego getta w odniesieniu do narracji abstrahującej od historii jego zniszczenia oraz odpowiedzialności projektantów wynikającej z decyzji o umieszczeniu narracji historycznej w fizycznej przestrzeni, w której wydarzyła się historia będąca tej narracji przedmiotem.

Contested framings: democratic conflict and the public university

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Sheldon
Keyword(s):  
British Society ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
The Public ◽  
Policy Interventions ◽  
Public Role ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
Globalising World

This chapter provides a brief history of the campus politics of Palestine-Israel in Britain alongside a genealogical account of how the stakes, boundaries and grammars of these struggles have been represented in the media, policy interventions and research. Taking up Nancy Fraser’s emphasis on the injustices produced by framings of justice, I show how these public representations have made liberal, secular and nationalist assumptions so that they have been unable to account for the limits of consensus or attend to students’ complex investments in the Palestine-Israel conflict. In the process, I situate these campus struggles in relation to historically evolving relations within British society, the emergent geo-politics of the ‘War on Terror’, and the legacies of the Holocaust and British imperialism. Finally, I consider how public constructions of this as an ‘imported’, ‘ethno-religious’ conflict have failed to address the role played by the British university in shaping these dynamics. I discuss how, in a post-imperial, globalising world, universities in Britain have become conflicted in their public role, creating different challenges for institutions operating in a fragmented higher education field. I conclude by explaining my multi-sited approach in this study, describing my selection of case study institutions and introducing these field-sites.

Systems and methods for political communication in post-war Italy

2018 ◽  
pp. 11-29
Author(s):  
Andrea Mariuzzo
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
Popular Press ◽  
Political Identities ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Government ◽  
Materials Used ◽  
Post War ◽  
Media And Communication

This chapter defines the channels used to elaborate and disseminate propaganda, and reconstructs a history of the circuits and the most significant materials used to create and disseminate language. It places the press and propaganda sections of parties and mass associations in the more complex context of the media and communication agencies that participated in the making of Italian political identities, such as major political newspapers, publications and exhibitions promoted by the government and by foreign embassies, and the popular press.

scholarly journals Feminist Interpretations of the Holocaust

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Potter
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Post Secondary ◽  
Feminist History ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Second Wave Feminism ◽  
Post Secondary Institution ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Post War ◽  
Experiences Of Women

The emergence of the study of the history of the Holocaust following the “silent years”, which occupied nearly two decades of the post-war era, coincided with the establishment of second wave feminism. Despite the creation of the discipline of Women’s and Gender Studies and the emerging variety of women’s history within post secondary institution, discussion of women in the Holocaust did not become a part of the discourse of history until the late seventies. In addition to the lag in addressing  the study of the history of women in the Holocaust, the application of feminist theory to Holocaust history was late to the academic conversation. Feminist history of the Holocaust was finally studied in the early eighties, in order to better understand not only women in the Holocaust but also the Holocaust more generally. However, the discourse failed to evolve and diversify as quickly as other forms of feminist history.   As a result of the perceived exceptionality of the Holocaust within the context of history and even within the more specified picture of the history of  genocide, the application of feminist theory as well as  the understanding of the experiences of women and  the implications of gender within the Holocaust remain relatively stunted within the context of Holocaust and feminist history.

scholarly journals Unrecognizable, abandoned, unnamed, avoided places: On the murders committed against Jews in Poland in the period after the Second World War and their commemoration

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-147
Author(s):  
Andrzej Rykała
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Post War ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
Second World

The fall of the Third Reich, turning the “most tragic page” in the history of the Jewish nation, i .e . the Second World War, did not mean the end of the tragedy for Jews on Polish soil. Even before the end of the greatest confl in the history of humankind, in the areas liberated from Nazi Germany occupation, many survivors of the Holocaust experienced acts of ruthless violence. However, very few of the numerous victims of the post-war anti-Jewish terror have been commemorated in public space. To a very small extent the form of public commemoration also covered earlier wartime cases of collective murders committed against Jews by Polish Christians. Even if the sites of the dramatic events which occurred in the shadow of the Holocaust were marked, the complete truth about their course was not restored everywhere.

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