Religion and the Survival of Mass Atrocity: Trauma and Memory

Dear Colleagues,

As Guest Editors, professor Éva Kovács (Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies) and professor Selma Leydesdorff (University of Amsterdam) will co-edit a Special Issue of the open access journal Religions (ISSN 2077-1444) published by MDPI.

The way people found and find strength and solace in religion during mass atrocities is an understudied topic. Many survivors reported the lifelong consequences of the extreme living conditions in the ghettos, concentration camps, and forced labor barracks, and, despite everything, they often managed to maintain a religious life, cohesion, and solidarity, which was often important for immediate survival. Religion can serve as a medium to counter dehumanization, since it enables the victims to transcend the daily here and now. Memories of such “relief of the heart” have come down to us in narratives, testimonies, oral history, literature, and poetry. Religious themes can be found in songs and music. With this volume, we want to describe and discuss why and how religious memories and sentiments were so significant for victims of mass atrocity in the mind-numbing environments of persecution, concentration camps, and genocide. There are many descriptions of how religious, literary, and philosophical communication with the divine or the transcendent have helped people overcome humiliation, starvation, and attempts to destroy their identity and human dignity.

Consequently, we do not want to limit ourselves to institutionalized religiosity but we will pay attention to collective religious experiences. Throughout we will focus on the ways religious feelings transform hate, revenge, and resistance and how they can also be found in the many ways people looked for new forms of connection and distance. This is not only a volume about surviving. Questions we pose are about the way religion could help retain a sense of selfhood, autonomy, and resilience and how religion was a source of resistance.

We are keen to receive contributions approaching our theme from a comparative perspective.

Deadline of the proposal: 31 May 2021; Deadline of the manuscripts: 15 October 2021.

If there are enough contributions the journal will be published as a book.

Please share this call for papers and send your responses to [email protected] and [email protected].

Prof. Dr. Selma Leydesdorff
Prof. Dr. Éva Kovács
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Religions is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• mass atrocity
• trauma
• religion
• memory
• oral history
• survival