Distance from the Belsen heap Celinscak, Mark
Distance from the Belsen heap,
2015, 2015, 2015-11-09, 2015-11-26
eBook
Winner of the 2016 Vine Award for Nonfiction
The Allied soldiers who liberated the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen in April 1945 were faced with scenes of horror and privation. With ...breathtaking thoroughness, Distance from the Belsen Heap documents what they saw and how they came to terms with those images over the course of the next seventy years. On the basis of research in more than seventy archives in four countries, Mark Celinscak analyses how these military personnel struggled with the intense experience of the camp; how they attempted to describe what they had seen, heard, and felt to those back home; and how their lives were transformed by that experience. He also brings to light the previously unacknowledged presence of hundreds of Canadians among the camp’s liberators, including noted painter Alex Colville.
Distance from the Belsen Heap examines the experiences of hundreds of British and Canadian eyewitnesses to atrocity, including war artists, photographers, medical personnel, and chaplains. A study of the complicated encounter between these Allied soldiers and the horrors of the Holocaust, Distance from the Belsen Heap is a testament to their experience.
Abstract
This is the source publication of a yet undiscovered DEGOB protocol from 1945 taken by survivor and interviewer Erna Galosi, recording her husband Elemer Galosi’s testimony after returning ...from Bergen-Belsen to Budapest. The protocol was found in its original form by their great-granddaughter at home after decades of unvoicing the struggles and tragedy the family had survived. This testimony is first published here by Alexandra M. Szabo.
Abstract
Bergen-Belsen is one of the biggest and most significant concentration camps in the history of the Holocaust. In this paper I reconstruct. 1. The Hungarian Camp between December 1944 and ...April 1945. 2. The evacuation and settlement of Hungarian military troops to the Bergen military training camp. (Truppenübungsplatz Bergen). This camp is also called as Bergen-Hohne Military Training Area. 3. The interactions between the Hungarian Jewish prisoners and the members of the Hungarian units between the two camps. 4. The controversial paths and memories of the atrocities against the Jews committed by Hungarian soldiers. The main focus of my study is a comparative analysis on the similarities and differences among the actors’ fragmented contemporary and postwar narratives: the perpetrators, the liberators and the victims on the activities of and killings by the Hungarian soldiers. I analyze ego-documents (interviews, testimonies and other correspondences) of the survivors and perpetrators of digital collections and primarily from the Archives of Gedensktätte Bergen-Belsen and from the Military Archives (Budapest). I also explore the most significant military files as well based on the Archives of the Bergen-Belsen Memorial.
In this vivid memoir originally published in German, Anne Groschler (1888-1982) recounts her 1944 escape from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to Mandatory Palestine via "Transport 222", an ...exchange transport of 222 Jews for "Aryan" prisoners of war. In the most detailed contribution of the exchange ever published, Groschler paints an authentic picture of life before WWII amongst the upper echelons of German society, her ultimate persecution and escape to Holland where she was betrayed, the horrors of life in the Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen camps, and her eventual flight via "Transport 222" to Palestine. Written immediately after her liberation in 1944, this unique document captures a little-known chapter of Holocaust history.
This research contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the role of sensory impressions in narratives of the everyday lives of prisoners in a concentration camp. I examine the narrative ...strategies in a diary and an early postwar memoir in the so-called Hungarian camp of Bergen–Belsen. I focus on how the survivors who produced these texts included references to sensory impressions in their accounts. By paying attention to mention in the survivors’ narratives of the more neglected elements of human experience (such as hearing, taste, smell and touch), I consider the ways in which non-visual sensory impressions were used in the narratives to convey experiences, observations, and feelings. I argue that in their depictions of everyday life in the camp, these testimonies used references to changes in their sensory impressions to represent processes and subtle changes in the social lives of the prisoners, which created a discursive space for the authors to express their emotions. This paper also attempts to introduce the term ‘sensory narratives’ into Holocaust studies in an effort to move beyond interpretations of historical narratives as representations of bodies and to engage with them as accounts that were created by bodies, including the senses.
This article reconstructs and analyses the spaces and visual narratives of two particularly important early exhibitions organized by Holocaust survivors: the one at the Jewish Pavilion in the former ...Majdanek concentration camp in Lublin (September 1946), and 'Unzer Veg in der Frayheyt' (Our Path to Freedom) made in the displaced persons camp in Bergen-Belsen (July 1947).
Located in one of the barracks of the former concentration camp, the Jewish Pavilion in Majdanek was one of the first public commemorative sites expressing Jewish memory of the war in Poland. While presenting a history of the Holocaust, the display also established a space for mourning. 'Our Path to Freedom' was created on the occasion of the Second Congress of Liberated Jews in the British Zone. It also presented the Holocaust, while at the same time imagining the future life of survivors in Eretz Israel. Together, these exhibitions demonstrate the heterogeneity of Holocaust memory of that time. They pose questions about different ways of narrating history, pointing to exhibitions as a significant medium, while allowing for a combination of visual and spatial means of representation in order to create a multifaceted narrative about the past.
Die Autorin vergleicht die Handlungsmöglichkeiten und Sprechweisen im ländlich geprägten Umfeld der drei Konzentrationslager Bergen-Belsen, Esterwegen und Moringen. Im Fokus steht das Verhältnis ...zwischen Personal, Insassen und Anwohnern. Dass die Lager nicht abgeschottet, sondern Teil der NS-Gesellschaft waren, verdeutlicht die Analyse der ökonomischen Beziehungen, der physischen Gewalt, der Konfliktpotentiale und Gewöhnungseffekte sowie ihrer gezielten Zurschaustellung für die Öffentlichkeit. Dabei bewegten sich die lokalen Akteure zwischen Zustimmung und Mitmachen, Distanzierung und Verweigerung. Die Studie hebt außerdem die Bedeutung des Lokalen für die erinnerungspolitischen Debatten nach 1945 hervor. This study examines the courses of action and modes of speech in the rural surroundings of the camps Bergen-Belsen, Esterwegen and Moringen. That the camps were not isolated but rather a part of Nazi society is illustrated in the analysis of the economic relationships, physical violence, the potential for conflict and habituation effects as well as their targeted public display. The study also stresses the importance of the local area as a place for commemorative discussions after 1945 between pragmatism, self-pity and resentment.
