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FS: Culture, Politics, Identity in Cold War Europe > Postwar Memory > Flashcards

Postwar Memory Flashcards

1
Q

What type of source is Under a Cruel Star?

A

It is a memoir - a narrative, written from the perspective of the author about an important part of their life

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2
Q

Historical significance of Under a Cruel Star being a memoir?

A
  • The author’s feelings and assumptions are central to the narrative.
  • Memoirs still include all the facts of the event, but the author has more flexibility here because she is telling a story as she remembers it, not as others can prove or disprove it.
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3
Q

When was Under a Cruel Star created?

A
  • Originally written in Czech and published in Canada under a diff title in 1973
  • autobiography published during normalization period in Czechoslovakia post-Prague Spring when reforms removed and status quo preserved
  • First published under this title in 1986
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4
Q

Who created Under a Cruel Star?

A
  • Heda Kovaly
  • Survived imprisonment in Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz, parents killed, escaped death march Feb 1945, husband Rudolf Margolius executed in 1952 communist show trial in Prague, wife of disgraced man, remarries, her and husband treated badly, leaves for America in 1968 during Warsaw Pact invasion
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5
Q

What is Kovaly’s purpose and what is she trying to do with Under a Cruel Star?

A
  • Memoir trying to say spirit of survival is necessary as well as hope
  • Main theme is the power of the human spirit to overcome the seemingly physically insurmountable
  • Kovaly says it is easier to survive physically impossible situations than passively relinquish control to others and wait to die -
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6
Q

What is the significance of Under a Cruel Star’s publication under this title in 1986?

A
  • Gorbachev’s policies of Glasnost and Perestroika in 1985

- Not actually being practically enacted in Czechoslovakia

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7
Q

What type of source is Billiards at Half-Past Nine?

A
  • Novel
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8
Q

What is the historical context within which Billiards is written?

A

Written whilst massive expansion of WG economy taking place - could potentially be read a conservative response to/critique of modernity

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9
Q

Significance of Boll as a writer to the novel itself and interpreting it and using as a source? (7)

A
  • German writer Heinrich Boll - radical liberal writer
  • Boll from Cologne and a Roman Catholic pacifist - Cologne of the major cities had given the least support to Hitler/Nazis in 1932/3 - 33% of Cologne vs 44% across entire Germany
  • Robert’s life very much mirrors Boll’s life and experiences of the War and afterwards in terms of critical of Church
  • He sees himself as not just a writer.
  • There is a sense that he sees it as his duty to make a political commentary.
  • Writer as a moral beacon - Very strong post-nazi idea about the function of a writer in society.
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10
Q

For what purpose was Billiards created by Boll? (5)

A
  • Boll is trying to highlight issues with the nature of post-war reconstruction in West Germany and convince people that it must be addressed:
  • Criticising the myths of national victimhood and resistance being perpetrated and how the true victims and those who resisted have been forgotten about and seemingly have no place in this society which forgets the crimes and rewards those involved
  • Also criticising the state of the Church and how it has been corrupted and how this in turn has allowed society to be morally corrupted
  • Critique of how society has carried on and seemingly not changed at all following the war and no lessons have been learnt
  • Hopeful tone, hope that society can progress if it adapts and heeds his warning at end of novel with Robert adopting Hugo and Heinrich giving Robert 1st piece of cake, suggesting a father’s forgiveness - GOD?
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11
Q

What sort of source is Hiroshima Mon Amour?

A

A film - French New Wave

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12
Q

Who created Hiroshima Mon Amour?

A

French Film director Alain Resnais and French author Marguerite Duras but was a co-production between France and Japan
Japanese title translates as “twenty-four hour affair” where as French translates as “Hiroshima my Love”

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13
Q

Why was HMA created/for what purpose/who is it’s intended audience?

A
  • Was initially supposed to be a documentary about effects of atomic bomb but Resnais didn’t believe it could be possible to convey this through a documentary
  • Love story used to bring the questions to the forefront
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14
Q

What is significant about HMA cinematography wise?

A
  • Considered part of French new wave but Resnais didn’t regard himself as being fully part of French New Wave but had closer links with Left bank group
  • Innovative use of brief flashback to suggest flashes of memory, creates a nonlinear storyline
  • Considered one of the most influential films of the French New Wave - major catalyst for Left Bank Cinema
  • Set in present day Hiroshima, flashbacks in Hiroshima, Nagaski and Nevers
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15
Q

What is significant about Duras?

A
  • born in French Indochina,
  • experienced separation from her husband near end of WWII as he was imprisoned in Buchenwald,
  • didn’t believe in infidelity
  • does this explain her writing of elle’s character?
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16
Q

When was Ashes and Diamonds created and by who?

A
  • Polish director Andrzej Wajda
  • 1958
  • Third of a trilogy of Wajda’s war films
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17
Q

What is Ashes and Diamonds based on?

A

Based on 1948 novel by Polish writer Jerzy Andrzejewski

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18
Q

Significance of Maciek being played by Cybulski?

A

famous screen actor who first comes to prominence in 1958 - stars in 2 other films this same year - often referred to as “the Polish James Dean”

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19
Q

Key historical themes which texts can help us to understand with regards to Post-war period - collective remembrance → myths/false or distorted memories/recollections of the war years both East and West

A
  • real tension between public versus private memory which for some was beneficial and for others detrimental
  • many in the postwar period, they could not escape the trauma of war years - it impacted their lives/relationships
  • distinction between and the link between emotional reconstruction and physical reconstruction in the post-war period in Europe
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20
Q

How does HMA indicate issues with transnational memory of WWII?

A
  • Elle’s memory/understanding of Hiroshima through museums and facts like the temperature of the bomb vs experience for those living it - lui “you know nothing”
  • Disparity of experiences of WWII, Hiroshima vs Nevers, very different experiences of the war
  • French end of war is end of occupation, Hiroshima end of war start of suffering for civiliians
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21
Q

Significance of HMA to history writing?

A

Shows how flat and superficial historians writing of peace is to real life - a metaphor for history writing in terms of surveys and how people actually disturb conventional narratives

22
Q

What does HMA tell us about cultural divisions?

A
  • cultural divisions separate characters, their meanings and experiences of war, its end, and its remembrance
  • calling each other city names to emphasise distance between them and their experience and also shows permanently located in the place of their suffering
23
Q

How does HMA hint at issues between public and private remembrance?

A
  • contrast between coming to terms with famous/huge moments of suffering and destruction and the smaller messier stories that happened around them
  • difference between the supposed clarity of soldier’s wartime experience and moral ambiguity and contradictions of the civillian
    film ends with them calling each other specific cities
  • in the postwar, countries too amorphous to capture specifics of inhabitants wartime suffering
  • Focus on elle’s story rather than lui’s because assumed to be one we understand
  • elle’s history rather is the repressed history but played out often and subsequently not given attention
24
Q

How does Under a Cruel star use symbols of luxury?

A
  • Symbols of luxury used to serve as a gross contrast to the evils of the concentration camps:
  • those in charge of the Nazi and Communist regimes lead lavish lives at the expense of suffering masses
  • through these symbols illustrating mistreatment of camp survivors post-liberation continues
25
Q

How does Billiards suggest the varied experiences of war and how it is difficult to have a collective remembrance?

A
  • All characters have such different experiences of war, cannot have a collective rememberance.
  • Marianne’s father was Nazi and her mother commited sucide/killed her siblings forced to live with foster parents.
  • Robert originally a dissident, flees following Ferdi’s death, returns and works for Reich, Captain, demolishes Abbey for revenge and personal vendetta, brother dies, wife killed in air raid.
  • Schrella flees, made stateless, family all gone, too painful to remember
26
Q

What does Ashes and Diamonds, its creation and plot devices speak to?

A
  • the tensions between public and private memory in the postwar world
  • controversy in CW Polish memory culture due to the pursuit of conflicting Goals
27
Q

How does Ashes and Diamonds speak to the controversy in CW Polish memory culture due to the pursuit of conflicting goals?

A
  • Wajda deals with the Polish Home Army’s resistance vs incoming Soviet-backed Communist regime but still aims to satisfy the Polish populace who held the Home Army dear AND the Communist party’s censorship powers even though they had renounced a Stalinist rigor of repression
  • Too strong a criticism of HA would mean it wouldn’t resonate with the audience but offending the regimes might result in the film being changed or aborted
28
Q

Historical context of Ashes and Diamonds which makes it significant?

A
  • Post-Thaw of 1956: October 1956 mass demonstrations and workers’ strikes/Rise of Gomulka and Polish socialism pursued/Hungarian Revolution
  • Censorship laws at the time focused on the danger of WORDS in films
  • Film able to pass because did not explicitly condemn anything BUT Wajda not permitted a passport to go and watch the film’s premier in Paris due to the film’s political nature
29
Q

What does historian Annamaria Orla-Bukowska say about Polish postwar memory?

A
  • Poland has a complicated postwar history.
  • WWII memorials all focus on German persecution/occupation and was a focal point for decades due to Soviet influence meaning selective communal memory and prevention of public demonstrations of resentment towards USSR
30
Q

How does HMA indicate the impact of trauma of WWI and lingering and impacting postwar lives and relationships?

A
  • Simultaneous conjunction of past and present - memory knocks down barriers between the two - lui’s hand position parallels dead German lover/elle struggles to distinguish lui from German as she relives her trauma
  • Elle and lui moved on physically but forever haunted by memories of the war
  • Naked bodies of lovers covered in ash like the Hiroshima rubble - lingering/presence of tragedy in human relationships/connections a decade on
  • Physical rebuilding of Hirsohima but city cannot move on from tragedy which is constantly ever-present with models/museums/film recreations
31
Q

What does historian Mercken-Spaas argue HMA highlights?

A
  • highlights the different ways of trying to rebuild postwar.
  • H negates his suffering by remembering it, N attempts to negate hers and fails by repressing it
32
Q

What is the train representative of in UaCS?

A
  • Train representative of a predestination that in context of Holocaust represents hardship and suffering.
  • Regularly deploys symbol of a train as a stark reminder of what went on during Nazi occupied Prague.
  • In the present trains are a haunting symbolic reminder of the horrors of the past
  • The passengers and the reader are temporally forced to shuttle back and forth from a trauma still ongoing and still in process of healing
33
Q

How do the ghosts of the dead haunt Kovaly’s narrative?

A
  • threaten to seep into lives of the living - additionally the survivors at times presented as living dead
  • still fresh from trauma, unable to move on from horrors experienced
  • motif of blurring descriptions of living and dead, empahsises evils of both Fascist AND Communist rule, both regimes dehumanise people to extent that even boundaries of what is alive and what is not are forced to blur
34
Q

How does Billiards at Half-Past Nine hint at the prevalence of guilt and trauma in society?

A
  • commonality of suicide in the Hotel, commented on by Hugo
  • Characters dealing with the past in different ways, but many are still living with their trauma in the present through these methods
  • Robert’s need for meticulous structure/routine/order because of the unsettling nature and unpredictable stupidity of war
  • Nettlinger attains high office but is still guilty and feels the need to redeem himself by being Schrella’s saviour
  • Johanna is unable to move on from the war years, gained more agency, and now feigns instability so she can oppose the regime with impunity - also attempts to murder a former Nazi prosecutor
  • Heinrich also craves order/structure and feels the need to throw away his medals and feels he failed his son. Revisits the cafe.
  • Schrella denies knowing Ferdi’s sister Erika because doesn’t want to drag up the memories - his father missing Ferdi killed sister died he was in exile
35
Q

What is the significance of the temporal in Billiards?

A
  • Events of book take place on one day in 1958 but also moves between present day and the past through individual memories up to the 19th century
  • majority of story told through use of flashbacks - past writing/narrating the present
36
Q

What does Ashes and Diamonds focus on?

A
  • How Poles are being pulled apart by Soviet-take over.
  • Wajda focuses on how intrusion sets countryman vs countryman.
  • Szcuzka, old Polish communist, estranged from his son who is in the Home Army and captured by his father’s comrades.
  • Tragedy of Civil War: final scene it is impossible to distinguish the killing from embrace
37
Q

What is the significance of Elle’s humiliation and shaming?

A

Elle’s humiliation and shaming for ‘sexual collaboration’ links to French national reconstruction and provides regime political legitimacy and aids myths

38
Q

How does HMA consider the link between physical and emotional reconstruction?

A
  • Physical reconstruction of Hiroshima depicted, suggestion lui involved as an architect, ex-soldier, links to de-militarisation of masculinity in PW world. Potentially read as lui able to work through experience emotionally by helping to rebuild physically
  • Emotional reconstruction of Hiroshima for an audience through film. No physical destruction for elle in Nevers, trauma suppressed, as if war had not happened, prevented her emotional reconstruction. Lui helps elle to emotionally reconstruct Nevers and relive her trauma.
39
Q

What does Mercken-Spaas say about temporality and spatiality of HMA?

A
  • the blending of time and space underlines the fact historic events like Hiroshima, when shown with all their ramifications, resist time and transcend space - destroys “Hiroshima myth”
  • universal event occurring throughout history
40
Q

What was contemporary reception to HMA?

A

Contemporary left-wing Francophone critics interpreted it as an implicit indictment of Gaullist technoratic ambitions as it reiterated the horror of atomic bombing and brought a French “allied victor” woman into contact with this suffering

41
Q

What is the spatial and temporal significance of Prague in UCS?

A
  • Prague becomes a symbol for human suffering and resillience AND an urban historical site.
  • Kovaly feminises Prague and refers to city as “she” and alive.
  • Relates her own experience of hardship and trauma with the traumatic experience of the city and its populous
42
Q

What could we read as the purpose of writing the memoir for Kovaly?

A

Act of writing the book/memoir an act of emotional reconstruction for Kovaly?

43
Q

How is Orwellian politics a major theme of UCS?

A
  • “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others”
  • Under fascism believe an alternative to fascism would bring freedom and opportunity to get out of poverty and create a more equal society
  • welcome communism to find more of the same, no equality
  • party officials live in self-indulgent luxury whilst people they govern and oppress live in fear and poverty
44
Q

How does Billiards consider emotional and physical reconstruction?

A
  • PW Germany still hasn’t recognised the good of the Lambs and instead continued acceptance of Buffaloes. Nettlinger and Vacano gain high public office/Ben Wackes leads “blue tunics”/Schrella stateless. Boll critical of lack of change and continuity with war years in PW world, not a reconstruction just a reconfiguration
  • the Faehmel family representative of new technoratic bureaucratic class. Beginning their dynastic ascent, a continuation of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks. 3 generations of architects, Heinrich a privy concullor, Robert a distinguished gentleman
  • physical reconstruction taking/taken place i.e. roofs/cafe everything back to normal/Abbey rebuild/Schrella’s return more than 20 years later, feels as if it is all the exact same. Boll critical of this as it as if war did not happen/everyone moved on and forgotten about it. Theme of continuity: Schrella takes exact same bus, exact same time, but noone remembers him.
45
Q

What does the act of writing do for Boll?

A

Act of writing the text one of emotional reconstruction for Boll

46
Q

How is Wajda’s practical decision to not portray any obvious villains and choice of characters reflective of postwar politics and world in Poland?

A
  • Sympathetic to both the Home Army assassins and the Communist official.
  • Made under aegis of Polish government and approved the film on the basis that it was an adaptation of a novel by the same name centred on the Communist official but Wajda changed the focus and shifted the audience sympathy to a more minor character Maciek but still took great pains to make Sczuka sympathetic.
47
Q

How does Wajda portray Szcuzka and Maciek?

A
  • Scuzuka is and old Polish communist who fought vs Franco’s fascist forces in Spain pre-WWI, more sympathetic to audiences and people than the new Soviet-influenced breed but still Communist.
  • Maciek and Home Army resistance.
48
Q

How is the Critique of Soviet influence implicit through specific symbols and tropes alluding to Poland and Polish culture?

A

The white horse, symbolic of Poland, acts a turning point for Maciek for his mission of killing, also retaining idea of Polish identity below communist regime. Red Poppies of Monte Casino, a patriotic song of resistance, Romantic poet Norvid another allusion to a free Poland. Strong religious connotations: a reminder that the Polish people can be proud of their history/religion as a competing and threatening ideology.

49
Q

What is significant about Wajda’s conscious decision to abandon realistic time and space?

A
  • Cybulski’s individualistic performance and anachronistic 1950s costume removed the film from being a realistic portrayal of 1945.
  • Audience supposed to view the film as a statement of contemporary world.
  • Cybulski speaks for a new younger disaffected generation, reassessing its past and uncertain of its future
  • expresses confusion and captures the soul of a people constantly trapped by the forces of history
50
Q

What is the hotel an illusion to in Ashes and Diamonds?

A

The hotel is an illustion to Poland having been occupied/representative of a Free Poland but it is stuck. With the hotel, they are in different spaces, the communist elite flat is really bourgeois.

FS: Culture, Politics, Identity in Cold War Europe (5 decks)

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