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This edited collection explores memories and experiences of genocide, civilian casualties, and other atrocities that occurred after the Second World War.
Donato De Simone WORLD WAR II EVENTS NARRATED FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE CHILDREN CAUGHT IN THE WEB OF ADULT INSANITY A young boy . . . a beautiful town . . . stalked by the Nazis bombed by the Allies . . . hiding Jewish refugees Abruzzos mini-holocaust . . . meeting Padre Pio escape to a new life in America Growing up in the tranquility of the Abruzzo region of Italy, Donato De Simone, Danny to his friends, was abruptly plunged into the violence of war as the Germans and Allies contested for the Sangro River in a major World War II battle. Now, after decades of pondering the meaning of these events, Danny recalls the drama of his times. Mixing humorous touches with his graphic descriptions...
Modern military history, inspired by social and cultural historical approaches, increasingly puts the national histories of the Second World War to the test. New questions and methods are focusing on aspects of war and violence that have long been neglected. What shaped people’s experiences and memories? What differences and what similarities existed in Eastern and Western Europe? How did the political framework influence the individual and the collective interpretations of the war? Finally, what are the benefits of Europeanizing the history of the Second World War? Experts from Belgium, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Luxembourg, Poland, and Russia discuss these and other questions in this comprehensive volume.
This book comprises 14 essays by scholars who disagree about the methods and purposes of comparing Nazism and Communism. The central idea is that if these two different memories of evil were to develop in isolation, their competition for significance would distort the real evils both movements propagated. Whilst many reject this comparison because they feel it could relativize the evil of one of these movements, the claim that a political movement is uniquely evil can only be made by comparing it to another movement. How do these issues affect postwar interrelations between memory and history? Are there tensions between the ways postwar societies remember these atrocities, and the ways in which intellectuals and scholars reconstruct what happened? Nazism and Communism have been constantly compared since the 1920s. A sense of the ways in which these comparisons have been used and abused by both Right and Left belongs to our common history. These twentieth century evils invite comparison, if only because of their traumatic effects. We have an obligation to understand what happened, and we also have an obligation to understand how we have dealt with it.
A New Statesman Book of the Year Winner of the Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize Winner of the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Italian Studies “Extraordinary...I could not put it down.” —Margaret MacMillan “Reveals how ideology corrupts the truth, how untrammeled ambition destroys the soul, and how the vanity of white male supremacy distorts emotion, making even love a matter of state.” —Sonia Purnell, author of A Woman of No Importance When Attilio Teruzzi, a decorated military officer and early convert to the Fascist cause, married a rising American opera star, his good fortune seemed settled. The wedding was blessed by Mussolini himself. Yet only three years later, Teruzzi...
Home after Fascism draws on a rich array of memoirs, interviews, correspondence, and archival research to tell the stories of Italian and German Jews who returned to their home countries after the Holocaust. The book reveals Jews' complex and often changing feelings toward their former homes and highlights the ways in which three distinct national contexts--East German, West German, and Italian--shaped their answers to the question, is this home? Returning Italian and German Jews renegotiated their place in national communities that had targeted them for persecution and extermination. While most Italian Jews remained deeply attached to their home country, German Jews struggled to feel at hom...
Despite the vast literature on genocide and mass violence during the 19th and 20th century, one question still haunts historians and the wider public alike: Why do ‘ordinary men’ use extreme violence against fellow human beings? “Empire, Ideology, Violence: The Long 20th Century” in Comparative Perspective offers innovative methods and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of extreme violence in the long 20th century. By looking at case studies from different regions and time periods the contributors shed more light on the social, political and economic contexts in which humans are inclined to use extreme forms of violence. Topics in the volume include case studies from Asia, Africa, Europe, the Ottoman Empire and the Nazi Third Reich.
“Literature of the Holocaust” courses, whether taught in high schools or at universities, necessarily cover texts from a broad range of international contexts. Instructors are required, regardless of their own disciplinary training, to become comparatists and discuss all works with equal expertise. This books offers analyses of the ways in which representations of the Holocaust—whether in text, film, or material culture—are shaped by national context, providing a valuable pedagogical source in terms of both content and methodology. As memory yields to post-memory, nation of origin plays a larger role in each re-telling, and the chapters in this book explore this notion covering well-known texts like Night (Hungary), Survival in Auschwitz (Italy), MAUS (United States), This Way to the Gas (Poland), and The Reader (Germany), while also introducing lesser-known representations from countries like Argentina or Australia.
Publisher Description
The authoritarian and totalitarian systems of individual countries have long been studied independently of each other. The separation of Eastern and Western Europe was used as a parameter by historians. This also applies to the analysis of Communism and Mussolini's Fascism. Only in recent years has the comparative perspective in the regional, chronological and system-oriented sense been applied, thus allowing many phenomena to be correctly understood and assessed. Central and Eastern Europe is tied to Western and Southern Europe by the experience of dictatorship and the ongoing need to evaluate and come to terms with these dictatorships. In the present anthology Mussolini's Fascism, National Socialism and Communism are examined comparatively. Similarities, connections and mutual influences in these dictatorships are sought. Finally, the transition from dictatorship to democracy is examined. With this collection of essays the editors intend to give impulse for inter-European comparative research on dictatorships and democracy.