Introduction
The Jewish cemetery in Victoria, British Columbia, is located on the corner of Cedar Hill Road and Fernwood. This historical cemetery remains active within the Jewish community. It was consecrated in 1860, and the first burial was conducted on March 20, 1861. The individual buried was murder victim Morris Price. In 2012, the cemetery was victimized by vandalism, which resulted in the destruction of multiple gravestones. Since, individuals should request approval before visiting the gated cemetery. The Jewish doctrine believes that sacred items should never be disposed. Therefore, the cemetery has an open grave where items that are no longer in use are placed. There is a large monument in the cemetery which commemorates individuals who did not survive the Holocaust. The cemetery coordinator shared that this creates an opportunity for individuals to grieve the lost ones they never got to see again.
Research Questions
The research questions focused on the relationships between collective grievance and burial practices, which was observed in monuments and their inscriptions. This explored how communities, specifically the Jewish community, grieved survivors of the Holocaust. Further analysis, examined how bereavement was associated by the community through their gravesite. This inquired how Jewish identity was represented in monuments, which was predicted to be through graphics such as an engraved Star of David and/or Hebrew script. Lastly, how individuals without physical burials are mourned among the community. For example, people who died during the Holocaust, whose bodies were not returned to their families. These questions helped to understand the methods that the Jewish community uses to remember their lost ...
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...cript. Individuals who do not have a physical burial have their names inscribed into a large monument. This provides a place where the Jewish community can mourn those who were lost in the Holocaust.
Compared to the Mainland Jewish community, the Victoria Jewish community appears quite small. Therefore, analyzing a larger cemetery may illustrate different mourning practices. The observation of a larger Jewish cohort should be examined in future studies. This includes studying a wider database of inscriptions and monument types. These studies may display how collectivism function in larger communities compared to smaller ones. It is also important to observe Holocaust memorials in European countries. The practice within a different cultural realm, especially one closer to the historical event, could show different burial and mourning practices.
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The Holocaust is considered the largest genocide of our entire world, killing more than 600,000,000 Jewish people during the years of 1933-1945. The memories and history that have filled our lives that occurred during the Holocaust are constantly remembered around the world. Many populations today “think” that constant reminders allow for us to become informed and help diminish the hatred for other races still today. These scholars believe that by remembering the Holocaust, you are able to become knowledgeable and learn how to help prevent this from happening again. Since the Holocaust in a sense impacted the entire human race and history of the world, there are traces of the Holocaust all across our culture today. As I continue to remember the victims of this tragic time period I think of all the ways that our world remembers the Holocaust in today’s society. Through spreading the word, works of media and memorials across the world, I am continually reminded of the tragedy that occurred.
By the end of 1941 in Europe, the Nazis have extended the murder of the Jews across the whole continent under Nazi domination. According to the report written by Tal Bruttmann, “Mass Graves and Killing Sites in the Eastern Part of Europe”, they placed kill center...
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If one were to ask a New York resident in the 1950’s how many people he or she would expect to be living in New York sixty years from now, he would most likely not say 20 million. Among those 20 million, it is even more unfathomable that an estimated 1.7 million Jews reside within New York City, making New York home to over a quarter of the Jews living in America today . Amongst those Jews however, how many of them consider themselves religious? Seeing that only an estimated 10 percent of Jews today classify themselves as observant, how and when did this substantial dispersion occur? The period post World War II in America presents the many different factors and pressures for Jews arriving in America during this time. Although many Jews believed America would be the best place to preserve and rebuild Jewish presence in the world, the democracy and economic opportunity resulted in adverse effects on many Jews. The rate of acculturation and assimilation for many of these Jews proved to be too strong, causing an emergence of two types of Jews during this time period. Pressures including the shift to suburbanization, secular education into professional careers, covert discrimination in the labor market and the compelling American culture, ultimately caused the emergence of the passive and often embarrassed ‘American Jew’; the active ‘Jewish American’ or distinctly ‘Jewish’ citizen, avertedly, makes Judaism an engaging active component of who and what they are amidst this new American culture.
The Holocaust refers to all the actions that were carried out by the Nazi regime against the Jews in Germany between 1933 and 1945. The Holocaust Artifacts are artifacts that bear out the stories of the victims of the Holocaust and are displayed in Museums. Material artifacts of the Holocaust are a powerful signifier of the Nazi era. This is because they carry and convey the materials trace of authentic experience (Stier 10). The question of the research is to find out using the Holocaust authentic artifacts, whether they bring us closer to experiencing the Holocaust and at the same time to confirm that the Jews really underwent a terrible suffering
The aftermath of the Holocaust left over six million Jews perished and the survivors in pain and anguish, each of their lives impacted forever by reliving the horrid events of this unspeakable tragedy every day. They needed to pick up the pieces to continue living by fleeing to different countries, assimilating into new cultures, and beginning new families to create happy memories. This being challenging for many of them, forced some of the survivors to suppress their emotions about the past in order to accomplish these newer lives while others to talk about it frequently. Each of them had their own methods to cope with the affects and thoughts they had after the Holocaust; their methods having its own advantages and disadvantages. This goes to show that the Holocaust survivors were affected more than ones mind
Dwork, Deborah, and R. J. Van Pelt. Holocaust: a History. New York: Norton, 2002. Print.
Accordingly, a cemetery is not simply a place containing a dead body or bodies, but a defined location specifically intended to be used for burying the dead. While Curl attempts to distinguish a cemetery from a churchyard, my database takes a broader approach and includes all formal burial places (graveyards in general), including those associated with churchyards, burial mounds, and war memorials.
A prominent them in the literature of the Holocaust we have read in this class is the role of family and heritage. Many of the works we have read have dealt with familial relationships, cultural heritage, and the passing down of culture from one generation to the next.
Post-mortem photography was, and still is, seen as a psychologically unhealthy practice, even when such photographs are historical documentations. Photographs taken during the liberation of concentration camps in the 1940's happen to be some of the most controversial, yet they are crucial to remembering the great tradgedy. Some opponents against post-mortem photography believe that atrocity photographs taken from the Holocaust should be hidden from view as they do nothing to honor the memory of the victims. The photographs by these opponents are seen only as morbid, without any historical value. But despite post-mortem photography's unpopularity in the 20th century—and still today—it was an essential tool in the documentation of the Holocaust and its victims. Therefore, post-mortem photography is not only vital to remembering and educating about the disaster, but also to remembering the individuals which memorial photography attempts to preserve.