Panagiotis Gerakakis, MAUS – La transmission de la lacune (pdf)

[MAUS – The transmission deficiencies]

The extreme experiences of the camps is often considered as indescribable. Art Spiegelman, through MAUS, tried an original and innovative approach. To exceed, to some extent, the problems of narration and transmission in transmitting such testimony. The chosen medium – comics – and the particular usage that Spiegelman has done through the use of animal form and the self-reflexive nature of the work, are the two important elements of MAUS studied and developed in this article.

Konstanze Hanitzsch, Feminisierung als Funktion der Schuldabwehr und Selbsteinopferung im literarischen Nachkriegsdiskurs (pdf)

[Feminization as a function of guilt-denial and self-sacrifice in post-war literary conventions] 

Inez Hedges, Drancy: History, Memory, Representation (pdf)

More than half a century after the fact, French film, video and fiction are mostly silent about the French concentration camp of Drancy, just outside Paris, from which more than 75,000 Jews were deported to death camps between 1942 and 1944. This is all the more remarkable considering that in 1994 historian Henry Rousso, along with French journalist Éric Conan, published Vichy: an Ever-Present Past in which the authors proposed a corrective to what they saw as the excess of memory and memorializing of the French Shoah which, they claimed, had led to an "impasse" and a "sanctification" that was preventing a factual examination of the past. Updating Rousso’s landmark 1988 work, The Vichy Syndrome, they argued that the most recent phase stood in marked contrast to the repression of the memory of Vichy during the Gaullist years, but represented just as dangerous a phase in the French national psyche. Taking up the history and memory debate in relation to narrative fiction and film, I argue instead that French writers and filmmakers should continue to search for the "narrative truth" about the internment camp of Drancy outside Paris. This was the place from which most of the Jews deported from France – to Auschwitz and other death camps – were sent to their fate. Countless stories remain to be told. These could make a significant contribution to an understanding of the Vichy years – one that would give due place to the complex moral choices of victims and perpetrators and to the continuing investigation of the années noires (dark years) of the German Occupation.

Melanie Hembera, Das jüdische Zwangsarbeitslager Pustków. Taten und Täter im Spiegelbild von NS-Ermittlungsakten (pdf)

[The Jewish labor camp Pustków. Acts and perpetrators in the mirror image of Nazi investigation files]

The Pustków forced labor camp for Jews was installed on the Debica Truppenübungsplatz (training camp) of the Waffen-SS. Between its establishment in autumn 1940 and its evacuation in July 1944, it had one of the longest lifetimes of any camp in the General Government. This article begins by showing that the perpetrators of crimes in the camp were many and varied. Nor only did the camp guards commit crimes against the prisoners, but so did those working for German companies on the Truppenübungsplatz building sites. Certain Jewish functionary prisoners also ill-treated their fellow-prisoners. The article goes on to show, by means of a study of the biography of an individual perpetrator who had a big scope of action, that he acted according to own free judgment and that his actions could have been inspired by a variety of different motives.

Peter Kalmbach, Wehrmachtjustiz und “totaler Krieg” (pdf)

[Military justice (Wehrmacht) and “total war”]

My essay describes Nazi military justice as an instrument of  "total war". From 1939 onwards, military courts formed part of the system of political oppression in the occupied countries, and they often handed down death sentences. The Wehrmacht’s military courts collaborated closely with the Ministry of Justice. At the very end of the war the military courts acted more and more radically, but lost some of its special privileges to civil courts.

The Pustków forced labor camp for Jews was installed on the Debica Truppenübungsplatz (training camp) of the Waffen-SS.  Between its establishment in autumn 1940 and its evacuation in July 1944, it had one of the longest lifetimes of any camp in the General Government. This article begins by showing that the perpetrators of crimes in the camp were many and varied. Nor only did the camp guards commit crimes against the prisoners, but so did those working for German companies on the Truppenübungsplatz building sites. Certain Jewish functionary prisoners also ill-treated their fellow-prisoners. The article goes on to show, by means of a study of the biography of an individual perpetrator who had a big scope of action, that he acted according to own free judgment and that his actions could have been inspired by a variety of different motives.

My essay describes Nazi military justice as an instrument of “total war”. From 1939 onwards, military courts formed part of the system of political oppression in the occupied countries, and they often handed down death sentences. The Wehrmacht’s military courts collaborated closely with the Ministry of Justice. At the very end of the war the military courts acted more and more radically, but lost some of its special privileges to civil courts.

Assia Kettani, L’affaire Dreyfus sous la plume des écrivains: antisémitisme et représentations de l’Histoire (pdf)

[How writers viewed the Dreyfus affair: antisemitism and representations of history]

Stefan Lochner, Die “Häftlingsgesellschaft” in einer totalen Institution absoluter Macht: Das Beispiel KZ Buchenwald. Versuch einer Annäherung (pdf)

Ingo Loose, Die deutschen Kreditinstitute im besetzten Polen und die Ermordung der Juden des Gettos Litzmannstadt 1939–1945 (pdf)

[German banks located in the occupied territories of Poland and the extermination of Jews from the Litzmannstadt ghetto between 1939 and 1945]

Were bank managers and heads of Savings institutions aware that by confiscating the bank accounts of Jews in 1940 and 1941 under the orders of the authorities, they were depriving the Jewish population of their material possessions and therefore played a role  in the “displacement” and the “evacuation” of the ghetto or rather that of the General government that followed? These banks profited directly and indirectly from the policy of repression against Jews and Poles, and the “taxation” and “liquidation” of Jewish heritage, something that would not have been possible without their involvement, they were responsible for an unprecedented process of impoverishment, which is the historical basis of the Holocaust.

Martina Mengoni, The gray zone: Power and privilege in Primo Levi (pdf)

Primo Levi is mostly known for his If This is a Man (1947), in which he narrated his experience in Auschwitz. Forty years after, in 1986, he published The Drowned and the Saved, in which he rethought the understanding of Lager against the risks of simplification and the fallacies of memory. This book is commonly linked with the concept of gray zone, a term which Levi himself coined and that nowadays has come in the common use and in socio-political analysis. In understanding how Levi developed this concept, we find an interesting genealogy that is worth exploring.

Benno Nietzel, Verfolgung, Überleben und Wiedergutmachun: Jüdische Unternehmer aus Frankfurt am Main von den 1920er Jahren bis zur Nachkriegszeit (pdf)

[Survival and Reparation: Jewish Entrepreneurs from Frankfurt am Main from the 1920s to the Post-War Period]

This study deals with one of the largest historical communities in Germany (together with Berlin, Hamburg, Breslau and Munich) as Frankfurt was home to some 30,000 Jews in 1933. Based on numerous first-hand sources and testimonies, the article highlights how the Jews were gradually eliminated from the city’s economic activity until they were completely excluded. The situation of post-war survivors and beneficiaries (restitution and reparations) is also addressed.

Béatrice Rabaglia,La série Eingedunkelt de Paul Celan: l'obscurité de l'exil (pdf)

[Eingedunkelt series: the obscurity of exile]

Paul Celan (1920-70), a German-speaking Romanian Jew known as the poet of the Shoah, lived his entire life in exile. Deprived by the Nazis of his homeland and his native language, he sought to reconstruct them in poetry, making his poems a new linguistic space and a memorial site. The Eingedunkelt (‘Benighted’) bears forceful witness to the despair of a man without a country, and his faith in literature as an imperative of remembrance.

Ilaria Renzi, Le dinamiche di gruppo nei campi di concentramento nazisti: il Molise (pdf)

[Group Dynamics in Nazi Concentration Camps: The Region of Molise]

During 1939 was identified a list of municipalities which belonged to Central and Southern Italy and which had little importance for military strategies. These municipalities were far enough from war-relevant zones and were designed to the interment of foreign and italian (considered “inferior”) war prisoners. One of these municipalities was the district of Campobasso (which now is the main city of the region Molise but belonged, at that time, to the region of Abruzzo). Among the municipalities of the district of Campobasso were chosen 6 locations: Agnone, Boiano, Bonefro (never active), Casacalenda, Isernia and Vinchiaturo. Between 1940 and 1943, 292 Jews were locked up in buildings, former convents, private houses requisitioned for the purpose of their conversion in concentration camps.
These prisoner were subjected to strict surveillance by the police and rigid administrative rules: they  couldn’t leave town confinement; they could not discuss politics; they  had to strictly respect entry and exit hours, keep a good conduct and not arouse suspicion, and their correspondence was subject to strict censorship. The food was administered by people outside the camps, in return for money.
The direction of the concentration camps was entrusted to commissioners of public security mission, supervisioned by police officers which were charged of surveillance and accompaniment of prisoners during walks allowed within the designated perimeter.
In the female camps, the male director was accompanied by a female director, which was usually a local person not employed in government, but with an active role in organization of the fascist party. She was in charge of direct surveillance of female prisoners and responsible for their compliance of requirements and prohibitions.
One of the purposes of surveillance by the agents was to avoid excessive familiarity and solidarity relationship between the prisoner and inhabitants of the place: for the sake of morality, it was necessary that these relationships were prevented, and in the case, interrupted with the transfer of the prisoner in other camps.
Despite these limitations, the locals were receptive to prisoners, helping them whenever possible.
The article then reported evidences of Jews confined in Molise, in the period after the armistice of September 8, 1943, in nazist concentration camps.

Dominique Schröder, Schreiben, um zu überleben. Das Phänomen des Tagebuchschreibens in nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern. Motive – Funktionen – Sprache (pdf)

Testimony: Perez Szechtman (Peter Sedgman) (pdf)

Born in Lublin in 1917, Peter Sedgman (born as Perez Szechtman) has had a very eventful life. In his teens he had an interlude in Palestine and with disastrous timing, he returned to Poland just prior to Germany’s invasion. Conscripted into the Polish army, he spent 18 months as a prisoner-of-war in Germany. He later had six months in hiding with his only surviving brother, who then tragically lost the will to live, and was killed. After an audacious escape from a German labour camp, Peter finally joined a group of Polish partisans. After the war, he married Stella Kohen and together they had a long sojourn in Italy before going to Australia with their three-year-old daughter, Christine. Life in Australia provided further challenges for the family of three, but despite these difficulties, Peter was able to rebuild his life. He passed away in Sydney in 2016
Peter Sedgman saw Aktion Erntefest from the inside. He gives us also a testimony of his forced participation as an Arbeitsjude in Aktion 1005.

Arvi Sepp, Hermeneutik der Verfolgung: Holocaust und Existenzangst in Victor Klemperers Tagebüchern 1933-1945 (pdf)

[Hermeneutics of Persecution: Holocaust and Existential Anxiety in Victor Klemperer's Diaries 1933-1945]>

Cinzia Villani, Infrangere le frontiere: L’arrivo delle displaced persons ebree in Italia (1945-1948): flussi, vie d’ingresso e politiche d’accoglienza (pdf)

[Breaking down borders: the arrival of Jewish displaced persons in Italy: flows, entry routes and reception policies]

Between the end of World War II and the establishment of the State of Israel, approx. 50,000 Jews arrived in Italy from East-Central Europe. The essay analyzes this migration to the Italian peninsula, the routes used to reach it, and the attitude of Italian authorities towards the new arrivals.

Jörg Waßmer, „Der Makel wird schwinden“: Grafeneck zwischen öffentlicher Erinnerung und Erinnerungsverweigerung (1945-2005) (pdf)

[“The stain will disappear”: Grafeneck between public memory and the refusal to remember (1945-2005)]