Memory Of World War Research Articles

The post‐war generation remembers: A mixed‐method study exploring children’s attitudes towards World War II commemoration

AbstractThis study investigated how children, a post‐war generation without direct connection to war, relate to the commemoration of World War II (WWII). Seven group interviews were held among pupils in the Netherlands, aged 9 to 18 (n = 55) and, subsequently, questionnaires were administered to other pupils (n = 374). Results revealed that children are affected by the collective narrative of WWII, and connect to commemoration on a social and emotional level. Comprehension, tangibility, inclusiveness and a right atmosphere are key elements to appreciate a commemoration. Insights from this study may help societies practice more appealing remembrances with post‐war generations.

The Politics of Russian Memory: The Great War in the European Context

This article examines how the historical memory of World War I emerged and developed in Russia, and also compares it to how Europeans have thought about the conflict. The author argues that the politics of memory differed during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. In the wake of the 1917 Revolution, Bolshevik efforts to re-format the memory of the Great War were part of its attempt to create a new society and new man. At the same time, the regime used it to mobilize society for the impending conflict with the 'imperialist' powers. The key actors that sought to inculcate the notion of the war with imperialism into Soviet mass consciousness were the Central Committee of the Bolshevik Communist Party, the Department of Agitation and Propaganda, and, in particular, the Red Army and Comintern. The latter two worked together to organize the major campaigns dedicated to war anniversaries, which were important both to reinforce the concept of imperialist war as well as to involve the masses in public commemorations, rituals and practices. The Soviet state also relied on organizations of war veterans to promote such commemorative practices while suppressing any alternative narratives. The article goes on to explain how, under Stalin, the government began to change the way it portrayed the Great War in the mid-1930s. And after the Second World War, Soviet politics of memory differed greatly from those in the West. In the USSR the Great Patriotic War was sacralized, while the earlier conflict remained a symbol of unjust imperialist wars.

The Second World War in the Political Discourse of Contemporary Georgia

This article deals with political decisions and public discussion related to the memory of World War II in Georgia. This issue does not attract much public attention, which may be explained by the fact that the war was not fought on Georgia’s territory and did not lead to any change in its status. The few debates that are there are linked to the contemporary political issues, such as attitudes to the West and Russia. As the Russian leadership under Putin has intensified its efforts to use the memory of World War II to project its ‘sharp power’ in Georgia and in other places, the pro-western part of the society responded by demands to make the commemoration of the war more ‘European’, for instance, by moving the date of the official Day of the Victory over Nazism from 9 to 8 May. The Georgian origin of Joseph Stalin, the architect of the Soviet victory over Nazism, further complicates the issue.

NEU! Europe: Krautrock and British representations of West German countercultures during the 1970s

ABSTRACT This article analyses how British popular music culture defined and responded to Krautrock, a subgenre of West German underground rock, during the 1970s. It examines and contextualises British and West German interactions in popular music immediately before Krautrock and at the time of its early definition. The article then explores how so-called Krautrock bands related to the British public and press and how they were described and understood in relation to their nationality. The article suggests that stereotypes and prejudices, shaped by the memory of World War 2, remained a significant aspect of British discourse on West Germany into the 1970s. However, interest in Krautrock gave rise to social and cultural interactions that inspired some to challenge and renegotiate ideas of Germany and Germanness. To some, bonds made through music, culture and politics proved more profound than the history of conflict between Britain and Germany.

Recalling Victory, Recounting Greatness: Second World War Remembrance in Xi Jinping's China

AbstractThe recent surge in public remembrance of the Second World War in China has been substantially undergirded by a centrally planned and systematically implemented discursive shift which has remained overlooked in the literature. This study examines the revised official narrative by drawing on three cases from China's school curriculum, museums and formal diplomacy. It finds that the once dominant trope of “national victimization” no longer represents the main thrust in the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) rhetoric on the Second World War. Under Xi Jinping, this has been replaced by a self-assertive and aspirational narrative of “national victory” and “national greatness,” designed to enhance Beijing's legitimacy and advance its domestic and foreign policy objectives. By emphasizing national unity and CCP–KMT cooperation, the new narrative offers an inclusive and unifying interpretation of China's war effort in which the victory in 1945 has come to rival the 1949 revolution as the critical turning point towards “national rejuvenation.” The increasingly Sino-centric and centrally controlled narrative holds implicit warnings to those challenging Beijing's claim to greatness.

Technologies of nationalism: First World War commemoration and New Zealand’s Gallipoli exhibition

ABSTRACT This paper examines the relationship between First World War Centenary commemoration and state-sponsored nationalism in New Zealand. In the national museum’s Gallipoli exhibition, commemoration shifts from its traditional emphasis upon military sacrifice for the nation. Film-related special effects technology promotes individual affective identification with suffering and loss, but also extolls the ingenious achievements and talents of both New Zealand soldiers historically, and Gallipoli’s producers. National identity is aligned with state promotion of creative and technological innovation as central to economic growth. The national myth-making of Gallipoli locates a technologically sophisticated modern New Zealand in the historical experience of the War.

Postsocialist and Postcapitalist Questions? Far-Right Historical Narratives and the Making of a New Europe

Despite a growing number of novel approaches to the far right and new explanatory models, one feature appears to persist in the scholarship: namely, a tendency to discuss the developments in Western Europe and in postsocialist countries separately. Bucking this trend, this article investigates the similarities between the activism of Italian and Polish far-right movements, focusing on the field of historical politics. More specifically, it investigates the ways in which the memories of World War II and accounts of victims of communism are mobilized in the two countries, as well as the question of “censorship” and “mainstreaming” of far-right historical narratives. Apart from comparing the developments in these countries, the article discusses various forms of cooperation between Polish and Italian far-right movements, which reveal their mutual influences but also the limits of transnational networking.

Dynamics of Remembrance across Time and Media: On Ruth Glasberg Gold’s Multiple Accounts of Her Holocaust Experiences in Transnistria

Abstract This article considers the dynamics of the memories of World War II for survivors who give multiple accounts of their experiences over time. I compare five testimonies with different medial content given in 1944, 1983, and 1996 by Ruth Glasberg Gold. In November 1941, at the age of eleven, she was deported with her parents and brother from Czernowitz to the Bershad ghetto, Transnistria, where she lost her family and was orphaned. My major interest is to examine how Glasberg Gold’s memories over time intersect with changes of medium, location, language, and temporal context, and might have brought different or similar emphases in her written, audio, and video testimonies of the Holocaust. I believe her case to be important for scholarly analysis as it allows one to explore how the developing personality of a Holocaust survivor and changing media environments intersect and relate to how memories of the Holocaust become shaped, rehashed, and modified over time.

‘Dominant’ First World War memory: race, nation and the occlusion of Empire

ABSTRACT Surveys carried out in the UK have revealed a marked lack of awareness of the contribution of non-white, non-European soldiers during the First World War. For many, the First World War is understood as an exclusively white, European conflict that was confined to the battlefields of the Western Front. This article considers how British cultural memory of the First World War was formed over the course of the 20th century, and asks why dominant memory came to exclude the experiences of the non-white soldiers of Empire. Drawing on the scholarship of Jay Winter, this article re-considers the two major ‘memory booms’ during which popular cultural memory of the First World War developed, and argues that each of these memory-making periods was shaped by interrelated forms of exclusionary racism. In the immediate postwar period, the experience of non-white soldiers was differentially commemorated according to imperial, taxonomic racial hierarchies. In the late twentieth century, meanwhile, First World War remembrance coalesced around a fundamentally white British national memory at the expense of the non-white ‘other’. Finally, this article considers how far the recent First World War centenary may have reshaped public understanding of the conflict and integrated non-white, non-European experience into British cultural memory of the war.

‘Transnational film, transnational memory? Collective remembrance in recent pan-asian war films’

ABSTRACT This paper explores the conflict over memory in East Asia by analyzing three pan-Asian film productions that attempt to produce a shared transnational memory of World War II: Purple Sunset (China, 2001), Distant Bonds (Japan, 2009), and My Way (South Korea, 2011). Using Hjort’s taxonomy of transnational cinemas (2009), it argues that all three productions appeal to pan-Asian transnational memory through affinitive transnationalism (transnational memory based on shared cultural heritage), but their overall transnational strategies diverge into cosmopolitan, modernizing, and globalizing transnationalism. Each strategy works to varying success for domestic and international audiences, suggesting that the cultural production of transnational memory remains elusive in the East Asian context. This paper ends with the question of whether cohesive transnational war memory is possible in East Asian cinema, and more broadly, how a stronger trend of pan-Asian transnational filmmaking might emerge outside of contested topics like World War II.

Performing Memory in Conflicting Settings: Russian Immigrants and the Remembrance of World War II in Finland

This article discusses public and mediatized memory politics concerning Word War II in Finland, particularly its transnational dimensions brought about by post-Soviet immigration from the former Soviet Union. Despite the ongoing multiculturalization of Finnish society, where Russian speakers have become the largest immigrant group, Finnish national identity is still constructed around the idea of national independence and its heroic defence. Finnish collective and public memory with its monuments and celebrations concentrates on the sacrifice the nation made for Finnish independence in the wars against the Soviet Union during 1939–1944. In turn, these (re)produce performative membership in the Finnish nation. Likewise, recent Russian memory politics that celebrate Russia’s “great victory” in World War II have become visible in the Finnish public and media space owing to the Immortal Regiment marches held in Helsinki since 2017. This event is embedded within a series of complex connections between Russian speakers, Russian mediascapes, and pro-Russian activists in Finland, and represents an instance of the mediatization of transnational memory politics.

Historical Memory and Practices of Monumental Commemoration of World War I in Australia (Part 2)

The authors’ research attention is focused on the specifics of the Australian memorial practices dedicated to the World War I. The statement is substantiated that in the Australian context memorials and military monuments formed a special post-war and post-traumatic part of the visual memory of the first Australian global military conflict.
 The features of the Australian memorial concept are clarified, the social function of the monuments and their important role in the psychological overcoming of the trauma and bitter losses experienced are noted. The multifaceted aspects of visualization of the monumental memory of the World War I in Australia are analyzed. Monuments and memorials are an important part of Australia’s visual heritage.
 It is concluded that each Australian State has developed its own concept of memory, embodied in various types and nature of monuments. The main ones are analyzed in detail: Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne (1928–1934); Australian War Memorial in Canberra (1941); Sydney Cenotaph (1927-1929) and Anzac Memorial in Sydney (1934); Desert Mounted Corps Memorial in Western Australia (1932); Victoria Memorials: Avenue of Honour and Victory Arch in Ballarat (1917-1919), Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial (2004), Great Ocean Road – the longest nationwide memorial (1919-1932); Hobart War Memorial in the Australian State of Tasmania (1925), as well as Villers-Bretonneux Australian National Memorial in France dedicated to French-Australian cooperation during the World War I (1938).
 The authors demonstrate an inseparable connection between the commemorative practices of Australia and the politics of national identity, explore the trends in the creation and development of memorial practices. It is noted that the overwhelming majority of memorial sites are based on the clearly expressed function of a place of memory, a place of mourning and commemoration. It was found that the representation of the memorial policy of the memory of Australia in the first post-war years was implemented at the beginning at the local level and was partially influenced by British memorial practices, transforming over time into a nationwide cultural resource.

Social dramas and memory formation. Resistance and the use of the Risorgimento in the Italian politics of memory, 1943–1948

ABSTRACT This article analyses the case of Italy and how the memory of World War II came to provide the ground for political legitimacy and the ideological foundations of post-war democracy. It focuses on the topos of the Resistance against Fascism as a ‘second Risorgimento’, e.g. a national and patriotic war of liberation supported by the entire populace. The article argues that the process of memory formation of the Resistance as a ‘second Risorgimento’ during the period of transition from Fascism to democracy shares the defining features of a rite of passage in the sense originally introduced by Arnold Van Gennep. The article develops a conceptual approach that brings together social science approaches to liminality, transition, and memory studies. Advancing a processual approach to memory formation, the article thus offers an alternative to the still dominant functionalist-presentist approaches to memory, heavily influenced by Durkheim society since the pioneering work of Halbwachs.

An Inclusive Model of Memory Work in Poland: Bridge to Poland as a Case Study

The memory of World War II in Poland is sometimes plagued by an us/them mentality or a competition of suffering. This paper will attempt to answer several questions: how are non-Jews contributing to Holocaust memorialization in Poland today? How can recognizing this contribution serve to heal rifts and change deep-seated stereotypes? We will present a case study, based on participant observation, of Bridge To Poland, which emphasizes memory work conducted by non-Jewish Poles. Bridge To Poland’s latest project in conjunction with the Grodzka Gate-NN Theatre Centre, The Neshoma Project: Conversations with Poles Rescuing Jewish Memory, highlights those whom Tec calls “Rescuers of Memory”. Exposing people to their work, Tec believes, results in breaking down negative stereotypes about non-Jewish Poles and building bridges between people.

Ambivalent Déjà-vu: World War II in the poetry of the Northern Irish Troubles

This article addresses how the poetry of the Northern Irish Troubles enters into a dialogue with the memory of World War II. Poems by Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney, Derek Mahon, and Sinéad Morrissey are analysed, showing how World War II is a controversial source of comparison for these poets. While World War II provides important ways of framing the suffering and claustrophobia of the Northern Irish conflict, evident differences also mean that such comparisons are handled warily and with some irony. The poems are highly self-conscious utterances that seek to unsettle and develop generic strategies in the light of traumatic suffering. This essay draws on Michael Rothberg’s concept of multidirectional memory, and it also makes use of Alison Landsberg’s notion of prosthetic memory in order to highlight how Seamus Heaney in particular makes use of the World War II memories mediated by popular culture to respond to the Troubles.

End of War or End of State? 1918 in the Public Memories of Post-Communist Croatia and Serbia

AbstractThis article investigates the role of 1918, the end of the First World War, and the establishment of the Yugoslav state in public memories of post-communist Croatia and Serbia. Analysing history schoolbooks within the context of major works of history and public discussion, the authors trace the developments of public memory of the end of the war and 1918. Drawing on the concepts of public memory and historical narrative, the authors focus on the ways in which history textbooks create historical narratives and on the types of lessons from the past that can be extracted from these narratives. While Serbia and Croatia have rather different patterns of First World War memory, the authors argue that both states have abandoned the Yugoslav communist narrative and now publicly commemorate 1918 as a loss of national statehood. This is somehow paradoxical, since the establishment of the South Slav State in 1918 was supposedly an outcome of the Wilsonian principle of national self-determination. In Serbia, the story of loss is packed in a fatalistic narrative of heroism and victimhood, while in Croatia the story of loss is embedded in a tale of necessary evils, which nevertheless had a positive outcome in a sovereign Croatian state.

ПАМЯТЬ О ВТОРОЙ МИРОВОЙ ВОЙНЕ КАК ФАКТОР СОВРЕМЕННЫХ АМЕРИКАНО-КИТАЙСКИХ ОТНОШЕНИЙ

This article explores how the memory of World War II affects contemporary US-China relations. Despite the fact that both of these coun- tries were in the camp of the victorious powers, actively cooperated in the fight against a common enemy – Japan, and seemed to have retained the warmest memories of their “fighting brotherhood”, the study of their memorial prac- tices leads to much less optimistic conclusions. In the PRC, the memory of the Second World War up to the 1990s was deliberately removed from the socio-political discourse. Then, as part of the transition from the communist to the nationalist ideology, the interest in the events of the war years increased, but they were interpreted in a spirit of victimization, with an emphasis on the sufferings endured by the Chinese people as a result of external aggression. To- day, the memory of World War II is being used in China to underpin an active foreign policy, which is considered to be aimed at preventing the repetition of the terrible tragedies of the past. For Americans, victory in World War II was originally a symbol of the transformation of the United States into a Pacific power, a rationale for regional leadership. Until China claimed the same role, the memory of US-Chinese military cooperation could be used as a diplomatic tool; it was also possible to talk about the “foundation of friendship” on which bilateral relations were based. Today, this technique no longer works, a com - mon victory does not bring the United States and China closer, but drives them apart dragging the countries to the opposite sides of the barricades.

Lviv's Uncertain Destination: A City and Its Train Terminal from Franz Joseph I to Brezhnev by Andriy Zayarnyuk

Reviewed by: Lviv's Uncertain Destination: A City and Its Train Terminal from Franz Joseph I to Brezhnev by Andriy Zayarnyuk Simone Attilio Bellezza (bio) Andriy Zayarnyuk, Lviv's Uncertain Destination: A City and Its Train Terminal from Franz Joseph I to Brezhnev (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020). 372 pp., ills. Bibliography, Index. ISBN: 978-1-4875-0519-6. In recent years, urban history has become particularly popular in Ukrainian studies. The field has been enriched with excellent publications, such as Serhii Bilenky's analysis of Kyiv's imperial development, which was awarded the American Association for Ukrainian Studies book prize in 2019.1 Reviewed here, Andriy Zayarnyuk's book about Lviv was awarded the same prize the following year. These are just two examples of numerous books and articles produced over the past decade that have been dedicated to the history of various Ukrainian cities: Odes(s)a, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Dnipro, and Donetsk. East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies periodically devotes special issues to the history of individual Ukrainian cities. Urban history provides an excellent context for studying the practices of daily life and the evolving sense of belonging as conditioned by cultural, social, and spatial factors. These topics [End Page 252] are also central for the research program of the innovative Center for Urban History of Lviv, where Zayarnyuk served as director for a few years. I believe that the high interest in urban history reflects Ukrainian society's concern about its political and national integrity, which has been further exacerbated by Russia's invasion. Cities present a model of a modern multicultural society, so the history of Lviv or Kyiv helps make sense of the existing differences and offers a story of successful construction of local, national, and transnational collective identities. The city of Lviv has attracted the most attention from historians, with numerous studies tracing out its transformation from a Polish city to Ukraine's second capital. Among more specific topics in the histories of Lviv are its Nazi occupation, the experience of migrants during the Soviet period, and the public memory of World War II victims. In the introduction to his book, Zayarnyuk explains how his work differs from previous scholarship in at least three aspects. First, it follows the so-called material turn in historiography, taking the railway station as the central point for an "archaeological" analysis of the materiality of the four regimes that ruled Lviv. Second, Zayarnyuk departs from the tendency to discuss Lviv simply as part and parcel of the region of Eastern Galicia, thus ignoring the specificity of the urban society. Third, he criticizes historians' preoccupation with ethnic differences in Lviv, which has led them to view nationality as the primary historical factor. Instead, Zayarnyuk underscores the role of social conditions in history, given that the absolute majority of Lviv's inhabitants were wageworkers and that "this experience was far more fundamental than either ethnicity or language" (P. 10). These principles have been implemented in the book with various degrees of success. Zayarnyuk consistently focuses on the experience of railway workers under the different political regimes that administered the city, supporting his argument that the ethnolinguistic factor plays a secondary role in the urban society. This proves more convincing in the part concerning the Habsburg period, as the workers' sense of political belonging to the socialist movement outweighed their national differences. However, overall, government agencies and outstanding individuals remain the principle historical actors in the book, and these actors seem to have attributed great value to ethnic, linguistic, and religious affiliations. Contrary to the author's intentions, the narrative rather corroborates the relevance of national dynamics in the historical evolution of Lviv. This is probably due to Zayarnyuk's lack of theoretical reflection [End Page 253] on social belonging and a reconstruction of social groups' agency (I would have written "classes," but Zayarnyuk does not use this term). Taking these factors for granted, he centers the study on the railway station as if it were a neutral and selfreferential medium of social interaction or a historical object with clear boundaries and fixed qualities. But it is not, and the available historical sources concerning the Lviv railway station were produced...

Places of Memory for the victims of the Holocaust in Ukraine: the totalitarian legacy and historical and political challenges of today

The article is devoted to the study of the formation of culture and policy Memory of the Holocaust victims in modern Ukraine. On the example of the international scholar and educational project „Protecting Memory”, which has been going on in Ukraine for more than ten years, the author analyzes the current state, trends, challenges and prospects of creating places of Memory and culture honoring the memory of World War II victims. war, including Ukrainian Jews and Ukrainian Roma. The article also provides a thorough analysis of the fundamental differences in the policy of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust during the communist regime in Ukrainian lands and in modern democratic Ukraine. In the period from 1945 to 1991, the Communist authorities of the Ukraine banned a special memory of Jewish people, which were the victims of the Holocaust, all victims of National Socialism (official title of the Nazi part − NSDAP in German) during World War II were marked by the euphemism of the Soviet regime as „peaceful Soviet citizens”. The anti-Semitic policy was particularly harsh between 1948 and 1953, when Ukrainian Jews affected by the Nazi occupation came under the brunt of Soviet postwar repression. Thus, the feature of the tragic fate of Jewish communities during the domination of the Nazi anti-Semitic ideology and practice was completely leveled. The USSR denied the identities of civilian victims of the Nazi occupation, especially Jewish people and Roma. Only in the days of sovereign and independent Ukraine, the identity and memory of the victims of the Holocaust and the Roma Genocide in Ukraine were revived. One of the most powerful examples of restoring the historical memory of these civilian victims of the Nazi regime in Ukraine was the „Protecting Memory” project. Thanks to this project, during 2010−2020 in five regions of Ukraine − Lviv, Rivne, Volyn, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr regions, 20 Memorials to Ukrainian Jewish people and Roma who were killed by Nazi punitive forces and their helpers during the German occupation of Ukraine in 1941−1944 were established. Key words: Holocaust, Antisemitism, Nazism, Stalin repressions Memory politics, World War II, Ukrainian Jews, Ukrainian Roma.

“Own” traitors of “alien” war: features of historical politics and memory of World War II in Ireland

“Own” traitors of “alien” war: features of historical politics and memory of World War II in Ireland