War Memorial Research Articles

The state of paediatric deceased-organ donation at a South African tertiary public- sector hospital: A 14-year analysis.

Solid-organ transplantation (SOT) has been proven to be a highly effective and life-saving treatment modality for adults and children suffering from end-stage organ failure. However, high paediatric waiting-list mortality has been reported, and children may suffer irreversible physical and deleterious psychological effects if not transplanted timeously. To identify in-hospital barriers to organ donation and gain a better understanding of the paediatric donor landscape. A retrospective descriptive study of consecutive deceased-donor referrals at Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital over a 14-year period, from 1 January 2007 to 31 December 2020. During the study period, 156 in-hospital deaths were recorded in the trauma unit and 1 425 in the paediatric intensive care unit. Ninety-three of the 1 581 patients (5.9%) were referred to the on-call transplant co-ordinator as potential organ donors, of whom 69% had been involved in a traumatic accident, including 52% in road traffic collisions. The mean age of the potential donors was 7 years with 60.2% being boys. On initial assessment, 67 of the 93 potential donors (72%) were assessed as eligible for donation of at least one solid organ. The transplant co-ordinator attempted to approach all families for consent; however, five families/next of kin could not be located despite multiple attempts. Among the remaining 62 eligible donors, 44 families/next-of-kin declined consent for solid-organ donation, resulting in a consent rate of 29% (n=18). Several families refused consent for religious reasons. One of the consented donors did not proceed to procurement as there were no suitable recipients. Seventeen donors proceeded to theatre, the intention being solid-organ procurement, but in 2 donors the organs were assessed as being unsuitable for transplant. From the remaining 15 donors, a total of 46 organs were procured and successfully transplanted: 14 livers, 30 kidneys and 2 hearts. During the 14-year study period, only 15 deceased donors could be utilised for SOT, as a result of low in-hospital referral (5.9%) and consent rates (29%). The reasons for low referral and consent rates are complex and often multifactorial, which the current study was not designed to investigate in sufficient detail. Future studies should be designed to further interrogate our findings, while accommodating for nuances specific to the paediatric deceased-donor population and their families.

Responding to Mass Atrocities in Southeast Europe: History and Memory of World War II and Its Aftermath in European Perspective. Introduction

This article introduces the complex historical and memory landscape of Southeast Europe in connection with the Second World War and its aftermath. In what ways have responses to mass atrocities in the region been shaped, how have they permeated public discourse, and to what extent have they been reflected in the entangled Balkan history? By analysing occupation, genocide, resistance, collaboration, justice, and memory, this introduction lays the ground for exploring the divergent interpretations of events that continue to influence contemporary attitudes toward reconciliation.

Museum Discourse in the Conditions of Information Warfare: problem statement

The article is devoted to the consideration of the position of museum discourse in the communicative system of modern Russia and, more broadly, in the national security system. In the context of geopolitical challenges and the development of political discourse in the semantics of the pervasive cancel culture in the format of applying new ethics as a symbolic act of oblivion, the national museum discourse acquires a particular significance. The “memory war”, the purpose of which is to delegitimize the previous discourse using techniques of rewriting, ignoring, neutralizing, and denying, actualizes the study of museum discourse in the context of national security strategy. Considering museum discourse as an imperative to strengthen national security, the authors identify a separate research area of socio–humanitarian sciences – “memory studies”, and introduce into the scientific categorical apparatus rather interrelated concepts of political discourse: “identity politics”, “memory politics” and “memorial politics”. The authors implement a strategy for analyzing the communicative effects of ensuring cultural sovereignty and overcoming the cancel culture, and conclude that museum discourse and the discourse of memory in the logic of cognitive and structural aspects represent mental constructs with the potential for dialogism and conversion (including the conversion of cultural capital into political capital), and determine the multilevel combinatorics of various communicative effects in the development of national identity. Hence, the authors propose to study the mutual influence of three discursive constructs: museum discourse – discourse of the state policy of memory – discourse of national identity, considered in relation to the modern political realities of Russia in the context of the implementation of the national security strategy.

Monumental minnepolitikk: Russlands bruk av sovjetiske og russiske krigsminnesmerker i Nord-Norge 2014–2023

Abstract: Monumental Memory Politics: Russia’s Utilization of Soviet and Russian War Memorials in Northern Norway 2014–2023This article explores how changes and developments of Kremlin’s WWII memory politics has impacted the use of Soviet and Russian war memorials by Russian diplomats in Northern Norway between 2014 and 2023. It examines the growing interest of Russia’s consulate general in Kirkenes in organizing joint commemorative events with local Norwegian politicians, notably on Russia’s Victory Day on May 9th. Since 2014, memory policy has increasingly become a constituent of security policy in Russia, and challenges to the official narrative of World War II are viewed as threats to national identity and integrity. How has Russia’s utilization of Soviet and Russian WWII memorials in Northern Norway changed between 2014–2023? This article demonstrates how the Consulate General has promoted the official Russian narrative of the Soviet Victory to memorials in Northern Norway and incorporated the use Russian military-patriotic symbols like St. George ribbons during its commemorations. Through its progressively assertive memory policy, the Consulate General has worked to inscribe Norway as an ally in Russia’s ongoing memory wars in Europe.

Dred Scott and Gettysburg in Tullock’s constitutional mythology and Civil War memory

Dred Scott and Gettysburg in Tullock’s constitutional mythology and Civil War memory

World War II and the Theme of Genocide in the Public Memory of Socialist Yugoslavia

The internal Yugoslav massacres and genocide committed during the Second World War left the postwar Yugoslav state with a complicated legacy. How could the new authorities rebuild the country, drawing on the heroic memory of the victories of the communist-led partisans against the wartime occupiers and collaborators, while at the same time explaining the large-scale war crimes and genocide committed by Yugoslavs against other Yugoslavs? This article surveys the ways in which the internal Yugoslav war crimes were described and explained as part of public memory of the Second World War in Socialist Yugoslavia. It explores how the history of massacres and genocide coexisted with the glorious partisan myth and how the history of these massacres in a way contributed to creating a usable memory out of the Second World War. Moreover, it shows how wartime memory was profoundly changed when the history of internal Yugoslav massacres was increasingly understood as part of what Jasna Dragovic-Soso has called a ‘theme of genocide’ during the last decades of the socialist state. The article suggests that the thematisation may have been a logical and necessary rethinking of Second World War history. Yet, it also argues that the substantial revisiting of this history was sometimes accompanied by irresponsible manipulation which contributed to enabling highly problematic types of memory politics both during and after Yugoslavia's existence.

Studying the Great Patriotic War in the Shadow of the Current Crisis

The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has thrown the field of post-Soviet studies into upheaval, as scholars seek to strike a balance between expressing opposition to an aggressive war and maintaining scholarly neutrality and recognition of complexity. Against this backdrop, the study of Russia’s memory of the Great Patriotic War—which has been invoked to justify the invasion of Ukraine—is particularly challenging. In this light, the author reflects on research of one of the most controversial aspects of the Great Patriotic War, the history and memory of the collaborationist “Vlasov Movement,” in the current environment. This exercise reveals some important aspects of the current memory landscape in Russia and the conceptual problems faced by those who study it. In particular, scholars of the war as well as war memory face the difficulty of navigating an information space and scholarship in which history and memory are closely intertwined.

Martyrological in Form, Military-Patriotic in Content

That Putin’s regime has been able to put the memory of the Great Patriotic War (GPW) to political use is hardly news to any observer of Russia. What is often overlooked, however, is that the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) has contributed to the instrumentalization of this memory by the Kremlin. In this article, I aim to bridge this gap. Drawing on an analysis of the ROC’s commemorative activities, I reconstruct the specific, martyrological, interpretation of the GPW that it is forging. With sin, atonement, and glory as its central concepts, this interpretation invests the suffering and losses of the GPW with patriotic sense. Thus, it turns the politically problematic traumatic memory of the GPW into a politically useful one. Simultaneously, it is consistent with the triumphant cult of the GPW advanced by the Kremlin. It also perfectly suits the statist historical narrative focused on the continuity of Russia’s past, which is crucial for the ideology of Putin’s regime. Furthermore, this interpretation does not contradict the Soviet memory of the GPW that the regime relies on. Finally, in combining Orthodox Christianity with militarism, the martyrological interpretation of the GPW is highly suitable for the regime’s political business of the day, which is waging its war against Ukraine.

Entangled Memories: Jewish and non-Jewish War Remembrance in interwar Austria

ABSTRACT Discourses of striving for equality versus the preservation of Jewish difference are reflected in the Jewish and non-Jewish struggles for an appropriate remembrance of the fallen during and after the First World War. They find their expression in the spatial localization of Jewish war memory. This paper deals with the polyphonic memory discourses and spatial positions of Jewish war memory in interplay with non-Jewish war memory in Austria during the Second World War. The focus is on the establishment of war cemeteries and specific signs of remembrance in Jewish and non-Jewish spaces.

How we (used to) remember the Partisans. Culture of memory and art form during and after Yugoslavia

ABSTRACT This paper contends that, under certain socio-political circumstances and in given historical periods, some art forms become particularly powerful means of expressing collective ideas about a shared past. Might artistic forms themselves tell us something about the social function of collective memory, as well as about the society that “addresses” its past through them? In an attempt to answer this question, the paper will look at the distinctive artistic expressions for remembering the Yugoslav anti-fascist Partisan movement and World War II at three moments in time, during which the memory of World War II was respectively (1) institutionalized as a narrative of the Partisan struggle and victory (through monumental memorials), (2) then called into question and remolded into “dissident” literary narratives, to eventually become (3) a form of activist socio-cultural critique of both nationalist memorialization in post-Yugoslav states and contemporary capitalist realities (through choir singing).

Collective (Non-)Memory of the Iran-Iraq War and Sectarian Thinking among Veterans-Turned-Shi'i Militia Fighters

This article redefines sectarianism as sectarian thinking via an ethnography of Shi'i militia fighters in Iraq and their relationships with the past. I explain this redefinition by tracing memories and histories that motivated Iraqi Shi'i veterans of the IranIraq War to join the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). Accordingly, I argue that everyday sectarian thinking in Iraq is less ideologically grounded than commonly presumed and rather feeds on memories, histories, and socialization in violence. I highlight how acts of non-remembrance and a lack of engagement with memories of the Iran-Iraq War fuel sectarian thinking and justify sectarian inhumanities.

The epidemiology of enterococci in a tertiary hospital and primary healthcare facilities in Fiji (2019–2022)

ObjectivesWe analysed 4 y of laboratory data to characterise the species and determine the antimicrobial susceptibility profiles of enterococci as human pathogens in Fiji. The study also investigated the molecular epidemiology amongst the subset of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE). MethodsThis retrospective study reviewed bacteriological data from Colonial War Memorial Hospital (CWMH) and other healthcare facilities in the Central and Eastern divisions of Fiji. Phenotypic, antimicrobial susceptibility and vanA and vanB PCR testing were performed using locally approved protocols. The first clinical isolates per patient with antimicrobial susceptibility testing results in a single year were included in the analysis. Data was analysed using WHONET software and Microsoft Excel. ResultsA total of 1817 enterococcal isolates were reported, 1415 from CWMH and 402 from other healthcare facilities. The majority of isolates, 75% (n = 1362) were reported as undifferentiated Enterococcus spp., 17.8% (n = 324) were specifically identified as Enterococcus faecalis and 6.7% (n = 122) as E. faecium. Overall, 10% of the enterococci isolates were from blood cultures. Among isolates from CWMH, <15% of E. faecium were susceptible to ampicillin, and 17.2% were vancomycin resistant. Overall, 874 enterococcal isolates (including the undifferentiated species) were tested against vancomycin, of which 4.8% (n = 42) were resistance. All of the VRE isolates tested (n = 15) expressed vanA genes. ConclusionsThis study demonstrates the clinical importance of VRE, particularly van A E. faecium in the national referral hospital in Fiji. Enhanced phenotypic and molecular surveillance data are needed to better understand enterococci epidemiology and help guide specific infection prevention and control measures and antibiotic prescribing guidelines.

Evaluation of the implementation of a "Pediatric Feasibility Assessment for Transplantation" tool in children and adolescents at Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital, Cape Town, South Africa.

Kidney transplantation remains the treatment of choice for children with kidney failure (KF). In South Africa, kidney replacement therapy (KRT) is restricted to children eligible for transplantation. This study reports on the implementation of the Paediatric Feasibility Assessment for Transplantation (pFAT) tool, a psychosocial risk score developed in South Africa to support transparent transplant eligibility assessment in a low-resource setting. Single-center retrospective descriptive analysis of children assessed for KRT using pFAT tool from 2015 to 2021. Using the pFAT form, 88 children (median [range] age 12.0 [1.1 to 19.0] years) were assessed for KRT. Thirty (34.1%) children were not listed for KRT, scoring poorly in all domains, and were referred for supportive palliative care. Fourteen of these 30 children (46.7%) died, with a median survival of 6 months without dialysis. Nine children were reassessed and two were subsequently listed. Residing >300 km from the hospital (p = .009) and having adherence concerns (p = .003) were independently associated with nonlisting. Of the 58 (65.9%) children listed for KRT, 40 (69.0%) were transplanted. One-year patient and graft survival were 97.2% and 88.6%, respectively. Only one of the four grafts lost at 1-year posttransplant was attributed to psychosocial issues. Short-term outcomes among children listed using the pFAT form are good. Among those nonlisted, the pFAT highlights specific psychosocial/socioeconomic barriers, over which most children themselves have no power to change, which should be systemically addressed to permit eligibility of more children and save lives.

Radical histories, emotional legacies, and everywhere in between? Exploring everyday responses to the traumas of war in Blood Swept Lands & Seas of Red. (2014)

ABSTRACT War commemoration in the UK has become spectacular, performative, and mediatised, manifesting new scales of visual power. This article assesses this ‘visual turn’ via an analysis of Blood Swept Lands & Seas of Red (BSL&SR) – an installation of 888,246 ceramic poppies, each representing a British and Colonial service fatality of the First World War, ‘planted’ in the Tower of London’s moat to mark the First World War Centenary (FWWC). Celebrated as a major success by FWWC officials, and attracting extraordinary public acclaim, academic analyses found that BSL&SR encouraged ‘unthinking’ re-circulation of ‘tropes’ about the war, which inhibited pluralism and critical consideration of the UK’s history of armed intervention. This article traces and explores the range, diversity, and nuances of ‘everyday’ public responses to the installation, drawing on a wealth of new information accessed through embedded research within Historic Royal Palaces (HRP). In doing so, it prompts reflection and debate about future state-supported cultural programmes and the role of heritage therein.

THE IMAGE OF THE ENEMY IN SOVIET PROPAGANDA DURING THE TURNING POINT OF THE STRUGGLE AGAINST FASCISM (June 1942 – August 1943)

The article examines the problems of the enemy image evolution during the turning point of the struggle of the Soviet people against fascism. The most important aspects of the ideological struggle between Germany and the Soviet Union in June 1942 – August 1943 are studied. The reasons for the transformation of the enemy’s image are substantiated based on the analysis of the wartime events that took place. The relevance of this issue is determined primarily by the importance of preserving the memory of the Great Patriotic War, in which knowledge about the enemy played a decisive role. This victorious experience can help to counteract the resurgence of the Nazi ideas in the modern world. Thanks to deep and comprehensive studying the mechanism of military patriotic propaganda and the introducing new technologies into it, the tasks of preserving identity and developing our society were solved. Currently, these historical processes will help to broaden the horizons and develop moral and patriotic values in modern youth. The purpose of the article is to consider the transformation of the enemy image the during the radical turning point in the Great Patriotic War in June 1942 – August 1943 in order to identify the most characteristic features of its depiction in various materials of Soviet patriotic propaganda. Materials and methods. The methodological basis of this research is both general scientific and special historical principles and methods of cognition, including the principles of historicism, objectivity and consistency, as well as a set of methods that made it possible to conduct a comprehensive analysis of archival and other research sources, including historical-genetic, historical-typological, historical-systemic and others. The work is based on archival documents and periodical materials. Study results. The most important circumstances of this period are noted, which played a decisive role in the development of the enemy image in the Soviet propaganda. The article presents the most characteristic features of the enemy’s image created by the Soviet propaganda. The article examines the changes in German propaganda among the population of the occupied territories. A comparative analysis of the activities performed by propagandists of the Nazi Germany and the USSR is carried out. The author provides examples of creating the enemy image based on the study of documentary sources, embodied in works of literature and art. The metaphorical image of the enemy reflected in the Soviet propaganda is revealed based on the study of archival materials and periodicals. At this, the importance of naturalistic description of the crimes committed by the fascists against the civilian population of the occupied territories is assessed in order to present the true face of the invaders and mobilize the society to fight the enemy. The issues of the legitimacy of the power of the warring parties are revealed. Conclusions. During this crucial period of the Great Patriotic War, significant changes are taking place in the image of the enemy. The original image of an inhuman, bestial enemy enslaving more and more lands, after the defeats suffered by the German army, is transformed into a caricature of a defeated cowardly enemy. The enemy is still strong, cruel and insidious, but the image of the defeated enemy is becoming dominant in the works of the Soviet propaganda and in public mind. The inevitability of victory becomes the dominant leitmotif in the Soviet propaganda and the enemy in the images created by propaganda should cause a feeling of disgust. Naturalization of the submitting the information about crimes committed by fascists and their accomplices becomes an important factor. It is referred to the development of a counter-propaganda system that convinces people that an inhuman enemy who kills women and children cannot be trusted. The images created in Soviet propaganda works achieved their goal and were firmly rooted in the public consciousness.

World War 1 and Colonialism in Kenya: Perspectives through Historiography and Literary Imaginaries

ABSTRACT During World War I, what is today Kenya was part of the British East African Protectorate. Direct fighting took place within the region as the neighbouring Tanzania was a German colony. The cultural and economic repercussions of the war transformed the social landscape and colonial approach to the administration of the region. Historically, the war period between 1914 and 1918 coincided with the acceleration of British colonial intrusion into Kenya and a close control of the different aspects of the local communities’ political, social, and economic day-to-day operations. It was also marked by the transformation of large parts of present-day Kenya into white settlements. Moreover, during the war, mostly male members of the various Kenyan communities were conscripted into military service and forcefully pressed into the British war service. The war memories in works of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, M. G. Vassanji and Margaret Ogola revolve around the sense of being caught in unknown crossfire, the inhumanity of conscription, causalities and other horrors of the war, and the irreplaceable loss of the most productive community members in the war.

Pediatric vocal cord mobility: Translaryngeal ultrasound application for resource-limited laryngologists

Background: Flexible fibreoptic laryngoscopy (FFL) is currently the gold standard for assessment of true vocal cord (TVC) mobility but is invasive and not without risk. The aim of this study was to determine the accuracy of an application-based translaryngeal ultrasonography (TLUS) as a screening tool for mobility of TVCs and to assess the feasibility of its use by an otolaryngologist not formally trained in ultrasonography.Methods: Forty children were recruited at the ear, nose and throat (ENT) clinic at Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital (RCWMCH). The first author (DR), an ENT trainee, was trained by a consultant radiologist (MJ) on the use of an ultrasound probe to assess TVC mobility. Two qualified ENT specialists (neither trained in ultrasonography) consented to evaluate TLUS and FFL videos for TVC mobility.Results: In total, 135 videos were obtained from 40 participants. Ages ranged from 10 days to 9 years, and the genders were equally represented. The overall accuracy of TLUS evaluation was 95.5% (sensitivity of 100%, specificity of 60%). The reliability of TLUS when compared to FFL showed a p 0.001 and a 100% agreement between ENT specialists evaluating the shared videos.Conclusion: Our study shows TLUS to be a reliable method of assessing TVC mobility.Contribution: Translaryngeal ultrasonography is portable, noninvasive and easy to use, making it a potentially useful screening tool for practitioners other than radiologists, for example, otolaryngologists, who have a good understanding of laryngeal anatomy, especially in resource-limited settings, where FFL might not be readily available.

“The Past that doesn’t Pass”: National Socialism in the Memory Policy of the FRG and the Historical Policy of the GDR

The article provides a comparative analysis of the coverage of the legacy of National Socialism in the memory policy of the FRG and historical policy of the GDR and various commemorative practices. The author revealed the conceptual apparatus that is used in professional historiography and public discourse. Its various contents and features of use in different chronological periods were also determined in the article. The author considered numerous methodological approaches used by researchers of memory problems. The difference between the concepts of “memory policy” and “memory culture” in content is that the first term provides for a set of government measures to preserve memory, while the second term is broader and focuses on involving public institutions and society in the discussion of “memory” problems. The article shows the differences in the attitude to the National Socialist past in the FRG and the GDR on specific examples. The author paid attention to new approaches to the memory of the World War II in modern Germany, which has resulted from the processes of migration and the transformation of the country into a multicultural community. Two factors influence contemporary debates about the politics of memory in Germany: a) globalization, cultural transfer and migration, which exacerbate conflicts in nationally oriented memory politics. Like most countries in Western Europe, Germany is an immigration country, comprising a population that can’t longer be differentiated by nations and ethnic groups. Accordingly, historical memory refers less and less to national or ethnic historical foundations, as an ever-increasing proportion of the population has a second family origin and is therefore confronted with a past that lies beyond their ethnic beliefs; b) the Russian-Ukrainian war turned attention to the crimes of National Socialism during the Second World War (1939-1945) in Eastern Europe and Ukraine in particular.

Considering Second World War Archaeological Heritage in France

The archaeology of the Second World War has existed since the 1980s in English-language research. However, the vestiges of this conflict were only officially included in French national heritage at the end of 2013. Only since 2014, the year of the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, do preventive archaeology operations prescribe for World War II (WWII) sites. Public research programmes have also been set up to identify and characterise the heritage linked to the conflict, in particular the numerous remains of the Atlantic Wall on France's western seafront. During this decade, several archaeological operations have revealed the strong scientific potential attached to WWII sites throughout the country. At the same time, researchers from the National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP) have drawn up a general research theme based on these remains which now form part of an international discussion framework. There are three main lines of research based on the typology of material traces from the conflict. The first of these is dedicated to battlefield remains, which are currently being used to compile an archaeology of military operations in Normandy. The second is the study of defensive structures (bunkers on the Atlantic Wall and passive defence constructions) that are also the subject of exciting discoveries in Normandy and other French regions. The third area of research addresses remains linked to internment and mass crimes. In particular, this concerns the search, currently underway, of the only Nazi concentration camp on French soil, the KL Natzweiler-Struthof. This houses the European Centre of Deported Resistance Members (CERD) and performs important research on other deportation or internment memorials (e.g. Drancy, Mont-Valérien) and on a series of prison camps across France. These sites, long threatened by soil and coastal erosion, development or the looting of militaria, are now crystallising as powerful heritage assets, even though the expression and sharing of this archaeological memory of World War II comes in response to high levels of national and international public expectation.

Stentless pyeloplasty for paediatric ureteropelvic junction obstruction: a 15-year experience at Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital

Stentless pyeloplasty for paediatric ureteropelvic junction obstruction: a 15-year experience at Red Cross War Memorial Children’s Hospital