Voices from the Kibbutz: Four Mothers,New Profile,and Women in Black

If there is any social organization that has provided a powerful illustration of the permeable boundaries between social politics—defined by Stephen M. Buechler as “forms of collective action that challenge power relations without an explicit focus on the state”—and social movements, and the role of collective identity in transforming either, as defined for women by Betty Friedan—it would be the Israeli kibbutz movement. The research presented here on grassroots Israeli women activists, a significant proportion of whom had grown up or had lived in a kibbutz, suggests that the social politics of everyday life on a kibbutz facilitated women's participation in larger social movements for peace, but also placed constraints on their activism. Many of these women had left or were in the process of leaving the kibbutz between 1989 and 1999, when this research was conducted. Those who had already left, and anchor women who organized urban demonstrations, saw the kibbutz as a conservative anti-woman force. Nonetheless, evidence gathered from qualitative interviewing with them suggests that the kibbutzim supported women who were politically active on national issues. Several women-led social protest movements illustrate how the kibbutz geared its members to think about the interplay of the moral and social orders in the small spaces of everyday life.     

The Politics of Nature at the Former Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to develop a new approach in Holocaust studies, namely an environmental history of the Holocaust. A case study of the former concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau demonstrates the extent of the entanglement of the politics of memory and the politics of nature, or political ecology, to use Bruno Latour’s term. I suggest that memorials should be treated as an environment, and thus explored as an assemblage of human and nonhuman (f)actors. Analysing both the official preservation strategies adopted by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum as well as artistic projects (including ?ukasz Surowiec’s Berlin-Birkenau), I consider commemorative practices’ environmental impact. My investigation thus primarily focuses on the role of the figure of the tree-as-witness in preservation work and in the use of powerful herbicides (namely Roundup) in preserving traces of the camp. This study could open the way to further comparative studies of ecocide and genocide.     

Concentration Camp Buildings as Artifacts: The Archaeology of Buildings in the Mauthausen-Gusen Complex

This article deals with the interpretation and display of the buildings and other built structures at the Mauthausen concentration camp. After decades of neglect the many standing buildings of the Mauthausen-Gusen complex are now being analyzed as a source of information about the Nazi terror system. This shift is part of a change in what is regarded as important and authentic at such sites and is connected to the educational approach now taking center stage. The archaeological investigation of buildings plays an important role in this process. Through many examples drawn from the killing and cremation area, the kitchen buildings and elsewhere, the article goes on to demonstrate both the explanatory potential of the architecture and how it is being presented in today’s memorial landscape.     

In Our Own Voices: a Guide to Conducting Life History Interviews with American Jewish Women

The valuable oral history guidebook, In Our Own Voices: A Guideto Conducting Life History Interviews with American Jewish Women,opens with this quote by Nen Lederkremen, "Without roots wecannot grow." The Jewish Women's Archive, an organization thatwas founded in 1995, has done an excellent job in enabling AmericanJewish women to record their roots. The Jewish Women's Archivefelt that women's contributions had been missing from the accountof the American Jewish experience. To rectify this, they pioneeredthe use of community-based oral history projects with Jewishwomen in Boston,     

Nazi Leaks and Intrigues in Second World War Ankara: the Plot to Send Herbert Melzig to a Concentration Camp

This article excavates one of the stranger episodes that took place in the transnational microcosm of the German expatriate world in Ankara and Istanbul during the Second World War. ‘Professor’ Herbert Melzig's story, the ‘Melzig affair’, illustrates how this microcosm, with its very different constituent members - Jewish and non-Jewish refugees from Nazism, German pro-Nazi expatriates, and an extensive embassy and Nazi Party network - acted as a conduit in German–Turkish relations, albeit one that produced unexpected results. This ‘Melzig affair’ sheds new light on the German presence in Second World War Turkey as well as the so-called German ‘exile on the Bosporus’ as it has been (re-)constructed and used in recent years; it also contributes to our understanding of Turkish foreign policy during the Second World War, especially regarding Turkey's reluctance to join the war on Hitler's side. At the end of the Melzig affair stood the ‘leaking’ of an internal Ministry of Propaganda memorandum. It prepared the ground for further leaks of this nature and was one of the turning points of public opinion in Turkey against the Third Reich.     

Voices from the Margins: Street Children's Subcultures in Indonesia

Indonesia has a proliferation of children living on the streets of its larger cities. To the state and dominant society, they are perceived as committing a social violation. In response to their marginalisation and subordination, street children in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia, have developed a 'repertoire of strategies' in order to survive. These include the appropriation of urban niches within the city, in which they create collective solutions for the dilemmas they confront in their everyday lives. This paper discusses a street boy community that exists within these marginal spaces: the Tikyan subculture of Yogyakarta. It presents the Tikyan subculture as a technique for street children to resist the negative stereotypes which are given to them by mainstream society. As they get older and become increasingly alienated by society, the Tikyan actively reject their 'deviant' label, and decorate street life so that it becomes agreeable in their eyes. This is achieved by deviating from dominant styles of dress and conventional behaviour, and through the development of a specific symbolic identity. These symbolic challenges to the dominant culture are communicated and dispersed within the social group and conveyed to the world via the subculture's 'specialised semiotic': their style of dress; their acts of bodily subversion or dissent (in the form of tattoos, body piercing and sexual practices); the music they play and listen to; and their use of drugs and alcohol. I describe these practices as the Tikyan 's obligatory performances, and the expected ways of behaving in order to remain accepted by the group.