Abstract: Raoul Wallenberg is widely remembered for his humanitarian activity on behalf of the Hungarian Jews in Budapest at the end of World War II, and is known as the Swedish diplomat who disappeared into the Soviet Gulag in 1945. While he successfully combated Nazi racial extermination politics, he fell victim to Stalinist communism – yet another barbaric, totalitarian regime of the 20th century.
Given Wallenberg’s biography, his mission and his unresolved fate it is no wonder that Wallenberg became a figure of mythic dimensions. It is the mixture of heroics and victimhood, as well as the seemingly endless potential of possible adaptations that secures this historic figure and his mythic after-narratives its longevity. While it is without doubt the man behind the myth who deserves credit – first the man’s realness gives the myth credibility – it is the myth that secures the man’s popularity. The man and his myth depend on each other.
In this article, I will give an overview of how Wallenberg was perceived and described by survivors, in popular scholarly literature, how he has been researched by historians, and how he has been presented in different media. It will become apparent that the narrators have sought to satisfy different needs, e.g. psychological, political, and commercial ones. The narrators’ intention and attitude towards the historic person and the myth which surrounds him is of primary importance. I will show how different approaches to, and uses of, the myth exist side by side and nourish one another. And yet they can all simultaneously claim existence in their own right. By providing examples from different times and places, I like to illustrate that the popular images of Wallenberg are far less one-sided, stereotypical and homogeneous than they are often portrayed and hope to draw attention to the great potential that the Wallenberg narrative has today, as his 100th anniversary approaches in 2012.
Abstract: Italy holds most of the world's cultural heritage, and its Jewish cultural heritage is also of the greatest importance. Only after Emancipation did Italian Jews begin to pay attention to their material heritage – synagogues, cemeteries, libraries, archives, silver furnishings, textiles and artifacts. Their preservation came to be understood as a means of preserving the identity and history of the Jews. After the war, and especially since the early 1980s, the importance of preserving the Jewish cultural heritage as a memory not only for Jews, but for the whole country, began to be acknowledged not only by Jews, but also by the general population, including the Italian authorities.
Abstract: Sixty years after the deportations of the Jews, it is perhaps time for Belgium, following the example of France, to acknowledge the Belgian state’s involvement in and accountability for the Nazi persecutions carried out on its territory. True, there are no grounds for comparing France and Belgium. France had a government – a head of state, ministers, and public services – which was independent, collaborationist and officially racist, whereas Belgium’s government, at odds with the king, had opted for exile. Nevertheless, from Brussels to Antwerp, via Liège and Charleroi, Nazi Germany could not have implemented the Final Solution without the active cooperation of local intermediaries, in the public services and the police force alike. Otherwise, it is inconceivable that fifteen German SS personnel could have organized the deportation from Belgium of some 25,000 individuals. Until recently, community-based conflicts kept the Shoah from occupying a place in the heart of Belgian memory of World War II. Now, although the path has been a rocky one, the Jews have set foot on the terrain of the history of World War II in Belgium. This chapter is divided into two parts. The first part will analyze Belgium’s perception of collaboration, concentrating mainly on political differences over this issue between Flanders and the two largely francophone regions of Belgium, Brussels and Wallonia. The second part will examine the country’s complex attitude to the memory of the Holocaust, and particularly to Belgian collaboration in the deportation of the Jews, and to the interests and compensation of Jewish victims and their descendants.
Abstract: Дисертацію присвячено побудові концептуальної моделі етнічного менталітету єврейської спільноти України. В дослідженні здійснено соціологічний аналіз особливостей ментальних форм та їх діяльнісних проявів в соціалізаційних практиках, які детермінують регуляцію внутрішньоетнічної поведінки, формування соціальних ролей, соціальних диспозицій, соціальних статусів представників єврейської спільноти України. У роботі розглянуто основні теорії і концепції формування і функціонування етнічної свідомості, а також процесів, що відбуваються в ній – теорії суб’єктивації-об’єктивації етнічних ментальних форм, теорії етногенезу, теорії соціальної ідентичності, концепції історії менталітетів. На підставі аналізу теоретичних підходів до вивчення феномена менталітету в соціологічній науці, представлено концептуальну модель етнічного менталітету, евристичні, технологічні та прогностичні можливості якої продемонстровані на прикладі вивчення менталітету єврейського етносу в сучасній Україні.
Диссертация посвящена построению концептуальной модели этнического менталитета еврейского этноса в Украине. На основе теоретико-методологического анализа подходов к изучению проблемы этнического сознания, функций этнического сознания в формировании этнокультуры, динамики развития этнической группы в истории обосновывается феномен этнического менталитета, который представляется как комплекс онтологизированных и определенным образом кодифицированных этнической культурой значений, символов, смыслов, моделей социального поведения на определенной территории его распространения в определенное время. Подчеркивается, что феномен этнического менталитета может быть проанализирован с полидисциплинарных позиций. В работе выделены основные элементы структуры и функции этнического менталитета как объекта социологического исследования. Представлены такие функции менталитета, как: персонализация, экспрессия, импрессия, интеграция, стандартизация. Показано, что найти абсолютную модель либо общий тип менталитета вряд ли возможно, поскольку это явление привязано к конкретной среде в конкретный момент времени. С позиций структурно-деятельностного похода анализируется становление этнического менталитета еврейского этноса Украины в условиях динамики современного общества. Представлен анализ генезиса ценностно-регулятивной системы и ее деятельностных проявлений в социализационных практиках носителей этнического менталитета. Выделены и представлены аксиологические, регулятивные и организационные элементы менталитета евреев Украины и их трансформации в историческом контексте. Продемонстрированы механизмы трансляции и репродукции традиционных ментальных форм и институциональные характеристики кодификации этнической традиции. На основе анализа теоретических подходов к изучению феномена менталитета в социологической науке, представлена концептуальная модель этнического менталитета, эвристические, технологические и прогностические возможности которой продемонстрированы на примере изучения менталитета еврейского єтноса в современной Украине.
Abstract: On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait, unleashing the fi rst Gulf crisis. When, by January, the United Nations’ economic sanctions had failed to force Iraqi withdrawal, the United States and a thirty-four nation coalition invaded. Although Israel did not participate, this brief war, over by February 28, could not help but intersect with the ongoing Arab-Israeli confl ict. Not only did the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, choose to drop missiles on Tel Aviv, touching off a secondary crisis over potential Israeli involvement, but calls to resolve the Palestinian question as part of a regional settlement circulated widely. For Muslims and Jews watching developments from afar, the First Gulf War thus became more than a conflict over Kuwaiti independence, oil rights or western imperialism. Rather it became a barometer of Muslim-Jewish relations around the world.
Abstract: Travelogue – On the Contemporary Understandings of Citizenship among European Jews – title and subject of Theodor Barth’s thesis – encompasses six books with ethnography based on a multi-sited fieldwork, in Central- & Eastern European Jewish communities.
The books are concerned with aspects of their own conditions of production, from fieldwork research to writing, alongside the ethnographic subject of the Travelogue: the conditions of Jewish communities (mainly in cities of Central and Eastern Europe) in the last half of the 1990s (1995-99).
The books root the model experiments developed throughout the Travelogue in different ethnographic contexts.
Book 1 (Spanning the Fringes – Vagrancy to Prague) is a traveller’s tale with quite contingent, serendipitous, and very short-term trips to sample Jewish life in St. Petersburg, Vilnius, Warsaw, Kiev, Bucharest, Sofia, and Budapest.
Book 2 (The Minutes of the ECJC) is a commentary and analysis around a conference which the candidate attended in Prague in 1995 of the European Council of Jewish Communities (ECJC). It focuses on the political work and changing strategies of the ECJC. This book establishes some of the terms of the problems of community-Jews in Europe.
Book 3 (The Zagreb Almanach) is a description and analysis of the candidate’s stay with the Jewish community of Zagreb, focusing on a place, a green room, the community centre itself—this is the closest to a traditional site of community living in his ethnographic research.
Book 4 (The Books of Zagreb and Sarajevo) provides a contemporary and contextualized reading of a key Jewish ritual complex—the Passover Seder and its text, the Haggadah. This is a cultural object for systematic iteration and commentary, on which to articulate in depth a number of his insights gained more diffusely from observation. Among all the books, book 4 is the one intensive piece in which the textual analysis defines a process through which the candidate intends to sensitise the reader to how pattern can emerge from details.
Book 5 (Thirteen Kisses—a Manual of Survival From Sarajevo) relates a testimonial account of how the activist group La Benevolencija functioned in Sarajevo humanitarian relief during the Bosnian War of 1992-95. The candidate hopes to demonstrate a slow transition from wartime testimonials in the presence of an anthropologist, to recognition in the urban commonwealth in the aftermath of the war. He also invites the reader to consider the particularities of survivor testimonies and contrast these to how the war-zone was perceived from the outside.
Book 6 (The Account of the Lifeline) provides an understanding of a search and accountability model developed by La Benevolencija—in co-operation with the Joint—during the war in Bosnia (1992-95). It consolidates and expands the account of the Jews in Sarajevo and their humanitarian actions, through the candidate’s work on archives of the Joint (American Joint Distribution Committee) in Paris.
The six books of the Travelogue are rounded up in three concluding sections, containing 1) a synopsis of the findings across the books (Frames – Modeling Disordered Systems), 2) an account for the process of visual modeling throughout the books (Design – Choices and Aggregates), 3) a bibliographic presentation in which various sources influenced the conceptual choices and experiments that are made throughout the manuscript are discussed (Bibliography: Reflective Readings). In this way, the candidate hopes to retrace his steps from the findings, via the crafting of the volume back to the ranks of colleagues and readers.
Abstract: Loin d’avoir disparu, la haine des Juifs est entrée dans un nouveau régime en se fixant sur Israël, cible d’une guerre médiatique de haute intensité. L’antisionisme radical, dont l’objectif est la destruction de l’État juif, représente en effet la dernière figure historique prise par la judéophobie. À ce titre, négatrice du droit à l’existence d’une nation, elle constitue l’une des principales formes contemporaines du racisme. Pour comprendre comment s’est accomplie la mondialisation de cette nouvelle configuration antijuive, l’auteur dissèque le nouveau discours de propagande des ennemis déclarés d’Israël tel qu’il s’est développé au cours des années 2000-2010. La nouvelle vision antijuive, qui consiste à « nazifier » les « sionistes » en tant qu’« agresseurs » et à « judaïser » corrélativement les Palestiniens en tant que « victimes », permet d’accuser les « sionistes » de « génocide » ou de « palestinocide ». Ce discours de propagande est replacé dans son contexte international, marqué par une menace islamiste centrée sur l’appel au jihad contre les Juifs.
Analysant divers matériaux symboliques exploités par la nouvelle propagande antijuive — images ou discours —, P.-A. Taguieff donne à comprendre comment et pourquoi la haine des Juifs, plus d’un demi-siècle après la Shoah, a pu renaître sous les habits neufs de l’« antiracisme » et de l’« anticolonialisme » et, grâce aux médias, se diffuser en recueillant l’assentiment d’individus parfois convaincus d’être étrangers à tout préjugé antijuif.
Abstract: The question as posed is a challenge, not only to those who assigned it as a theme to be explored, and not only to those who expect to answer it, but also to all of Europe in which anti-Semitism persistently continues to show its face half a century after the closing of the Death Camps. Five decades separate us from the last days of the Gas Chambers and of the Crematoria, and still the embers of hatred for Jews, for "The Despised Other", smoulder beneath the surface of post-World War II Europe, erupting spasmodically from Madrid to Moscow. The question as phrased is a direct challenge to all of European heritage precisely because it contains its own answer, an answer no one desires to express or hear, for it embodies a confession of a fundamental flaw in the fraying tapestry that is Europe today after Bosnia. To give voice to the answer, however circuitously, would be to confront head on the centrifugal danger that, if not neutralised, could unravel the process of European unification and integration. The question as put is a classic example of a rhetorical query of a combined question and answer: thus "Why is it so?" implies, at the same time, "Hatred for Jews did not die in Auschwitz; it was not even mortally wounded". The only question remaining is: "How forthright will the attempt to examine the answer be?" Not how accurate, but how honest? Unavoidably it will be accusatory and, quite possibly, offensive. As one performs cultural vivisection of that which was, still is, and, most probably, will continue to be an attribute of a Europe chronically infected by the virus of continuing anti-Semitism, there has to be, of necessity, a shocked response. Hence the underlying tension of the topic for which the messenger is all too often blamed.
