(Un)spoken Histories: The Second World War and Yugoslav Jewish Women

What is it about?

In post-Yugoslav area, women’s history is still hardly studied and barely figures in the teaching of history. In my article I have presented little known texts by Jewish women written during or soon after the Second World War. I call them “(un)spoken stories.” My purpose is not to discover new and “important” historical events not yet included in studies of the Second World War in Yugoslavia. Rather, the focus of my interest is the voices themselves writing about history, whether in the form of diaries, letters, notes and memoirs, or fictional works, some of definite literary merit: poems, stories and novels. The examples of texts that I present are situated in the margins of interest of researchers and readers. However, to my mind they can be treated as representations with a strong performative potential that can initiate a change in thinking about the past. Reading texts is therefore an active approach that carries an important message. I am interested in the characteristic ways of making such narratives and in the specific discourse shaping them in Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav reality. If we read these texts in a broader historical and literary context, they can be interpreted as a kind of rebellion against the existing reality and policies of memory.

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