Bringing the Dark Past to Light

Bringing the Dark Past to Light

Author: John-Paul Himka

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2019-06-12

Total Pages: 993

ISBN-13: 1496210204

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Despite the Holocaust's profound impact on the history of Eastern Europe, the communist regimes successfully repressed public discourse about and memory of this tragedy. Since the collapse of communism in 1989, however, this has changed. Not only has a wealth of archival sources become available, but there have also been oral history projects and interviews recording the testimonies of eyewitnesses who experienced the Holocaust as children and young adults. Recent political, social, and cultural developments have facilitated a more nuanced and complex understanding of the continuities and discontinuities in representations of the Holocaust. People are beginning to realize the significant role that memory of Holocaust plays in contemporary discussions of national identity in Eastern Europe. This volume of original essays explores the memory of the Holocaust and the Jewish past in postcommunist Eastern Europe. Devoting space to every postcommunist country, the essays in Bringing the Dark Past to Light explore how the memory of the "dark pasts" of Eastern European nations is being recollected and reworked. In addition, it examines how this memory shapes the collective identities and the social identity of ethnic and national minorities. Memory of the Holocaust has practical implications regarding the current development of national cultures and international relationships.


Contemporary World Fiction

Contemporary World Fiction

Author: Juris Dilevko

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2011-03-17

Total Pages: 554

ISBN-13: 1598849093

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This much-needed guide to translated literature offers readers the opportunity to hear from, learn about, and perhaps better understand our shrinking world from the perspective of insiders from many cultures and traditions. In a globalized world, knowledge about non-North American societies and cultures is a must. Contemporary World Fiction: A Guide to Literature in Translation provides an overview of the tremendous range and scope of translated world fiction available in English. In so doing, it will help readers get a sense of the vast world beyond North America that is conveyed by fiction titles from dozens of countries and language traditions. Within the guide, approximately 1,000 contemporary non-English-language fiction titles are fully annotated and thousands of others are listed. Organization is primarily by language, as language often reflects cultural cohesion better than national borders or geographies, but also by country and culture. In addition to contemporary titles, each chapter features a brief overview of earlier translated fiction from the group. The guide also provides in-depth bibliographic essays for each chapter that will enable librarians and library users to further explore the literature of numerous languages and cultural traditions.


Khatyn

Khatyn

Author: Ales Adamovych

Publisher: Glagoslav Publications

Published: 2012-08-28

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 1909156094

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It is a quiet place, with lush green grass covering the location of the former Belarusian village. A village that was burned to the ground with its inhabitants in 1943. Anyone familiar with this small corner of Eastern Europe is chilled to the bone by the events that transpired there, and the village’s name Khatyn has now come to embody a horrific national tragedy. But tragedy is not all this name embodies, for it also reminds people of the tremendous courage of those who fought for the life and freedom of their country. It is the story of this village and the events that surround its annihilation that are the focus of Ales Adamovich’s novel Khatyn, which was written on the basis of historical documents. The author, himself a World War II veteran and partisan, depicts the reality of the partisan resistance to fascism in Belarus. The main character is a man named Florian, who in his memories returns to events that transpired some thirty years ago, when as a teenager he joined a partisan unit and met his future wife, Glasha. He witnesses how the villagers of Khatyn are burned alive as reprisal for supporting the partisan movement. The monstrous cruelty of the death squad and its commanders manifested itself in the act of punishing the entire community for the deeds of those who had helped the partisans. The village, composed mostly of the elderly and mothers with children, was locked inside a barn. After being covered with dry hay, the barn was set ablaze with the families inside. Over half a century later, Adamovich’s story about the courage of ordinary people has not lost its immediacy. Today, the world is still marred by war crimes committed against communities of noncombatant. Khatyn is a testament to an event that must not be forgotten, and to a reality that must not be repeated.


Katyn

Katyn

Author: Wojciech Materski

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2008-10-01

Total Pages: 616

ISBN-13: 0300151853

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In the spring of 1940, the Soviet Union carried out the mass executions of 14,500 Polish prisoners of war - army officers, police, gendarmes, and civilians - taken by the Red Army when it invaded eastern Poland in September 1939. This work details the Soviet killings, the elaborate cover-up of the crime, and the subsequent revelations.


Contemporary World Fiction

Contemporary World Fiction

Author: Juris Dilevko

Publisher: Libraries Unlimited

Published: 2011-03-17

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 1591583535

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What people in North America learn about other cultures and countries is often filtered through Western perspectives and sensibilities. One way to get beyond that sometimes-one-dimensional view is to sample stories of other countries and cultures as told by people who live in those lands and speak their languages.


War in the Wild East

War in the Wild East

Author: Ben Shepherd

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-06-30

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 0674043553

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In Nazi eyes, the Soviet Union was the "wild east," a savage region ripe for exploitation, its subhuman inhabitants destined for extermination or helotry. An especially brutal dimension of the German army's eastern war was its anti-partisan campaign. This conflict brought death and destruction to thousands of Soviet civilians, and has been held as a prime example of ordinary German soldiers participating in the Nazi regime's annihilation policies. Ben Shepherd enters the heated debate over the wartime behavior of the Wehrmacht in a detailed study of the motivation and conduct of its anti-partisan campaign in the Soviet Union. He investigates how anti-partisan warfare was conducted, not by the generals, but by the far more numerous, average Germans serving as officers in the field. What shaped their behavior was more complex than Nazi ideology alone. The influence of German society, as well as of party and army, together with officers' grueling yet diverse experience of their environment and enemy, made them perceive the anti-partisan war in varied ways. Reactions ranged from extreme brutality to relative restraint; some sought less to terrorize the native population than to try to win it over. The emerging picture does not dilute the suffering the Wehrmacht's eastern war inflicted. It shows, however, that properly judging ordinary Germans' role in that war is more complicated than is indicated by either wholesale condemnation or wholesale exoneration. This valuable study offers a nuanced discussion of the diversity of behaviors within the German army, as well as providing a compelling exploration of the war and counterinsurgency operations on the eastern front.


Making Sense of War

Making Sense of War

Author: Amir Weiner

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2002-04-14

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 0691095434

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Reconceptualizes the historical experience of the Soviet Union from a different perspective, that of World War II. Breaking with the conventional interpretation that views World War II as a post-revolutionary addendum, this work situates this event at the crux of the development of the Soviet - not just the Stalinist - system." - publisher.


The Shoah in Ukraine

The Shoah in Ukraine

Author: Ray Brandon

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2008-05-28

Total Pages: 394

ISBN-13: 0253001595

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On the eve of the Nazi invasion of the USSR in 1941, Ukraine was home to the largest Jewish community in Europe. Between 1941 and 1944, some 1.4 million Jews were killed there, and one of the most important centers of Jewish life was destroyed. Yet, little is known about this chapter of Holocaust history. Drawing on archival sources from the former Soviet Union and bringing together researchers from Ukraine, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States, The Shoah in Ukraine sheds light on the critical themes of perpetration, collaboration, Jewish-Ukrainian relations, testimony, rescue, and Holocaust remembrance in Ukraine. Contributors are Andrej Angrick, Omer Bartov, Karel C. Berkhoff, Ray Brandon, Martin Dean, Dennis Deletant, Frank Golczewski, Alexander Kruglov, Wendy Lower, Dieter Pohl, and Timothy Snyder.