Zuflucht und Utopie. Österreichisch-jüdische Emigration in die Dominikanische Republik

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

Alexander Korb

Transformationsgewalt in Europa 1944–1950. Perspektiven auf das Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs

This essay proposes that transformation violence be considered a particular form of violence that marked the transition to the post-war period towards the end of the Second World War. While a series of violent acts can be classified as wartime violence, transformation violence is a useful concept that can be applied in particular to three interlocked scenarios: settlement violence, meaning violent acts that aimed to destroy the former enemy in war and civil war; acts of war that constituted a continuation of ethnic and political civil wars from the occupation era and which were particularly hard to put to an end as long as the fighters familiar with the territory and the population were not given a convincing exit scenario (these might be described as gang wars if the term “gangs” did not carry such a strong ideological connotation); lastly, ethnic cleansing that aimed at a rapid political, demographic and social transformation of the state and the nation. These forms of violence all also had the purpose of arranging the population by new measures and to draw them into the new political system while at the same time creating loaded target groups who were to be excluded from the new political system. Finally, the article raises the question whether the export of violence into colonial territories aided the peacemaking efforts on the continent. It describes the scenario of violent re-colonialisation of territories like Algeria, which had been occupied by members of the axis powers during the Second World War.

SWL-Reader

Paul A. Shapiro

Opening the Archives of the International Tracing Service (ITS). How did it happen? What does it mean?

Until the end of 2007, the International Tracing Service (ITS) was the largest collection of inaccessible records anywhere in the world that shed light on the fates of people from across Europe – Jews as well as members of virtually every other nation or nationality – who were arrested, deported, sent to concentration camps, and even murdered by the Nazis; who were put to forced labour, calculated in many places to result in death; and who were displaced from their homes and families, and unable to return home at the war’s end. These were documents that Allied forces collected as they liberated camps and forced labour sites across Europe in the last months of the war and during their post-war occupation and administration of Germany and Austria.

The archives of the ITS in Bad Arolsen, Germany, contains over fifty million documents produced in the Second World War era relating to the fates and destinies of over 17.5 million people. Using samples and case studies, the author, who led the campaign to open the archives, provides a view of the effort to open the collections for research and discuss the importance of this recent event for Holocaust survivors, victims of National Socialism, and scholars.

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.

The Dominican Republic is nowadays considered an ultimate holiday paradise by most Europeans. It is less known that this small state in the Antilles served as a place of refuge from Nazism for Austrian, German and Czech Jews during the Second World War. While most countries closed their borders to the flood of refugees after the 'annexation' of Austria, it was - of all places - this dictatorial Caribbean island state that offered refuge to the persecuted. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee built an agricultural model project in Sosúa on the country's northern coast, which was modelled on Kibuzzim and was laid out for tens of thousands of refugees. However, only a few hundred reached the island; they included many Viennese.

The history of this settlement project reveals the developmental lines of the twentieth century: the democratic states' capitulation in the face of the German anti-Jewish policies, the concept of an agricultural project based on socialist ideas and its failure and, finally, migration as a modernising catalyst.