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This article describes the powerplay around the recent discovery (summer 2015) of eighteenth-century Jewish graves in the French city of Lyon. Prior to the French Revolution, Jews had no right to have their own cemeteries, and the corpses of the deceased were buried in the basement of the local catholic hospital, the Hôtel- Dieu. In recent years this centrally located building was completely renovated and converted into a retail complex selling luxury brands. The discovery and subsequent identification of the graves – and of some human remains – led to a complex confrontation between various actors: archaeologists, employed either by the municipality or by the state; religious authorities (mostly Lyons chief rabbi); the municipality itself; the private construction companies involved; direct descendants of some of the Jews buried in the hospital‘s basement; as well as the local media. The question of what to do with the graves took centre stage, and while exhumations were favoured by both archaeologists and the representatives of the families, the chief rabbi – supported by the construction companies – proved reluctant to exhume, for religious reasons. In the first part of his article the author details the origins of this Jewish funerary place and current knowledge about it. He then goes on to analyse what was at stake in the long negotiations, arguing that the memory of the Holocaust played a role in the attitude of many of the parties involved. By way of conclusion he considers the decision not to exhume the graves and elaborates on the reasons why this led to some dissatisfaction.
2 Metamorphoses, or how self-storage turned from homes into hotels Helene Brembeck Approaching Christmas 2014, US columnist Patrick Clark complained in an article entitled ‘Hoarder nation: America’s self-storage industry is blooming’: It’s the time of the year when American households are filling up with stuff. Your living room is piled up with boxes from Black Friday haul, or your porch is creaking with the weight of UPS deliveries. While retail analysts are obsessively tracking buyer behavior to gauge the impact of Cyber Monday on store earnings, one industry
James Baldwin’s arrest in Paris in December 1949 gave birth to his perfect storm. His ten days in Fresnes jail weakened him physically and emotionally. He made it out, but upon release he was mired in self-doubt and enveloped in a bout of depression. He returned to his hotel, ready to try to get back to his life, however daunting that effort would be. The hotelier’s demand that he settle his bill, and do it quickly, awakened his obsession with suicide. He simply could not handle one more obstacle in his path; he chose to kill himself in his room. Ironically, he saved his life when he jumped off a chair with a sheet around his neck. In a matter of seconds his death wish was replaced by his equally obsessive need to write, witness, think, party, drink, challenge, and love.
All of the authors contributing to this issue of Journal of Humanitarian Affairs (JHA) agreed to write articles elaborating on the presentations they gave at the international conference hosted by FMSH (Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme) and MSF-CRASH (Médecins Sans Frontières – Centre de Réflexion sur l’Action et les Savoirs Humanitaires) on 20–22 March 2019 at the Hôtel de Lauzun in Paris. The title of the conference was ‘Extreme violence: investigate, rescue, judge. Syria, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo’. This issue also includes a recent text
historical, geographical and cultural context. And overall, rather than disrupting existing relations of dominance and inequality, aid works to consolidate and reproduce them. In Batman’s attempts to save the Congo we can very clearly see the relevance of work in political geography. This includes the role of ‘hotel geopolitics’ ( Fregonese and Ramadan, 2015 ), where existing international tourist and transport infrastructures alongside unequal mobility regimes shape the
per cent. Rice said to me, ‘Let’s have a second round and he will win.’ But we weren’t in Switzerland. Things weren’t so simple. People were already protesting, breaking hotels. The Americans became scared and the electoral council made a pronouncement, bringing Préval to power. The way his successor came to power wasn’t positive. But, by then, Lula’s government had come to an end, I was no longer foreign minister and, under [Brazilian President Dilma] Rousseff, there were other priorities: problems with Mercosur, etc. I am not trying to
also recalled crowds trying to force entry into the hotel where they were staying before being dispersed by members of the Congolese armed forces, who fired live ammunition. MSF Relations with the ‘Riposte’ MSF field reports and public communications from the first months of the outbreak reveal few signs of concern about the response strategy, although they note that the epidemic might not have been ‘under
receive support from a well-wisher to go to culinary school. Unable to secure a work permit, he used a Kenyan friend’s ID to get a job at a high-end hotel in Nairobi. He was fired when management learned he was a refugee working with a fraudulent ID. In such an environment, refugees cannot fully benefit from their own and donors’ human capital investments. In Kakuma, refugees had somewhat more freedom to start their own businesses with
Tea on the terrace takes readers on a journey up and down the Nile with archaeologists and Egyptologists. Travellers such as Americans Theodore Davis, Emma Andrews, and James Breasted, as well as Britons Wallace Budge, Maggie Benson, and Howard Carter arrived in Alexandria, moved on to Cairo, travelled up the Nile by boat and train, and visited Luxor. Throughout the journey, readers spend some time with them at their hotels and on their boats. We listen in on their conversations, watch their activities, and begin to understand that much archaeological work was not done at the field site or in the university museum, as many historians have argued. Instead, understanding the politics of conversation in the social studies of science, the book shows that hotels in Egypt on the way to and from home institutions and excavation sites were liminal, but powerful and central, spaces which became foundations for establishing careers, building and strengthening scientific networks, and generating and experimenting with new ideas. These are familiar stories to readers, but Tea on the terrace presents them in a new framework to show Egyptologists’ activities in a seemingly familiar but unknown space. A mix of archaeological tourism and the history of Egyptology, the book is based on original archival research, using letters, diaries, biographies, and travel guides as well as secondary sources.
23 ‘I’d find a way to contribute to peace’ Jo Berry I started this morning1 by going to the beach and putting my feet in the water, and then looking back at the Grand Hotel. And even though it was in 1984 that my father was killed there,2 I still have a reaction, a response. And I was just sitting there, just thinking of everything that’s happened, and just thinking that, if that hadn’t happened, who would I have been, who would I have become? And recognising the choices that I made within two days have completely changed my life. When my father was killed that