43 research outputs found
Picturing Jasenovac: Atrocity Photography Between Evidence and Propaganda
Between 1941 and 1945, approximately 80,000 inmates, mainly Serbs, Jews and Roma, perished in Jasenovac, a brutal Ustasha–run concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia. Ever since the 1980s, Jasenovac has been one of the most contentious aspects of the memory of the Second World War in the former Yugoslavia. Controversies surrounding the number of victims and the nature and purpose of the camp, which continue to polarize the region, have been well documented. However, there has been hardly any scholarly research on the deep divisions regarding the photographic record of Jasenovac and the uses of images in the representation of the horrors of this camp. This is even though fundamental differences in the perceived importance of atrocity images permeate the dominant cultures of memory in the region, and represent an important barrier to reconciliation. In Serbia and in the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska, graphic atrocity photographs are routinely used in in the mainstream press, in television documentaries, in books and exhibitions devoted to Jasenovac. One can even speak of a distinct aesthetic of memory, captured in a number of iconic images that serve to sustain the vision of the Ustashe as uniquely barbaric and evil, and of Jasenovac as the place of unimaginable cruelty. By contrast, in Croatia, atrocity images are almost completely absent from public discourse, on the grounds that their authenticity is compromised and that decades of propagandistic misuse by the Serbian side have undermined the status of atrocity photographs as a medium through which the past can be adequately represented.
The chapter argues that in order to understand these different approaches to atrocity photographs, it is necessary to look beyond the socio-political circumstances of Yugoslavia in 1980s and 1990s, and the instrumentalization of history that defined that era. There is much to be gained from looking further into the past and considering the legacy of the Yugoslav State Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Committed by the Occupiers and Their Accomplices in Yugoslavia, which operated between 1944 and 1948. By offering the first detailed scholarly examination of the War Crimes Commission’s attitude to, and uses of, photographs, both generally, and in relation to Jasenovac, the chapter argues that contemporary polemics about atrocity images and their relevance echo many of the Commission’s own dilemmas regarding the role of visual evidence in documenting atrocity, about the propaganda potential and emotional power of violent images, and the ways in which images can be deployed strategically to sustain particular narratives of victimhood and villainy. Also, it shows how institutional practices through which the Commission collected photographs paved the way for many of the subsequent controversies surrounding their ‘authenticity’ and relevance as a historiographic source
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Beyond belief: the social psychology of conspiracy theories and the study of ideology
The chapter revisits Michael Billig’s writing on conspiracy theories, as featured in the book Fascists: A social psychological view of the National Front (1978) and a number of other works published in the 1980s. In spite of its originality and continuing relevance, Billig's writing on conspiracy theories is today surprisingly neglected in literature on the subject, especially that written by social psychologists. The chapter looks at conceptual, theoretical and methodological issues that have prevented social psychologists from engaging with Billig’s writing on conspiracy theories, and argues that, at a time when conspiracism is said to be on the rise, there is much to be gained from a return to this pioneering and original work
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[Book review] Jelena Đureinović: The Politics of Memory of the Second World War in Contemporary Serbia. Collaboration, Resistance and Retribution
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Rescuing the ‘Sava victims’ from oblivion and denial: History and memory of the last Ustasha crime in Sisak (Spasavanje savskih žrtava od zaborava i negiranja: istorija i sećanje na poslednje ustaške zločine u Sisku)
The article explores the history and memory of the last Ustasha crime in Sisak: the massacre perpetrated on the banks of the River Sava on 4 May 1945, on the eve of the Ustasha withdrawal from the city. Although the victims of this massacre – known locally as “Sava victims” – became a visible object of public remembrance in Sisak after the war, no scholarly works have ever been published on the event, and memorialisation was accompanied by a striking lack of interest in the identities of the victims, or the facts of what happened to them. This article is an attempt to explain and counter this longstanding tradition of neglect by addressing, for the first time, key questions about who the victims were, how many were killed and why. Examining the story of the Sisak massacre is important because, since the 1970s, there has been speculation that bodies discovered on the banks of the Sava were victims not of an Ustasha massacre, but of Partisan revenge killings perpetrated after the liberation of Sisak. This revisionist interpretation has gained traction in Croatia since the 1990s, and even some mainstream Croatian historians have suggested that, due to the paucity of historical evidence about the crime, the revisionists' views cannot be dismissed outright. The paper critically examines this argument, and by illuminating the facts of the case, hopes to provide some much-needed clarity. Also, in mapping the events in Sisak in the final weeks of the war, the article reveals that the massacre on the banks of the Sava in Sisak was not an isolated event. There were other crimes committed in and around Sisak in the final weeks of the war, crimes which are very much part of the story of the “Sava victims”, yet which were until now completely unknown. Among them are one of the last massacres of Serbs by the Ustasha, and what is probably the final act of the Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia. The article brings to light these previously unknown crimes and reveals the identities of some of the victims
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Staro sajmište: Mesto sećanja, zaborava i sporenja [Staro Sajmište: A site remembered, forgotten, contested]
The Semlin concentration camp (also known by its Serbian name Sajmište) was one of the main sites of the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Serbia. Established by Nazi Germany in December 1941 on the outskirts of Belgrade, Semlin was one of the first concentration camps in Europe created specifically for the internment of Jews. Between March and May 1942, approximately 7,000 Jewish women, children and the elderly (almost half of the total Jewish population of Nazi-occupied Serbia) were systematically murdered there by the use of a mobile gas van.
In spite of its importance as a site of the Holocaust, for much of the post-war period the Semlin camp occupied a marginal place in Yugoslav/Serbian public memory. Even today, sixty seven years after the liberation of Belgrade, the site where the camp was located, best known by the name Staro sajmište – the Old fairgrounds - stands practically in ruins, awaiting conservation and transformation into a suitable place of remembrance.
The book Staro Sajmište: A site remembered, forgotten, contested - published in the year which marks the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the Semlin concentration camp – offers the first detailed account of the post-war history of this place of the Holocaust. Based on extensive research using both archival sources and secondary literature, the book reveals a whole array of largely unknown details about the post-war history of this locality, and in doing so draws attention to the continuity in the marginalization of Staro Sajmište as a place of the Holocaust. By analyzing Staro Sajmište as a place that has been simultaneously remembered, forgotten and contested, the book makes a significant contribution towards existing debates about Serbian society’s attitude towards the past, especially towards the Second World War and the Holocaust
Qualitative psychology and the archive
This special section considers the relevance of a reflexive engagement with archives in
psychology, and explores the value of archives as a resource for empirical inquiry and scholarship. The contributions offer reflective commentaries on the potential and limitations of working with (and within) archives. They also highlight the range of theoretical, methodological and practical issues that psychologists might want to take into account when engaging in this kind of inquiry, including the need to treat archives and archiving as set of societal practices through which the past is not only preserved, but also constructed, and constituted
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Négocier un lieu dans la mémoire collective pour la destruction des Juifs de Serbie : le cas du Judenlager Semlin [Negotiating a place for the destruction of Jews in Serbian public memory: the case of the Semlin Judenlager]
The chapter outlines the post-war fate of the site of the Semlin Judenlager in Belgrade and examines the various controversies that have surrounded its memorialisation since 1945, with a specific focus on the period after 198
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“Shortly afterwards, we heard the sound of the gas van”: survivor testimony and the writing of history in socialist Yugoslavia
The article examines the assertion found in post–World War II Yugoslav historiography, that a mobile gas van was deployed in Nazi-occupied Serbia not just at the Semlin Judenlager in Belgrade but also at another camp in the city, Banjica. This claim is based on a small number of contradictory testimonies, mainly from survivors, which were collected by local institutions after the war. How can we explain the presence of this by all accounts erroneous claim in the testimonies of survivors? Why and how was it incorporated into the camp's history in spite of the glaring inconsistencies and the absence of corroborating evidence? The article argues that individual memories of the gas van encountered in the testimonies, and their subsequent assimilation into the historical memory of the war, are both products of the same dynamic, namely the socially mediated and institutionally embedded nature of 'witnessing.ï¿
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Η «ημιαναγνώριση» του Ολοκαυτώματος: Αναζητώντας μια θέση στη δημόσια μνήμη της Σερβίας για την εξόντωση των Εβραίων [‘Half-Recognizing’ the Holocaust: Remembrance of the Semlin camp in Belgrade since the 1980s]
The chapter examines the memorialisation of a major site of Jewish suffering in Nazi-occupied Serbia, the Semlin Judenlager.
In spite of its importance as a place of the Holocaust, the site of the Semlin camp played a marginal place in the memorialisation of the destruction of Serbian Jewry in post-war Yugoslav/Serbian society. The chapter examines the reasons for this and explores the ways in which, in the post-war period, the memory of the Holocaust tended to be assimilated within the dominant symbolic orders, first within multi-ethnic Yugoslavia and later within a post-Yugoslav ideological milieu dominated by Serbian nationalism and the preoccupation with Serbian suffering during the Second World War.
In exploring the memorialisation of Semlin since the 1980s, the chapter also draws attention to the continuities and discontinuities between the Communist and post-Communist periods in the way in which the destruction of Jews is understood and remembered in Serbian society