Abstract: This article examines the ways in which Jewish personal belongings that have been appropriated by gentiles during, and in the aftermath of, the Holocaust have been identified, demanded back, passed down from generation to generation, and commodified. Focusing on Biłgoraj and Izbica (Poland), and Mir and Iŭje (Belarus), our objective is to determine whether the Jewish identity of personal belongings appropriated by local non-Jewish communities during, or in the aftermath of, ‘Holocaust by bullets,’ survived in the postwar communities in which they have been circulating, and define what role they played for the postwar relations between Jews and non-Jews.
Abstract: As we approach the post-witness era this paper investigates the changing role of the Holocaust and Holocaust survivors in twenty-first century British politics and culture. In the first part, the article discusses the ways in which, through their role in educational initiatives and commemorative culture, survivors have acquired an increased visibility in British understandings of the Holocaust. For a significant period of time, this process was characterized by a tendency to abstract survivors from their Jewish identities to ensure that they could more easily act as mediators of a universalized, yet highly domesticated, Holocaust narrative with meanings for contemporary British society. However, in the second part the article will argue that, starting from the second decade of the twenty-first century, it is also possible to discern an increasing acknowledgement of British Holocaust survivors’ ‘difference.’ It will be suggested that British politicians have attempted to mobilize survivors, the Anglo-Jewish community they are seen to represent, and the Holocaust more in general, in Britain’s domestic battle against Islamic extremism and in the pursuit of the rather elusive concept of ‘British values.’
Abstract: Based on preliminary research, we ask what insights can be gleaned about Polish Holocaust memory and testimony by examining the prolific art made by Polish ‘folk’ artists, via a range of disciplinary approaches. What can art history, visual culture studies, oral history, anthropology, memory studies, and museum studies tell us about the motivations, functions, and ethical implications of such works? Can they be considered acts of witness? Broadly, our text considers the status of ‘art naïve’ in the contexts of Holocaust representation, ethnographic museology, and bystander testimony.
