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In the last two decades, flight and expulsion have emerged as critical topics in contemporary German literature and culture, with authors exploring narrative modes in literary texts that open transnational perspectives. Reinhard Jirgl’s Die Unvollendeten (2003) and Sabrina Janesch’s Katzenberge (2010) are examples of such texts, dealing with traumatic experiences of displacement in the aftermath of the Holocaust and Second World War, while challenging exclusionary narratives. Both novels employ the railway journey, including places and objects associated with it such as the platform and the station, tracks and railcars, as a central motif. In the following, I will show the degree to which this motif allows for “multidirectional” (Rothberg) modes of “postmemory” (Hirsch) that transcend national borders and memory discourses. The railway provides a link between generations in both of the texts discussed. However, it also interlinks the traumatic displacement of ethnic Germans and Poles at the end of the Second World War with the experience of Holocaust victims. Can modes of postmemory in Jirgl and Janesch therefore be read as multidirectional, or do they simply equate distinct experiences, blurring distinguishing features of different groups’ suffering and historical contexts?

This article explores the decision amongst the children and grandchildren of Auschwitz survivors to replicate the concentration camp number of their survivor family member on their own body. The article sheds new light on the complex intergenerational legacy of the Holocaust and on memorial practices. By focusing on the tattoo as a form of memorial practice, the article captures the intersections between the contemporary trend of tattooing and the concentration camp number as the visual symbol of the crimes of the Nazis. Drawing on data from qualitative interviews with 13 descendants of Holocaust survivors, the article considers motivations for getting the tattoo, conversations with the survivor parent or grandparent about the tattoo (if they were still alive), as well as the design and placement on the body. The decision to replicate the number was a statement about family relationships and was often a way of expressing love, legacy and continuity and pride. Some descendants who replicated the number, which had dehumanised and stigmatised their ancestor, saw it as a way of reclaiming. The tattoo also had a dialogical function, keeping family stories and histories alive as we enter the post-witness era. The sociological analysis is this article shows how personal lives are shaped by memories, as well as secrets and silences, and how they connect with history, relationships and identity. This article contributes to our understanding of the legacy of the Holocaust on families and family relationships and the corporeal impacts across generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work of Hank Greenspan has provided essential insights for rethinking foundational conceptions and methods of collecting interviews with Holocaust survivors. As Greenspan urges us to consider, not all interviews are alike and there are those that entail sustained and intimate interpersonal connections, often developed over several years between 'partners in a conversation.' Greenspan's emphasis on interviewers and survivors 'learning together' underscores the contingent, emotionally intimate, and collaborative aspects of the interview process that are often kept at the margins by Holocaust testimony archives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay draws on Henry (Hank) Greenspan's insights about recounting and retelling in the ways that Holocaust survivors testify and bear witness in narrating their experiences. Sometimes taking place from afar and in silence, my interaction with friends such as Hank Greenspan and with the voices of survivors such as Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel compels me to recount and retell that absent the overriding of moral sensibilities, if not the collapse or collaboration of ethical traditions, the Holocaust, genocide, and other mass atrocities could not take place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

War-time Jewish hideouts are rare material witnesses of past violence and struggle for survival. Over the years, the issue of hiding appeared in multiple contexts in Holocaust research, but we know very little about their materiality and architecture. The article is an introductory summary of an artistic research project conducted by Natalia Romik and Aleksandra Janus on the materiality of hideouts and the contemporary vernacular memory of them. The article contains descriptions and spatial analysis of three underground hideouts located in Poland and Ukraine and offers an overview of how the vernacular memory of them functions in various local contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Animal rights organisations worldwide fight against live shipments of meat animals. The main Israeli NGOs leading the fight are Animals-Now, Israel against Live Shipments, and Let the Animals Live. Their visual rhetoric highlights the cruelty of these shipments. Combined with written messages, photographs of animal suffering appeal to viewers’ emotions and conscience. This article examined ‘Stop the Death Transports!’ – The most extensive campaign led by these NGOs, together with Animals Australia, in 2016. It analysed the campaign poster from the approaches of photography semiotics and visual contextual analysis, informed by theories of visual culture and animal ethics. The campaign represents an intermediate approach between the hardcore and softcore approaches, using visual and verbal references to the Holocaust and slavery. However, though the use of the Holocaust is highly charged for local Jewish viewers thus contributing to the understanding of the immorality of consuming meat, it may in fact assuage their conscience by shifting the moral burden from the meat eaters to the transporters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Ghost Story and Secretion, the Northern Irish artist Willie Doherty depicts landscape as haunted. Both films register the presence of ghosts through a malodorous ooze: a residue of repressed secrets whose return disturbs the living. These miasmic flows literalize the seepage between ‘concentrationary histories': the interrelation between particular histories of institutional violence. Doherty's haunted topographies explicitly connect the Breitenau and Dachau camps with Northern Ireland's Troubles and Abu Ghraib. Haunting, understood here through the uncanny, and Nicholas Abraham and Maria Torok's theory of encryption, embodies concentrationary memory's focus on narrating the seepage between histories and the camp’s continued threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the intersection of genocide studies, climate change, and peace education. It does so by examining the state of these connections, and proposes a fresh concept for considering the entanglements of contemporary violence in the Anthropocene. A notion of postgenocide sees the elements of geopolitical order, warlordism, climate change and resource exploitation. Postgenocide is an approach to mass violence occurring beyond the usual framing of state violence and intent. It aims to enrich the ongoing decolonization of peace education, as well as empower peace educators in conveying these often-complex relations in a violence-prone and climate changing world. Thinking outside of legal constraints of genocide or emotive fuzziness of climate change, educators can broaden their appeals and promote decolonized thinking of how violence works, its agents, and who it impacts in the Anthropocene. Postgenocide offers a transformative research and praxis link frame beyond globalizing Holocaust education as a stand-in for human rights education. Peace educators can leverage global concepts like postgenocide to cut through and examine the complexity of such entanglements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this Keynote paper presentation, the author takes on a wide-ranging and deep exploration of edges as a central concept to Self-Psychology. From natural edges to psychoanalytic edges, from the consulting room to the field of psychoanalysis, from the origin of Kohut's Self Psychology to present-day creative, and at times, maverick contemporary thinking, the author traces a history tinged with an edginess made up of giftedness and historical trauma which, together, raise important questions for us to consider. As was the case for many émigré analysts during World War II, the author sees Kohut's immensely creative life dependent on his ability to erect and maintain a caesura regarding the impact of the Holocaust. The author suggests that Kohut's last gift to us, his last bit of edginess, is his challenge to us to contend with the shadow of his hidden pain and its implications on contemporary creative thinking and practice. To do otherwise would compromise our creative edges and lose a part of Kohut in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is an evaluative work written to examine the relations of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, with National Socialist Germany and his role in the Holocaust. The study summarizes the phenomenon of the Holocaust within the framework of existing literature and evaluates the allegations of Al-Husseini's involvement in the Holocaust based on secondary sources. To provide evidence, original documents from the German Federal Archives (BA/Bundesarchiv) and the German Foreign Ministry's Political Archive (PA/Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts) are also utilized. The central claim of the study is that while Al-Husseini's collaboration with the National Socialist regime is acknowledged in the context of defending the Palestinian national cause, he did not have any role or influence in the occurrence of the Holocaust. Based on the findings, the claim that Al-Husseini was an active participant in the Holocaust is false. Such claims, as seen in the example of Netanyahu's allegations in the 21st century, are used for current political purposes and do not align with historical facts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evidence regarding the intergenerational effects of the Holocaust points to a heightened sensitivity to traumatic and stressful events, as well as to threats. These effects were found across at least three generations: the survivors themselves, their children, and their grandchildren. More specifically, this sensitivity is manifested in increased psychological reactions to adverse circumstances, especially when such situations trigger associations with the Holocaust. During 2023 Israel has experienced unprecedented civil unrest and protests following the government's plan to promote a judicial overhaul. Many expressed fears for Israeli democracy and the integrity of the social fabric in Israel. The current study examined how Holocaust descendants (i.e., children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors) experienced this prolonged social unrest. A web‐based random sample of 706 Israeli Jews born after World War II completed questionnaires several months before the unrest began (Wave 1, 2022) and seven months into the unrest (Wave 2, 2023). Supporting most of our hypotheses, Holocaust descendants reported higher civil unrest salience (i.e., more preoccupation with the political and social upheaval) relative to comparison descendants (i.e., children and grandchildren of those not directly exposed to the Holocaust). Relative to comparison descendants, Holocaust descendants were also at a greater risk of reporting exacerbation in anxiety since the judicial overhaul was introduced, but not in depression or somatisation symptoms. Results remained significant after controlling Wave 1 distress level, background characteristics, level of engagement in civil unrest, and participants' viewpoint on the judicial overhaul. The findings further corroborate unique reactions to stress among Holocaust descendants, this time by highlighting increased preoccupation and increased exacerbation in anxiety during a period of prolonged political and social turmoil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored the relevance of the Holocaust in the lives of Australian adults who grew up with at least one parent and grandparent who were Holocaust survivors. Two individual cases are highlighted with data analysed using a Phenomenological Interpretative Approach. Two themes are discussed: the relevance of the Holocaust in participants' life and the familial communication patterns about the Holocaust. The findings demonstrate how past collective trauma continues to impact the lives of the survivors' descendants decades after the historical events and how transmission of trauma and resilience from grandparents and parents to their offspring occurred verbally and non-verbally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the diaries of young Jewish refugees who documented their emigration from Germany and Austria in the 1930s and who wrote for family members, imagining future readers of their accounts. These diaries offer unique access to children's voices during the Holocaust, showing how some child refugees became family chroniclers, self-consciously documenting a story of Jewish resistance and survival, as well as a tragedy of loss. Their diaries became treasured material objects and autobiographical texts that perform a writing subject, a child as author and narrator, asserting agency in a situation in which they were multiply marginalised as children and as Jewish refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The peculiarity of the Holocaust in Transcarpathia, also known as Subcarpathian Rus’, is that the process of segregation and extermination of most of the local Jewish population lasted only about seven months. Most Jews were not deported until 1944, and the region was liberated months earlier than in more western parts of Central Europe. Jewish survivors returned to this quasi-state territory amidst the process of its Soviet annexation, which put local Ukrainians at the top of the power hierarchy. This abrupt change in interethnic relations as a result of the genocide has not yet been studied. I therefore focus on the entangled interactions and post-war social history of Holocaust survivors. In this article, I explore the complex process of the restitution of real estate and personal property in rural and urban areas, focusing not only on the interim authorities at different administrative levels who coordinated the restitution and integration of survivors but mainly on Jewish survivors and their diverse agency. I argue that the social position of Jews in the immediate post-war period differed depending on the location. Anti-Jewish resentment among Ukrainians in villages manifested itself at the official level as the confiscation of Jewish property. At the same time, the Soviet authoritarian centralization of power ensured that destructive processes and conflicts in rural areas did not escalate into open confrontation and violence. Instead, in the urban space, the agency of the first survivors who returned to the cities contributed to successful restitution cases. Nevertheless, this was possible primarily through the close interaction and cooperation of the Jews with local authorities at the highest levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of traumatic events, individuals and groups seek to make sense of these experiences. ‘Never again’ is often considered the primary lesson of genocide. Yet, people may understand this lesson in different ways, and other lessons may also be relevant. The present paper reports a qualitative content analysis of publicly available testimonies from survivors of the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide and the Nanjing Massacre (N = 200), examining the lessons of genocide that these survivors shared publicly. We identified six broad categories of lessons that were represented across contexts and extended the lessons commonly considered: Lessons on the individual and interpersonal level, on the ingroup level, the (inclusive) intergroup level, the universal level, and concerning both collective memories and the future. These lessons go beyond ‘never again’ and show different individual and societal obligations and insights that survivors sharing their testimony deem most important to learn from their experience of genocide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the use of comedy, specifically satire, in addressing Holocaust denial in the 21st century. It highlights the work of comedians such as Sarah Silverman, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Jon Stewart in exposing the malevolence behind historical distortions through humor. The article explores different case studies, including stand-up specials and satirical news programs, to demonstrate the effectiveness of comedy in raising awareness about the dangers of denial. It also discusses the role of comedians as public intellectuals and the long history of Jews using humor to respond to antisemitism. The article suggests that humor can be a powerful tool in shaping how we think about the past and present. [Extracted from the article]

Hiding from war, violence, and persecution in a secret, confined place affects the subjectivity of the occupants. The hideout's material properties and the hiders' silence to avoid detection enter deep into their lives. This co-constitution of subjectivity and hiding becomes manifest in their affects, feelings, and emotions, as will be illustrated by an analysis of Anne Frank's lived experience of hiding for two years from Nazi persecution. She and her fellow hiders maintained a regime of silence in the secret annex of a canal house in Amsterdam to prevent their discovery and deportation. The hideout's material and social restrictions created a subjectivity of hiding that devalued Anne Frank's existence as a human being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning with early studies in the 1970s, dehumanisation has become a key feature in attempts to grasp the fundamental dynamics and conditions under which mass atrocities emerge. One of the most long-standing, prominent and widely accepted conceptions sees the loss of moral status as a key constitutive component of processes of dehumanisation, suggesting that the victims' exclusion from the moral universe of obligation breaks down moral barriers, enabling forms of persecution outside the established practices of violence among human communities. With reference to the paradigmatic case of the Holocaust, this article critically interrogates this so far unquestioned equation of a loss of moral standing with dehumanisation. Overall, it argues for a much more nuanced differentiation between normative and analytical uses of dehumanisation, the need for more detailed reflections on its empirical appearances and relevance, and a more critical engagement with its conceptual grounding. Doing so will lead dehumanisation research beyond its current state and would allow for a more intricate assessment of its uses, meanings and relevance in cases of mass violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The essay offers a reflection on memories of traumatic histories, including African American slavery, Native American genocide, and the Holocaust. I weave personal memories together with a consideration of poetry, monuments, and other representations that sometimes tend to efface, sometimes come to grips, as best they can, with these appalling events and their legacies.

The article analyses the novel Umschlagplatz (1988) by a significant Polish writer and literary critic, J.M. Rymkiewicz, which deals with a twice iconic space (Warsaw’s Umschlagplatz — pars pro toto of the Holocaust and the painful problem of Polish- Jewish relations during and after the Second World War). The article aims to determine the novel’s place in the ongoing debate in Polish society about Polish complicity in the Holocaust since the second half of the 1980s. The analysis of the complex text construction covers the relationship between poetics and the problem of testimony, the modality of fiction. Generated by an acute sense of the blatant non-presence of the space of the Jewish tragedy in Polish historical consciousness as a place of memory, guilt, and shame, Rymkiewicz’s novel appears as a postulate of commemoration and empathy addressed to Polish society, a call for recognition and comprehension of the traumatic past. Umschlagplatz was a significant artistic and ethical step in preparation for working through the Holocaust-related Polish trauma, complicated by the persistence of the heroic-romantic self-identification of Polish society.

The article is devoted to the study of the concept of genocide proposed by Raphael Lemkin and its evolution in international law. R. Lemkin - the author of the term «genocide» - developed a broad concept of this crime, which included not only the physical elimination of the national, ethnic or social groups but also the destruction of their language, culture, social structure and economic base. However, after the adoption of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948, the legal definition of genocide was significantly narrowed. The article analyses R. Lemkin's views on defining the scope of what can be considered genocidal acts, in particular, in the context of the Holocaust and other crimes committed by the Nazis, as well as in the context of the Holodomor. The article also examines the historical background of the emergence of the concept of genocide and the evolution of international legal instruments that protected the rights of national, ethnic and cultural groups before the emergence of this concept. In particular, the role of the Hague Conventions, many peace treaties, decisions of international judicial bodies and reports of international administrative bodies in the formation of legal prerequisites for the protection of the rights of the specified groups before the introduction of the concept of genocide and the adoption of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 is analysed. In addition, the article analyses in detail the differences between the original concept of R. Lemkin and the narrower concept that was enshrined in the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Also, the views of modem scholars regarding the concept of genocide proposed by R. Lemkin are discussed. The results of this research may be useful for further analysis of the intellectual heritage of R. Lemkin, the influence of his concept of genocide on the development of modem international law, as well as for the further search for ways to improve international standards for the protection of minority rights and international legal instruments for the prevention of genocide, punishment for its commission and protection of its victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous academics addressed the violence against the Serbs and Jews within the Independent State of Croatia. In addition to identifying research gaps in this regard, this paper analyses the letters of Georges Gueyraud, a Vichy diplomat in Zagreb, along with several other documents sourced from the French Diplomatic Archive. Primarily focused on the violence against the Serbs, this paper delves into the period when the violence reached its peak, namely the summer of 1941. It contains Gueyraud’s analysis of the atmosphere of violence in Zagreb that he had witnessed, as well as testimonies of violence from various parts of Croatia that he had acquired. Furthermore, this paper examines the reactions of the Croatian authorities and the press in response to these atrocities. In addition to analysing the content of Gueyraud’s letters, this article evaluates his handling of the information he received, examining the presence of a critical approach. Furthermore, it assesses the accuracy of his information by cross–referencing it with sources and literature.

This paper explores the dynamics of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict through the perspective of Jewish history and collective memory, with a particular focus on the Holocaust as a point of departure. Through a history of civilization approach and collective memory analysis, this paper explores how the traumatic experience of the Holocaust has shaped the identity, politics and narratives of the Jewish people to influence their views on the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. It reveals how the memory of the Holocaust is not only an integral part of Jewish identity but also plays a role in shaping the policies and strategies adopted by the state of Israel. Holocaust memory is often used to justify defensive and offensive actions to sustain the Jewish state amidst external and internal threats. In this context, the "From Holocaust to Holocaust" narrative reflects the transformation and continuity of collective trauma used as a legitimization and mobilization tool in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. This paper uses historiographic methods and narrative analysis to identify recurring patterns of thought and feeling within the Jewish community and how these patterns translate into political action. It also highlights the role of critical actors, both political and intellectual, in shaping and articulating these narratives. The results of this paper are expected to provide deeper insights into the complexity of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and how history and collective memory play an essential role in the dynamics of this conflict.

A common practice used by the Germans and collaborators in World War II, as part of the Holocaust, was to use existing Jewish cemeteries as places for mass burial. Research was completed at the Old Jewish Cemetery in Riga, Latvia, the Livas Jewish Cemetery in Liepaja, Latvia, and the Zaliakalnis Jewish Cemetery in Kaunas, Lithuania. The Old Jewish Cemetery in Riga was adjacent to the Riga Ghetto and was used to bury individuals murdered in the ghetto. In Kaunas, an area of the Zaliakalnis Jewish Cemetery is devoid of grave stones, and literature sources and testimony indicate that this area was used for the mass burial of Jews from the Kaunas Ghetto and other mass killings. In Liepaja, the local Jewish Heritage Foundation believes that there are mass graves within the Livas Cemetery. Methodologies for this research include the use of a pulseEkko Pro 500-megahertz ground-penetrating radar (GPR) system. Electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) data were collected through a linear array of electrodes coupled to a direct current (DC) resistivity transmitter and receiver. Analysis of aerial photography and satellite images was also employed at each location. ERT and GPR data indicate three separate trench anomalies in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Riga. The presence of these anomalies corroborates Holocaust survivor testimony that bodies were buried in mass graves in that area. In the Zaliakalnis Jewish Cemetery in Kaunas, ERT and GPR data indicate an anomaly in the western part of the cemetery, and ERT data further indicate two other possible mass graves. In Liepaja, preliminary GPR analysis indicates an anomaly in a cleared section of the cemetery. Based on the presence of geophysical anomalies in all three cemeteries, which correlate with literature sources and Holocaust survivor testimony, there is a high probability that mass graves are present at each site. Future research directions include expanding the search areas in each cemetery, additional literature and testimony-based research, and the addition of other geophysical methodologies.

Objective/Context: In the field of Holocaust studies, the Latin American experience has occupied a liminal space. Even when the global character assumed by its forms of remembrance is widely accepted, little attention has been paid to the national cases of this region. This paper deals with a specific national case through the construction record of the National Monument to the Victims of the Jewish Holocaust, located in the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The present research reveals the legal and administrative process that accompanied its gestation, the recognition of the actors that intervened throughout the period, and, finally, the character and debates that the architecture of the pantheon provoked. This cycle, which lasted a little more than two decades, allows us to qualify the meaning of the global character of Holocaust memory by considering how this experience was redefined in a national context. Methodology: For this research, qualitative techniques are used in the analysis of the legislative and patrimonial records, journalistic sources, interviews with involved actors, and a documentary film called “Monument,” which aims to give an account of the history of its construction and the representational matrix of that memorial. Originality: Although there have been, in recent years, some works that addressed the memory of the Holocaust in Argentina, they focused on various cultural media: literature, film, and testimonial narratives. This paper addresses an object whose materiality is different—monumental—and which was conceived as a public policy of commemorative character. The analysis of the construction of this memorial pantheon allows recognition of how the transnational dimensions of Holocaust remembrance intersected with aspects of the Argentine political process of the last twenty years. Conclusions: The analysis of the construction process and the materiality assumed by its architecture demonstrate, first, how the global dimensions of Holocaust remembrance interact with local contexts and, second, the tensions raised between the actors and organizations that promote its memory and the victims of Nazi persecution in Argentina

The article analyzes the influence of the current international situation on the concept of German identity. The main elements that form the basis of contemporary German self-consciousness are identified. The author explores the relationship between the regional, national, and supranational components of German self-identification, examining the persistent mental “divide” between the new (former GDR) and the old lands (West Germany). Special attention is paid to the challenges posed for the Federal Republic of Germany in terms of historical discourse and memorial practices by the influx of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa. The role of the 2023 Palestine-Israel escalation in the transformation of the national narrative is separately examined. The article also evaluated the conflict around Ukraine as a factor in strengthening the European dimension of German identity.Among the key methods used by the author are content analysis of speeches by German officials, analysis of legislation and media. In addition, logical, chronological, and comparative-historical methods were applied. All this in aggregate led to the following conclusions. The Federal Republic of Germany is undergoing a systemic and multidimensional identity crisis. The main challenge is finding a balance between historical responsibility, transatlantic commitments, and national interests. The goal of the German establishment is to formulate a new national idea, which includes defining the role and place of Germany in the world, forming a value consensus regarding migrants, and overcoming the alienation between the east and west of the country. However, in the post-1990 world order, such a large-scale task remains rather impossible for the current elites.

This article aims to discuss the Dimensions in Testimony project, designed and launched by the USC Shoah Foundation to establish a novel approach to collecting oral testimony. The Foundation’s project was initially presented to a wide audience, especially by the U.S. press and researchers, as involving the creation of witness holograms. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Misdescribed by media outlets as based around holograms, this USC Shoah Foundation initiative looks, at least for the moment, to create two-dimensional images based on a long recording process and hours of in-depth interviews. Nevertheless, the project is bound to shape the future of Holocaust testimony and oral history itself. The key challenge for its authors remains to explain what the project actually is and to develop the concept of interactive biography, a name proposed by Stephen Smith, but not fleshed out enough in any academic articles in the author’s opinion. Consequently, this paper aims to discuss the USC Shoah Dimensions in Testimony project as a collection of interactive biographies, with particular emphasis on what an interactive biography is, as well as formulate a definition and propose alternative terms. For this purpose, the author proposes an interdisciplinary approach. To define interactive biography, this article will necessarily describe the mechanisms governing the project, the technique for displaying two-dimensional recordings of survivors, and how this aforementioned interactivity operates in the encounter of two-dimensional images of survivors and the recipients of their testimony. Finally, this paper will also look to answer attendant questions, including whether the project works as a post-memory tool for sharing survivor stories, and how are the survivors expressed in a digital tool.

This paper addresses the use of oral history sources in my practice of documentary filmmaking as a second-generation Holocaust survivor. It examines how the filmic documentation of oral history sources can reflect aspects of testimony, memory, and postmemory, as they are theorized in the field of Holocaust Studies. In my film “Past Forward: Journeys to Transnistria,” I document the challenge of relating an intergenerational and cross-cultural story while preserving historical accuracy. Filmed in Ukraine in 2002, it tells the story of my mother, a child-survivor of the Romanian Holocaust. Through oral testimony, the film captures my mother’s survival story as she tells it to me and later to her granddaughter who documents it for a history school project. It then retraces my mother’s journey between 1941 and 1944 from her hometown of Dorohoi, Romania to Transnistria as it was called then under German-allied Romanian occupation. Survivor’s testimony combined with onsite witness interviews, and an archival military map, were used to trace the story of a little Jewish Romanian girl who survived the journey to Transnistria. Recently available archival sources have further validated her story. It has also contributed to locating the film within the broader context of the Holocaust in Ukraine.

The events of the Holocaust are reflected in the numerous memoirs of rescued victims and witnesses of Nazi crimes. Collections of testimonies, memories and oral history on the Holocaust include thousands of early testimonies and life stories archived in for example the Yad Vashem and audio-visual collections initiated in later years such as the Institute for Visual History and Education USC Shoah Foundation, The Fortunoff Video Archives, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yahad-In Unum and others. In this open forum we how the knowledge from collecting and using oral history and testimonies in Holocaust research can inform current collecting initiatives in relation to for example the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine.

This source publication contains three categories of documents related to the Nazi German occupation of Poland, specifically the city of Lwów (Lemberg) in District Galicia of the General Government, which have been translated from German to English. The documents were selected for their relevance to ongoing debates and research questions evoked by the “third phase” of the Holocaust characterized by both widespread police searches for Jews and help offered by non-Jews to the fugitives, here set in the multi-ethnic context of Eastern Galicia between September 1943 and June 1944. Documents 1 to 4 are the German laws that formed the legal basis of decrees limiting Jewish residence and sanctioning punishment for their violation. Documents 5 to 7 are verdicts handed down by the Special Court in Lemberg (Sondergericht im Lemberg) on the basis of these decrees, in which the judges imposed the death penalty on the accused for giving refuge to Jews. Documents 8 to 11 are final reports regarding the arrests of Poles and Ukrainians, and the Jews whom they were sheltering, written by members of the Third Commissariat of the Lemberg Polish Criminal Police (PPK), which were sent to their supervisors in the German Criminal Police (Kripo).

The role of Jewish functionaries during the Holocaust has fueled heated debates internationally, as well as in Israel since the 1940s. For decades, however, the topic was marginalized in Israeli cinema. The documentary, Kapo (Tor Ben-Mayor and Dan Setton 1999) was the first to include filmed testimonies of former Jewish female functionaries in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The documentary, We Wept Without Tears (Itai Lev and Gideon Greif 2021) is the first to include testimonies by members of the Sonderkommando (“the special squad”) i.e., prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau, primarily Jews, who were forced to work in the killing installations. This article analyzes the ways these documentaries deliberately suspend judgment to provide a more complex perspective on these individuals. Kapo and We Wept Without Tears are examined in the context of how Holocaust memory has changed in Israeli society and cinema. The discussion centers on the ways these films generate a non-judgmental narrative, and the similarities and differences between them in approaching this sensitive topic. It shows that Kapo endeavors to maintain cinematic ambivalence, whereas We Wept Without Tears deliberately highlights the protagonists’ lack of agency and avoids rendering judgment.

This article focuses on the analysis and interpretation of 15 testimonies collected immediately after the war by David Boder and by the Polish Historical Institute in Sweden with women deported to Auschwitz, evacuated to Ravensbrück in its last two phases and then to Malchow. The study of their statements can provide both a historical overview of Ravensbrück and its sub camps in 1944 and 1945, and help identify the effects of the camp, an overthrown social context, on individuals, women in this case, and groups. The comparative exam of the interviews allows to identify the crucial events and experiences which constitute the core of the interviewees’narration and representation of the events. The situations and episodes they chose to recall may explain their perception of the events and reveals a gendered perspective which affected their memories in terms of the selection of the events and their focus on specific issues. The memories were recalled in relation to social frames, which were different from those the survivors were previously used to and pertained to the context of the camp. These coordinates constitute a net which can provide an insight into the mechanism of memory construction and early representation of the Holocaust.

This article deals with the religious dimension of the violence against the Jews in Eastern Galicia at the start of Operation Barbarossa (the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany on June 22, 1941), in June–July 1941. It examines the context of the various attacks, such as the burning of synagogues, the public persecutions of devout Jews, in addition to the verbal insults, especially by priests instigating the local population against their Jewish neighbors. The paper looks at the political use of these narratives, as well as their consequences and justifications.

Writer Michel Dufranne and illustrator Maza’s French-language graphic novel, Triangle rose, (2011) features a Berlin homosexual deported under Paragraph 175. In this frame narrative, the elderly survivor’s story never reaches its potential diegetic audience, Parisian students, including the protagonist’s great-grandson. The framed narrative represents the protagonist’s unarticulated memories. This narrative glitch reflects 1) the historic failure to acknowledge homosexuals as legitimate Nazi victims, and 2) ongoing homophobia in Berlin and Paris, resulting in shame, as conceptualized by Sara Ahmed and Ruth Leys. Portraylng the Nazi persecution of gay men, Triangle rose highlights an important, underrepresented chapter of National Socialist history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the fascination with ‘Jewish gold’ and the belief that Jews possess riches long predates the Holocaust, it was the systematic dispossession of Jews during World War II that fueled the myth of ‘Jewish treasures’ to an unprecedented extent. Based on ethnographic field research in six former shtetls: Iŭje and Mir in Belarus, Biłgoraj and Izbica in Poland and Brody and Berezne in Ukraine, and diverse sources, including testimonies of survivors, archival documents, memoirs, and literary texts, this paper discusses the longevity of the myth of Jewish treasures in the post-Holocaust East-Central European provinces and analyses its social consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ahmet Zog was the "King of the Albanians" from September 1928 until April 1939, when the country was invaded by fascist Italy. During his reign Albania experienced an unprecedented period of relative stability and progress. Zog's government took the first small steps towards the creation of a modern European country. King Zog developed a strong economic dependence on Mussolini's Italy, but he did not implement fascist ideas and policies. Albania welcomed and assisted persecuted Jews since 1933, when Hitler came to power as chancellor of Germany. Zog's attitude towards Jewish immigration was strongly influenced by Herman Bernstein, United States Ambassador to Albania during the years 1930–1933. Prior to Italian occupation, Albania was considered a safe transit point for Jewish refugees seeking to reach prosperous and stable destinations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning in October 1941, a rumour circulated in the occupied territories and in the press of the free world that Jews deported from the ghettos were being sent to the Pripet Marshes for land reclamation. In reality, this was fake news created by the Nazis to cover up the ongoing Holocaust. The false claims reached the West through the Jewish Telegraph Agency, which in turn relied on reports from the Swedish newspaper Social Demokraten and the Ukrainian-language Nazi newspaper Krakivs'ki Visti. The article analyzes the sources of these false claims and attempts to explain the reasons for their persistence; for not only did the belief that Jews were sent to the marshes rather than the death camps persist during the war, but the rumour is now being exploited by Holocaust deniers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, based at Concordia University in Montreal, is Canada’s leading research institute and advocacy centre for the study of conflicts, mass atrocity, genocide, and human rights. Nowadays, its featured tasks range from mapping prejudices and hatred online, elaborating new strategies to prevent disinformation or fake news, to defending human lives and strengthening democracy in the whole world. The centre hosts several conferences and workshops every year in order to help politicians, diplomats, academics, experts, soldiers, stakeholders, and general public counter extremism in all its forms. The history of this institution is deeply rooted in the attempt to study conflicts and violence following a comparative, interdisciplinary — chiefly historical and, in some ways, socio-psycho-historical — approach which emerge from the work of the British historian Norman Rufus Colin Cohn (1915–2007) and his Centre for Research in Collective Psychopathology (1962–80). This article deals with the hitherto unexplored contribution of Cohn, his studies on antisemitism and witch hunt in the creation of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life-story interviews with 39 Jewish supporters of a football club whose quasi-Jewish identity is the catalyst for antisemitic abuse were used to explain the under-researched everyday experiences among members of the Anglo-Jewish community. All interviewees said their experiences of antisemitism within English men's football supporter culture were much worse than in wider society. All interviewees believed references to Hitler and the Holocaust exceeded any threshold of acceptability and that the death of 6 million people should never be associated with football. While denigration of Jewish rituals and practices was offensive and problematic for some, Jewish stereotypes tended to be downplayed, dismissed, or tolerated by most interviewees as part of the "banter" endemic in English supporter culture to lessen or disrupt the impact of the hate speech they endure. These responses indicate complex processes of anger, acceptance and rationalisation as recipients attempt to make sense of and deal with everyday antisemitism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stanley Kubrick's project on the Holocaust, Aryan Papers, was dear to his heart. He worked on it for a long time, but he could not, in the end, bring himself to complete the planned film. This article canvasses some of the reasons other scholars have supplied for this film remaining unmade, including the notion that the Holocaust is unrepresentable. However, it points to a novel explanation. I argue that Kubrick's plot modifications, particularly to the conclusion, doomed the project. Specifically, Kubrick has a Jewish woman take revenge for war-time atrocities. Discussing revenge in relation to the Holocaust has until recently been as impious as representing the Holocaust itself. Jewish revenge was unfashionable in Holocaust films of all kinds when Kubrick was working on Aryan Papers in the early 1990s. Kubrick's planned film was generically ahead of its times. The vengeful Jewish woman had to wait for Inglourious Basterds in 2009. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most prevalent themes in Emeric Pressburger's work as a screenwriter is the 'good German', a character who often represents an enemy country, who is nevertheless depicted sympathetically, or, at the very least, as a morally ambiguous character. Figures of this kind appear throughout his works, including his unpublished novels and unfilmed screenplays. This paper will examine some of these unproduced works and contest that Pressburger's writing was a response to the trauma of Nazism and the Holocaust, which stood in conflict to his largely egalitarian outlook in which he believed that all people had some good attributes. In a radical turn for the Jewish screenwriter, Pressburger uses these late works to attempt to come to terms with the moral implications of the Holocaust, considering if revenge can be justified, to what extent one should forgive, and whether acts of kindness could ever outweigh the crimes a person has committed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2001, HBO and the BBC released Conspiracy, a critically acclaimed dramatization of the Wannsee Conference, where Nazi officials discussed coordinating the Final Solution in January 1942. Written by Loring Mandel, Conspiracy is noted for its strict adherence to the historical record as well as its chamber play atmosphere. However, HBO originally planned Conspiracy as the first half of a two-part feature. Its unproduced second half, Complicity, would have depicted Allied indifference to the Holocaust, the plight of Jewish refugees, and the rise of Adolf Eichmann. This article discusses the origins, pre-production history, and cancellation of Complicity. Grounded in archival documents – screenplay drafts, meeting minutes, research files, as well as oral history interviews, this presentation will trace Complicity's beginnings as a story about Jewish efforts to inform the UK and US governments about the Holocaust and its transition to a dramatization of the April 1943 Bermuda Conference, which is most notable for its failure to meaningfully address the 1940s refugee crisis. Complicity is a fascinating example of 'shadow quality TV'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers how to read the location outtakes of Claude Lanzmann's film Shoah (1985). These film reels — now digitized and available on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's website — often seem to offer little content, and demand different ways of viewing to make any sense of them. I link them to two other types of viewing experience: watching landscapes filmed by Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub and using online maps such as Google Street View to identify and navigate particular locations. Engaging with the outtakes in this way involves a consideration of the events of the Holocaust indexed by the locations and the images that Lanzmann made of them. It also makes it possible to glean something of the working methods of Lanzmann and his team. Finally, it offers a particular spatial experience in its own right, which, I argue, can serve as a form of Holocaust memorialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article scrutinises the role railways played in the existence of the German concentration camp system during the Third Reich era. Through the lens of Jewish slave labourers' experiences, I argue that the numerous daily transports of prisoners from site to site were the backbone of the SS camp system. Grounded in survivor testimonies and Nazi administrative records, this paper traces the pathways of Dutch Jewish deportees on a single deportation transport to the concentration camps and addresses the impact of the frequent displacements upon the inmates. In general, the Germans decided which detainee was sent where, yet sometimes the victims could interfere in the selection process or evade relocation to another site. The maps in this article visualise the trajectories of several Dutch Jews; they demonstrate that prisoner relocation was a common phenomenon and reveal the vast distance that inmates covered by train. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historian Raul Hilberg once observed of death trains: "It's just very regular traffic. Death traffic". Though subtle, his insinuation that this death traffic represented a "new normal" is, in fact, an astute observation of a largely unresearched process whereby Polish railway workers, and locals living near railway tracks, became witnesses to the Holocaust through observing the distinctive new "traffic" flowing by their spaces of home and work. In this case study, therefore, I examine these "death traffic witnesses" to reveal how their experiences highlight a critical reality about genocide in our modern world – its ability to transform relatively banal spaces (in peacetime) into horrific ones when employed for sinister purposes. In this case, those banal spaces are the railways that cut through our modern landscapes as symbols of connection, commerce and transport; their steel rails cutting through backyards and city centres linking even remote villages with major metropolises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]