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Full-Text Articles in History

Bonding Images: Photography And Film As Acts Of Perpetration, Christophe Busch Oct 2018

Bonding Images: Photography And Film As Acts Of Perpetration, Christophe Busch

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Historical and contemporary cases of collective violence show an incremental use of photography and film to capture and disseminate violent acts. Recording cruelty during conflict seems to be a highly ritualised practice that urges the question what communicative and psychological functions these acts have? Why and how does perpetrator photography shape a binding moral world that divides 'us' versus 'them'? These visualising acts are commonly seen as proof of power that desensitises the perpetrators and dehumanises the victims. This contribution focuses on the imagery of the Holocaust, looks into the functions that capturing and sharing cruelty has on the evolution …


Lechem Hara (Bad Bread), Lechem Tov (Good Bread): Survival And Sacrifice During The Holocaust, Carolyn S. Ellis Jan 2010

Lechem Hara (Bad Bread), Lechem Tov (Good Bread): Survival And Sacrifice During The Holocaust, Carolyn S. Ellis

Carolyn Ellis

In Judaism, human nature is understood as existing on a spectrum between yetzer hara (evil inclination) and yetzer tov (good inclination). Jews struggle to suppress the yetzer hara and exercise the yetzer tov. Based on an oral history interview and co-created by a survivor of the Holocaust and a researcher, this story focuses on bread (lechem) and hunger in a Polish ghetto. The narrative encourages reflection about good and evil and about the tangled intermingling of the generosity of self-sacrifice and the instinctive drive for survival.