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S:I.M.O.N. Issues

S:I.M.O.N. Sections

Editorial

S:I.M.O.N. is an e-journal of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI). It appears twice a year in English and German language. S:I.M.O.N. aims at both a transnational and comparative history of the Holocaust and Jewish Studies in Central and Eastern Europe within the broader contexts of the European history of the 20th and 21st century, including its prehistory, consequences and legacies as well as the history of memory.

S:I.M.O.N. serves as a forum for discussion of various methodological approaches. The journal especially wishes to strengthen the exchange between researchers from different scientific communities and to integrate both the Jewish history and the history of the Holocaust into the different “national” narratives. It also lays a special emphasis on memory studies and the analysis of politics of memory. S:I.M.O.N. uses a double-blind review system, which means that both the reviewer’s and the author’s identities are concealed from each other hroughout the review process.

Shoah: The journal deals with the history of the Shoah from multidisciplinary, transnational and comparative perspectives. It seeks to integrate studies on Jews as well as on other groups of victims of the Holocaust, especially on Roma, and of so far less researched regions of (East) Central and (South) Eastern Europe.

Intervention. The journal reports on research projects and their transmission into public events. It also informs about current educational and remembrance programs.

Methods. The journal serves as a forum for the discussion of methodological approaches as, for instance, the everyday history, oral history, gender history, the history of violence, anti-Semitism and racism and the theory of memory and memory politics.

DocumentatiON. The journal contributes to critical approaches on using and interpreting archival materials in the 21st century.

Download the current issue S:I.M.O.N. 2017/2.

Articles

Kinga Frojimovics

Die Beziehung zwischen der Pester Israelitischen Gemeinde und der IKG Wien. Vom ‚Anschluß’ bis zum Beginn der Deportationen 1941

The Relations between the Jewish Community of Pest and the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien (IKG) from the 'Anschluß' until the Beginning of the Deportations, 1938-1941 In 1938 the Jewish Community of Pest (PIH)] and the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien were the two largest Jewish communities of Central Europe. By 1938, the two Jewish communities had cultivated strong relationships with one another for over a century. However, the nature of the relationships between the two Jewish communities had changed drastically in 1938.

As a consequence of the increasingly worsening official anti-Jewish discrimination, ties of social and legal aid had exclusively replaced any other kinds of relationships. Religious life, chiefly issues of kashrut, social aid for members of the community, as well as Emigration from Austria after the 'Anschluß', and issues concerning one’s Hungarian citizenship after the anti-Jewish legislation had been central to the mutual work of extending social and legal aid to one another.

A systematic study of the relationships between the two largest Central European Jewish communities between 1938 and 1941 will enable us to understand how these increasingly adversely influenced central institutions of Jewish life attempted to assist their members and one another during the first phase of the Holocaust. To show how the two communities collaborated and tried to help each other is crucial, since these Jewish institutions are routinely portrayed even in historical works as isolationist bodies that were utterly uninvolved and uninterested in the problems of the Jewish world in general. The study will explore how their ties between 1938 and 1941 (until the beginning of the mass deportation of Viennese Jews) influenced the behaviour of the two communities and their members both in the later phases of the Holocaust and its aftermath. The ties of legal and social aid provided a viable model as well as a context for later patterns of relationships within and also without the Jewish world.

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Marianne Hirsch/Leo Spitzer

Spaziergang in der Herrengasse. Straßenfotos aus dem jüdischen Czernowitz

Czernowitz was the Habsburg Empire's „Vienna of the East“; it had a lively German-speaking Jewish community, almost all of whom were persecuted or murdered during the time of the Second World War. Yet the memory of Cernowitz lives on, passed on as it is by survivors and their descendants “like a wonderful present“ and a „relentless curse“, as noted by Aharon Appelfeld. We find evidence of old Cernowitz in historical reports, memoirs, documents and literary works. These include impressive contributions by Cernowitz-born writers.

In their lecture, Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer focussed primarily on materials from family albums and collections in order to tap into the world of Jewish Cernowitz before its destruction. In particular, they analysed street photographs depicting daily life which had been taken on the city's streets before the Second World War and during the occupation by Romanian fascists and their allies from Nazi Germany. What do these ordinary and apparently opaque images tell us about the rich and diverse past? We were astonished to discover that they tell and show us a lot in that they reveal both more and less than we had expected.

Events

Miloslav Szabó

Ein ‚antislowakischer' Oscar-Film? Zur Darstellung des Holocaust im tschechoslowakischen Film Obchod na korze

During the clerical-fascist Slovak State, "Tóno" Brtko, a docile and poor carpenter, is offered the possibility to 'aryanise' the small Main Street sewing accessories shop of Rozália Lautmannová. Torn between his good-natured principles and his greedy wife Evelyna, he finally agrees to take over the shop by making the deaf and senile lady believe he is her nephew arriving to help her out. Yet he then discovers that the business is bankrupt, and Ms. Lautmannová is only relying on donations from the Jewish community. While letting his wife believe he is making money from the shop, he gradually becomes a supporter of the old lady. More and more, a cordial relationship between the two evolves. When the Slovak authorities finally decide to deport the Jewish population of the small town, Tóno, in a deep conflict with himself and his values, finally opts for hiding Ms. Lautmannová – a decision which turns into tragedy. Obchod na korze won the 'Oscar' for Best Foreign Language Film in 1966. The film was presented on the occasion of a VWI-Visuals presentation on 29 January 2015 in Vienna's Admiralkino.

Regina Fritz/Éva Kovács/Béla Rásky (Hg.)

Als der Holocaust noch keinen Namen hatte.

Zur frühen Aufarbeitung des NS-Mordes an Jüdinnen und Juden

Before the Holocaust Had Its Name.

Early Confrontations of the Nazi Mass Murder of the Jews

In der Historiografie ging man lange davon aus, dass es bald nach 1945 zu einer unausgesprochenen Übereinkunft gekommen war, den Judenmord zu beschweigen und die Schuldfrage beiseite zu schieben. Die erst kürzlich wiederentdeckten vielfältigen, bis in die frühen 1950er-Jahre angestellten Bemühungen, die postnazistischen Gesellschaften über die Verbrechen des NS-Regimes aufzuklären und sie mit diesen zu konfrontieren, sich damit auf mannigfaltige Weisen auseinanderzusetzen, widersprechen aber dieser lange gültigen Annahme.

Die Beiträge des vorliegenden Bandes fragen nach den konkreten Maßnahmen, die es unmittelbar nach dem Schrecken des Krieges gab, das begangene Unrecht nach dem Krieg als solches anzuerkennen: Welche Versuche gab es, den Massenmord zu thematisieren, zu dokumentieren, der Opfer der NS-Vernichtungspolitik zu gedenken, Verantwortlichkeiten zu klären und die „Schuldfrage“ zu stellen? Welche politischen Interessen verbanden sich mit den Bemühungen, die Vergangenheit auszuarbeiten, wie(so) scheiterten sie und ab wann sind erste Tabuisierungstendenzen feststellbar?

Béla Rásky ist Direktor des VWI, Regina Fritz ist Projektmitarbeiterin bei der Edition „Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945 (VEJ)“, und Eva Kovács ist wissenschaftliche Programmleiterin des Wiener Wiesenthal Instituts für Holocaust-Studien (VWI).

Wien 2016

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