Site designed by huncwot was made for National Library of Poland and polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Part of the Armenian collection

Project is divided into the eight sections, describing the heritage of nations, religions and cultures which lived in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: site presents eastern lands collection (Byzantine tradition), collections of people from the territory of Italy, France and Germany, shows Islamic, Jewish and Armenian heritage and - of course - Lithuanian and Polish cultural treasures. Each section has its own music background, which illustrateseasily zoom into them and see all the details.

Also on the site can be downloaded texts (PDF), desktop and mobile wallpapers and multimedia (for PC, MAC and iPod).

This project was a FWA site of the day.

Visit the site at www.commonwealth.pl

As Gazeta.pl writes, his work could be seen till the beginning of 20th century. After the WW2 inscription has disappeared. After the years it was brought to the memory of Gdansk inhabitants by the users of theinternet forum Dawny Gdańsk (The Old Gdansk).

They have started historical investigation about the old postcard. They wondered if this inscription had been a part of the city name (Danz - Danzig). It was also a suspicion of the photomontage, but later some documents found in the archives by Tomasz Strug have confirmed the authenticity of the old photo and the personality of forester Danz. There were also some remainders of the trees from inscription found in Oliwa.

Inscription made of the trees. (#)

This case can be interesting from the context of internet communities potential in the history matters. Users of the historical forum have inspired, explored and decisively evidenced the question of the past. There was no inspiration from the official institutions. Amateurs using professional methods and supported by the power of community nowadays have a chance to actively support historians in the matter of historical research, sometimes doing it even better, or searching for the new original topics and ways of history (like in the case of historical reenactment movement and experimental archeology projects).

Maybe the term citizen historians (like citizen journalism) used by Jeff Jarvis can be refered to this case?

Using the base of RSS sources and functionality of Google Reader we can show daily at least several interesting news, resources and discussion related to the topics of digital history. Also a special widget with the latest news can be put on the one’s site.

Of course all copyrights of the content provided by the project feed belong to the original authors. Feed is only a medium to share information about the sources of the content. We do not even publish it on the project site - it is available by RSS channel (powered by Feedburner) or by the widget (Widgetbox).

The mechanism of the aggregation is a part of Google Reader functionality. The database of sources is built by Historia i Media team.

On the second stage of the project development we want to work with the RSS sources and prepare a tool for social aggregation and evaluation of the most active and valuable ones, which would be dynamically added to the main feed.

This project was made in a few hours so please do not hesitate to comment it or suggest any modifications.

Please visit a project homepage: feeds.historiaimedia.org/

Photo by gotto78 (CC)

In this article I would try to discuss the way in which the tragic events in Argentina and Chile are remembered by the society and how visual materials occurring in the Internet, as well in the public sphere (memory parcs, ‘muro de la memoria’, museums), could reinforce the collective experience of the contemporary history. I will show, how satirical editions in Argentina, emphasized the situation and portrayed the dictatorship and how the young documentary filmmakers commemorate the years of regime and build collective memory by film. But first of all, I would describe a theoretic background of my essay, by focusing on what is semiotics and why it is useful to view collective memory via this filter, especially, when we analyse the visual material.

Semiotics is a relation between sign, object and the interpreter. This relation, according to Magnussen [1] who cites Peirce’s theory, should be iconic or symbolic and not necessarily occurs in the language. It may be successfully a sign which refers to object in the sense of resemblance or life practice and cultural habits. Historic analysis often gets benefit from semiotics in Peirce’s or Eco’s theory, because materials deposed in museums mostly contain of visual materials. The private history, closed in family archives, as so called living history, are visual souvenirs of the time: a photo, a letter and correspondence between the members of family, the paintings, the films, or some objects ‘from the era’. It is significant, that the objects are permanently interpreted and by the process of memorization, are creating the new signs. So the new sign providing the new interpretation, may be perceived as a mutation or a product of recycled history and the ‘old’ signs. Sign in this sense, become independent of its interpreter and indicates not him, but the time and the historic moment. Although its meaning changes and reinforce or deteriorate in the eyes of the next generations and their collective experience and collective memory.

Collective memory is a sort of product of memorising and of collected experiences. As Iwona Irwin-Zarecka claims in her important publication [2]: “A ‘collective memory’ is a set of ideas, images, feelings about the past and it is best located not in the minds of individuals, but in the resources they share. There is no reason to privilege one form of resource over another - for example, to see history books as important but popular movies as not.” In our analysis – the history of dictatorship in Chile and in Argentina, the main role in commemorating play the photos and documentaries, set by amateur filmmakers on youtube.com and documentaries done by sons of the witnesses of „Dirty War” years. If we add, that collective memory may also be „an active process of sense-making through time”, like it is defined by Olick and Levy in their article [3], the semiotics framework of collective mean-making will be clear.

Part 1: Argentina: forced disappearing

The sense-making, like I wrote in previous paragraph, is in this way reinforced by visual materials, ’signs’ of the time. It can be also the remedy for sharp reality and a sort of passive resistance for terror. And to the landscape of Argentinian and Chilean belonged: in Argentinian case about 340 detention centers – unofficial prison system that wee covered by governmental legal penitentiary structure. Almost of territory of the country had in each province its detention center. The exact map of secret prisons identified after years of investigations is situated here:

Full map view

Although, not only bodies were tortured by soldiers. The goal was to destroy the reformist movements: trade unionism, socialism, human rights voluntarism, pacifism. Among this regime without face prisoners (in many testimonies repeats the expression, that decisive persons wore habits or masks. In Chilean narration there was a man in a hood who was a main investigator) there were: priests, nuns, doctors, psychologists, journalists, actors, lawyers and, mostly, students of local universities. Not surprising that in this ugly atmosphere of every-day uncertainty grew up an editorial alliance: editions created the new form of opposition: the comics. DeAgostini, in 1981, so in the time of a light thaw in matter of censorship, occurred one of the most important comic grotesque on regime – Buscavidas, created by Alberto Breccia.

Buscavidas, were published in 1981 and 1982 in comics magazine SuperHum and were created by Alberto Breccia with the screenplay of Trillo. SuperHum was a submagazine of Hum, weekly magazine that attacked economic policy, military regime in a non-serious way. Till the first releases, the main character incorporated the regime. As can be found in Magnussen’s essay [4] Buscavida were a character without face, who lived someone else’s life. Black and white images were a good artistic solution in the dark years of dictatorship. The history focused on distortion of social relations, of annihilation of the families and of lack of communication, caused by fear. In Buscavidas, often there are no family life in a sense of normal, stable institution. There are mothers, who are alone, without husband and children („The Family”, „The grandmother”, „Persecuta”). And if there are any relations, they are forbidden („Marengo”) and persecuted as immoral and reactionist against the regime. The view of the societal life was depressive, full of cruelty and ambivalence. Moreover, Buscavida’s characters were deprived of their dignity, personal uniqueness, social relations and even personal history. In this matter, the creator of this comics would made this drama – drama of forced forgetting and evaporating history as well as evaporating the whole generation – to be public, as did „Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo”, revealing their personal tragedy and letting know about the scale of the mass murder and disappearance. Let us quote the beautiful words, that may be read on the commemorative website of „Desaparecidos” [5]: „For the Mothers, the “disappeared” were taken alive and had to be returned alive. This did not last long as the attention span of the population at large on the topic was short and it was all soon buried”. In that case, Buscavidas also made vivid the disappeared.

Later after Buscavidas occurred in socio-artistic life of Argentina, it appeared to be normal in terms of democratic rules, the rising democratic government allowed to form CONADEP (1983) - National Commission on the Disappeared, which were obligated to commemorate the desaparecidos and to estimate the real number of deaths while „Dirty War”. In 1985, thanks to CONADEP investigations (see also Wikipedia: , began the famous trial of junta’s soldiers, while 2000 of citizens wrote to the government complaints against the military. Right then, the elected president Raul Alfonsin passes the „law of full stop” [6], increasing the progress of the trials and reducing at the same time people susceptible to being prosecuted and lynched by families of Desaparecidos. Two years later, in 1987, Alfonsin established the law of „due obedience”, which supposed to end the persecutions of both sides of conflict. The families of desaparecidos insisted to provide the trials on normal ways, to let things clear to their private histories. Although, the next president Carlos Menem pardoned 280 members of junta and the close of desaparecidos wrote a testimony „Nunca Mas”, establishing the dramatic collective memory of the dictatorship in public life. Today, after twenty years of dictatorship, the argentinian government seem to have consequent anti-militarist ideology. It is worth to mention, that in Buenos Aires in 1998 was found Memory Park for commemorising Desaparecidos and „Dirty War”. The government of the capital with non-governmental organizations approved the project, situating it along the Plata River on North Costanera Avenue in Buenos Aires, near the University of Buenos Aires. About 300 meters north of the park is a military airport that was utilized for the “flights of death” during which victims of the Military Junta government were thrown into the river and sea. To this create the park were invited many artists well-known worldwide like Denis Oppenheimer (Monument to the Escape may be seen here). The essence of the project is the ramped path, meant to form a giant “wound” in the lawn of the park leading just toward the river, where the visitors can distinguish the name of killed or vanished during the „Dirty War”. Among the artist invited to the project is Magdalena Abakanowicz and her figures.

Part2: Chile: The hidden history

When Argentina was bleeding during the short period between 1976 and 1983, Chile had been experiencing the same terror, although at that time it was „established” terror. Namely – first act of violence occured right after the coup d’ etat in 1973. The National Stadium was full of prisoners, taken from the streets and forming only for two months of existing this concentration camp a mass of 12 000 people, among them 1000 of women, also pregnant and 1000 of foreigners. As historians and human-right specialist claim (Wikipedia), in first three months of the military government, at least 100 person were killed (Caravan of Death, Operation Colombo, Operation Condor). Among them famous bard Victor Jara, commemorated nowadays by government as the patron of National Stadium, where he was murdered.

Needless to say, that during the dictatorship of Pinochet (1973-1990), Desaparecidos were the whole generation, whose maturity occurred in 1970s. Still, the are only vague estimations of deaths, but the process of commemorating also appears and has the chance to reinforce the memory of those times. In this chapter, I will focus on two documentaries illustrating the years of terror in Chile: „The City of photographers” by Sebastian Moreno and „Estadio National” by Carmen Luz Parrot.

Documentaries are that kind of material, which is direct as photo and focused on the present time, portraying those, who remember and those, who remember for somebody, who was, in our case, killed and vanished. Those two documentaries clearly show, how much the new generation must do to provide the memory of the years of drama. As one of the “heroes” of that time claimed: we had too much autocensure to talk openly. We talked via photographs, films. So young people who remember the story from their fathers should speak with them or even on behalf of them. This statement show especially the documentary on the National Stadium. When we see the football training and the narrator, who was imprisoned there, we may notice this fact clearly. Especially, that even sport stars from the Chilean representation like Chueco Leppe, were killed there.

The history starts in the 1973, when the first ‘oppositionist group’ – La Legua, is placed in the sectors. They are bitten, tortured in special place after the small, but hard to survive “cyclist path”. Soon, the soldiers can’t cope with all of the bodies, which lay down on the floor near the entrance. Officially, we need to add, there were 38 people identified as killed. In fact, in the relation of one of the prisoners, only in this day, when he was detentioned in the concentration camp, he saw many more victims. During the two months of collecting the prisoners in that place, between September 1973 and November 1973, thousand people were treaten badly – the Chilean Human Right Organization reveals, that mostly they were treated with high tension, sharp equipment like knives, tortured mentally and by deprivation of food and space. In dressrooms, changed onto the cells, stayed often more than 100 people at once. It can be seen on the walls, where the prisoners wrote dates of their detention and their names, just to be remembered, in the words of another survivor.

National Stadium was the official, public place of torture – with irregular visits of the families, with press conferences or visitations of bishops and foreign ministers. Maybe this fact helped the prisoners to live. Most tragedies had place in secret places like: Villa Grimaldi, AGA, La Firma, Colonia Dignidad, Venda Sexy, Londres 38, José Domingo Cañas and Isla de Malpo, Lonquen, which was crucial to the film of the son of one of the photographers of the dictature – Jose Moreno, Sebastian. Like he says at the beginning of his documentary, his childhood was marked by photos – especially by a photo of Luis Navarro – portrayed Lonquen’s prisoners. Behind the wall of many people, was a hole, where they hung till death. This photographer, member of Vicaria de la Solidaritad promised himself at that time to “defend those, who had fallen”. Like many others, he stood on the streets to “take photo-testimonies”. The streets were also the public place of tortures and of demonstrations. It is crucial, especially nowadays, when most visible tragedies of the Chilean regime are collected and revealed to the public life, that the photographs helped the opposition to form and to fight, because where they occurred, nobody was killed. The deaths were performed only without the witnesses. Today the ‘heroes’ of Moreno’s film claim, that camera was a sort of a weapon, letting them to live and to document the regime. Even though, that the youngest member of AFI, Asociacion de la Fotografia Independienta (works of AFI can be seen here:

Rodrigo Rojas, was burned alive on the barricade, where he was without his camera.

Today, those documentary testimonies help to cope with the drama. Although the process of commemorating is harder to execute, because of the late returning path Chile to democracy. As we may remember, Pinochet lost the referendum in 1988 and presidential elections in the next year, delegating his power to Patricio Aylwin, but remaining the Commander-in-Chief of the Army, until March 1998. Thus, the Rettig Commision could estimate the score of the horror not earlier than in 1991. In its findings, there were 3000 people killed by the regime. Further report, the Valech Report from November 2004, added that 24 000 of prisoners were persecuted in detention centers and due to numbers of Latin American Institute of Mental Health and Human Rights (ILAS) close to 200 000 people suffered the great trauma. All of the reports are deposed on desaparecidos site.

It is obvious, that Chile must give salute to their Desaparecidos. Members of AFI created a place called Muro de la Memoria, situated in Bulnes de Santiago de Chile, where they put the photos of any person they can find and identify. Till today, the Muro contains of 950 of photographs of 1.192 of Desaparecidos.Their ‘organic’ work on commemorating is great, because as we can see on the film, they go to the families and take a photos of the victim, that often exists on the bottom of family album as a unique portrait. Then, they transfer this into the tiles of the Muro. But Chile wakes up and beside the Muro, there are plans to build Museum de la Memoria, (plans are here).

Part 3: Internet as a source of collective memory – conclusion

In the close neighbourhood of public investments to commemorate Desaparecidos, the Internet is full of a private testimonies, on which I shall focus at the end of my article. Short presentations, like this:

show small dramas of mothers and families of Desaparecidos, the reality of the Chilean streets and reveals the attitude toward the national tragedy. But, as we could expect, while analyzing the commemorate Argentinian movement, there are much more film on regime of “Dirty War”.

Short view on history in Videla’s speech:

And on Chilean Coup d’etat:

This testimony, set on youtube after 30 years of „Dirty War”, is important message to viewers:

The song of Sting, dedicated to the mothers of disappeared in Chile.

Most of them are sentimental testimonies, but, as we may hear in the one of the presentations, even artists from abroad like: Gothan Project, Sting or Bono, commemorated the victims in their popular songs. These unique narrations on the short-film service visited by millions of unique users, can successfully spread the information, what was the dictatorship in Argentina and Chile, and how not to forget any of the victims of those regime. Collective memory occurs in the popular culture and in the artistic creations and materials like photos and films, not only in books. So we must be aware of advantages of commemorating role of the Internet and media and simply use them to show the shadows, as well as the happy historic moments in our history.

Agnieszka Szmidel

1 Anne Magnussen. Imagining the Dictatorship 1981-1982. Visual Communication, 5, 2006. SAGE Pub.

2 Iwona Irwin-Zarecka. Frames of Remembrance: The Dynamics of Collective Memory. Transaction, 1994, 4

3 Jeffrey K. Olick, Daniel Levy . Collective Memory and Cultural Constraint: Holocaust Myth and Rationality in German Politics, American Sociological Review, 1996, Vol. 62, No. 6, pp. 921-936

4 Anne Magnussen. Imagining the Dictatorship 1981-1982. Visual Communication, 5, 2006. SAGE Pub.

5 “EL DESAPARECIDO” AS A TERROR TACTIC THAT LASTS PAST STATE TERRORISM, http://www.iisd.org/YOUTH/ysbk047a.htm, 27.02.2008.

6 Interpreting Victim Testimony: Survivor Discourse and the Narration of History, http://www.yendor.com/vanished/karenhead.html, 27.02.2008.

Big album of polish correspondence signed by AK Warsaw, with aquarel stamps ‘1 VIII 1944′ designed by polish painters, from the begging of auction, was named “filatelistic rarity” and rapidly was an object of controversy. The Warsaw Uprising Museum tried to collect funds, although it’s annual donation for buying exhibits was lower than proposed price.

Day by day to Office of the Capital City of Warsaw and Ministery of Polish Culture and National Heritage arrived the voices to help Museum to get the whole collection. Young students of Lelewel College planned even a collection on this purpose. Finally, Polish bank PKO BP and Polish Telecomunications were given aprobation of giving a part of the opening price. Then, collection of 123 of stamps and correspondence could be transported to Poland and exhibited in The Warsaw Uprising Museum next month, in March 2008.

As “Gazeta wyborcza” wrote in the last article on auction, Germans have offered their help to buy this unique collection.

Still, most of correspondence is deposed in private archives or were destroyed in SB magazins. To compare the numbers, museum’s exhibits are really a drop in the ocean of a real history of Uprising: during the Uprising period there were produced 13.000 unique stamps and over 150.000 letters, sent via 40 post-boxes. Maybe institutions and organizations with historical profile should pay more attention to activities that occur in the Internet? This way may be one of the possible solutions to collect exhibits still hidden in private archives. Online auctions are still full of historical objects.

Historical reenactment movement is carried by history enthusiasts. Most of them treat it as a part of theirs life, but can’t really earn on it. But there is now in Poland a first chance to change this situation.

The biggest re-enacting of the greatest medieval battle in Europe with hundreds actors and 70 thousand viewers. Every year on 15th July in Grunwald close to Ostróda, northern Poland. Photo by BiLK Thorn (CC)

The medieval castle of Grodziec, near polish town Leginca, became an employer for the real knights. They would be employed on a full-time basis and get about 2k PLN (about 800$) a month. Theirs duties will be: to practice the historical fencing and horse-riding in case of making presentation for turists. They would have to also guard the castle (even in the night) and to take care of animals in the castle farm.

The team will built from 20 men. They will get armours, horses and medieval accommodation in the castle: with get up at 4AM and later 8 hours long work with animals and trainings.

Sport arena may become a territory of an international conflict. 200motels in post Soccer War writes that sometimes a playing field is not a large enough arena to contain the antagonisms or even hatreds that lie not very far beneath. “Football” War (La guerra del fútbol) was a six-day war between Salvador and Honduras, in which sport played a very significant role - maybe not as a main cause of the conflict (as media presented it), but as a immediate factor of its outbreak. As Władysław Kozakiewicz showed in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, sport can be also a chance for a political demonstration.

Jayne in her post proves, that history can be written using very trivial facts: boxing match, baloon experiments and… solar-powered car jourenys.

Doughnuts writing about the Battle of Wilderness (1864) shows that sometimes historical information can be reach in the most unlikely source. Very coherent and concise explanation of this battle is published in the book about the… origins of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester - The Surgeon of Crowthorne.

Melissa Bellanta in her post about the Maritime Strike of 1890 reflects on the language importance in historiography. Writing a chapter for a book to be called Crucial Moments in Australian History she admits that one of the things I’m grappling with is the fact that it’s difficult to talk about the Strike without replicating the kind of military cliches beloved of labour historians. She asks how to find a language to describe labour conflicts which does not trundle out the same metaphors of war, and the same heroic tonality?

Sharon Howard presented a few posts from a different blogs. He shows the text of Brian Downey from behind AotW blog about history hidden behind the photos of Albert V. Colburn (1831 - 1863), a lieutenant colonel of the federal Army of the Potomac.

And more, the history of Abayudaya, the protestant sect called the Malakites, who shared and developed their interest in the Old Testament, is described in the post of the Barista blog. They began to keep Sabbath, called their children after the Old rather than the New Testament, and ripped the Christian part of the Bible out of the sacred book. They also had themselves circumcised, appointed Rabbis and built synagogues.

Sharon also pointed to the post of Women in Science blog about ENIAC, which was the first purely electronic, Turing-complete, digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems. In her text Peggy presents women involved in this project and compare this computer to the laptops used nowadays.

African Urban Experiences in Colonial Zimbabwe. A Social History of Harare before 1925 by Tsuneo Yoshikuni is topic of the post written by Timothy Burke. As he claims, here Yoshikuni was seeing something that has increasingly become visible to other historians of southern Africa, that the initial response of some Africans to colonial conquest or to partial integration into a global political economy was in fact quite dynamic and inventive.

Jacob Kramer in the post titled Taylorized Academic Labor connects the work organisation methods by Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915) with the organisation of historical education and academic labour nowadays.

Tim Abbott discovers history hidden behind The Death of Montgomery painting by John Trumbull.

Another post describing relations between history and sport brings Jon Swift. He writes about Bobby Fischer, chess player, who became a role model for American youth when he beat Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky in the 1972 World Chess Championship.

Jeremy brings post titled Psychology’s History and the CIA. In the text he presents the discussion over the relationship between the CIA and Psychology’s History.

Interview with Ramachandra Guha, the author of India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy presents Chandrahas Choudhury. A historian must certainly read, and closely, the newspapers of the period or region he is writing about. For both India after Gandhi and A Corner of a Foreign Field I spend many enjoyable hours looking at microfilms of old newspapers and magazines. The riches of India’s periodical press are an under-utilized resource, since many historians still tend to restrict themselves to official records.

The Genetic Distance between Karunanidhi and Mallika Sherawat is a title for post which describes Aryan migration theory in the context of new genetic researches. If these theories were true, shouldn’t there should be scientific evidence to back it up? Shouldn’t we see a genetic difference between caste and tribal groups and between Indo-European and Dravidian speakers?

Very interesting data about historical perspective of GDP (Gross domestic product) value published on this post. The graph shows the share of GDP over the last 500 years for China, India, Japan, Latin America, Western Europe, and United States.

Danny Birchall on the blog posted short text about the ways in which we’re storing our cultural memory on the internet, and what that might mean for the near future’s view of the recent past. The problem is not that the internet does not contain everything in the world, just that it’s all that we have access to. If it isn’t on the internet, does it really exist?

On really real talk blog there is published a tribute post to the memory of Martin Luther King. Not only very personal letter about experience understanding him can be read, but there are also some links to the books and songs about Martin Luther King.

Post titled The Paradox of Ronald Reagan: His First Inaugural by Ralph Brauer poses a fascinating and controversial question: what if Reagan was really better than his defenders would have us believe?

Polish Travel Agency “Orbis” was established in 1920 in Lviv. It organized travels abroad. In 1951 Orbis overtook 9 best hotels in Poland and foreign tourists were also served there. It had a monopoly on hotels of higher standard and foreign guests’ service. Blog PanTuNieStał shows how Orbis was trying to encourage tourists to visit communist Poland using matches labels.

Merritt Griswold is the person most instrumental in bringing baseball to St. Louis, was one of the founders of the first baseball club in the city, and served with the Home Guards in St. Louis during the early part of the Civil War. In this post Griswold, his service, and the Cyclone Base Ball Club are put in the context of the political tensions leading up to the war and the successful attempt to secure St. Louis for the Union side.”

Cultural heritage and archaeological artifacts of indigenous people in Mexico are topics of the post by Peter N. Jones. In Mexico, the rights of indigenous peoples are not nearly as great, and they have little or no say over their cultural heritage. Mexican law is largely derived from Roman law, as reinterpreted by Spanish medieval law. In accordance with this, ownership of land is very different than in the US or other countries.

Suzanne Hackett loves the music and culture of the Garifuna people of coastal Belize, who have ancesters from Africa as well as the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean. She met Garifuna music artist Andy Palacio this summer and was struck by his mission to save Garifuna music as a link to the culture and unique history of the Garifuna people. More can be read on this page.

A post on America’s westward expansion, and what it meant for Native Americans, especially with the Sioux. In a few places, Hari Balasubramanian tries to contrast this with what happened in India, which is where he is from.

The life of Ellen Ternan, woman who shared with Dickens his last thirteen years before his early death, is described in the post by Elizabeth Kerri Mahon. The question remains, did Ellen Ternan love Dickens? It’s clear from the few letters from Dickens that survive that he loved her, was passionately attached to her. That’s one thing that will never be certain. She was probably fond of him, he took care of her, respected her opinion on his work but love?

Brett Holman proposes an article by David Llewellyn from the blog about Jeremy Bentham’s political philosophy. Who does Bentham influence? Well, apart from just about everybody, there are a couple of particular somebodies that can be mentioned. Marx? Hitler?

Judith Weingarten in her post tells about Zoroastrianism, the religion and philosophy based on the teachings ascribed to the prophet Zoroaster (Zarathustra, Zartosht). This is a part of the three part serie (more can be reach here and here).

Another story about american chess player. Paul Morphy was one of the greatest chess players of all time and is credited with revolutionizing the game in the 1850s. Post by Frances Hunter.

On January 23, 1897, Elva Zona Heaster Shue of Lewisburg WV, a bride of three months, was found dead at the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor of the log house where she lived with her new husband. As Dave Tabler writes, her case remains to this day a one of a kind event in the American judicial system … the only case in which the word of a ghost helped to solve a crime and convict a murderer!

Thomas Carlyle writes about holy trinity of historians: race, class, and gender. In his opinion, today, the dialog among professional historians revolves, in many ways, around one or more of these issues. In the history field, every professional article, every graduate research paper, and every book has to look at all three of these things, even if it is devoted to mainly one of them. But what about the other topics?

Michael Turton writes about the life of Maurice Benovsky. Benovsky was born in Vrbova, Hungary (now Slovakia) in 1746, a Hungarian nobleman. He left his native land at 22 and joined the Polish confederation (Confederation of Bar), to fight for Polish independence against the Russians. In 1770 he was captured by the Russians and exiled to Kamchatka after a stint in Kazan. How did he achieve the title of king in Formosa (Taiwan), why did he meet with King Louis XV and Benjamin Franklin?

The history of Brooklyn Bridge is presented in the post of GrrlScientist. As a west coast native, the only times I ever heard of the Brooklyn Bridge was when someone was trying to sell it to me.

Bora Zivkovic publishes a story by his mother, Rea Zivkovic Reiss. She writes about her experiences of WWII and history of surviving the Holocaust. was nine years old when the war began. I remember many events and various people and situations. The memories are fragmented of course, and merged with stories and knowledge learned subsequently, but they reach far back into the past.

Funerals and Feasts in Pre-Pottery Neolithic B are the topics of the post by Archaeozoo. Kfar HaHoresh, located in northern Israel, is the first centralised mortuary-cum-cult site identified in the Neolithic of the Levant, and it has been suggested that the site functioned in a manner similar to the ancient Greek amphictyony, that is a central shrine serving neighbouring villages.

Dmitri Minaev writes about Yakov Alexandrovich Slashchov, who was killed in Moscow by a Trotskyist named Kolenberg on 11 January 1929. This officer was the first leader of the White Guard who proposed to grant autonomy to Ukraine, after the home war became a teacher of the Soviet military academy. But why was he killed?

Mark R. Stoneman prepared a very interesting post about relations between Google and historical education. Should historians both learn SEO and write for general audiences on the web? Google is the first place many people turn for answers. What should be done to prevent the situation when they searching for history topics and find on the first places non-credible knowledge?

Again, thanks for all the submissions, hoping that among this links some articles interesting for you can be found. Now we are waiting for the next Carnival!

Operation Lódź could be compared to this performed in France and cumulated in Verdun. While in France commemoration is well distinguished and well organized for visitors, in Poland almost nobody knows about 200 thousands of Russian, German and Polish soldiers, who have died in small villages across Lodz and Warsaw. After them remains 273 cemeteries, hidden in the area of voivodship. GPS would be a tool to find them and to discover the route of the front. Internet guide would tell the story about all militar activities and victims.

In the Operation Łódź fought 700 thousands German, Russian and Austrian soldiers.

The City of Koluszki, to honor died soldiers, filmed remains of cemeteries and the last railways and created documentary of Operation Lodz. It is avaiable in polish in Google Video site.

All Lodzkie is interested in promotion of forgotten military roads. The heads of voivodship think at this moment about creating 65 km touristic track providing from Museum of Lodz History to Lowicz and Piotrkow. Such historic tourism would be possible after local governments apply for a patronate on commemorising Operation Lodz and approving those branch of front in 1914 as heritage of Europe in the same way as it was in the case of Verdun. For now, to know more about militar operations in Lodz, you can visit: www.lodz1914.pl.

via gazeta.pl

Katyn describes the history of the massacre of Polish officers in 1940. Taken prisoner by the Red Army in September 1939 they were executed after the order signed by Stalin, Vyacheslav Molotov, Beria and the rest members of Soviet Politburo on March 5, 1940.

Andrzej Wajda’s film is is based on Andrzej Mularczyk’s book Post mortem - the Katyn story. Released on September 2007, it attracted an audience of over three million people. In one of the interviews Wajda stressed, that the film would not have seen the light of day during the communist period. He hoped his film will be followed by more on the same topic.

In this article you can read about the polish memory of Katyn massacre in the context of researches by polish sociologist Barbara Szacka.

Another historical films nominated in the 80th Annual Academy Awards category of best foreign language film are: Mongol (the first Academy Award nomination for Kazakhstan) and The Counterfeiters (In the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, a group of prisoners with skills ranging from finance to forgery are put to work under the direction of a master counterfeiter manufacturing perfect replicas of foreign bank notes.),

English translation of the lirics one can find here. This song was showed even in the television news There are also many remixes of it available on YouTube.

Before, across the long time, this song was hardly known. Audience outside Czechoslovakia had no chance to hear it. Now, thanks to YouTube, czech comedian Ivan Mládek, author of the song, has became a real internet star. But this case has maybe not only entertainment context. YouTube again proved its archaeological function, making a dead cultural (historical) resource live again. This song have been put online without any role of historical or cultural institution, on the same principle as many archival videos (like for example this movie of Wrocław (Breslau) from the summer of 1939) or in the other way polish propaganda chronicles, showed over any official actual DVD distribution).

A communist war against the colorado beetle “dropped down by the USA air force” (1950)

The resources until now unavailable or available only in archives now can be independently digitalized and used online by everyone. Diffused archeology promote often unknown and rare sources, which in the tradition media had no chance to become visible.

Can this activity of internet users realised on the base of YouTube functionality be used in the aims of history education?

Tomasz Szarota, historian, professor at the Historical Institute at the Polish Academy of Sciences in the interview by Tomasz Urzykowski is asked about his attitude to the historical reenactment ideas.

“Killed” soliders in the reconstruction of liberation of Chełmno from the nazi occupation by the Red Army. Photo (CC) by Kriz Dux

Szarota says that the conception of reconstructing may have a sens because of showing the patriotic behaviour, for example by presenting the episodes from the November Uprising (1830-1831), when young cadets attacked the Belweder Palace in Warsaw. For Szarota events from the far past, when there are no living witnesses and no living memory, can be commemorate by such initiatives. But when they tells about history still vivid in the memory of witnesses and theirs families, the situation is completely different: The Warsaw Uprising is still to close in the time and too tragic. It was a terrible massacre and organizers of the performances make from it a delightful happening.

Summarized history?

Very similar opinions could be heard according to the project from a few years, when two groups commemorated the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising by the paintball play. That was a question, if there was anything more than the game:

Does the popularity of historical reenactment shows results from our need for living historical images, better for us than books and scholar discussions? Perhaps such initiatives may have mostly not educational and entertainment potential, but first of all give audience (like sometimes a historical cinema movies) an easy version of the historical representation, without any questions nor doubts (why it happened, how it happened etc.). In such situation, history may be summarized to the few minutes of attractive fireworks, like in the music video.

To rebuild the memory

But sometimes representation and memory are met themselves very intensively: During one of the Warsaw Uprising reenactment shows old polish insurgent Stanisław Sieradzki talked with young Tomasz Sarnecki, who plays the role of Sieradzki in this performance. Old man almost fainted, when he saw another performer - Paweł Krzywicki, who remembered him a friend killed during the Uprising - Jan Kajus Andrzejewski. Sieradzki shaked hand with a young actor asking why his friend had to die. Krzywicki, very touched, told: For this [such feelings] we make it.

Photos from this meeting can be reached here.

What myths are in this post-historical view? Myths are a kind of beliefs, that society has about itself. They constitute collective identity and a sense of history and influence on the process of rememberring. It is not the point, that community must treat the myths as an accurate version of history, however – must believe in accuracy of the myth itself. Myth, as Carl Kerrenyi says, is the way of oeparating on reality, „but a way never complete, which is always in process”(1) Myth has great power on particular community, transmitting the whole national symbols, rituals, memorials and „big dates”. In this reasoning, myth brings the new meaning and defins history. It formes collective memory and underlies the frontier from members of the community to non-members. By believing in myth, we distinguish Us from the Others.

Needless to say, that myths constitute history. But they are exceptionally important in such moments, which decide on one’s future, bringing changes on political and economic scene, tied often with nationalisms, ideologie ofexclusion and, in extreme cases – with the war. One of the most important and painfull examples of such mythological conflicts are Balkans and two countries belonging to this european region: Croatia and Serbia.

Croatia, in historic terms, is a country of forced forgetting. This expression, made by Paul Connerton, reffers to forming collective identity under a pressure and on the way of the threat of Serbian invasion, the permanent opponent in its history. This identity was constructed not earlier then in 1980’s, although was repressed by communist regime since the end of World War II, still shedding light on „who is who” matter from the begining of Croatia as a nation and exploding in the time of the balkan war. Not suprising, that croatian mythology after the World War II, returned from fascination of the power in fascist’s guerillas, to „Antemurale Christianitatis” - that emphasised religious separation form Serbs and muslims.

In contrast, Serbian participation in the war was explained by defending the honor of the Croatian fascists and fundamental muslims. The war in 1990’s was the third homeland war, that was supposed to overcome the catholic and muslim invasion (remains of Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman occupation and the myth of those two forces). The myth was bonded also in religion, evoking the origin of the nation as „Heavenly people”.

First question, after describing briefly the couloir of the balkan war, is how those two nations could clash their myths and just struggled in the name of religion, having such similar social mythology? The answer is rather simple: (re)construction of social identity is an almost regular side-effect of any rapid social change, in the opinion of bulgarian historian – Marco Hajdinjak In Post-Yugoslavian countries it was truly visible, in fact that after the end of World War II started a sharp process of erasing memories. Although, yugoslavian propaganda set up the renewed myth of brotherhood and unity, which was presented in films, literature at the time of 80’s.

But myths are hard to define and hard to deal with. They refers to the past (Croatian’s Antemurale comes from Leon’s X thesis of the region of today’s Croatia as the christians defence territory). Similarly, the myths which underlied Serbian’s identity, had their beginnings in the myth of promised land of Kosovo Polje, lost by them in 1392, expected to be the genuine missing piece of Great Serbia. Things are more complicated, than we think on behalf of sharing the same language by those two nations, living in Balkans. In the same way, Serbs and Croats were obligated to develop non-verbal language, that should showed, who is who. For instance, like Hajdinjak writes in his work, Serbs made extremely visible their „orthodox” way of greeting: by making a sign of a cross with the thumb, index and middle finger and raising the hand. It not only emphasized the nationality, but also stressed out the origin of Serbs as warriors. In 1989, those myth-making belief was a part of Serbs’ reality, when Slobodan Milosevic said to over million spectators on Kosovo polje: „Today (Serbs) are again in battles and facing battles. These battles are not armed battles yet, although such battles are not yet excluded”(2)

The same thing was with so called Krajina, the territory gived to balkan people by Emperor Ferdinand II, free from taxes and feudal obligations, with freedom of religious practices. However – Serbs were not the first habitants of this militar land, Ferdinand II Habsburg gave mentioned land to Vlachs (orthodox Christians speaking latinian dialect). Although, as Hajdinjak writes, Vlachs rapidly identified themselves as Serbs and abandoned their identity as minority in Krajina, that land seemed to be mythical „truly” Serb fatherland. The same Krajina and its important city – Knin, was an object of terytorial claims of Croatian governors, because of mythical origin of the first Croatian kingdom, found in 1058. When Croats finally pushed out Serbians from Knin in 1995, Franjo Tudzman compared city to „beautiful homeland”(3)

Mythmaking is significant in other, not necessarily always opponent, nations. Called the marketplace of ideas, clearly demonstrates the process of making collective identity and history of particular nation. I would like to describe the german case – both former „Ossies” and „Westies”, focusing attention on communist myths, that formed German Democratic Republic after 20 years of nazis’ regime.

The first president of GDR, Wilhelm Pieck, in 1950 claimed, that „East German youth knew too little about the Peasants’ War” (4) , that took place in 1525 in Thuringen. For the first timein german history, a radical priest, Thomas Muntzer found the Workers and Peasants’ State. In incredibly large scale, this reformative priest became an archetype of true revolutionary, the champion of the masses, who, on the basis of his People’s Reformation Party, inspired writers such as Frederic Engels and governors like Walter Ulbricht, the General Secretary, to build an idea of freeing the working class. Astonishing might be the fact, that the leaders of communist regime in Germany did not appreciate Martin Luther – the avant-garde of reformation – for his article „Against Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants” (1525). Like Walinsky-Kiehl states: „If Mutzner was perceived in mythic terms as the embodiment of revolution, then Luther clearly personified the forces of Counter-Revolution during German’s Reformation Era” (5) and symbolized West Germany and their religious bourgeois ideologie. GDR communist leaders perceived themselves as the genuine democratic class, the unique Germans, non-polluted by capitalism and western, USA-in-favor-politics. Thus, in 1961 the Berlin Wall could separate the two Germanias solely. Suprisingly, in early 60’s, Luther seemed to be rehabilitated and soon Erich Honeker, the present at time, President of party, was a head of Martin Luther Commitee, which was responsible for making relations with Lutheran Church warmer than they were before 1950. Although, the myth, established by communist regime, is now concidered as not fulfilled. Masses, which this myth reffered to, didn’t in Walinsky-Kiehl’s opinion, believed in a sense of cultivating and glorying Thomas Mutzner and his Workers and Peasant’s State. Maybe this myth could not form the novadays history due to a short period of Peasant War, which dured only a year (1525-26), and was quickly shut by the feudal army.

Reffering to the glory of history and to the mythical origins, beliefs are a part of european identity, although they are at the same time often false. „False” means having false framework and being historically unreal, in opinion of Carl Kerrenyi. In Polish case, which I want to describe as the last reflection on european mythmaking, those beliefs were based on not real fable – present in chronicles, but never proved to be real. By this short introduction I want to show the polish myth of Sarmatian nationality, in which Polish noblemen were portraited as sons of Sarmatia – utopian land, which probably existed only in the historiographic writer’s imagination and baroque poetry.

Sarmatism was a myth of genealogy, which supposed to shed light on politics and culture. Thus, sarmatian noblemen, who at the same time were poets and politicians (like Maciej Stryjkowski, Stanislaw Sarnicki or Aleksander Gwagnin among others), constructed the content of mythical genealogy – nobleman as a warrior defending christian’s heritage. In its beginings they reffered to polish intervention in Moscow, which led to come to the throne the „last and lost” of Ivan’s descendants – Dmitrij. Worth to mentions is that Dmitrij was a false Tzar, created as an idea to put on the throne polish aliant, who implement new politics, in favor of Poland.

In the myth of sarmacy, writers of epoque made the model of nobleman, who should have been the warrior of his own liberty, who should have been good, frank, hospital, individual, independent. This characteristic changed into portrait of the nation as a whole, shifting with the time to a more „catholic” and contre-reformatic values like: devoutness, decency. Political situation and permanent wars with turkish enemy as well as sweddish „Flood” in 1654, developed in polish noblemens’ character new ‘mythical’ and ’sarmatian’ virtues: stubborness, xenophobia, nationalism. Polish noblemen, in a state of invasion from all the sides, formed a myth of defenders of the faith, „one and proper catholic religion”, and focus their attention on their own small homelands, as we might read in Waclaw Potocki’s poems and epos like „Chocim War”. Today historians as Janusz Tazbir in his publications claim, that maybe this factor of shifting their forces to their own business, could lead to loss of polish autonomy. One fact is certain, this myth developed with his creators and began polish national portrait till novadays.

As we could see in those descriptions, yugoslavian, german and polish cases, so different and so particular, show consistent need of national beliefs, explaining ideological shifts, religious virtues or psychological, national characteristics. In almost all of those cases we saw clearly the unspoken but noticeable power of the myths, leading millions of people to conflicts and wars, like it was in Yugoslavian and Polish case and could be in german GDR with „Westies”, if they hadn’t established the Wall. European history evokes those myths, although it is a big work for us to do, just in revealing another myths and to clear collective memory from „erasing” or evaporating memories. History is still full of the myths waiting to be explained and discovered.

1 Carl Kerrenyi: Myth and technique, Diogenes, 13/24, p. 8.
2 Olivera Milosavljevic, :”Yugoslavia as mistake”, The Road to War in Serbia, p. 69, in: Hajdinjak: Yugoslavia: Dismantled and Plundered, paper presented at international Symposium: The Memory of Violence/Genoside, p. 10.
3 Judah, The Serbs, p. 46, in: Hajdinjak: Yugoslavia: Dismantled and Plundered, p. 12.
4 Robert Walinsky-Kiehl, Reformation history and political mythology in the German Democratic Republic 1949-1989, Sage Publications, 3.
5 Robert Walinsky-Kiehl, Reformation history and political mythology in the German Democratic Republic 1949-1989, Sage Publications, 9.

Agnieszka Szmidel

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As Piotr Witek writes in the text titled Film as one of the most important contemporary ways of representing history. Problems of teaching methodology of history, quite often professional historians disagree that film may generate history (Lino Micche, Michel Foucault for example) and what follows can not constitute an alternative for historiography (written history). According to them films are fictious tales, having not much in common with what a historian deals with. Sometimes documentary film as a genre is accepted, yet only as historical source.

Film can be a source of a historical awareness

According to author, maybe it is high time to admit that film histories are beyond the control of academic historians. Evaluation criteria that have been worked out for written historiography can not serve the purpose of evaluation of audio-visual narration. Very often film creates a historical world that written academic historiography can not compete with. That is why working out new criteria serving evaluation and analysis seems to be necessary.

To read more, please visit the original site.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has said teachers who refuse younger students access to the site are “bad educators”. In his opinion Wikipedia should be seen as a “stepping stone” to other sources..

A year ago Wales told educators that Wikipedia must not be a source used in the research work, according to the lack of quality in the articles.

Jimmy Wales, photo by Andrew Lih (CC)

Therefore now Wales would critize history department at Middlebury College where using Wikipedia in the research papers is banned. In the opinion of Don Wyatt, chair of the department, even though Wikipedia may have some value, particularly from the value of leading students to citable sources, it is not itself an appropriate source for citation. Wikipedia is a good place to start the research (to get know about generally idea of the fact or unknown word, or to find the first basic direction in making choise of bibliography. But not to cite from articles (opened to free anonymous edition) in the academic research, where generally there is no place for the footnotes taken from encyclopedias.

Read more:

Wikipedia’s Founder Says the Site Has a Place in Academe

Wikipedia as primary source for professional historical research? The case of on-line IPN catalogue

A Stand Against Wikipedia