Start Date
26-5-2026 4:00 PM
End Date
26-5-2026 4:15 PM
Description
This paper considers closely three missives crafted by individuals suffering life- threatening duress during wartime incarceration, one during World War One, and two during the Second World War. Only one of these three survived beyond wartime. All three examples involve food: messages embroidered on or about the sourcing of daily bread or describing dishes that were available only in memory. Nevertheless, the very act of crafting objects to carry communications beyond the dire circumstances in which these prisoners of war found themselves embodied hope and defiance. While acknowledging and describing the very different contexts of each of these examples, I argue that studying them together highlights shared aspects of significance for the historical project: the value of personal testimony and family history in constructing commemorative narratives; the necessity of decisions about what to include and exclude from the very resource-intensive process of museum acquisition, preservation and curation; and the growing consensus surrounding the communicative value of ephemera. All the while I keep sight of the specific objects, and stories they embody, to illustrate for readers that despite vast temporal and logistical distances, there is profound observer engagement evoked by these poignant communications crafted at personal cost.
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Included in
Objects of Wartime Resistance and Food Scarcity
This paper considers closely three missives crafted by individuals suffering life- threatening duress during wartime incarceration, one during World War One, and two during the Second World War. Only one of these three survived beyond wartime. All three examples involve food: messages embroidered on or about the sourcing of daily bread or describing dishes that were available only in memory. Nevertheless, the very act of crafting objects to carry communications beyond the dire circumstances in which these prisoners of war found themselves embodied hope and defiance. While acknowledging and describing the very different contexts of each of these examples, I argue that studying them together highlights shared aspects of significance for the historical project: the value of personal testimony and family history in constructing commemorative narratives; the necessity of decisions about what to include and exclude from the very resource-intensive process of museum acquisition, preservation and curation; and the growing consensus surrounding the communicative value of ephemera. All the while I keep sight of the specific objects, and stories they embody, to illustrate for readers that despite vast temporal and logistical distances, there is profound observer engagement evoked by these poignant communications crafted at personal cost.