Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/25785648.2022.2162778
Saul Friedländer, Michal Govrin
ABSTRACT This lecture by Prof. Saul Friedländer and the following response by Prof. Michal Govrin were delivered at Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem, on October 10, 2013. The public lecture was part of the “Transmitted Memory and Fiction’ research group. The following morning, a study session was held with Saul Friedländer, Otto Dov Kulka, the members of the research group, and other guests. In his keynotes lecture, Friedländer discussed the two modes of transmission of traumatic memory, i.e. collective and individual, and expanded on the transmission of the collective trauma of the Shoah in Israel. Friedländer argues that socially transmitted memory of traumatic events lasts as long as its function remains collectively essential, and is transformed with the change of the collective reality. He maintains that, in Israel, the continually changing memory of the Shoah is likely to remain ‘alive.’
{"title":"Lecture: Some Reflections on Transmitting the Memory of the Shoah and its Implications, particularly in Israel","authors":"Saul Friedländer, Michal Govrin","doi":"10.1080/25785648.2022.2162778","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2022.2162778","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This lecture by Prof. Saul Friedländer and the following response by Prof. Michal Govrin were delivered at Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem, on October 10, 2013. The public lecture was part of the “Transmitted Memory and Fiction’ research group. The following morning, a study session was held with Saul Friedländer, Otto Dov Kulka, the members of the research group, and other guests. In his keynotes lecture, Friedländer discussed the two modes of transmission of traumatic memory, i.e. collective and individual, and expanded on the transmission of the collective trauma of the Shoah in Israel. Friedländer argues that socially transmitted memory of traumatic events lasts as long as its function remains collectively essential, and is transformed with the change of the collective reality. He maintains that, in Israel, the continually changing memory of the Shoah is likely to remain ‘alive.’","PeriodicalId":422357,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Holocaust Research","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131340803","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}
Pub Date : 2023-01-02DOI: 10.1080/25785648.2022.2153979
Christopher G. Browning
ABSTRACT This article examines the journal entries of Tracy Strong Jr. that he wrote in the latter half of 1940 while serving as a representative of the International Red Cross to the German POW camps holding Allied prisoners in central Germany. Despite his many critical observations, Strong strove to maintain a neutral and even-handed attitude toward Nazi Germany, as well as pacifist convictions that condemned the war itself. In 1941-1942, he worked as a humanitarian relief worker in the Vichy internment camps in southern France. Here his prioritizing of helping victims of the war over fighting and winning it transformed him into an early Holocaust rescuer.
{"title":"An American in Germany: Fall 1940","authors":"Christopher G. Browning","doi":"10.1080/25785648.2022.2153979","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2022.2153979","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines the journal entries of Tracy Strong Jr. that he wrote in the latter half of 1940 while serving as a representative of the International Red Cross to the German POW camps holding Allied prisoners in central Germany. Despite his many critical observations, Strong strove to maintain a neutral and even-handed attitude toward Nazi Germany, as well as pacifist convictions that condemned the war itself. In 1941-1942, he worked as a humanitarian relief worker in the Vichy internment camps in southern France. Here his prioritizing of helping victims of the war over fighting and winning it transformed him into an early Holocaust rescuer.","PeriodicalId":422357,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Holocaust Research","volume":"95 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133565266","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}
Pub Date : 2022-10-02DOI: 10.1080/25785648.2022.2132730
Leora Bilsky
ABSTRACT Since the 1990s, international criminal law has struggled to find the proper role for victims in mass-atrocities trials. Notwithstanding the rise of the victim-centered trial, victims still participate in these trials mainly as witnesses for the prosecution, but not as full and proactive participants. In this article, I return to the forgotten contribution of Rachel Auerbach (1903-1976), a Jewish-Polish journalist, historian, and Holocaust survivor, and explore her important contribution to the Eichmann Trial, where she helped shape a new paradigm of a victim-centered atrocity trial in the wake of World War II. Auerbach's vision for the trial, as I shall present in this article, can be understood as an early precursor of later developments in both international criminal law and, more broadly, in the field of transitional justice. The contribution of women to the development of international criminal law has been marginalized for many years. Similarly, Auerbach's contribution to the Eichmann Trial has long been viewed as merely technical, limited to finding relevant witnesses for the trial as part of her work as the director of the Testimony Collection Department of Yad Vashem. I show that Auerbach had a groundbreaking vision of the Eichmann Trial and of the way law should perceive victims' testimonies in such trials, based on her “translation” of the legacy of the clandestine Oyneg Shabes archive enterprise in the Warsaw ghetto into a legal setting. In her view, the trial would become victim-centered, not only due to the survivors' testimonies, but also because it would recognize their initiative and agency in promoting a new conception of testimony. I argue that her approach to victims' testimonies and its connection to the crime of cultural genocide are still highly relevant to the ongoing legal and historical discussion about atrocity trials.
{"title":"Rachel Auerbach and the Eichmann Trial: A New Conception of Victims’ Testimonies","authors":"Leora Bilsky","doi":"10.1080/25785648.2022.2132730","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2022.2132730","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Since the 1990s, international criminal law has struggled to find the proper role for victims in mass-atrocities trials. Notwithstanding the rise of the victim-centered trial, victims still participate in these trials mainly as witnesses for the prosecution, but not as full and proactive participants. In this article, I return to the forgotten contribution of Rachel Auerbach (1903-1976), a Jewish-Polish journalist, historian, and Holocaust survivor, and explore her important contribution to the Eichmann Trial, where she helped shape a new paradigm of a victim-centered atrocity trial in the wake of World War II. Auerbach's vision for the trial, as I shall present in this article, can be understood as an early precursor of later developments in both international criminal law and, more broadly, in the field of transitional justice. The contribution of women to the development of international criminal law has been marginalized for many years. Similarly, Auerbach's contribution to the Eichmann Trial has long been viewed as merely technical, limited to finding relevant witnesses for the trial as part of her work as the director of the Testimony Collection Department of Yad Vashem. I show that Auerbach had a groundbreaking vision of the Eichmann Trial and of the way law should perceive victims' testimonies in such trials, based on her “translation” of the legacy of the clandestine Oyneg Shabes archive enterprise in the Warsaw ghetto into a legal setting. In her view, the trial would become victim-centered, not only due to the survivors' testimonies, but also because it would recognize their initiative and agency in promoting a new conception of testimony. I argue that her approach to victims' testimonies and its connection to the crime of cultural genocide are still highly relevant to the ongoing legal and historical discussion about atrocity trials.","PeriodicalId":422357,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Holocaust Research","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116616579","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}
Pub Date : 2022-10-02DOI: 10.1080/25785648.2022.2111508
Laura Morowitz
ABSTRACT Since 2013, the Eyewitness War Museum (EWM) in Beek, the Netherlands, has been claiming to offer a ‘lifelike’ depiction of many of the central events of the years 1940 to 1945. While incorporating some video, soundtracks, and touchscreens, the heart of the museum is its thirteen largescale multifigure dioramas filled with war memorabilia, including uniforms, weapons, and everyday artifacts. Through the lifelike mannequins and the historical objects, the visitor is invited to ‘encounter’ and experience the events of the Second World War; so much so, that the visit promises to transform them into ‘eyewitnesses.’ In distinct contrast to numerous war and Holocaust museums that aim to involve the visitor as a ‘secondary witness’ through embodiment and self-reflection, the EWM visitor ‘experiences’ history as a captivating and consumable visual display, watching from a distanced position of spectatorship. Moreover, the ‘guide’ to the museum, an ‘ordinary’ German soldier, is fictional, while the items that surround him are authentic. After two decades of valorizing witnesses and the use of survivor testimony, museums like the EWM negate and downplay their value, labeling the commodified experience of the visitor equivalent to that of an historical ‘eyewitness.’ While exploring these issues, this article also provides a new tool in analyzing visitor responses by looking not at predetermined surveys—often designed by the very people who run the museums—but rather at more casual visitor responses in guidebooks and travel sites. Reviews on TripAdvisor and the travel platform izi.TRAVEL are explored to reveal the way that visitors perceive, remember, and interpret their experience in the museum.
{"title":"The Eyewitness War Museum in the Netherlands: Spectacle, Experience, and Usurping the Witness","authors":"Laura Morowitz","doi":"10.1080/25785648.2022.2111508","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2022.2111508","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Since 2013, the Eyewitness War Museum (EWM) in Beek, the Netherlands, has been claiming to offer a ‘lifelike’ depiction of many of the central events of the years 1940 to 1945. While incorporating some video, soundtracks, and touchscreens, the heart of the museum is its thirteen largescale multifigure dioramas filled with war memorabilia, including uniforms, weapons, and everyday artifacts. Through the lifelike mannequins and the historical objects, the visitor is invited to ‘encounter’ and experience the events of the Second World War; so much so, that the visit promises to transform them into ‘eyewitnesses.’ In distinct contrast to numerous war and Holocaust museums that aim to involve the visitor as a ‘secondary witness’ through embodiment and self-reflection, the EWM visitor ‘experiences’ history as a captivating and consumable visual display, watching from a distanced position of spectatorship. Moreover, the ‘guide’ to the museum, an ‘ordinary’ German soldier, is fictional, while the items that surround him are authentic. After two decades of valorizing witnesses and the use of survivor testimony, museums like the EWM negate and downplay their value, labeling the commodified experience of the visitor equivalent to that of an historical ‘eyewitness.’ While exploring these issues, this article also provides a new tool in analyzing visitor responses by looking not at predetermined surveys—often designed by the very people who run the museums—but rather at more casual visitor responses in guidebooks and travel sites. Reviews on TripAdvisor and the travel platform izi.TRAVEL are explored to reveal the way that visitors perceive, remember, and interpret their experience in the museum.","PeriodicalId":422357,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Holocaust Research","volume":"58 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130449723","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}
Pub Date : 2022-10-02DOI: 10.1080/25785648.2022.2122141
Shirli Gilbert
ABSTRACT Scholars of the Holocaust have long recognized that ordinary people’s accounts, by definition subjective and individual, can deepen our understanding of the experience and impact of the genocide. The distinctive value of personal letters, however, particularly collections of sustained correspondence among multiple writers, has not yet been fully appreciated or explored in Holocaust historiography. Over the past decade or so, more and more collections of personal correspondence relating to the Holocaust have been unearthed. Their distinctive form and burgeoning numbers stimulate questions about their potential historical significance and how, in both practical and analytical terms, they might most fruitfully be approached. Building on my longstanding work with the family letters of Rudolf Schwab, a German-Jewish refugee who eventually ended up in South Africa, I reflect in this essay on a series of methodological questions surrounding the use of such private collections in Holocaust historiography. How might they differ, as sources, from the many testimonies, diaries, and other ego-documents with which Holocaust historians already work? Are they simply another addition to this already vast archive? To what extent might they enrich, complicate, or even disrupt our prevailing understandings? What new perspectives might they offer scholars about the Holocaust, the experiences of refugees, and beyond?
{"title":"A Cache of Family Letters and the Historiography of the Holocaust: Interpretive Reflections","authors":"Shirli Gilbert","doi":"10.1080/25785648.2022.2122141","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2022.2122141","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Scholars of the Holocaust have long recognized that ordinary people’s accounts, by definition subjective and individual, can deepen our understanding of the experience and impact of the genocide. The distinctive value of personal letters, however, particularly collections of sustained correspondence among multiple writers, has not yet been fully appreciated or explored in Holocaust historiography. Over the past decade or so, more and more collections of personal correspondence relating to the Holocaust have been unearthed. Their distinctive form and burgeoning numbers stimulate questions about their potential historical significance and how, in both practical and analytical terms, they might most fruitfully be approached. Building on my longstanding work with the family letters of Rudolf Schwab, a German-Jewish refugee who eventually ended up in South Africa, I reflect in this essay on a series of methodological questions surrounding the use of such private collections in Holocaust historiography. How might they differ, as sources, from the many testimonies, diaries, and other ego-documents with which Holocaust historians already work? Are they simply another addition to this already vast archive? To what extent might they enrich, complicate, or even disrupt our prevailing understandings? What new perspectives might they offer scholars about the Holocaust, the experiences of refugees, and beyond?","PeriodicalId":422357,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Holocaust Research","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133375394","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}
Pub Date : 2022-10-02DOI: 10.1080/25785648.2022.2122140
Svetlana Suveica
ABSTRACT This article is the first attempt to piece together the sporadic traces of cultural plunder in wartime southwestern Ukraine under Romania’s occupation in 1941-1944. In Transnistria, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered, the violent and organized redistribution of wealth and heritage via acts of cultural looting occurred in tandem with the economic exploitation and extermination of Jews in the region. Motivated by prospects of high profits, regional and local public officials set up hidden networks and organized group schemes that transgressed the boundaries of state hierarchies and extended beyond the region. While deliberately extracting ‘cultural trophies’ from local museums, theaters, and art galleries based on Ion Antonescu’s verbal orders, they simultaneously plundered the valuables and belongings, including objects of cultural value, of the Jews.
{"title":"Pianos and Paintings from Transnistria: The Plunder of ‘Cultural Trophies’ During the Romanian Occupation (1941-1944)","authors":"Svetlana Suveica","doi":"10.1080/25785648.2022.2122140","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2022.2122140","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article is the first attempt to piece together the sporadic traces of cultural plunder in wartime southwestern Ukraine under Romania’s occupation in 1941-1944. In Transnistria, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered, the violent and organized redistribution of wealth and heritage via acts of cultural looting occurred in tandem with the economic exploitation and extermination of Jews in the region. Motivated by prospects of high profits, regional and local public officials set up hidden networks and organized group schemes that transgressed the boundaries of state hierarchies and extended beyond the region. While deliberately extracting ‘cultural trophies’ from local museums, theaters, and art galleries based on Ion Antonescu’s verbal orders, they simultaneously plundered the valuables and belongings, including objects of cultural value, of the Jews.","PeriodicalId":422357,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Holocaust Research","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124798141","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}
Pub Date : 2022-10-02DOI: 10.1080/25785648.2022.2122142
Harry Legg
ABSTRACT The 1935 Nuremberg laws labeled individual Germans as ‘full racial Jews’ if they possessed a minimum of three grandparents who had ever been members of a Jewish congregation. This ‘group’ was chosen for discrimination and the self-identification of its members was ignored. Outside the realm of Nazi fantasies, the nonracial reality of ‘Jewishness’ had seen many Jews leave behind secular and religious Jewish identities, as well as interaction with Jewish communities. This paper presents the example of the Eisig family, a family of non-Jewish ‘full Jews.’ Several other examples are also examined, in order to capture the reality that the everyday lives of non-Jewish ‘Jews’ under Nazi persecution often could not have been more different from the lives of self-identifying Jews. These differences have received minimal attention in the current historiography. The family primarily discussed in this paper found itself caught between the ‘Aryan’ and Jewish spheres. Until then, their lives had been lived entirely alongside non-Jews, with whom they were now increasingly prohibited from having contact. Often lacking established relationships with Jews, they neither wanted nor were welcome to join the Jewish community. Before looking at the example of the Eisig family, this paper also reviews the English- and German-language publications on ‘Jewish’ everyday life under Nazism. Though non-Jewish ‘Jews’ receive inadvertent coverage in discussions of Nazi policy, their everyday life is almost completely absent from the literature, especially in English-language studies. The situation is much the same in the German literature, though there are some notable but ultimately insufficient exceptions. Alongside displaying the isolation that non-Jewish ‘Jews’ faced, and the latter’s historiographical omission, this paper also draws attention to the impact of two much under researched concepts within everyday life: wealth and status.
{"title":"Non-Jewish ‘Full Jews’: The Everyday Life of a Forgotten Group Within Nazi Germany","authors":"Harry Legg","doi":"10.1080/25785648.2022.2122142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2022.2122142","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The 1935 Nuremberg laws labeled individual Germans as ‘full racial Jews’ if they possessed a minimum of three grandparents who had ever been members of a Jewish congregation. This ‘group’ was chosen for discrimination and the self-identification of its members was ignored. Outside the realm of Nazi fantasies, the nonracial reality of ‘Jewishness’ had seen many Jews leave behind secular and religious Jewish identities, as well as interaction with Jewish communities. This paper presents the example of the Eisig family, a family of non-Jewish ‘full Jews.’ Several other examples are also examined, in order to capture the reality that the everyday lives of non-Jewish ‘Jews’ under Nazi persecution often could not have been more different from the lives of self-identifying Jews. These differences have received minimal attention in the current historiography. The family primarily discussed in this paper found itself caught between the ‘Aryan’ and Jewish spheres. Until then, their lives had been lived entirely alongside non-Jews, with whom they were now increasingly prohibited from having contact. Often lacking established relationships with Jews, they neither wanted nor were welcome to join the Jewish community. Before looking at the example of the Eisig family, this paper also reviews the English- and German-language publications on ‘Jewish’ everyday life under Nazism. Though non-Jewish ‘Jews’ receive inadvertent coverage in discussions of Nazi policy, their everyday life is almost completely absent from the literature, especially in English-language studies. The situation is much the same in the German literature, though there are some notable but ultimately insufficient exceptions. Alongside displaying the isolation that non-Jewish ‘Jews’ faced, and the latter’s historiographical omission, this paper also draws attention to the impact of two much under researched concepts within everyday life: wealth and status.","PeriodicalId":422357,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Holocaust Research","volume":"80 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133279032","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}
Pub Date : 2022-10-02DOI: 10.1080/25785648.2022.2116830
Gilly Carr
ABSTRACT Julia Brichta, a Jewish–Hungarian refugee, came to the Channel Island of Guernsey in 1939, a year before the arrival of the German occupying forces. The story of what happened to her during the war in Ravensbrück was told in her own words on several occasions between 1945 and 1965, yet the specifics of her path to Ravensbrück and her role as a camp policewoman there, have hitherto been unclear. Based on surviving archival documents, this paper attempts to untangle the evidence to establish some of the facts behind this ‘grey zone’ survivor of the Holocaust. It examines Julia’s path towards Ravensbrück and the ways in which her pre-camp and camp experiences impacted the ways in which she narrated her story between 1945 and 1965. Whether she was a non-Jewish resistance heroine or a Jewish perpetrator who lied about her wartime activities, this paper argues that in the end, such judgments are simplistic and mask the complexity of survivor stories. Instead, seeking to understand changes in testimony over time based on the audience as well as pre-camp and camp experiences offers a more fruitful path of analysis.
Julia Brichta是一名犹太匈牙利难民，1939年，也就是德国占领军到来的前一年，她来到了根西海峡岛。在1945年至1965年期间，她在ravensbr克的战争中发生的事情在多个场合都是用她自己的话讲述的，但她前往ravensbr克的具体过程，以及她在那里担任集中营女警的角色，迄今为止都不清楚。本文以幸存的档案文件为基础，试图理清证据，以确定大屠杀“灰色地带”幸存者背后的一些事实。这本书考察了朱莉娅走向ravensbr ck的道路，以及她在集中营前和集中营的经历对她在1945年至1965年间讲述自己故事的方式的影响。无论她是一名非犹太抵抗运动的女英雄，还是一名对战时活动撒谎的犹太犯罪者，本文认为，最终，这种判断过于简单化，掩盖了幸存者故事的复杂性。相反，根据受众以及营前和营前经历，寻求理解证词随时间的变化，提供了一种更富有成效的分析途径。
{"title":"Narratives of Resistance, Moral Compromise, and Perpetration: The Testimonies of Julia Brichta, Survivor of Ravensbrück","authors":"Gilly Carr","doi":"10.1080/25785648.2022.2116830","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2022.2116830","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Julia Brichta, a Jewish–Hungarian refugee, came to the Channel Island of Guernsey in 1939, a year before the arrival of the German occupying forces. The story of what happened to her during the war in Ravensbrück was told in her own words on several occasions between 1945 and 1965, yet the specifics of her path to Ravensbrück and her role as a camp policewoman there, have hitherto been unclear. Based on surviving archival documents, this paper attempts to untangle the evidence to establish some of the facts behind this ‘grey zone’ survivor of the Holocaust. It examines Julia’s path towards Ravensbrück and the ways in which her pre-camp and camp experiences impacted the ways in which she narrated her story between 1945 and 1965. Whether she was a non-Jewish resistance heroine or a Jewish perpetrator who lied about her wartime activities, this paper argues that in the end, such judgments are simplistic and mask the complexity of survivor stories. Instead, seeking to understand changes in testimony over time based on the audience as well as pre-camp and camp experiences offers a more fruitful path of analysis.","PeriodicalId":422357,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Holocaust Research","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117149738","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}
Pub Date : 2022-06-08DOI: 10.1080/25785648.2022.2062919
Hana G. Green
ABSTRACT This article calls for a revisitation and reevaluation of passing experiences in Holocaust research and remembrance. In this article, passing denotes the concealing of one’s Jewish identity by adopting a non-Jewish, non-persecuted identity in the attempt to function as Gentile, ‘Aryan,’ or as a member of another, more protected group. In recent years, passing narratives have become more visible in Holocaust canon. However, these accounts are most often integrated into frameworks of hiding, resistance, and Gentile-directed rescue, if at all, and are largely discounted in Holocaust memory. Incorporating passing experiences as a mere element in dominant commemorative narratives of evasion and defiance elides the stories and experiences of individuals who attempted to survive in plain sight. Moreover, their exclusion and minimization preclude deeper inquiry into passing as a Jewish response to persecution. The diversity of experience among passers, as well as its day-to-day nuances, provide critical insight that helps us understand and engage with more diverse survival experiences during the Holocaust and offers greater insight into both the field at large and to broader interdisciplinary arenas. This article highlights the distinctiveness of passing as a method of survival, assesses the ways in which it has been silenced in broader perspectives, and comments on its place in Holocaust memory.
{"title":"Passing on the Periphery: A Call for the Critical Reconsideration of Research on Identity ‘Passing’ as a Jewish Response to Persecution During the Holocaust","authors":"Hana G. Green","doi":"10.1080/25785648.2022.2062919","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2022.2062919","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article calls for a revisitation and reevaluation of passing experiences in Holocaust research and remembrance. In this article, passing denotes the concealing of one’s Jewish identity by adopting a non-Jewish, non-persecuted identity in the attempt to function as Gentile, ‘Aryan,’ or as a member of another, more protected group. In recent years, passing narratives have become more visible in Holocaust canon. However, these accounts are most often integrated into frameworks of hiding, resistance, and Gentile-directed rescue, if at all, and are largely discounted in Holocaust memory. Incorporating passing experiences as a mere element in dominant commemorative narratives of evasion and defiance elides the stories and experiences of individuals who attempted to survive in plain sight. Moreover, their exclusion and minimization preclude deeper inquiry into passing as a Jewish response to persecution. The diversity of experience among passers, as well as its day-to-day nuances, provide critical insight that helps us understand and engage with more diverse survival experiences during the Holocaust and offers greater insight into both the field at large and to broader interdisciplinary arenas. This article highlights the distinctiveness of passing as a method of survival, assesses the ways in which it has been silenced in broader perspectives, and comments on its place in Holocaust memory.","PeriodicalId":422357,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Holocaust Research","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131843448","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}
Pub Date : 2022-06-08DOI: 10.1080/25785648.2022.2062920
J. Rich, M. Dack
ABSTRACT This article addresses the fraught relationship between technology and representations of the Holocaust by examining the ethical dilemmas and opportunistic possibilities of a developing virtual reality tool for teaching and learning. Its focus is a pilot project at Rowan University in New Jersey, entitled the Warsaw Project, which seeks to balance the immersive nature of virtual and augmented realities with best practices, robust student engagement, and historical accuracy. In this article, we illustrate the project origins, scope, and content and share some of the major ethical dilemmas encountered as well as unexpected outcomes. Ultimately, we argue that advanced digital platforms and immersive technologies can, within an appropriate learning environment and when guided by qualified instruction, serve as an effective pedagogical tool and inform students in a way otherwise unachievable through literature and film.
{"title":"Forum: The Holocaust in Virtual Reality: Ethics and Possibilities","authors":"J. Rich, M. Dack","doi":"10.1080/25785648.2022.2062920","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/25785648.2022.2062920","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article addresses the fraught relationship between technology and representations of the Holocaust by examining the ethical dilemmas and opportunistic possibilities of a developing virtual reality tool for teaching and learning. Its focus is a pilot project at Rowan University in New Jersey, entitled the Warsaw Project, which seeks to balance the immersive nature of virtual and augmented realities with best practices, robust student engagement, and historical accuracy. In this article, we illustrate the project origins, scope, and content and share some of the major ethical dilemmas encountered as well as unexpected outcomes. Ultimately, we argue that advanced digital platforms and immersive technologies can, within an appropriate learning environment and when guided by qualified instruction, serve as an effective pedagogical tool and inform students in a way otherwise unachievable through literature and film.","PeriodicalId":422357,"journal":{"name":"The Journal of Holocaust Research","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132740068","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}
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