Une conférence d’Ilana Miller (Université de Chicago) dans le cadre du séminaire d’histoire moderne des Juifs de l’Institut d’histoire contemporaine de l’AV ČR et le CEFRES en partenariat avec le Musée juif de Prague.

Où : bibliothèque du CEFRES – Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Prague 1
Quand : 17h – 19h
Langue : anglais

Résumé en anglais

Was there such a thing as “Jewish popular culture” under communism? In this presentation, I use data collected from the publishing and film industries to examine moments of increased popularity in Jewish themes in Czechoslovak culture. While the rapid rise in interest in Jewish themes in post-communist culture has been written about extensively, few have taken seriously the possibility of widespread interest in Jewish themes under communism. By examining trends in mainstream literary and cinematic culture, I show that the 1960’s boom in interest in Jewish themes rivalled the post-communist period. While the post-communist period was heavily influenced by foreign and external cultural trends, communist era literature and films were far more domestic—both in their creation as well as in their themes and focus. Using distribution and publication data, reviews, movie posters and illustrations, this presentation explores the characteristics and qualities of Jewish popular culture under communism, particularly the role that Jewish themes played during the era of communist reform.

Illustrations by Zdeněk Chotěnovský from Hana Bělohradská, Bez krásy, bez límce (1964).

Conférence prononcée par  Wolfgang Schellenbacher (Université de  Vienne / EHRI) dans le cadre du séminaire d’histoire moderne des Juifs de l’Institut d’histoire contemporaine (AV ČR) et du CEFRES en partenariat avec le Musée juif de Prague.

Où : bibliothèque du CEFRES – Na Florenci 3, 110 00 Prague 1
Quand : 17h – 19h
Langue : anglais

L’exil politique des socialistes autrichiens en Tchécoslovaquie en 1934 est différent des autres mouvements de réfugié en Europe centrale durant cette période, visiblement en raison de la sympathie manifestée par le gouvernement tchécoslovaque envers ceux qui fuient. Cependant, à la fin des années 1930, les  politiques tchécoslovaques envers les réfugiés deviennent nettement plus restrictives. La comparaison de la manière de fuir et du sort des Autrichiens fuyant la persécution pour leurs convictions politiques en 1934 avec ceux des Autrichiens tentant d’entrer en Tchécoslovaquie pour échapper aux persécutions anti-juives de 1938, met en lumière la nouvelle politique de Prague à l’encontre des réfugiés juifs .

Une conférence de Stephan Stach (Institut d’histoire contemporaine – AV ČR) dans le cadre du séminaire d’histoire moderne des Juifs de l’Institut d’histoire contemporaine de l’AV ČR et le CEFRES en partenariat avec le Musée juif de Prague.

Langue : anglais

Résumé en anglais:
During the 1950s and 1960s a number of books on the Holocaust appeared in the German Democratic Republic. They had their origins in the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, the only Holocaust research center in the Eastern Bloc. Among them was Bernard Mark’s Der Aufstand im Warschauer Ghetto (The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1957; originally published in Polish in 1953), the collection of memoirs and diaries Im Feuer vergangen (Lost in the Fire, 1958) and the volume of documents Faschismus-Ghetto-Massenmord (Fascism, Ghetto, Mass Murder, 1960). These books constituted a considerable part of the literature on the Holocaust at the time. They were widely discussed in the press, where authors often used them as evidence of Nazi war criminals holding public office in West Germany at that time. Though their propaganda potential certainly increased the popularity of these publications, their impact went far beyond that. The publications were praised for their literary quality, for instance by the East German critics Victor Klemperer and Arnold Zweig, and met with the interest of the general reading public in East Germany. In my talk, I analyze the reception and perception of these books – and thus the Jewish Historical Institute – between Cold War propaganda and the emergence of an East German Holocaust memory.