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Soviet Women’s Acceptance of Infantilization as a Means of Compromise, Resistance, and Denial on the Frontlines of World War II and Beyond
By Julia-Maria Xavier Content Warning: Sexual Assault Abstract World War II was marked by the violent acquisition of land, shaping, and re-shaping of territories and populations both in its immediacy and aftermath. For citizens of the Soviet Union, like most other nations, defending their territory was an issue of patriotism, in which all citizens were…
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Passport to Reprieve: Global Movements and Camaraderie During the Second World War
By Susan Samardjian Content Warning: Genocide Sonia Caplan, Passport to Reprieve. Canada: Azrieli Foundation, 2021. xi + 209 pp., with illustrations. ISBN: 9781989719169 (sc). Price: CAD$14.95. “The complexity of our lot struck me so forcefully that I was staggered again and heard myself exclaiming, ‘If I live to tell the story, nobody will believe it.’”1…
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Mangled Memory: Remembrance of the Nazi Regime in the German Democratic Republic
Cover photo: Dietmar Rabich / Wikimedia Commons / “Berlin, Palast der Republik — um 1990 — 2” / CC BY-SA 4.0 By Aviva Gomes-Bhatt From 1949 until 1990, Germany was divided into the Western Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the Eastern German Democratic Republic (GDR). Ideologically separated by the proverbial Iron Curtain, each state had to grapple with reconstruction and usher itself…
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The City of the Dead Confronts the City of the Living: Mostar’s Partisan Memorial Cemetery as ‘lieu de mémoire’
Cover photo: Partisan Memorial Cemetery, Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Photo: leiris202/Flickr. No changes made. View the license here. By Nikolai Ranko Duffield Introduction Located in a valley between the Hum and Velež mountains, a city of stone sits idly, intersected by the mighty blue Neretva, which flows quietly through the centre. Frequently listed as a…
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The Voices of a Few: Women in the Gulag
Shack from Gulag- Museum of the Occupation of Latvia. Photo: Marcin Szala/Wikimedia Commons. No changes made. View the license here. By: Julia Maria-Xavier The Stalinist era saw millions of people caught within the penal system, whether in prisons, labour camps, forced labour colonies, or exile, and millions more who bore the traumatic experience of being…