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Writing Antifascist Resistance examines the final letters of five antifascist activists who faced execution during World War II, including three teenagers. From Julia Conesa and Guy Môquet, who were given mere hours to write before their firing squad executions, to Masha Bruskina, Mordechai Anielewicz and Olga Bancic, whose messages were delivered clandestinely, these last letters reveal the human face of resistance against fascism.
Camino traces how these letters travelled through a myriad of intermediaries, including relatives, neighbours, Red Cross workers and prison wardens. This study explores how these final testimonies were often manipulated, consciously or unconsciously, as they passed through different hands, transforming personal farewells into political symbols.
Writing Anti-Fascist Resistance treats these letters as items of material culture,
memento mori and metonymies of resistance, merging affect with activism in the history of twentieth-century antifascism.
This compelling volume will appeal to historians of World War II and resistance movements, students and scholars of memory studies and material culture, and anyone interested in how ordinary people maintained their humanity and defiance in the face of fascist terror.
List of contents
List of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Last Letters as Historical Sources
Chapter 1. Julia Conesa and Thirteen Red Roses in Franco's Spain (5 August 1939)
Chapter 2. Guy Môquet and the Hostages of Vichy France (22 October 1941)
Chapter 3. Masha Bruskina and Jewish 'Partisans' in Occupied Byelorussia (26 October 1941)
Chapter 4. Mordechai Anielewicz and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (21 April - 16 May 1943)
Chapter 5. Olga Bancic and The Manouchian Group (10 May 1944)
Conclusion
Index
About the author
Mercedes Camino is Professor of History at Lancaster University. Her research interests include film and memory of twentieth-century conflicts. She is the author of
Memories of Resistance and the Holocaust on Film (2018) and co-editor of
The Holocaust in the Twenty-First Century (2017).
