The Mystery of the Tanganyika Knife and the Rediscovery of the Polish Refugee Experience of Britain’s Wartime Empire

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article under review is an interesting research proposal in the field of material culture studies and addresses four interesting intersecting themes. The first one aims to bring to prominence the marginalised non-British experience of migration and refugeeism in British cultural memory of the war, which itself has its own strong pre-existing narrative of national victimhood and victory. Secondly, the article demonstrates that family histories (the unofficial discourse, a ‘people story’) can help to provide a language with which to explore the under-represented history of Eastern European refugees in the British Empire during the Second World War. Thirdly, the author appreciates colonial spaces (Africa) as a place of asylum and by doing so attempts to widen the geographical analysis of humanitarian relief. And finally, the article uses material culture as an entry to these family, national, and beyond-national stories, and examines the role of ephemera and objects in preserving lesser-known experiences of conflict.

What we have here is an engagingly written (with reference to a personal story), neat article that discusses the intersection of the themes of memory, displacement and material objects. It fits the special issue very well, it is written in an overall good style and on a good linguistic level (English). The themes raised are convincingly interwoven with references to relevant literature. Not only the subject matter of the article, but also the methodological and theoretical approach are of a satisfactory level and make it a suitable publication proposal. In terms of room for improvement, I would suggest the following points:

-        Literature:

o   2/49-56 – discussion of literature – How about elaborating on what relevance these particular references have to the topic of the article? The point the author tries to achieve here remains unclear

o   In terms of the state of research, it might have been worthwhile to further enrich the context by brief references to: 1) the critical literature on colonial materiality – e.g. Carsten Stahn’s Confronting Colonial Objects: Histories, Legalities, and Access to Culture 2) the question of the precarious position of the East European memory of Soviet oppression/deportation to the USSR (which later took the deportees to Africa and other colonial locations of interest to the article) against the background of competitive memory frameworks, and the question of claiming the “Western” European attention in asymmetrical European memory of WWII (e.g. Malksoo, The Politics of Becoming European; Zessin-Jurek, On Lobbying for the Gulag Memory), and 3) the growing interest in the memory of the dislocation and survival of Polish Jews in the East, Central Asia and colonial spaces (e.g. Atina Grossmann, Remapping Survival; Zessin-Jurek, Teffilin Tale from Siberia – on objects, and many more). In particular, issues concerning the post-war conjunctures of memory of the Polish refugees/deportees wartime fate and survival, which are discussed in the article in relation to the Polish diaspora in Britain, are also discussed in relation to the Polish-Jewish diaspora elsewhere.

 

-        factual

o   p. 1/ 17: “they were moved from work camps under Soviet control to transit and Displaced Persons camps under British administration” –> passive voice whereas they were not moved, they moved themselves: they left the work camps on their own, and were actively looking safety elsewhere.

o   The number of Poles who were deported – the upper figure of 1,7 mln has been called into question recently, so it is worth signalling that this is a rather exaggerated figure.

o   8/282: “The majority of the Poles refused to return to Poland after 1945 due to the Soviet occupation” –> better “Soviet domination” – after 1945 – this was more of domination than occupation (which was the case in 1939-41)

 

-        stylistic:

o   The article’s aims are introduced late in the text: on page 6 –> suggestion: moving them earlier into the introduction.  

o   Language: 7/223: “Earmarked to rot in camps that were ridden with hunger and disease – “rot”; 8/294: title of the subsection: “Knives and grandmothers” - is more sensational than academic

o   sometimes authors are introduced for the first time with full names, sometimes only with last names – this asks for consistency, and recommended choice would be the former).

o   misspelt authors’ names: is “Jonchen” instead of “Jochen”, 7: Ewa “Stancyzk” - > “Stańczyk”, “Lingelback” -> “Lingelbach”

o   unclear sentences: e.g. “While much has been written in Poland about this ‘Siberian odyssey’, an interesting blind spot exists in the telling of this story Britain.” –> one more careful reading is necessary

o   6/220: “Aged six, the recently bereaved Babcia, along with her mother and brother were part of the Poles who were ‘violently taken to camps and special settlements’ inside the Soviet Union, and in her case, Kyrgyzstan” –> why this personal information has a footnote to Jochen Lingelbach’s study?

Author Response

Thank you to the first reviewer for their thoughtful comments. I have taken on board every one of their suggestions and have made the following changes:

Literature:

• I have moved this to later in the text so that it is clear that the context is the lack of articulation of these war stories in the context of post-colonial Britain, now 137-146.
• Thank you for these additional points of reference, they have now been incorporated into the article, now 362 - 373.

Factual

• Thank you for spotting this, I have now changed this sentence to incorporate your suggestion. 
• I have now added a qualifier.
• I have now changed this word to domination. 

Stylistic:

• I have now moved these aims on to page three.
• I have changed rot, to 'experience the slow violence of neglect'.
• I have added first names, as per the reviewer's suggestions
• I have standardised spellings of names
• I have now changed 'blind spot' to gap, but I couldn't quite see what was unclear.
• The footnote was a reference to the exact sentence Jochen Lingelbach used in his study, but I have now made it clearer that was what i was referencing. 

My thanks again to the reviewer for their helpful and thoughtful suggestions!

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article is quite intriguing as it intertwines personal histories, which are often overshadowed in war studies, with material culture. It presents numerous individual expressions, which seems fitting for the theme of the journal. The emotional connection with the main character, the grandmother, is palpable, but expected given the circumstances. The methodology of material culture, supported by literature, including references to key English-language works, is commendable. It's understandable that the author doesn't delve into Polish-language literature, given the language barrier. Overall, I have no critical points about the article.

Author Response

My thanks to the reviewer for their generous and thoughtful reading of the article.