Direct Witness Research Articles

The philosophy of v. lisovoy in the context of discussions around the “kyiv world-view and philosophical school”

The article is devoted to the study of the Ukrainian realities of the second half of the 20th century, which are important for the revival of the collective memory of Ukrainians through the prism of the life path and the philosophical views of V. Lisovoy. The main attention is focused on the idea conceptualized in the writings of V. Tabachkovsky about the birth and development in the 60s and 80s of the 20th centuries in Kyiv of an original intellectual center – the “Kyiv worldview and anthropological school”. This pretentious, according to V. Lisovoy, definition caused a lively discussion on the pages of the “Krytika” magazine, to which V. Lisovoy also joined. As a direct witness of the events of the times of “stagnation” and the European intellectual level the philosopher, in contrast to a number of his contemporaries, V. Lisovoy made an attempt to consider the Ukrainian philosophy of the 60s-80s of the 20th century in the context of the methodological assets of the Western intellectual thought of that time. This approach allowed the Ukrainian scientist to refute the belief formed in the 90s of the 20th centuries about the existence and active development of the “Kiev school of worldview and philosophy” in the second half of the 20th century, thereby laying the foundations for rethinking the intellectual heritage of that time. This type of intelligence makes it possible to clarify, and in some cases to construct a clear idea of a certain community about itself, its culture, and with it its place and mission in the world, thereby uniting communities around the achievement of a certain goal.

ОПРИЯВЛЕННЯ МЕХАНІЗМУ ГЕНОЦИДУ: ДОКУМЕНТАЛЬНІ ДЖЕРЕЛА VS ДЖЕРЕЛА ОСОБОВОГО ПОХОДЖЕННЯ ПРО ГОЛОДОМОР В УКРАЇНІ 1932–1933 РР.

Totalitarian states control information space, watching closely the appearance of only that information that does not contradict an official one. In this way, on the one hand, “classical archival” sources had been preserved, with content controlled by the totalitarian regime. On the other hand, ignored and repressed society members who had been persecuted or committed crimes against humanity remain unheard. Taking into account often liquidation by the dictators not only direct witnesses of their crimes, but also indirect ones (documents), it turned out that it is oral history is often the only proof able to be used in a court against the guilty in genocide. Mostly documents of local level have been preserved after archivocide in the Ukrainian archives of the party organs. These sources contain facts mostly «allowed» by the party. «Unallowed» facts as part of Holodomor history have to be searched for first of all in oral history. The goal of the research is to review some thematic aspects of Holodomor from the pint of view of their correlation in archival sources and oral history. Because of intentional liquidation of the sources of the Holodomor epoch (1930s), we do not have many facts from specialists in agriculture, medicine, education. Such facts, as well as a set of others, often absent or partly present in archival sources, can be found in oral history. Therefore, present in archival sources about the famine spots are often covered by oral history testimonies. Besides, sources of personal origin suggest vision from «below», often correlating with information blocks of archival sources: level of mortality, expressed in description of amount of corpses on the streets; methods of food confiscation; fate of kids; escape from a village as a survival strategy; black boards. Such parallel reading allows «revealing» of the sources produced by the Soviet totalitarian state.

The influence of stress on children’s speech in the context of war

War is an unbearable and unforeseen burden on the human psyche. Threat to existence, fear for life, loss of loved ones lead to an increase of non-psychotic borderline disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder. Children represent the most unprotected and vulnerable part of the population. Being in the zone of military conflict, they acquire a tragic experience that deforms their consciousness, their values and outlook. Children experience mood swings, depression, unmotivated aggression, obsessive states, overwhelming fear and anticipation of retelling the experienced events. The article is devoted to the analysis of speech characteristics of children who witnessed the Russo-Ukrainian war, which began on February 24, 2022. The study focuses on the description of the verbalization of the psychological state of a child who witnessed bombings and shelling, children from the occupied territories who had to leave their homes, and children who, not being direct witnesses of military operations, have been forced to live in temporary refugee camps for six months unable to return to their houses. The authors analyze ways of verbalizing fear, anxiety, obsessive states, types of verbal aggression. The article deals also with the influence of parents on overcoming or, vice versa, increasing children's stress.

FiRe 2 : An Online Database for Photographic and Cinematographic Film Technical Data

Among the great variety of our Cultural Heritage, photographic and cinematographic materials are fundamental and direct witnesses of the past. As often happens when dealing with materials of cultural interest, even photographic and cinematographic films can undergo severe deterioration, aging, and color fading throughout the time, leading to the need for proper restoration, conservation, and preservation of these materials. In this context, even though the digitization process is becoming more and more essential, analyzing and studying the analog materials remains fundamental to perform a retrieval or a correction faithful to the original material. For this reason, the lack of technical information (especially for the oldest materials) and the absence of open source archives of the producing companies underlines the actual and concrete need for a database of physical, chemical, and sensitometric data of both cinematography and photographic films. The aim of this work is the creation and the promotion of FiRe 2 , a big and unique database of cinematographic and photographic materials to support the work of conservators, restorers, and researchers, as the availability of information and the cooperation between institutions and professionals are essential for preserving our Cultural Heritage.

Short-Term Psychological Support for Civilians Exposed to the January 2015 Terrorist Attacks in France.

Following a terrorist attack, responses to a psychosocial disaster range from low-intensity initiatives to high-intensity treatment. Some studies described post-disaster psychosocial services and planning across Europe. However, little is known about the psychosocial support (PS) actually delivered after terrorist attacks. This study assesses prevalence and the factors associated with not receiving short-term PS among terror-exposed people with probable mental health disorders following the January 2015 terrorist attacks in France. This study used data from the first wave of a longitudinal survey conducted six months after the attacks. Prevalence and factors associated with not receiving PS were described in the immediate period (48 hours), the early post-immediate period (48 hours-one week), and the medium-term (over one week) using a robust Poisson regression for each of the three periods. Nearly one-half of the participants (N = 189) did not receive PS in any period (46.6% in the immediate period, 45.5% in the early post-immediate period, and 54.5% in the medium-term). In each period, not receiving PS was associated with not being very close to the attack sites. Not receiving PS in the immediate period was also associated with being a direct witness (DW) rather than being directly threatened (DT) and not having support in daily life; in the early post-immediate period, not receiving PS was associated with not having a peri-traumatic dissociation experience and being followed for a psychological problem before the attacks; and in the medium-term period, it was associated with perceived social isolation. The characteristics of the terror exposure and social support seemed to influence presence or absence of PS after the terrorist attack and highlight the need for strategies to reach out to people regardless of the type of exposure.

Child safety assessments during a caregiver's evaluation in emergency departments after intimate partner violence.

Physical abuse of children is reported to occur in 30%-60% of homes with intimate partner violence (IPV). IPV in adult victims presenting to emergency departments (EDs) represents a critical opportunity to evaluate for child safety. The primary objective was to determine the frequency of child safety assessments (CSAs), defined as any documented inquiry about the presence of children in the household, when adults presented to EDs for IPV. The secondary aims were to assess (1) the impact of demographic factors, ED type, and social work (SW) involvement on the likelihood of CSAs; (2) the nature of children's exposure; and (3) the frequency of child protective services (CPS) reports. We performed a chart review of encounters with ICD-10-CM codes for patients aged 18-60 with IPV presenting to three EDs in Connecticut from 2017 through 2019. CSAs were completed in 179/277 encounters (78.9%) and were more likely to be completed in encounters with SW involvement than without (162/171 [94.7%] vs. 17/56 [30.3%], p< 0.001). A total of 143 children lived in the home at the time of the incident; of the 107 children for whom the nature of exposure was known, 10 (9.3%) were physically involved and 26 (24.2%) were direct witnesses to the violence. CPS reports were made in 52.4% of the encounters in which children lived in the home. CSAs were omitted in one-fifth of encounters for IPV. Given the high prevalence of children involved in IPV episodes, ED encounters for IPV represent an opportunity to improve the safety of children.

King Lear “After” Auschwitz: Shakespeare, Appropriation and Theatres of Catastrophe in Post-War British Drama. By Richard Ashby

Richard Ashby’s King Lear “After” Auschwitz takes flight from Adorno’s famous dictum that “to write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric.”1 Adorno’s call for an aesthetics founded on contradiction rather than harmonization speaks directly to the dissonances of King Lear, and Adorno’s turn to Beckett in search of a dramaturgy tuned to catastrophe dovetails with the Lear-Beckett rapprochement that defines so much postwar theater. Ashby uses Adorno’s aesthetic and cultural writings to organize a project enriched by many other thinkers who were interred or displaced by the Holocaust, including Primo Levi, Hannah Arendt, Elias Canetti, and Walter Benjamin, and the cover of the book displays a sketch of Poor Tom in his hovel by the Austrian artist Oskar Kokoschka, who was deemed a degenerate by the Nazis. Nonetheless, this is not an inquiry into the meanings of King Lear for Jewish thinkers or other victims, survivors, and direct witnesses of the camps. Instead, Ashby, like Adorno, uses the phrase “after Auschwitz” to diagnose postwar consumerism, the automatism of mass culture, and the rise of the administrative and biopolitical state. This metonymizing of Auschwitz allows Ashby to take up a subject rather different from Shakespeare and the Holocaust per se: namely, appropriations of King Lear by postwar British playwrights, who addressed historical and existential traumas that unfolded after the camps had been emptied, such as the pain of exile and social alienation (David Rudkin’s 1984 Will’s Way), the genocide in Bosnia (Sarah Kane’s 1995 Blasted), and the devastations of industrialism and climate change (Forced Entertainment’s 2016 Table Top Shakespeare, Dennis Kelly’s 2010 The Gods Weep). The result is a powerful study of Shakespearean appropriation that deftly maneuvers among critical, textual, philosophical, and performance materials in order to craft definitive readings of major works of modern British drama and establish the unique thematic and formal affordances of King Lear as equipment for confronting catastrophe.

Memories of Sarajevo Jew Benjamin Samokovlija – Damjan about his participation in the National liberation and anti-fascist war in Yugoslavia (1941-1945)

Benjamin Samokovlija (Sarajevo, 31.III.1918 - Skopje, 28.II.1996), comes from a Jewish family. On April 5, 1941 he was mobilized in the ranks of the army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In the second half of August 1941, Benjamin joined the ranks of the National Liberation Army and the People's Liberation Army. He took part in numerous battles in the anti-fascist war for the liberation of Yugoslavia. After the Fourth Enemy Offensive of the Supreme Headquarters of the People's Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia which took place in the first half of 1943, Samokovlija together with part of his partisan unit were captured by the Germans and imprisoned in Zenica. After a month in the Zenica prison, a group of 600 prisoners, including Samokovlija, were transferred to the Thessaloniki concentration camp. In October 1943, through an EAM connection, Benjamin Samokovlija managed to escape and join ELAS. He remained in the ranks of the Greek partisans until the contact with the Macedonian partisans from the First Macedonian-Kosovo Brigade on the territory of the Aegean part of Macedonia in the period between the second half of December 1943 and January 1944. He was admitted to the III Battalion and was in charge of the agitprop of the battalion, from where he was later transferred to the ranks of the II, V and X brigades, acting as a battalion commissioner and participating in the battles for the liberation of Macedonia. At the very beginning of World War II in 1941, Benjamin Samokovlija lost many of his immediate family members, including his parents and wife. As direct witnesses to the measures taken for the physical and economic destruction of the Jews in Bosnia and Herzegovina by the German occupying authorities, their collaborators and the authorities of the Independent State of Croatia, his three sisters joined the People's Liberation War. His eldest sister Laura was killed in 1945. Benjamin Samokovlija is the holder of several military and state decorations. During his tenure, he ran a number of state-owned enterprises. It is particularly important to emphasize that for less than two decades he served as President of the Jewish community in the Republic of Macedonia, building strong friendly relations with other religious communities in the country.

Una testimonianza sulla nascita della Fondazione Corrente

The article is a direct witness of the birth of Fondazione Corrente given by one of his President. It underlines the relations between the historical movement of “Corrente” in 1938 and the new venture in 1978, focusing on the political engagement

Synthesis of Fukushima Daiichi Cs-bearing microparticles through molten core-concrete interaction in nitrogen atmosphere

Cs-bearing microparticles, released during the accident of Fukushima Daiichi, are a significant concern for health and environment due to their abundance over wide areas, associated with a low solubility. Since their discovery, efforts have been made to characterise these particles and use them as direct witnesses of the various events inside the reactors. This study reports the experimental synthesis of micrometric particles through molten core-concrete interaction. Primary chemical analyses on Al/Si, K/Si and Na/Si atomic ratios seem to confirm concrete as source of Si. Cs has also been identified in low concentrations.

A “Stretchier” Kind of Witnessing

The article compiles the events marking the precarity of disabled peoples’ lives during the Second World War in Germany through an examination of the transition of Nazi psychiatric killing centers into memorials during the long twentieth century. As Judith Butler points out in Frames of War: When is Life Grievable?, recognizing the conditions of vulnerability calls us to a responsibility to alter abuse, suffering, and violence; yet it may also be true that “the apprehension of precariousness leads to a heightening of violence, [as] an insight into the physical vulnerability of some set of others […] and incites the desire to destroy them” (2). Such is the case with the medical mass murder of 300,000+ psychiatric patients in Nazi Germany as this preliminary medical mass murder made possible the post-1941 Holocaust genocide of 5.4 million Jewish people in death camp gas chambers. Thus, the article attempts to answer some critical questions by using Nazi medical mass murder as its historical foundation: How does one witness a violent mass tragedy when no witnesses survived? What meaning can be derived from the memorialization of disability history in our own contemporary moment? What do these public acts of recognition mean to disabled people as a group and/or disability scholars as part of the preservation of disability history? Why do these medical mass killings that pre-date and lead to the Holocaust still sit primarily unrecognized and forgotten? Finally, what do today’s memorialization practices tell us about contemporary attitudes toward disability as this largely unaffiliated subpopulation lives in the aftermath of this murderous history? When and how do disabled lives become grievable? How might we devise an alternative model to Holocaust studies’ pivotal reliance on direct witnesses that are not available in the Aktion T4 psychiatric killings?

From Arabism to Inclusivism: Reorientation of Al-Irsyad's Educational Patterns in East Java, 1919-1984

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This article aims to provide a description and analysis of the changes in the style of education of Al-Irsyad organization in East Java from 1919 to 1984. The style of Arabism that is closely related to Al-Irsyad is gradually fading. This study uses historical research methods with the primary sources used being official organization documents and direct witnesses. The results of this study indicate that Al-Irsyad education in East Java had a shifting in style, from bolder Arabism to tending to be normative and inclusive. This shifting was caused by the formalization of the government's education curriculum, the needs of the times, and demands for adjustment to the local indigenous people. One of the main consequences of this shift was the decline in the number of educators and scholars from Al-Irsyad’s education.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

The reception of Jubilees in Greek catena manuscripts of Genesis

Several Greek catena manuscripts preserve material from Jubilees, offering valuable witness to the largely lost Greek version of the book. Yet how did material from this Second Temple composition become part of a late ancient Christian anthology? This article interrogates the transmission of Jubilees material in catena manuscripts of Genesis. Rather than offering direct witness to Greek manuscripts of Jubilees, this material had already been appropriated and restructured before the compilers of catena manuscripts collected and reorganized it around the textual frame of Greek Genesis. Two conduits account for the availability of this material: the use of Jubilees among late ancient chronographers and a widespread genealogical tradition, derived from Jubilees, that names the wives of biblical patriarchs. In late antiquity, the Book of Jubilees often circulated not as a unified composition but as individual units which were assimilated into other structuring frameworks, whether the schemata of chronographers or the (margins of) the Greek Bible itself. The late ancient reception of Jubilees thus foreshadows the atomism of modern text-critical appropriations. The conclusions of this article invite similar exploration for other Second Temple texts.

Trăgători și Mistificatori: Contrarevoluția Securității în decembrie 1989

Trăgători și Mistificatori: Contrarevoluția Securității în decembrie 1989

"Hymen" and "Mask of Queens" by Inigo Jones. Early spectacles at the court of James I and the Baroque theatrical aesthetics

The subject of the study is the changes in the theatrical space and artistic features of the two early court masks during the transition from the Renaissance theater system to the Baroque. The object of the study were two early court spectacles of the Stuart period in the context of Baroque aesthetics – "Hymen" and "Mask of Queens", the authors of which were the playwright Ben Johnson and the artist Inigo Jones. Special attention is paid to the scenic design of both masks and the transformations of the theater space, in which the main role is played by the stage device – the turning circle. Its use in spectacles not only allowed the artist to change the whole design and express one of the main themes of the performance through the transformations themselves, but also combined stage transformations with the plot action of the mask. The research material is presented by the surviving texts of Ben Johnson's mask plays, letters from courtiers and ambassadors who were direct witnesses of court spectacles, as well as published sketches of costumes and scenery by Inigo Jones. The methodology of the work includes a cultural-historical approach, a descriptive method, a method of comparative analysis, as well as a reconstruction of a theatrical performance that has not yet been carried out in relation to both masks. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that for the first time in Russian theater studies, an attempt has been made to consider the aesthetic features of Inigo Jones' theatrical and decorative art in the context of Baroque aesthetics based on the material of two court spectacles. The main conclusion is the identification in the two early Stuart masks of the features of Baroque art and the transition to the formation of the English Baroque theater with its scenic metamorphoses, striking the viewer dynamics, the coverage of the universal expanses on stage and the synthesis of all the arts.

Crimean Events of 2014: Causes, Chronology, Consequences

ABSTRACT This article examines the military-political situation around the Crimean peninsula. Three issues are discussed in detail: (a) the historical roots of Crimea’s contemporary problems, (b) the events of 2014, and (c) the military importance of the peninsula and the present system of its defense. The text is accompanied by photographs and maps. Being a native Crimean, a citizen of both Ukraine and Russia, the author considers the stated topic from the point of view of a direct witness and participant in the events. This corrects the current clear numerical superiority of those foreign researchers who either were not present in the Crimea during the events of 2014 or never visited the territory of the peninsula at all. Being very critical of the current Ukrainian and Russian realities, the author expresses an exclusively personal opinion, in no way connected with either the official position of the authorities of Ukraine and Russia or with the public moods currently prevailing in the Crimea. 1 1 ‘Krymskiye sobytiya 2014 goda: prichiny, khronologiya, posledstviya’, translated by Dr. H. S. Orenstein.

Raden Saleh Syarif Bustaman (circa 1811-1880) and the Java War (1825-30) : A Dissident Family History

The childhood years of the famous Arab-Javanese painter, Raden Saleh Syarif Bustaman (ca. 1811-80), in Semarang from his birth in ca. May 1811 up to the Java War (1825-30) are crucial for understanding his subsequent attitudes towards the Dutch and their colonial rule in Java as expressed through his art. Growing up in the household of his uncle, the enlightened Semarang regent (bupati), Suroadimenggolo V (1765/8-1826; in office 1809-22), and his Calcutta-educated cousins, Raden Mas Saleh and Raden Mas Sukur, the young painter was a direct witness to the tragedy which overwhelmed his close family in the lead up to Diponegoro’s great rebellion. From a position of trust and cooperation with Raffles and other senior members of the British interim administration (1811-16), within a short decade (1816-26) Suroadimenggolo’s world was destroyed. Both his and his sons’ outspokenness and pro-British sentiments became a liability following the Dutch return in August 1816. This led to their dismissal from their posts in Semarang (1822) and Lasem (1824) respectively, and worse happened following the outbreak of the Java War, when both he and his elder son, Raden Mas Saleh, suffered arrest (8 September 1825) and lengthy detention on Dutch naval vessels when the regent’s younger son, Sukur, joined Diponegoro’s forces. Even after his early death on 15 November 1826, the aged Semarang bupati’s body found no peace in the Terboyo (Semarang) family graveyard. Sent east to distant Madura, it was later (20 July 1827) reinterred in the royal burial ground of his son-in-law, the Sultan of Sumenep, Paku Nataningrat (r. 1811-54), while the Dutch authorities sought to cover their tracks with misleading obituary notices (Appendices Ia and Ib). The present article, using a range of published and archival sources, illustrates this tragic family history, and speculates on the likely effects such events may have had on the young painter, Saleh, as he began his career under the aegis of his Belgian mentor, Antoine Auguste Joseph Payen (1792-1853). Two further appendices provide a Bustaman family tree (Appendix II) and a Brief Chronology of Kiai Adipati Suroadimenggolo and his family, 1865-1880 (Appendix III).

Tărnovgrad Viewed by the Others: the Case of Niketas Choniates

The text is devoted to the analysis of the portrayal of Tărnovo, the new capital of the restored near the end of the twelfth century Bulgarian state, in the historical work and speeches by Niketas Choniates, a Byzantine historian, official and rhetorician from the latter half of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. As a direct witness of the contemporary Byzantine-Bulgarian relations, a high ranking court dignitary throughout most of the discussed period, and the author of the most important sources shedding light on the restitution of Bulgaria, he left a legacy of extraordinary importance, one which has shaped views of the subsequent generations of Byzantine historians. While examining Tărnovo’s role shows it did not occupy a particularly significant place in the historian’s narrative, and the remarks concerning it appear as if in passing, he nonetheless was fully conscious of the city’s significance not only for the Bulgarians themselves, but also in the context of the prospective expansion of the Empire in the direction of its northern neighbours. It is therefore no accident that in his brief characterisation the city the author focused on the description of the defensive qualities of Tărnovo. Paradoxically, his arguments on this subject may play an important role in the present ongoing discussion among the archaeologists exploring the former capital on the subject of chronology and size of the fortifications surrounding the two most important hills on which the city developed, namely Tsarevets and Trapezitsa.

Directivos ante situaciones de crisis. El uso de LinkedIn por parte de la CEO de Metro de Madrid durante la borrasca Filomena / Senior managers in crisis situations. The use of LinkedIn by the CEO of Metro de Madrid during the storm Filomena

In January 2021, the storm Filomena paralysed Spain. One of the most affected cities was Madrid, which suffered a general collapse for several days. Metro de Madrid (underground railway company and one of the most popular public services in the city) continued to provide service to its users. Silvia Roldan (CEO of Metro de Madrid) wrote a daily post on LinkedIn to explain to users what problems they were facing, how they were being solved and how the service was ensured. Metro de Madrid is an underground railway company that was inaugurated in 1919. It extends over 294 kilometres distributed in 302 stations. It employs 7,000 persons. Other data of Metro de Madrid are: 2,400 cars, 8,758 security cameras, 1,263 vending machines, 2,424 tele-indicators, 1,703 escalators, 541 lifts and 5,386 intercoms. "LinkedIn is a social network that has a great attraction, you are addressing a professional audience, which judges you on the basis of the work you do", says the CEO of Metro de Madrid in an interview conducted to illustrate this research. This research is based on two hypotheses: 1) In a crisis context, direct communication between a company's executive and stakeholders reduces uncertainty and helps to restore institutional equilibrium; and 2) It is possible to find a paradigmatic model in this type of communication with specific stakeholders. This research carried out a quantitative and qualitative analysis using a content analysis of Roldan’s posts on LinkedIn during this crisis and an interview with the CEO of Metro de Madrid. This case gives us some lessons in communication as main results. LinkedIn is an optimal platform for crisis communication, especially if we want to transmit moderately long messages, with nuances, aimed at a professional audience willing to listen and dialogue. Roldan’s colloquial and friendly tone used in her posts are justified in this case (Filomena crisis). She is CEO of the company, direct witness of the facts and responsible for the solutions that are implemented. She uses the first-person narrative, which produces closeness and is a good remedy against uncertainty. It complements institutional messages, transmitted through institutional media and channels, which use a more aseptic and formal tone. The use of photographs in the published posts establishes an emotional links between the author of the post and readers. Readers feel like a direct witness of the facts, especially when the photograph is a subjective close-up. LinkedIn, despite not being Metro de Madrid's main communication channel, is a useful and valuable platform for communicating in emergency situations, even in a more personal and less institutional way than other platforms. Perhaps its greatest virtue is to target a professional and specialised audience, which can be proactive in the resolution of an emergency. The use of LinkedIn in emergency situations is still under-researched compared to other social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram. This article is part of the competitive research project: “Crisis and emergency communication in Social Media. Study of its use in Spain and design of information protocols for institutions and media (COMCRISIS - PID2019-109064GB-I00)” granted and funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of the Spanish Government.

‘If It Wasn’t For Us … ’: Peripheral Narratives of the Pacific War

ABSTRACT Scholarship on the Indigenous experience of World War II has justly focused on recording accounts of direct witnesses of that period. Such a sense of urgency, at least in Papua New Guinea, has led to the neglect of areas of the country that, though not directly affected by the war, were invested in the war effort by providing labour and soldiers. Communities residing in those areas recall stories of their war heroes as key figures for the liberation of the country and, ultimately, its current adherence to ‘Western values’. Through an analysis of the moral claims that those peripheral stories entail, in this article I suggest potential directions for the study of narratives of World War II that move beyond ‘the era of the witness’.