Mariangela Chatzistamatiou Aristotle University of Thessaloniki The presentation explores the transformation of mourning practices among Greek Jews in relation to the Holocaust, focusing on the stark contrast between the impossibility of mourning within the Auschwitz camps and the reemergence of grief, ritual, and remembrance in its aftermath. In the camp environment, where death was constant,… Continue reading Liberation and the Politics of Mourning: Jewish Memory through Musical Expression
Tag: Issue n.5
The Fragmented Liberation(s) of the Italian Dodecanese (1940-1945)
Luca Castiglioni The Italian administration of the Dodecanese (1912–1945) remains a contentious but marginalised subject in European colonial and subjecthood studies, while its ending is still being a sensitive topic in Greek and Turkish political framework: this time has been often dismissed either as a temporary foreign occupation delaying Greek unification or as an eccentric, quasi-colonial… Continue reading The Fragmented Liberation(s) of the Italian Dodecanese (1940-1945)
“The Promise”: Testimony and post-liberation life in a graphic novel metanarrative
Evlampia Tsireli Aristotle University of Thessaloniki This paper will focus on the stages of research and creation of a graphic novel based on the ladino (Judeo-Spanish) testimony of Samuel Profeta, available at the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Sam Profeta was a Holocaust survivor from Thessaloniki. Known to the Jews of Thessaloniki as “Uncle… Continue reading “The Promise”: Testimony and post-liberation life in a graphic novel metanarrative
Slovak Narratives of Wartime Occupation and Liberation
Charles Sabatos Yeditepe University Compared to the Czech experience of wartime occupation, which inspired a number of novels and films that gained international acclaim, the Slovak experience remains relatively little known. Among the most notable works by Slovak-Jewish survivors of World War II, both recently published in English translation, are Leopold Lahola’s short story collection The Last… Continue reading Slovak Narratives of Wartime Occupation and Liberation
Liberation as a Contested Process: Testimonies of Jewish Survivors from Northwestern Greece between Liberation and “Second Occupation”
Konstantinos-Michail Foteinis University of Ioannina. This paper examines how Jewish survivors from the communities of Epirus (Arta, Preveza, Ioannina) and Corfu experienced and narrated liberation through their testimonies. Drawing on Tony Judt’s notion of Europe’s “double occupation,” it approaches liberation not as a clear endpoint but as a transitional and contested process shaped by contradictions,… Continue reading Liberation as a Contested Process: Testimonies of Jewish Survivors from Northwestern Greece between Liberation and “Second Occupation”
Silenced Agency: the Spomen Kosturnica of Barletta as a transnational site of Yugoslav testimony
Rosanna Rizzi This study examines the Spomen Kosturnica of Barletta (1970), designed by the Yugoslav sculptor Dušan Džamonja, as a case study of the “incomplete” and contested memory of Liberation in post-war Europe. Dedicated to Yugoslav Partisans who died on Italian soil during the Second World War, the monument embodies a transnational narrative of Liberation that has… Continue reading Silenced Agency: the Spomen Kosturnica of Barletta as a transnational site of Yugoslav testimony
Sephardi women in Auschwitz – A Ladino-testimony of a traumatic experience
Fani Oflidou University of Patras This presentation examines the linguistic features and narrative dimensions of the testimonies of two female survivors of Auschwitz–Birkenau, Sephardic Jews originating from Thessaloniki, Greece. The testimonies were delivered in Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) and form part of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. The corpus of Judeo-Spanish testimonies included in the… Continue reading Sephardi women in Auschwitz – A Ladino-testimony of a traumatic experience
Against Monolingual Memory: Ladino Testimonies and Methodological Issues
Lydia Vlasidou – York University in Toronto.. Lida Maria Dodou – University of Vienna The Ladino-language testimonies are a small and understudied subset of Holocaust survivor narratives. Unlike testimonies recorded in other languages, these interviews were often conducted in a language was no longer the survivor’s primary language of everyday expression. This linguistic displacement shaped… Continue reading Against Monolingual Memory: Ladino Testimonies and Methodological Issues
Beyond the Prison Gates: Greek Testimonies of Liberation from Brandenburg-Görden
Alexios Ntetorakis Exarchou Charles University For millions of deportees to Nazi Germany, liberation was not a single moment but the beginning of a new and often chaotic struggle. This paper examines that experience through the case of 282 Greek prisoners deported to Brandenburg-Görden penitentiary in 1944, following their paths beyond the prison gates into the… Continue reading Beyond the Prison Gates: Greek Testimonies of Liberation from Brandenburg-Görden
Telling ‘Liberation’ Differently: Ukrainian female forced labourer oral history vs. the French POW story in Cartier-Bresson’s Le Retour
Sasha Colby Simon Fraser University The complexity and diversity of WW II liberation has revealed itself to me through two of my bookprojects in ways I believe can be productively compared. The Matryoshka Memoirs: A Story ofUkrainian Forced Labour, the Leica Camera Factory, and Nazi Resistance (ECW Press, 2023),recounts the Ostarbeiter experience of my grandmother, Irina Kylynych, as it coincided with theresistance work of Leica Camera heiress, Elsie Kühn-Leitz. For Irina, the story of Wetzlar’sliberation the spring of 1945 was particularly difficult to tell: while she eventually escaped to Canada,“liberation” was a complex moment of hiding in DP camps, posing as Polish, Soviet capture, escape,… Continue reading Telling ‘Liberation’ Differently: Ukrainian female forced labourer oral history vs. the French POW story in Cartier-Bresson’s Le Retour