Download or read book World War II Historical Reenactment in Poland written by Kamila Baraniecka-Olszewska and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the consequences of the latest political shifts in Central Eastern Europe: the rise of right-wing parties and, among other things, politics becoming more invested in history. These phenomena coincide and overlap with the democratisation of history by turning the past into a hot topic, persistently present in the public sphere and often evoking strong emotions. Ethnographic research (conducted in 2012-2016) focusing on how World War II reenactors experience the past serves as the basis to analyse the ways in which the group uses the widespread, often institutionalised interest in history to – on the one hand – become involved in debates on World War II and the remembrance thereof, and – on the other – to authentically experience this past. The volume therefore analyses how physical the process of creating and experiencing grassroots visions of the past is, and how these visions interact with the public discourse about the past. Reenactors’ ability to marry the often-contradictory orders of historical truth, authenticity, and representation is explored. Moreover, Baraniecka-Olszewska analyses how the reenactors overcome various obstacles on their way towards authentic experiences, performing history through their bodies.

Download or read book The Polish Experience through World War II written by Aleksandra Ziólkowska-Boehm and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2013-05-09 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Polish Experience through World War II explores Polish history through the lives of people touched by the war. The touching and terrible experiences of these people are laid bare by straightforward, first-hand accounts, including not only the hardships of deportation and concentration and refugee camps, but also the price paid by the officers killed or taken as prisoners during WWII and the families they left behind. Ziolkowska-Boehm reveals the difficulties of these women and children when, having lost their husbands and fathers, their travails take them through Siberia, Persia, India, and then Africa, New Zealand, or Mexico. Ziolkowska-Boehm recounts the experiences of individuals who lived through this tumultuous period in history through personal interviews, letters, and other surviving documents. The stories include Krasicki, a military pilot who was on of around 22 thousand Polish killed in Katyn; the saga of the Wartanowicz family, a wealthy and influential family whose story begins well before the war; and Wanda Ossowska, a Polish nurse in Auschwitz and other German prison camps. Placed squarely in historical context, these incredible stories reveal the experiences of the Polish people up through the second World War.

Download or read book Staged Otherness written by Dagnosław Demski and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-22 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cultural phenomenon of exhibiting non-European people in front of the European audiences in the 19th and 20th century was concentrated in the metropolises in the western part of the continent. Nevertheless, traveling ethnic troupes and temporary exhibitions of non-European humans took place also in territories located to the east of the Oder river and Austria. The contributors to this edited volume present practices of ethnographic shows in Russia, Poland, Czechia, Slovenia, Hungary, Germany, Romania, and Austria and discuss the reactions of local audiences. The essays offer critical arguments to rethink narratives of cultural encounters in the context of ethnic shows. By demonstrating the many ways in which the western models and customs were reshaped, developed, and contested in Central and Eastern European contexts, the authors argue that the dominant way of characterizing these performances as “human zoos” is too narrow. The contributors had to tackle the difficult task of finding traces other than faint copies of official press releases by the tour organizers. The original source material was drawn from local archives, museums, and newspapers of the discussed period. A unique feature of the volume is the rich amount of images that complement every single case study of ethnic shows.

Download or read book World War II in Polish Museums and Historical Re enactments written by Robert Andrzejczyk and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Novel Das Boot Political Responsibility and Germany s Nazi Past written by Dean J. Guarnaschelli and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-23 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study investigates the relationship between Lothar-Günther Buchheim (1918-2007), his bestselling 1973 novel Das Boot (The Boat), and West Germany’s Vergangenheitsbewältigung. As a war reporter during the Battle of the Atlantic, Buchheim benefitted from distinct privileges, yet he was never in a position of power. Almost thirty years later, Buchheim confronted the duality of his own past and railed against what he perceived to be a varnished public memory of the submarine campaign. Michael Rothberg’s theory of the implicated beneficiary is used as a lens to view Buchheim and this duality. Das Boot has been retold by others worldwide because many people claim that the story bears an anti-war message. Wolfgang Petersen’s critically acclaimed 1981 film and interpretations as a comedy sketch, a theatrical play, and a streamed television sequel have followed. This trajectory of Buchheim’s personal memory reflects a process that practitioners of memory studies have described as transnational memory formation. Archival footage, interviews, and teaching materials reflect the relevance of Das Boot since its debut. Given the debates that surrounded Buchheim’s endeavors, the question now raised is whether Germany’s “mastering the past” serves as a model for other societies analyzing their own histories. Sitting at the intersection of History, Literature and Film Studies, this is an unprecedented case study depicting how the pre- and postwar times affected writers and others caught in the middle of the drama of the era.

Download or read book Tourism and Memory written by Doreen Pastor and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-23 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers tourism to memorial sites from a visitor’s point of view, challenging established theories in tourism and memory studies by critically appraising Germany’s often celebrated memory culture. Based on visitor observations and exit interviews, this book examines how domestic and international visitors negotiate their visits to the concentration camp memorials Ravensbrück and Flossenbürg, the House of the Wannsee Conference and the former Stasi prison Bautzen II. It argues that memorial sites are melting pots where family, national and global narratives meet. For German visitors, the visit to memorial sites is a confrontation with Germany's responsibility for the two dictatorships while for international visitors it can be a form of 'seeing is believing'. Ultimately, it is the immediacy of the space that is the most important part of the visit. Rooted in an interdisciplinary approach, this book will be of interest to academics and students in German Studies, Tourism and Heritage Studies, Museum Studies, Public History, and Memory Studies.

Download or read book The Global Infrastructure of the Special Operations Executive written by Derwin Gregory and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-23 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Second World War, the British government established the Special Operations Executive (SOE) for the purpose of coordinating ‘all action, by way of subversion and sabotage, against the enemy overseas’. Although the overseas operations of this branch of the British Secret Services are relatively well known, few studies have explored the ‘backroom sections’ of this organisation. This book draws together the infrastructure developed to support an agent’s ‘journey’ from recruitment to despatch to the field. At the start of the Second World War there were few existing facilities established within the UK to support clandestine operations. As the conflict progressed, in parallel to learning the operational procedures of their trade, SOE also had to rapidly expand their support infrastructure around the world. The organisation could effectively support their agents only by establishing facilities dedicated to training, research and development, supply, transportation, communication, and command and control. By predominately focusing on the organisation’s ‘agent facing’ infrastructure, this book provides a backdrop to the brave men and women who conducted operations abroad. In addition, it gives an overview of the facilities in which SOE’s backroom staff lived and worked. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of archaeology, history and war studies.

Download or read book Shoah and Torah written by David Patterson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-18 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shoah and Torah systematically takes up the task of reading the Shoah through the lens of the Torah and the Torah through the lens of the Shoah.The investigation rests upon (1) the metaphysical standing that the Nazis ascribed to the Torah, (2) the obliteration of the Torah in the extermination of the Jews, (3) the significance of the Torah for an understanding of the Shoah, and (4) the significance of the Shoah for an understanding of the Torah.The basis for the inquiry lies not in the content of a certain belief but in the categories of a certain mode of thought. Distinct from all other studies, this book is grounded in the categories of Jewish thought and Judaism—the categories of creation, revelation, and redemption—that the Nazis sought to obliterate in the Shoah.Thus, the investigation is itself a response to the Nazi project of the extermination of the Jews and the millennial testimony of the Jews to the Torah.

Download or read book The Devil s Playground written by Piotr Wróbel and published by Canadian Foundation for Polish Studies. This book was released on 2000 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The war that never ends written by Paweł Machcewicz and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-10-08 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk epitomizes one of the most important and dramatic clashes in the European culture of memory and public history in last decades. The museum became the arch-enemy for the nationalist right-wing as “cosmopolitan”, “pseudo-universalistic”, “pacifistic” and “not Polish enough”. Paweł Machcewicz, historian and museum`s founding director, was removed from his position by the Law and Justice government immediately after opening the museum to the public. In his book he presents this story as a part of cultural wars that tear apart not only Poland but also many countries in Europe and on other continents.

Download or read book Jewish Child Soldiers in the Bloodlands of Europe written by David M. Rosen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-03-03 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about the experiences of Jewish children who were members of armed partisan groups in Eastern Europe during World War II and the Holocaust. It describes and analyze the role of children as activists, agents, and decision makers in a situation of extraordinary danger and stress. The children in this book were hunted like prey and ran for their lives. They survived by fleeing into the forest and swamps of Eastern Europe and joining anti-German partisan groups. The vast majority of these children were teenagers between ages 11 and 18, although some were younger. They were, by any definition, child soldiers, and that is the reason they lived to tell their tales. The book will be of interest to general and academic audiences. There is also great interest in children and childhood across disciplines of history and the social sciences. It is likely to spark considerable debate and interest, since its argument runs counter to the generally accepted wisdom that child soldiers must first and foremost be seen as victims of their recruiters. The argument of this book is that time, place, and context play a key role in our understanding of children’s involvement in war and that in some contexts children under arms must be seen as exercising an inherent right of self-defense.

Download or read book The Eagle Unbowed written by Halik Kochanski and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-13 with total page 783 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: World War II gripped Poland as it did no other country. Invaded by Germany and the USSR, it was occupied from the first day of war to the last, and then endured 44 years behind the Iron Curtain while its wartime partners celebrated their freedom. The Eagle Unbowed tells, for the first time, the story of Poland’s war in its entirety and complexity.

Download or read book No Greater Ally written by Kenneth K. Koskodan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2011-12-20 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth history of the Polish soldiers who served in World War 2, with previously unpublished first-hand accounts and rare photographs. There is a chapter of World War II history that remains largely untold; the monumental struggles of an entire nation have been forgotten, and even intentionally obscured. This book gives a full overview of Poland's participation in World War II. Following their valiant but doomed defence of Poland in 1939, members of the Polish armed forces fought with the Allies wherever and however they could. Full of previously unpublished accounts, and rare photographs, this title provides a detailed analysis of the devastation the war brought to Poland, and the final betrayal when, having fought for freedom for six long years, Poland was handed to the Soviet Union.

Download or read book Managing Sacralities written by Ernst van den Hemel and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What happens when religious sites, objects and practices become cultural heritage? What are —religious or secular—sources of expertise and authority that validate and regulate heritage sites, objects and practices? As cultural heritage becomes an increasingly popular and influential frame, these questions arise in diverse and challenging manners. The question who controls, manages, and frames religious heritage, and how, arises with particular urgency. Case studies from Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and the United Kingdom present an analysis of the paradoxes and challenges that arise when religious sites are transformed into heritage.

Download or read book The Future of Religious Heritage written by Ferdinand de Jong and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-03-28 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Future of Religious Heritage examines the resurgence of religious heritage in a secular age and frames such heritage as both legacy from the past and promise for the future. Drawing on case studies from across Europe, this volume addresses the intersection of three well-defined areas of research: secularism, religious heritage and the question of renewal. Considering the heritagisation of religion and the sacralisation of heritage, contributions to the book consider to what extent the idea of renewal, so pivotal to religious and secular ontologies, is present in heritage formations. Thinking about the temporalities of re-enactment and reconstruction, this volume examines whether heritage practices incorporate religious time into secular practice. Problematising such temporalities of the sacred in our post-secular age, the volume explores how these intersections of religious and secular time in heritage practices inform constructions of the future. The Future of Religious Heritage addresses the paradox of the secularisation of religion and the sacralisation of heritage in a post-secular age. It will appeal to academics and students with an interest in critical heritage studies, religion, and (post)secularism, and will also be of interest to those studying re-enactment, regeneration and renewal.

Download or read book Commemorating the Children of World War II in Poland written by Ewa Stańczyk and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-11-02 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores contemporary debates surrounding Poland’s 'war children', that is the young victims, participants and survivors of the Second World War. It focuses on the period after 2001, which saw the emergence of the two main political parties that were to dictate the tone of the politics of memory for more than a decade. The book shows that 2001 marked a caesura in Poland’s post-Communist history, as this was when the past took center stage in Polish political life. It argues that during this period a distinct culture of commemoration emerged in Poland – one that was not only governed by what the electorate wanted to hear and see, but also fueled by emotions.

Download or read book The Holocaust Genocide Template in Eastern Europe written by Ljiljana Radonić and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-05-21 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Holocaust/Genocide Template in Eastern Europe discusses the “memory wars” in the course of the post-Communist re-narration of history since 1989 and the current authoritarian backlash. The book focuses specifically on how “mnemonic warriors” employ the “Holocaust template” and the concept of genocide in tendentious ways to justify radical policies and externalize the culpability for their international isolation and worsening social and economic circumstances domestically. The chapters analyze three dimensions: 1) the competing narratives of the “universalization of the Holocaust” as the negative icon of our era, on the one hand, and the “double genocide” paradigm, on the other, which focuses on “our own” national suffering under – allegedly “equally” evil – Nazism and Communism; 2) the juxtaposition of post-Communist Eastern Europe and Russia, reflected primarily in the struggle of the Baltic states and Ukraine to challenge Russian propaganda, a struggle that runs the risk of employing similarly distorting and propagandistic tropes; and 3) the post-Yugoslav rhetoric portraying one’s own group as “the new Jews” and one’s opponents in the wars of the 1990s as (akin to) “Nazis”. Surveying major battle sites in this “memory war”: memorial museums, monuments, film and the war over definitions and terminology in relevant public discourse, The Holocaust/Genocide Template in Eastern Europe will be of great interest to scholars of genocide, the Holocaust, historical memory and revisionism, and Eastern European Politics. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research.