Nazi Concentration Camps Research Articles

Uncovering Buried Historical Memory: A Conversation with Grzegorz Kwiatkowski

Uncovering Buried Historical MemoryA Conversation with Grzegorz Kwiatkowski Grzegorz Kwiatkowski (bio) and Peter Constantine (bio) Grzegorz Kwiatkowski is a new and dynamic poetic voice from Poland, with six volumes of poetry and several translations on the way, as well as the vocalist of the psychedelic postpunk band Trupa Trupa. His newest collection, Crops, translated into English by Peter Constantine, was published by Rain Taxi in November 2021. In this interview, Constantine and Kwiatkowski discuss the themes of his poetry and his endeavors as a musician and activist. [End Page 34] Click for larger view View full resolution HOLOCAUST CONCEPT JEWISH SHOES FOR REMEMBRANCE DAY, AUSCHWITZ BIRKENAU Peter Constantine: Several years ago a number of students at the University of Connecticut specializing in Polish began translating your work. One of the students, Michal Ciebielski, published his translations in New Poetry in Translation, which caused quite a sensation. Readers were drawn to the stark voices of your poems, the different narrators from a troubling past who tell compelling and often frightening stories in a minimal and distilled form. Grzegorz Kwiatkowski: On reflection I realize that was in fact the first time my work was translated and published outside Poland. I was delighted with the translation. It really hit the mark. The English was minimalistic and cold and very direct. As for the voices in my poems, I feel that an artist in some way has to be like a sponge, and for me that means hearing and absorbing different voices from the past and present. It was important to live with these voices for a while. I think this is the crux of my method: I strive to listen to others as much as I can and to be as open as I can. But I do make a selection from these voices, and this selection is usually very dark. I believe that this dark music that I am seeking and re-creating has its source in my family history, in which the Nazi concentration camp Stutthof played a very central role. Constantine: When I started reading your poetry, I came across an article in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, and then later in the Guardian too, about your grandfather taking you to the Stutthof camp when you were a child, and about the gruesome and momentous discovery you made there more recently. Kwiatkowski: Yes, when I was a child my grandfather took me to Stutthof. It was the first time he’d returned there since World War II. It was a very traumatic experience for him. He tried to reconstruct what had happened to him, and his memories suddenly came alive—memories from when he was an inmate there. Both he and his sister. I was a child, and suddenly I saw my grandfather as a broken person. He was crying, shouting. He was in a state of trauma. It was a very powerful and very devastating experience for me, perhaps the most important experience in my life. My head was suddenly filled with so many questions, vital and simple questions: Why do people hate one another? Why do people murder one another? Why do such places as concentration camps exist? In some way from this time on I was lost, and yet perhaps quite the opposite. I began seeking a way to understand these horrors. Walter Stier by Grzegorz Kwiatkowski translated by Peter Constantine You never saw any trains? nonever we had far too much work to dowe never left the officewe worked day and night And yes, many years after this visit with my grandfather, my friend and Trupa Trupa bandmate Rafał Wojczal and I were walking near the fence of the museum of the concentration camp and found first hundreds and then thousands of shoes. It turned out that there were almost half a million shoes. The Stutthof concentration camp was a kind of shoe-gathering center for all the concentration camps in Europe; the Nazis collected the leather for manufacturing everyday leather items. And when the Red Army soldiers in 1945 “liberated” the camp, they counted the shoes. There were half a million. In 1967, when the Stutthof Museum was established, the director...

Assigning Numbers in Nazi Concentration Camps as a Factor of Dehumanization: As Remembered by Soviet Rrisoners

The author considers the semantic and semiotic meaning of assigning numbers to prisoners of the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. These concentration camps were formally designed to exterminate the enemies of the state, but in fact, in addition, they defined the limits of the possibilities of turning a person into a part of the total state. Assigning a number to a prisoner in a camp was the key factor in annihilating a person, transforming him into a sign, depriving a person of the most important anthropological properties, which ultimately facilitated the elimination of a prisoner. As a result of assigning a number to a prisoner, while staying in a camp, it became increasingly difficult for a prisoner to remember his own name; his inner essence "merged" with the number; his real name was forgotten. The reduction of a person to a number entrenched the deprivation of a prisoner of human status; it became the highest degree of degradation; it turned a prisoner from a person into a typical specimen with the sign of a person whose number correlated and entrenched the symbolic authenticity of the object into which a prisoner was turned. The assignment of a number took all the actions of the SS men regarding prisoners beyond any moral and ethical assessments. A person without a name, deprived of realizing his personal uniqueness and image - the necessary conditions for self-perception as a thinking, living being, merged with similar people; he was doomed to silence; he was turned into an object of influence.

The Gift of Happy Memories: A World War II Christmas Puppet Play in Ravensbrück

Szopki, Polish musical nativity puppet plays, were a widespread but relatively unstudied artistic response to Nazi occupation among Polish Catholics in Nazi concentration camps. As the nativity story is only a small portion of a szopka production, the Polish inmates had opportunities to subvert censorship during the rest of the performance. The artist Maja Berezowska and the actress Jadwiga Kopijowska wrote and performed Szopka Polska in the Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1942, 1943, and 1944. This article examines the adaptation of traditional carols and puppets in the context of social ritual to facilitate a purposeful recreation of happy and comforting prewar memories in the play. Building on scholarship that focuses on less visible forms and sites of resistance, the present article’s approach frames the sharing of positive memories as a form of caretaking. These activities, especially communal activities led by women, are often overlooked in scholarship in favor of more overt or dramatic actions.The Szopka Polska writers drew strength from representations of childhood and motherhood. Parodied traditional songs and altered stock szopki scenes promoted Polish heritage and normalcy, using Poland’s past triumphs as hope for future liberation. Three modern puppets, the Soldier, Polish Mother, and a Häftling (inmate), attend the nativity and directly address the inmates’ World War II experiences, a phenomenon that rarely occurred in other forms of concentration camp theater. In the play, these three puppets, the 19th-century folk character Wiarus, and a skit for two children promote survival and resistance by modeling productive reactions to oppression.@font-face{font-family:"Cambria Math";panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;mso-font-charset:0;mso-generic-font-family:roman;mso-font-pitch:variable;mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal{mso-style-unhide:no;mso-style-qformat:yes;mso-style-parent:"";margin:0in;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";}.MsoChpDefault{mso-style-type:export-only;mso-default-props:yes;font-size:11.0pt;mso-ansi-font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;mso-ascii-font-family:Arial;mso-fareast-font-family:Arial;mso-hansi-font-family:Arial;mso-bidi-font-family:Arial;mso-ansi-language:EN;}.MsoPapDefault{mso-style-type:export-only;line-height:115%;}div.WordSection1{page:WordSection1;}

Can theories on complex trauma and attachment make room for Garwood’s concept of a psychic guardian?

This review essay of a new book by GP and psychotherapist (and Nazi camp survivor), Alfred Garwood, explores the effect of severe early childhood trauma on the development of the adult. It relates how Dr Garwood was interned in a Nazi concentration camp from the age of nine months to two years old. He grew up to become a GP and psychotherapist, but his early experiences always reverberated inside him. Garwood’s efforts to cope with those reverberations led him to develop the concept of a “psychic guardian” which is explored in this article.

The Survivor

The Survivor

Rytuał w wykonaniu kobiet „Radio Majdanek”

The article provides insight into the historical phenomenon of performed „radio broadcasts” conducted by the female prisoners of the Nazi concentration camp at Majdanek, Poland. Every day over a period of a few months, women played the role of radio announcers and recreated from memory the communication formulas of Polish Radio broadcasts. The prisoners associated the pre-war Polish Radio with a strong message of cultural heritage and humanist values. The re-enactment and listening of the broadcasts evoked positive emotions and stirred the imagination of the women. The „radio” united them and gave them the strength to survive the reality of the concentration camp, promoted adherence to cultural norms, brought back the works of poets and writers, and provided entertainment. The broadcasts became a ritual ordering the mental universe of the women, which gave meaning to the everyday, provided a sense of the continuity of time that confirmed the women’s identities, their sense of dignity and belonging to a community. The memory of the structure and aesthetics of an electronic broadcast gave the women a communication tool to construct and to preserve their own culture in a death camp. In the broadcasts they performed, the Polish female prisoners constructed a space where they were able to preserve their dignity and humanity.

Lectures on beauty as a way to preserve the spiritual strength and dignity of women in the German concentration camp FKL Ravensbrück in the light of the documentation of prof. Karolina Lanckorońska

Introduction: The article aims at analysing the influence of beauty on the spirituality of women (in a philosophical sense) and the value of art history education during the secret teaching that women received in the all-female German Nazi concentration camp – FKL Ravensbrück. The clandestine lessons were initiated by the Polish teachers to save fellow prisoners, young Polish women, who were subjected to some criminal medical experiments conducted by the Germans. The researcher examines the role of telling stories about beauty and works of art in the extreme conditions, when the excruciating suffering was cumulating and depriving the prisoners of hope for survival. The author indicates the importance of influencing the listeners’ with the value of beauty contained in the lecturer’s words concerning the works of art and the emanation of her personal spiritual beauty. The research also underlines the role of the ancient method of learning through ekphrasis and emphasizes the therapeutic value of beauty. Method: Analysis of the source documents: the mémoires of the former Ravensbrück inmates and the results of Urszula Wińska’s survey. Conclusions: Attending the secret classes by the Polish women-prisoners (so called “Rabbits”, as they were subjected to the medical experiments) at FKL Ravensbrück and their education in the field of art history and aesthetics provided by prof. Karolina Lanckorońska had a double meaning. On one hand, it allowed the women to survive the camp (ad hoc effect of teaching), and on the other hand, it strengthened their need for a stronger attachment to their Polish roots and returning to the family home. It also boosted their love for the model of social life, in which one is to start one’s own family and protect the lives of its members.

ПОЕТИКА СВЕДОЧЕЊА СПАСЕНИХ: ОД СВИТАКА ДО ВЕЛИКЕ ПРИЧЕ

The subject of the paper is the analysis of genre features of the heterogeneous corpus of Holocaust testimonies created directly in the Nazi Concentration Camps and those formed from a greater time distance from lived experiences, preserved in the form of documents or transcribed conversations. The research material consists of Megilas Oyshvits (1973), conversations of Gideon Greif, the most important historian of the Holocaust, with surviving members of the “Sonderkommandos” and the work of Primo Levi, also a surviving prisoner of the Auschwitz camp. The analysis of the mentioned morphologically and methodologically different testimonies (megilas, diary notes, conversations, autobiographical-memoir records, texts on the linear position of novels, essays and scientific studies) leads to the conclusion of their contribution to complicating the genre system of literary-scientific types and deconstructing some elementary settings. connection with factography as the “pole” of truth and science in them.

El fotógrafo de Mauthausen/The Photographer of Mauthausen (Targarona 2018): Francesc Boix’s legacy from page to screen

El fotógrafo de Mauthausen/The Photographer of Mauthausen () is the first feature film on Spaniards deported to Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War and represents a watershed moment for the country’s collective memory. The film focuses on Francesc Boix, a young Catalan photojournalist who spearheaded a clandestine operation to save photographic evidence of the Nazi’s crimes while a prisoner in Mauthausen. Despite its visual acuity, Targarona’s entry is a complicated addition to the canon of recent concentration camp films, given the director’s positioning of Boix as a macho hero and her counterfactual depictions of Mauthausen. By juxtaposing archival photography with stills from the film, this article traces the recreation of Boix’s experience, as well as how his story has had an enduring impact on the memory of all the Spanish and Catalan survivors of Mauthausen in Spain’s collective imagination.

영화 속의 역사, 역사 속의 영화:

This article attempts to examine a French documentary film directed by Alain Resnais in 1956, Night and Fog, and especially the historical context in which it was produced and accepted. The film was a typical historical movie in that it dealt the Nazi concentration camps in the 1930s and 1940s and showed the holocaust in World War II, and that it conveyed their history to the younger generations: it has been released on the TV public channels or for the secondary education in France for decades. And the film was born in the midst of growing memories of the deportation by enacting national memorial day of the deportation, establishing a memorial of the martyrs of the deportation, and publishing a collection of the deportation survivors’ testimonies. A rumor that this film was out of the nomination for the Cannes International Film Festival under the pressure of the West German Embassy gave rise to a great dispute and anger in French society in April 1956, thereby showing that the anti-German sentiment was still strong among the French. But the censorship taking issue with a scene that revealed the kepi of a French gendarme who guarded the camp at Pithiviers, was not highlighted by the press, thereby signifying that memories of ‘the collaboration by the Vichy regime’ were still suppressed. Since the 1980s when all the other memories were overwhelmed by memories of the holocaust, the film came to the fore as a pioneering holocaust movie. Although its title, “Night and Fog” implied the suppression of Resistance rather than the holocaust, and even the word “jew” hardly appeared in its narration, it can fall within the category of the holocaust film because it properly preserved and conveyed the essential images of the holocaust. (Dongduk Women’s University / greve@hanmail.net)

Improving the Explanation of Electoral Behavior Through a Combination of Historical and Local Context – The Case of the AfD’s Results at the Federal Election in Germany in 2017

Abstract The purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which an approach that takes into account the historical and spatial context of an election can contribute to a better understanding of electoral dynamics in general. It applies this approach to the analysis of the results of the populist radical right party “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) at the 2017 federal election in Germany. Making use of a newly compiled dataset at the municipality level in Germany, local context will first be included in a direct way, measured by distances from the municipalities to relevant geographical markers that can be associated with a long-term or a short-term historical legacy. These spatial points include former Nazi concentration camps (main camps as well as relevant sub-camps) in order to test for the long-term legacy, first reception facilities for refugees during the so-called “refugee crisis” (2015–16) as markers of one of the most incisive developments of the recent past in Germany. Additionally, the distance to the Eastern border is tested, as this variable has proven to be relevant in the context of earlier studies on the AfD. Second, actively modeling spatial non-stationarity using Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) in an exploratory manner shows that most effects on the strength of the AfD at the municipality level (from modernization loser theory to the contact hypothesis) vary significantly and considerably in terms of strength throughout Germany.

Katyn – Golgotha of the East

Poland has experienced two cruel systems. One of them was fascism, symbolized by the German Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. The second one was Stalinism, Katyn will remain its symbol forever. For over 50 years, no other issue in Polish-Soviet relations was as concealed as the Katyn massacre. In this essay, I will talk about the genocide in 1940 on 22,000 Poles (soldiers and civilians), investigations in this matter, and the fight for the truth. Everyone knew that any public statement about this crime could have significant consequences, such as dismissal from work or school expulsion. The Katyn genocide was a war crime that was first concealed and then distorted for the longest time. It can be said that it was a crime against the Polish nation.For many years, the press, radio, and television did not talk about it. On April 13, 2020, Polish people celebrated the Katyn Massacre Remembrance Day. In the spring of the year 1940, during two months in and around Katyn (currently in Russia), executioners from the NKVD, ordered by the Soviet authorities, murdered 21,857 prisoners of war with a shot in the back of the head. NKVD-People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. This enormously evil deed of the Bolsheviks is called the Golgotha of the East. Golgotha is a place near Jerusalem where convicts were executed. Christians believe that Jesus Christ was crucified in this place. Similarly, innocent Polish officers were killed at this place of execution. The name of the crime comes from the village of Katyń near Smolensk, where victims were murdered and buried.

"PLAYING WITH REALITY" IN A NAZI CONCENTRATION CAMP.

This paper explores the function of play under traumatic circumstances, focusing on playing with the reality of a Nazi concentration camp. The goal of playing was to enhance life forces, which was achieved by active mastery of the passive trauma, re-establishment of inner equilibrium, transformation of internal reality into a more bearable one, recovery of symbolic functioning. The analysis of the movie "Life is Beautiful" is used for illustrating this theme.

Karel Bergman – jeden ze dvou a půl tisíce; z Trhové Kamenice mezi příslušníky Royal air force

This article addresses the destiny of an ordinary man, Karel Bergman – a civilian who fought for the freedom of his nation. It seeks to describe the life of a man for whom entry into the Czechoslovak foreign armed forces was not easy, but who did his very best for his country. The article also commemorates the sad destiny of his family – as Karel Bergman was a Czechoslovak Jew. Karel Bergman was one of the 2 500 Czechoslovak airmen in the RAF. He was not a pilot or an air crew member; his duties were different; but men in his line of duty ought also to be remembered. Karel Bergman was born into a Jewish family in the small town of Trhová Kamenice in East Bohemia. After his studies he entered the family business and supported his local community, as did other Jewish families there. When the situation in Czechoslovakia became harder for Jewish people, he left his country for the United Kingdom. There he started his own business and employed refugee women. He was called up to the Czechoslovak army in exile, but his recruitment was postponed several times due to his work for refugees. When he entered the Czechoslovak army in exile, he took up his duties as interpreter and translator. He served as translator in the 312th Czechoslovak Fighter Squadron, for Fighter Command and other units. When World War II ended, he was demobilised and tried to engage in a normal life as the sole survivor from his family, his mother and sister and other members of his family having been murdered in Nazi concentration camps. Upon returning to his homeland, he met a friend of his cousin’s and married her. Later, because of the communist party takeover in Czechoslovakia, he left his homeland with his wife and stepdaughter for Canada. A job was offered to him in the United Kingdom, enabling him and his family to stay there. He later bought the company in which he worked. Karel Bergman died on 14 September 1983 at a UK airport, and his ashes were scattered at the Dřevíkov Jewish cemetery in Czechoslovakia.

Functional Specificity of the Guidebook to the Concentration Camp Memorial

This article forms part of series of comparative studies dealing with tourist guidebooks to the memorials of various former concentration camps in Germany published years ago during the GDR era and today. The authors substantiate the need to consider the former concentration camp memorial guidebook as an independent kind of genre identifying both functions for the memorial guidebook and inappropriate functions and underlying the need to expand the usual genre functionality of the guidebook. A new group of tourist guidebooks has been introduced. These are guidebooks of so-called places of traumatic memory as the former Nazi concentration camps can be considered. These guidebooks form homogeneous group among a vast variety of tourist guidebooks.

Disrupted and Unsettled: An Introduction to Monuments, Memorials, and Italian Migrations

Disrupted and Unsettled: An Introduction to Monuments, Memorials, and Italian Migrations

Holy Night

What is the value of a book? Is hope worth dying for? In this work of philosophical WWII era short fiction, three prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp find a bible. A book in Birkenau. They know that if it is found in their position they will be punished, if not killed, and yet, they decide to hide and keep this hidden treasure. They know, for their own safety, they should burn the evidence. Or, should they trade it for food? Or read it? While the risks are great, they decide they will die before giving up the book. They also consider sharing it with others, at least, until they day comes they are caught.

Turn the pain and affliction into thinking about the beauty

Abstract: The article reflects on the importance of opposing Polish women - prisoners of the German Nazi concentration camp FKL Ravensbrück - to the practices of the German authorities (guards and medical staff of this camp) used against prisoners. One of the forms of opposing the totalitarianism of the Third Reich was secret teaching. At FKL Ravensbrück, female teachers taught fellow prisoners - “the rabbits”. This term was used to describe the women who underwent medical experiments in the camp: 74 Polish women and 12 women of other nationalities. Professor Karolina Lanckorońska found herself in the camp's conspiratorial teaching staff. The source base for the analysis are the war memories of female prisoners, including Dr. Wanda Półtawska and Dr. Urszula Wińska. The summary shows the issue of the protection of values by people subjected - against their will - to life in extreme conditions.

‘I feel like I can’t do a lot’: Affectivity, reflection and action in ‘Transformative’ genocide education

Guided tours of memorial museums have sought to have an impact on visitors through an affective learning environment and critical reflection leading to ‘action’. However, there is limited work investigating the pedagogical underpinnings of such guided tours in order to understand whether they can facilitate action. This paper presents reflections of 21 students’ experiences of educational visits to the former Nazi extermination and concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland between 2017 and 2018. Students identified the guided tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau as having an affective dimension that enhanced understanding and brought about a perspective transformation but action was ill-defined. In considering ill-defined action, this paper attempts to frame understanding of the guided tour of the memorial museum within the context of Transformative Learning. It concludes that guiding practices should incorporate space for reflection and provide examples of potential ‘action’ so that visitors can mobilise their deeper understanding and experience long-term personal ‘change’.

Tropy II wojny światowej na łamach czasopism dla dzieci najmłodszych w Polsce Ludowej (1945–1989)

For a very long time in Poland, themes that allude to the Second World War were not covered in children’s magazines. This was largely due to the perception of the vulnerability of young readers as well as the trauma of the older generation. It was not until the late 50's, in the 20th century, that the periodicals started to discuss the said themes. This study intends to determine the representation of WWII and the impact of such representation in two children’s periodicals, Miś [Little Bear, publ. 1957-1989] and Świerszczyk [Little Cricket, publ. 1945-1989]. Both periodicals present the events of the Second World War in an enigmatic and oblique way; and they favoured literary genres such as poetry and short prose rather than popular science forms. Importantly, Nazi concentration camps, ghettos, civilian casualties in families and among the closest ones, evacuations, relocations, among other subjects were taboo subjects. The said issues (just as the subject of death in general) only began to appear in Polish literature for children after the year 2000. However, in recent times, children’s magazines have been concerned with other more commercial issues and the said themes have been avoided.