The Nazi occupation of Europe of World War Two is acknowledged as a defining juncture and an important identity-building experience throughout contemporary Europe. Resistance is what 'saves' European societies from an otherwise chequered record of collaboration on the part of their economic, political, cultural and religious elites. Opposition took pride of place as a legitimizing device in the post-war order and has since become an indelible part of the collective consciousness. Yet there is one exception to this trend among previously occupied territories: the British Channel Islands. Collective identity construction in the islands still relies on the notion of 'orderly and correct relations' with the Germans, while talk of 'resistance' earns raised eyebrows. The general attitude to the many witnesses of conscience who existed in the islands remains ambiguous. This book conversely and expertly argues that there was in fact resistance against the Germans in the Channel Islands and is the first text to fully explore the complex relationship that existed between the Germans and the people of the only part of the British Isles to experience occupation.
The Nazi occupation of Europe of World War Two is acknowledged as a defining juncture and an important identity-building experience throughout contemporary Europe. Resistance is what 'saves' European societies from an otherwise chequered record of collaboration on the part of their economic, political, cultural and religious elites. Opposition took pride of place as a legitimizing device in the post-war order and has since become an indelible part of the collective consciousness. Yet there is one exception to this trend among previously occupied territories: the British Channel Islands. Collective identity construction in the islands still relies on the notion of 'orderly and correct relations' with the Germans, while talk of 'resistance' earns raised eyebrows. The general attitude to the many witnesses of conscience who existed in the islands remains ambiguous. This book conversely and expertly argues that there was in fact resistance against the Germans in the Channel Islands and is the first text to fully explore the complex relationship that existed between the Germans and the people of the only part of the British Isles to experience occupation.
Victims of Nazi Persecution from the Channel Islands explores the fight and claims for recognition and legitimacy of those from the only part of the British Isles to be occupied during the Second World War. The struggle to have resistance recognised by the local governments of the islands as a legitimate course of action during the occupation is something that still continues today. Drawing on 100 compensation testimonies written in the 1960s and newly discovered archival material, Gilly Carr sheds light on the experiences of British civilians from the Channel Islands in Nazi prisons and concentration camps. She analyses the Foreign Office's treatment of claims from Islanders and explores why the islands' local governments declined to help former political prisoners fight for compensation. Finally, the book asks why 'perceived sensitivities' have stood in the way of honouring former political prisoners and resistance memory over the last 70 years in the Channel Islands. The testimonies explored within this volume help to place the Channel Islands back within European discourse on the Holocaust and the Second World War; as such, it will be of great importance to scholars interested in Nazi occupation, persecution and post-war memory both in Britain and Europe more widely.
With firsthand sources and archeological research, this study explores life inside Nazi prisons during the occupation of the Channel Islands. Through most of the Second World War, Nazis occupied the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey, two British Crown dependencies in the English Channel. With extensive research, archeologist Gilly Carr has uncovered the enduring legacies of this occupation. In Nazi Prisons in Britain, she shines a light on the lives of citizen resisters who became political prisoners on their own soil. Carr explores political prisoner consciousness and solidarity through the letters of the “Jersey 21” and the diaries of Frank Falla, Guernsey’s best-known resister. Drawing on memoirs, poetry, graffiti, official archives, and material culture—as well as the words of war criminals, traitors, surrealist artists, and many others—she reveals what life was like inside these brutal Nazi prisons.
Digitale Anwendungen ermöglichen neue Zugänge zur Topographie der nationalsozialistischen Verbrechen. Das Jahrbuch 2016 des International Tracing Service (ITS) legt den Fokus auf verschiedene räumliche Aspekte des Holocaust und anderer nationalsozialistischer Massenverbrechen. Das wachsende Forschungsinteresse an der Rekonstruktion von Verfolgungswegen sowie von Orten und Räumen des Terrors steht im Zusammenhang mit neuen digitalen Methoden und Darstellungsmöglichkeiten. Zugleich ist es mit der verstärkten Hinwendung zu einer Erfahrungsgeschichte der NS-Verfolgten verbunden. Das Archiv des ITS verwahrt eine der weltweit größten Sammlungen zur Geschichte der NS-Verbrechen. Aufgrund seiner einzigartigen Struktur birgt es für diese Zugänge große Forschungspotentiale, zu deren Freilegung das Jahrbuch beitragen soll.
Archaeologies of Cultural Contact undertakes an exploration of cultural transfer, with a particular focus on the combination and modification of both material and behavioural attributes under conditions of contact. From globalization and displacement to cultural legitimization and identity politics, the modern world is characterised by, and articulated through, dynamics of contact and transfer. This book recognises that creolization, ethnogenesis, hybridity, and syncretism are analytical concepts and social processes, relevant not only to the postcolonial contexts of the twentieth century but also to wide-ranging instances where contact is made between cultural groups. Indeed, in representing the re-working of pre-existing cultural elements, they were crucial and ever-present features of the human past. Ranging in their analytical frame, scale, and geographical and temporal location, the chapters in this volume demonstrate the diverse understandings that can be gained from explorations into the material remains of past contact, exposing and overcoming various limitations of competing models of cultural change. They permit insights into not only cultural change and difference but also the processes of appropriation, resistance, redefinition, and incorporation. Together, the contributions articulate the perspectives that concern practices in relations to people, places, and things, and note how power dynamics mediate social interactions and sustain and constrain forms of cultural contact. This book will be of interest to researchers and students in archaeology as well those from cognate disciplines, particularly anthropology and history.
What is often held to be Britain's 'finest hour' – the Second World War – was not experienced so uniformly across the British Isles. On the margins, the war was endured in profoundly different ways. While D-Day or Dunkirk is embedded in British collective memory, how many Britons can recall that Finns were interned on the Isle of Man, that enemy soldiers developed British infrastructure in Orkney, or that British subjects were sent to concentration camps from Guernsey? Such experiences, tangential to the dominant British war narrative, are commemorated elsewhere in the 'other British Isles'. In this remarkable contribution to British Island Studies, Daniel Travers pursues these histories and their commemoration across numerous local sites of memory: museums, heritage sites and public spaces. He examines the way these island identities assert their own distinctiveness over the British wartime story, and ultimately the way they fit into the ongoing discourse about how the memory of the Second World War has been constructed since 1945.
This book explores the way in which the legacy of the German occupation of the Channel Islands has been turned into heritage (or, conversely, neglected) over the last 70 years. Once seen as the ‘taint of the mark of the beast’, the perception of much of what the Germans left behind has slowly changed from being despised and reviled, buried underground or dumped at sea, to being reclaimed, restored, highly valued and treated as ‘heritage’. This book examines the journey of various aspects of this heritage, exploring the role of each post-war generation in picking at the scar of occupation, refusing to let it heal or fade. By discovering and interpreting anew their once-hated legacy, each generation of Channel Islanders has changed the resulting collective memory of a period which is rapidly moving to the edge of living memory. It includes the first in-depth investigation into the multiple aspects of heritage of occupation of a single place and will offer comparative material for other heritage professionals who work with similar material throughout Europe and in other post-occupation areas. It will explore the complex ethical issues faced by anyone who works with the legacy or heritage of Nazism, seeking to understand how and why the Channel Islands have responded in the way that they have and asking how unique – or typical for formerly-occupied Europe - their response has been.
This book focuses on the numerous examples of creativity produced by POWs and civilian internees during their captivity, including: paintings, cartoons, craftwork, needlework, acting, musical compositions, magazine and newspaper articles, wood carving, and recycled Red Cross tins turned into plates, mugs and makeshift stoves, all which have previously received little attention. The authors of this volume show the wide potential of such items to inform us about the daily life and struggle for survival behind barbed wire. Previously dismissed as items which could only serve to illustrate POW memoirs and diaries, this book argues for a central role of all items of creativity in helping us to understand the true experience of life in captivity. The international authors draw upon a rich seam of material from their own case studies of POW and civilian internment camps across the world, to offer a range of interpretations of this diverse and extraordinary material.
Across the whole of Nazi-ruled Europe the experience of occupation was sharply varied. Some countries - such as Denmark - were allowed to run themselves within tight limits. Others - such as France - were constrained not only by military occupation but by open collaboration. In a historical moment when Nazi victory seemed permanent and irreversible, the question 'why resist?' was therefore augmented by 'who was the enemy?'. Resistance is an extraordinarily powerful, humane and haunting account of how and why all across Nazi-occupied Europe some people decided to resist the Third Reich. This could range from open partisan warfare in the occupied Soviet Union to dangerous acts of insurrection in the Netherlands or Norway. Some of these resistance movements were entirely home-grown, others supported by the Allies. Like no other book, Resistance shows the reader just how difficult such actions were. How could small bands of individuals undertake tasks which could lead not just to their own deaths but those of their families and their entire communities? Filled with powerful and often little-known stories, Halik Kochanski's major new book is a fascinating examination of the convoluted challenges faced by those prepared to resist the Germans, ordinary people who carried out exceptional acts of defiance.
Every large nation in the world was directly or indirectly affected by the impact of war during the course of the twentieth century, and while the historical narratives of war of these nations are well known, far less is understood about how small islands coped. These islands – often not nations in their own right but small outposts of other kingdoms, countries, and nations – have been relegated to mere footnotes in history and heritage studies as interesting case studies or unimportant curiosities. Yet for many of these small islands, war had an enduring impact on their history, memory, intangible heritage and future cultural practices, leaving a legacy that demanded some form of local response. This is the first comprehensive volume dedicated to what the memories, legacies and heritage of war in small islands can teach those who live outside them, through closely related historical and contemporary case studies covering 20th and 21st century conflict across the globe. The volume investigates a number of important questions: Why and how is war memory so enduring in small islands? Do factors such as population size, island size, isolation or geography have any impact? Do close ties of kinship and group identity enable collective memories to shape identity and its resulting war-related heritage? This book contributes to heritage and memory studies and to conflict and historical archaeology by providing a globally wide-ranging comparative assessment of small islands and their experiences of war. Heritage of War in Small Island Territories is of relevance to students, researchers, heritage and tourism professionals, local governments, and NGOs.
Of all the resistance organizations that operated during the war, about which much has been written, one stands out for its transnational character, the diversity of the tasks its members took on, and the fact that, unlike many of the known evasion lines, it was not directed by Allied officers, but rather by group of ordinary citizens. Between 1942 and 1945, they formed a network to smuggle Dutch Jews and others targeted by the Nazis south into France, via Paris, and then to Switzerland. This network became known as the Dutch-Paris Escape Line, eventually growing to include 300 people and expanding its reach into Spain. Led by Jean Weidner, a Dutchman living in France, many lacked any experience in clandestine operations or military tactics, and yet they became one of the most effective resistance groups of the Second World War. Dutch-Paris largely improvised its operations-scrounging for food on the black market, forging documents, and raising cash. Hunted relentlessly by the Nazis, some were even captured and tortured. In addition to Jews, those it helped escape the clutches of the Nazis included resistance fighters, political foes, Allied airmen, and young men looking to get to London to enlist. As the need grew more desperate, so did the bravery of those who rose to meet it. Using recently declassified archives, The Escape Line tells the story of the Dutch-Paris and the thousands of people it saved during World War II. Author Megan Koreman, who was given exclusive access to many of the archives, is herself the daughter of Dutch parents who were part of the resistance.
