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Paper short abstract

this paper is about commemorating sites where victims of the Holocaust lived and the construction and maintenance of memory at the micro-level of locality and street. Issues of memory keeping, liminality and "communitas" across social and geographic boundaries will also be discussed.

Paper long abstract

Kugelmass (1992) describes organised tours undertaken by American Jews to Europe to view former camp sites as "rites of the tribe", secular pilgrimages. By contrast, this paper is about commemorating sites where Holocaust victims lived, and the construction and maintenance of memory at the micro-level of locality and street.

The paper is based largely on written accounts by children of survivors and refugees and either written up for their magazine, Second Generation Voices, or else written up for a volume on the emotional impact of such journeys, which I am currently co-editing.

The paper focuses on the residential homes of Holocaust victims immediately prior to their deportations, and especially the placing of "Stolpersteine", or stumbling blocks, in the pavement just outside such premises, with the names of the victims (see Mandel and Lehr, 2018). By December 2019 as many as 75,000 such Stolpersteine had been laid in over 24 European countries. Elsewhere, local community groups and residents' associations erected plaques on, or near, the exterior walls of such premises, bearing the names of previous residents deported by the Nazi regime.

Such initiatives involve a bringing together of individuals and groups who might otherwise not come into contact with each other, such as descendants of victims and their families, local residents and representatives of local authorities. At the unveiling of Stolpersteine or plaques, ceremonies and speeches are made, seeking to bridge the gap between the past and the present, thereby "site-sacralising" (McCannell, 1976) these liminal spaces and offering, at least fleetingly, a sense of "communitas" (Turner, 1969 and Graburn, 1989).

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Anthropological observations suggest the truly hapless died here: elderly, the disabled of any age, the very ill; and those desperate enough to commit crime yet unlucky enough to be caught. Their graves displaced by police, an associated plaque gives the wrong date for closure of their workhouse.

Paper long abstract

The border wall that once outlined Tukthuset (c 1740-1939) still delineates the "othering" within Norway's 'Long Nineteenth Century', a time when police could round up vagrants and sentence them to the workhouse for 6 months, without trial. The physical remains from Oslo's workhouse (Tukthus) include skeletal remains (N=305), documents and reports. The cemetery was shifted with dubious care in 1989 to make room for a new police station; oral histories and reports from archaeologists claim the local indigent community witnessed the removal of graves, stating the removed dead were "people like us".

A partial footprint of Tukthuset's precinct, now stylized by a polished, granite insert in the police station's outer wall, crosses the new road that displaced the workhouse cemetery and passes through an expensive restaurant. This seems to commemorate the unknown, impoverished dead. And yet the very real border between the poor and the outer world, once a tall, wooden fence, is a caricature in pink stone, a monument to the bankers and city managers who built it in 2000, in which the accompanying plaque is etched with erroneous dates. Perhaps a well-meaning acknowledgement of the most impoverished victims of the Industrial Age, this memorial highlights that the now-erased graveyard, which once held the bones of those who died as inmates of Tukthuset, has been swept away by the occupational descendants of those who jailed them.

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The paper sheds light on the changes in landscape and everyday practices related to the Ottoman heritage in the contemporary Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The author discusses memory, fractured landscape, ecology, the past embedded in the landscape and the future reshaping of it.

Paper long abstract

Mustafa Gaibi (derived from Ar.: hidden, unseen, absent) was a sufi master of the Jelveti dervish order who lived in the seventeenth century. He was well known for his prophecies and was respected among Muslims and Christians alike. Gaibi died in Stara Gradiška in today's Republic of Croatia and was buried there. His turbe (mausoleum) stood there for around two and a half centuries. Around 1954 the turbe was relocated from Stara Gradiška to Bosanska Gradiška in Bosnia and Herzegovina where it stands now. According to the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina the Turbe of Sheikh Gaibi is designated as a national monument.

The author of this paper attempts at highlighting the reasons for the dislocation of Gaibi's turbe. On the basis of archival documents and the qualitativ ethnological and cultural anthropological field research in Stara Gradiška and Bosanska Gradiška she detected changes in memories and ladscapes on the both sides of the border.

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This research contributes to the ethnography of tourism in sacred spaces with a portrait of Jewish, Christian and Muslim suppliers to souvenir shops in Jerusalem. There is currently no academic literature on suppliers. The theoretical background is 'the theory of middlemen minorities'.

Paper long abstract

This research contributes to the ethnography of tourism in sacred / conflicted spaces with a portrait of Jewish, Christian and Muslim suppliers to souvenir shops in Jerusalem. Academic research on the host gaze in general and on souvenir shopkeepers in particular is scarce and totally non-existent on souvenir suppliers. In this research we consider the challenges and dynamics of Jerusalem's religious souvenirs market in the context of regional politics, fluctuations in tourism, and global market competition. The handful of suppliers portrayed here embody flexibility vis-à-vis changing circumstances and openness in dealing with various clients, qualities that help them meet the challenges of this multi-cultural yet politically fraught city.

The main theoretical context is Bonacich's Theory of Middlemen Minorities (1973). Originally the term was coined in relation to ethnic minority groups such as the Chinese in Southeast Asia, Jews in Europe, and Indians in East Africa. According to this theory, one role that an ethnic group can play is that of a middleman minority.

The findings concentrate on the life stories of three suppliers: Shlomo (Jewish-Israeli), Patrick (American Catholic) and Jafar (Palestinian Muslim). The main conclusion is that what the suppliers that we met have in common is their multilayered complex identities. Apparently, such people - with chameleon like characteristics - are attracted to such middlemen professions, but in the case of Israel, possibly there are more such cases because it is a land of immigrants and because of the ongoing contestation between various religious / political / ethnic groups.

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Paper short abstract

Roadside memorials stand as indicators of certain facts.They start as markers of an event, but soon come to represent individual and communal processes of grief,mourning, and shifting of social roles.As with witness marks, they reveal information to those who witness and participate in or with them.

Paper long abstract

A witness mark is a groove, line, or mark that occurs with intent, by accident, or naturally. A witness mark is the result of a particular process and comes to be an indicator that imparts information. For a watchmaker, witness marks are invaluable for the repositioning of parts during a repair. The same can be said of a roadside memorial. The memorial immediately lets the witness know that something has occurred on that space. The landscape has been changed, in some cases forever. Flowers, notes, pictures, and toys start to crowd each other out around the base of a marker, often a cross. While initially roadside memorials are thought to simply be markers of death, an indicator of the loss of life, they soon come to be transformed into spaces that represent so much more. They are sites where new biographies, community belonging, and understandings of social roles are tested, negotiated, and reaffirmed. As with witness marks, roadside memorials, help the mourners and members of the community figure out how to put all the 'parts' back together again. The tribute items left at the roadside memorial impart information to the mourners and any observers, especially once the memorials begin to fade and weather, in the same way the grooves and marks help a watchmaker know what place and order the parts need to be in.