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… Continua a leggere The Fragmented Liberation(s) of the Italian Dodecanese (1940-1945)

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… Continua a leggere Slovak Narratives of Wartime Occupation and Liberation

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… Continua a leggere 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… Continua a leggere 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… Continua a leggere Beyond the Prison Gates: Greek Testimonies of Liberation from Brandenburg-Görden

Performing survival: gender experiences of Liberation in the Mondo Archives

Tatiana Liani School of Drama at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.  In 1939, Renato Mordo, the Viennese Jewish artistic director of Deutsches Theater in Prague, arrives with his wife, actress Trude Wessely-Mordo, and his son Peter, in Athens. The forgotten Greek citizenship that his father had retained saved him from the fate of countless other Jewish… Continua a leggere Performing survival: gender experiences of Liberation in the Mondo Archives

The Shattered Identity After World War II: Różewicz’s «The Card Index» Between Paralysis and Unfinished Liberation 

Andrea Cominetti University of Verona. This paper analyzes the figure of the Protagonist in The Card Index (1960), examining it through the lens of traumatic memory and the complex psychological legacy of the Second World War. The play, which marks Tadeusz Różewicz’s theatrical debut, stands as one of the most significant documents of the impossibility… Continua a leggere The Shattered Identity After World War II: Różewicz’s «The Card Index» Between Paralysis and Unfinished Liberation 

Io ho scelto di essere libera. Camilla Ravera Facing her own History

Barbara Meazzi Université Côte d’Azur The archive of Ada Prospero Gobetti Marchesini preserves, among other materials, the papers related to the writing of her book Camilla Ravera – Vita in carcere e al confine (Life in Prison and in Confinement/Internal Exile), published in 1969 thanks to her tenacity. The book is now almost completely forgotten, partly… Continua a leggere Io ho scelto di essere libera. Camilla Ravera Facing her own History

Rethinking the Liberation of Occupied Italy: A Southern Perspective through Rita Majerotti’s Voice

Daniela Vitagliano  Aix-Marseille University. This paper approaches the liberation of occupied Italy from the perspective of Southern Italy in order to examine it as a historical act that generated new tensions, contradictions, and asymmetries of power. At the moment of liberation, the South was marked by profound social and economic inequalities. On the basis of previously unpublishedarchival documents by Rita Majerotti, a militant deeply rooted in the South and… Continua a leggere Rethinking the Liberation of Occupied Italy: A Southern Perspective through Rita Majerotti’s Voice

Jewish Identity in Post-war Greece, a Comparative Approach between Thessaloniki and Thessaly region

Zacharias Sartzetakis  University of the Aegean. The Holocaust had a decisive worldwide impact on the formation of the post-war Jewish identity. German persecution against Jews was, also, implemented throughout Greece, but it did not unfold in the same way in all regions of the country. There are significant variances in the survival rates of the different Jewish communities of Greece.… Continua a leggere Jewish Identity in Post-war Greece, a Comparative Approach between Thessaloniki and Thessaly region