The Journal of Holocaust Research最新文献

{"title":"Motherhood During and After the Holocaust: Testimonial and Fictional Perspectives","authors":"H. Duffy","doi":"10.1080/25785648.2020.1741856","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2020.1741856","url":null,"abstract":"Hitler stated that ‘one gestating Jewish mother posed a greater threat [to Aryan purity] than any fighting man’ and claimed that ‘every child that a [Jewish] woman brings into the world is a battle [...] for the purity of race.’ These pronouncements point to the fact that the Nazis made annihilation of Jewish mothers their strategic objective. However, until recently, mainstream Holocaust historiography paid scant attention to the specificity of the mothers’ experience, instead adopting a gender neutral, not to say male-centered, position. In other words, historians – including some female ones – assumed that men and women experienced Nazi persecution in essentially the same way. Consequently, they ignored significant challenges presented by uniquely feminine experiences, such as menstruation, amenorrhea and the correlated risk of infertility, pregnancy, and childbirth. Jewish women were also exposed to enforced sterilization and abortion, and, whether in ghettos, camps, hiding or resistance groups were often victims of sexual assault. Finally, it was equally as a result of their biological role as child bearers and their socially constructed role as main child carers that Jewish women saw their survival chances drastically reduced. For instance, while in some ghettos, pregnancy was punishable with deportation, arriving in a concentration camp visibly pregnant or accompanied by small children usually meant instant death. For survivors, these experiences caused long-lasting traumas which, in the absence of a context propitious to their articulation, were particularly slow to heal. Even if the specific predicament of Jewish mothers still occupies a relatively small space in historical studies, it has found its way into literature, both testimonial and fictional. The aim of the present special issue of the Journal of Holocaust Research is to explore how mothers have been represented in narratives across languages and cultures. Offering readings of individual texts or favoring a comparative approach, the four articles collated in the present volume address a range of literary texts from a variety of perspectives. They also do so with reference to a wealth of theoretical studies concerning motherhood and, more specifically, the distinctiveness of women’s experience of Nazi persecution. The special issue opens with Carmelle Stephens’s critical examination of two testimonies that have by now achieved canonical status: Olga Lengyel’s Five Chimneys: A Woman","PeriodicalId":422357,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Holocaust Research","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127193056","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Deportation, The Maternal Abject, and the Impossibility of Selfhood: Jacqueline Saveria Huré's 1954 Ni sains ni saufs","authors":"France Grenaudier-Klijn","doi":"10.1080/25785648.2020.1741852","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2020.1741852","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In 1954, Jacqueline Saveria Huré, a non-Jew resistant deported to Ravensbrück in 1942, published Ni sains ni saufs [Neither Safe nor Sound] a work of fiction drawing in large part from her experience. Divided into four parts, the novel follows the lives of a group of female inmates, from their last days in the fictional camp of Graffenburg, to their liberation and ensuing return. In a pattern similar to other deportation novels by women, the narrative focuses largely on the women themselves, deliberately pushing the German perpetrator to the margins of the story. Told in a realist mode and focalised by an implacable omniscient narrator, the reader is spared nothing of the crude reality of communal life in the camp, and of the women's physical and moral debasement. This is particularly salient in the case of Mme Buze, incarcerated with her daughter, the tone being peculiarly scathing in its depiction of this maternal figure, portrayed not only as physically repulsive, but also as fundamentally stupid and narrow-minded. Following a comprehensive contextualization of this relatively unknown text, the article proceeds to decipher the function of Mme Buze in relation to the novel's protagonist, Florence Mesnil. Drawing from Julia Kristeva's conceptualization of abjection, it argues that in the context of this deportation novel, the maternal figure serves both to denote the abject existential devouring that is deportation, and to delineate a symbolic unshackling leading to the protagonist's survival. It concludes by showing that given the central figure's inability to fully attain individuality, the text illustrates its author's generalized contempt, conservative nihilism, and conception of deportation as fundamentally nonsensical.","PeriodicalId":422357,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Holocaust Research","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129066318","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Saints and Martyrs: Popular Maternal Tropes in Holocaust Memoir","authors":"C. Stephens","doi":"10.1080/25785648.2020.1741847","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2020.1741847","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The present examination of idealized maternity in Holocaust literature opens by suggesting that Mark Anderson's observation about the disproportionate presence of child victims in popular representations of the Holocaust can be extended to mothers. The perceived vulnerability and innocence of women and children highlight Nazi brutality, placing the Holocaust within a reassuring narrative framework wherein the line between victims and perpetrators is unproblematic. Such a narrative has often been perceived as inappropriately sentimental and as potentially obscuring the complexity of the event. However, the present article demonstrates that in the texts it explores – Olga Lengyel's Five Chimneys (1946) and Isabella Leitner's Fragments of Isabella (1978) – the maternal ideal not only serves to illustrate the horrifying brutality of the Holocaust, but becomes an aid in the retrospective production of meaning in the face of overwhelming trauma. The article construes the deployment of the maternal paragon as a palliative device in Holocaust memoir. It also hints at the wider role motherhood assumes as a textual proxy, which facilitates the confrontation of the more challenging emotional and epistemological issues presented by the Holocaust.","PeriodicalId":422357,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Holocaust Research","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133803815","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Folding Memory: The Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust and the Commemoration of the Shoah","authors":"Eran Neuman","doi":"10.1080/25785648.2020.1709302","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2020.1709302","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This essay proposes an analysis of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust (LAMOTH) as a new mode of Holocaust commemoration by architecture. The main claim of the essay is that LAMOTH proposes, an alternative to postmodernist and deconstructivist modes of Holocaust commemoration in architecture. In order to show and elaborate on this new mode of commemoration, the essay briefly outlines the history of the LAMOTH's an organization and analyzes its previous locations. It also demonstrates that LAMOTH current location and building’s design stems from ideas about fluidity, continuity and the fold, particularly the ways in which the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze defined those concepts. Finally, the essay discusses the significance of Holocaust commemoration that emerges from this type of architecture.","PeriodicalId":422357,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Holocaust Research","volume":"52 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126593730","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Hall of Remembrance at Yad Vashem: Israel’s Holocaust Commemoration Monument","authors":"D. Bar","doi":"10.1080/25785648.2020.1700650","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2020.1700650","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article discusses the design and construction of the Hall of Remembrance (ohel yizkor), the main memorial monument at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. It describes years of complex deliberations among the leaders of Yad Vashem and the decisions they made throughout the years. Between 1942, when the idea of establishing a Holocaust memorial monument in Eretz Israel was first raised, and 1961, when the Hall of Remembrance was inaugurated, the initial idea of designing Yad Vahsem as a large-scale site with several memorial structures was replaced with the decision to construct a site of much smaller dimensions, with this impressive yet minimalistic building at its center. The fact that it contains nothing but the names of the concentration and extermination camps, an eternal flame, and a symbolic grave with the ashes of Holocaust victims created an intense experience. The Hall of Remembrance was intentionally built of concrete and basalt, as opposed to the local Jerusalem stone. The building had no features typical of Israeli or Jerusalem architecture. Authenticity was created using sophistication, realizing that Yad Vashem could not offer physical remains or extermination sites, but rather memories alone. As that, the site successfully reflects the connection between Israel and Europe, between the years of devastation and the years in which the institution was established, and between suffering and redemption. Although memory of the Holocaust is not explicit, but rather practically implied, the leaders and architects of Yad Vashem succeeded in transforming the Mount of Remembrance and the Hall of Remembrance at its heart into the most prominent memorial site in the State of Israel.","PeriodicalId":422357,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Holocaust Research","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126360697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Pre-1914 Origins of Hitler's Antisemitism Revisited- Response","authors":"Moshe Zimmermann","doi":"10.1080/25785648.2020.1709306","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2020.1709306","url":null,"abstract":"It has now been about forty years since Eberhard Jäckel and Axel Kühn published the documentation Hitler – Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen, 1905–1924. It did not take much time to discover that about one-tenth of the documents published in this volume were fake – or, in other words, that even respectable historians could be deceived when it comes to information about Hitler. Indeed, thirty years after the demise of the Third Reich, biographies of Hitler were in abundance, written by both authoritative and amateur historians. But the lust for more was insatiable. This opened the gate to forgers and scoundrels like August Priesack, who supplied Jäckel with fake Hitler letters, or Konrad Kujau, who sold Hitler’s fake diaries to the respectable weekly Stern in 1983. Since then, at the latest, we – both historians and laypeople – have become extremely cautious, even suspicious, when it comes to new revelations and new documents about Hitler, especially young Hitler, since it is particularly difficult to corroborate the information about this stage of his career. Thomas Weber managed to write his two groundbreaking books about the earlier, lessdocumented chapters in Hitler’s career – Hitler’s First War (2010) and Becoming Hitler: The Making of a Nazi (2017) – apparently without falling into the pitfall of fake documents. Combining intensive research in the archives with a talent for intricate interpretations, the outcome is a coherent and unconventional story about the ‘making’ of Hitler before he became a ‘star’ in German and world politics. Some have found Weber’s findings too speculative, but not unreliable. It is worth mentioning here that the Koebner Center for German History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem published Thomas Weber’s article about Hitler in World War I in its periodical Tabur back in 2009, so Hebrew readers got a notion of Weber’s findings a year before Hitler’s First War appeared in English. One of the more intriguing lacunae in Hitler’s biography concerns his becoming an antisemite. Eberhard Jäckel, right after publishing the above-mentioned documentation, referred to Hitler’s 16 September 1919 speech as his first documented ‘outing’ as an antisemite. The mystery remained how to explain the lack of evidence about Hitler’s attitude toward antisemitism before age thirty. Neither Brigitte Hamann in Hitlers Wien (1996) nor Thomas Weber in Hitler’s First War could identify open and direct expressions of antisemitic views in Hitler. Hamann mentioned Hitler’s later reference to Otto Weininger and Arthur Trebitsch and the fact that Schoenerer and Lueger were politically active during young Hitler’s time in Vienna but solely as indirect background for his later","PeriodicalId":422357,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Holocaust Research","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125774399","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The ‘Gray Zone’ in Cinema: Representations of the Kapo in Israeli Cinema","authors":"Yvonne Kozlovsky Golan","doi":"10.1080/25785648.2019.1701847","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2019.1701847","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Following the liberation of the death camps and labor camps and the discovery of the murder of millions of Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators, it emerged that among the latter were Jews. Referred to as ‘kapos,’ from the German word Kameradenpolizei, these Jews were forced to cooperate with the Nazi authorities in the camps and ghettos. While the kapos (and members of the Jewish Police) were also persecuted by the Nazis, they also benefited from certain powers and privileges – unlike their fellow Jews. These circumstances place them in a morally complex category within Holocaust narratives, their representation wavering between being seen as victim and as perpetrator. This paper explores the representation of the kapo figure in Israeli feature and documentary films, particularly the kapo’s ethical and moral characteristics. The research conducted focuses on how the disclosure of kapos’ personal or scripted versions in these films, as mediated by the director, reflects a gradual shift in Israeli public opinion regarding kapos and the role they played in the Holocaust. This article explores three films: two documentaries, Kapo (2000) and The Kozalchik Affair (2015), and one feature film, Kapo in Jerusalem (2015), which is constructed as a documentary and is partially based on the life story of a notorious kapo Eliezer (Acha) Gruenbaum.","PeriodicalId":422357,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Holocaust Research","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125435128","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Pre-1914 Origins of Hitler’s Antisemitism Revisited","authors":"Thomas Weber","doi":"10.1080/25785648.2019.1707442","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2019.1707442","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article revisits the origins of Adolf Hitler's antisemitism. It raises the question as to whether it is really credible to argue that Hitler did not harbor antisemitic sentiments prior to the post-revolutionary period following World War One. The article introduces readers to hitherto unknown testimony by Elisabeth Grünbauer, the daughter of the family with whom Hitler lodged in Munich prior to the First World War. According to her testimony, Hitler was already an antisemite six years earlier than previously believed. Crucially, she claims that Hitler's Jew-hatred predates the watershed of World War One. In her testimony, Grünbauer recorded antisemitic statements Hitler made to her father that link Hitler's decision to leave Austria to his antisemitism. The article provides a critical assessment of Grünbauer's testimony. Further, it attempts to explain the genesis of Hitler's antisemitism in the prewar world and its eventual mutation in postwar, post-revolutionary Munich.","PeriodicalId":422357,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Holocaust Research","volume":"97 2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123301751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Jewish–Gentile Relations in Hiding during the Holocaust in Sokołów County, Poland (1942–1944)","authors":"Miranda Brethour","doi":"10.1080/25785648.2019.1677090","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2019.1677090","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores the experience of Jews in hiding with gentile Poles during the Holocaust through the geographical lens of one county in eastern Poland, Sokołów, which was situated a few kilometers south of the Treblinka death camp. Drawing on the written and oral testimonies of Jews from the region, the following pages illustrate the attempts of Sokołów Jews to survive after the liquidation of the ghettos in 1942 by finding shelter with Gentile neighbors, looking into their divergent experiences of hiding. This article shows that there were very few cases in which Jews received shelter from Polish Gentiles without providing something in return: For many Jews in hiding, financial exchanges were the lifeline connecting them with their aid-provider, and, at times, offers of shelter were rescinded gradually or immediately once financial resources ran dry. It further exposes that the roles of ‘rescuer’ and ‘perpetrator’ could be performed simultaneously, complicating the notion of the Gentile rescuer as a one-dimensional actor of moral good, which has dominated public spaces of memory in contemporary Poland and appears in pieces of academic writing. Finally, this article pays homage to the community of Sokołów Jews destroyed in the Holocaust by exploring the memory of Sokołów’s Jewish past in the region today.","PeriodicalId":422357,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Holocaust Research","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129222167","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Solidarity and Animosity among Sonderkommando Prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau","authors":"Gideon Greif","doi":"10.1080/25785648.2019.1666461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2019.1666461","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT A detailed analysis of testimonies of the survivors of Auschwitz-Birkenau’s Sonderkommando (Special Squad), which had to assist the SS murderers in perpetrating their crimes of mass murder conducted in Birkenau’s gas chambers, delivers a new insights in the social structure of that very special work Kommando. Differing social, national, cultural and religious backgrounds, as well as the different languages spoken by the members of the Sonderkommando, let to the establishment of different groups within the Kommando. Within and in-between these groups arose a special social dynamic, that oscillated between solidarity and animosity. Central conflicts arose between Polish and Greek Jews and with the Soviet prisoners of war, or between Greek and Hungarian Jews. Another source of conflict was that in order to form the social structure within the camp and the Kommando, the SS established a system of ‘Functionaries.’ As in other parts of the camp, the functionaries of the Sonderkommando made use of their privileges in very different ways: while some supported other prisoners, the resistance movement and the uprising, others are remembered by the survivors as cruel. However, despite all the conflicts and the dreadful reality of the Sonderkommando’s work, the analyzed testimonies of the survivors belonging to different of the groups within the Kommando show, that solidary relations played an important role for the members of the Sonderkommando; not only within the Kommando but also towards prisoners from other parts of the camp. The testimonies show that the solidarity among the Sonderkommando prisoners had many forms: the support of religious Jews to live according to their belief, friendships, the support of weaker or younger prisoners within or without the Kommando, the establishment of a set of rules for the daily conduct and last but not least: the courageous resistance activities that led to the uprising of 7 October 1944.","PeriodicalId":422357,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Holocaust Research","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-08-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121739533","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}