Language:
German
Year of publication:
1998
Titel der Quelle:
Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft
Angaben zur Quelle:
46,4 (1998) 320-328
Keywords:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Historiography
;
World War, 1939-1945 Jewish resistance
;
Warsaw (Poland) History Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1943
Abstract:
Notes that the Warsaw ghetto uprising is being appropriated as a symbol by a variety of present-day movements, from the PLO to the environmentalists. The story itself has been idealized into an heroic myth, with literary parallels to the epic of Achilles: the decision to remain in the place of danger in spite of the offer of a refuge; and the decision to die fighting - an honorable and aesthetic death. Any prosaic details that impinge on the heroic image are angrily rejected (e.g. certain remarks by Marek Edelman); heroes who do not fit the ideal, such as the child smugglers who kept the ghetto alive, are forgotten. Similarly, the martyrdom of Janusz Korczak is transfigured into a saint's legend, unlike that of others, among them many who voluntarily joined their families on the Umschlagplatz and were deported to extermination camps.
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