Naftali Bezem, From Holocaust to Rebirth (1972)

A lot of my output as an academic lingers on hard drives and never sees the light of day once delivered. This page contains a selection of my writing over the past fifteen years and hopefully gives an idea of the kinds of issues that interest me. Some “long read” blog posts will also be collected here so if you want references and bibliography this is the page for you.

All of these are formatted as PDFs for ease of downloading: please acknowledge and attribute appropriately. There are a couple of paragraphs at the bottom of this page describing the principles I think are fair.

National Perspectives in an International Setting

A conference paper from 2003 describing the ways in which the Auschwitz Museum changed in (and beyond) its early years.

auschwitz_past_and_present (1)

A lecture given at the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow in 2004, reflecting on the ways in which Tisha B’Av links into Holocaust remembrance. Also considering the problems of depicting the traces of the Holocaust photographically.

HMD 2005

A piece written at the request of the Auschwitz Museum in 2005  (though never actually published) looking at the first five years of Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK.

All I want is peace and quiet

A conference paper from 2007 with the subtitle ‘Recovery from trauma in The Pawnbroker and The West Wing’, this looks at the similarities in the ways that PTSD is depicted in these two media and what this tells us about the way in which 9/11 affected our view of the Holocaust.

After Auschwitz

‘After Auschwitz’, Emergence: Faculty of Humanities Postgraduate Journal, Volume Two ‘The Defining Moment’, Autumn 2010, pp. 34-39. A consideration of the conflicting narratives in memories of Auschwitz in postwar Poland.

Rights and Usage

As an independent researcher, and moreover one who is very interested in the visual, I am aware that the internet is a place where material is very mobile. I am often very glad about this, as it enables me to research and illustrate pieces at little or no cost. I do, however, try and give credit where I can to the originator and never claim something to be my own work when it’s not.

If the interested visitor could try and observe these principles when using my work I would be grateful. If using a picture, please acknowledge my copyright and contact me if you wish to use an image commercially. If quoting me, please either link back to my content or cite accurately: the PDF files in the Archive page carry details of their time and place of origin to assist in this. In addition to being a platform for me to develop and share my opinions, there is also an agenda to promote myself: in borrowing from me, you are acknowledging that I am worth borrowing from. The corollary of this (I feel) is that I deserve to have my efforts appreciated!