The Blitz Sample Clauses

The Blitz. Coventry as a mnemonic community In our interviews with young people and experts the WWII destruction of Coventry in the course of air raids of 1940-42 by the Luftwaffe (also known as the Coventry Blitz) was the most instantaneous answer to the question about events in the local history that might be defined as ‘difficult’ or ‘problematic’.8 UKFG2R9: ‘Like obviously the war. [Laughter in group] It was quite problematic, I think it was probably quite hard for Nuneaton because we were a mining town, and Coventry as well was, it looked like …Leicester, huge industrial, the Midlands were so, there was obviously a big overload of ammunition for here, and stuff, so I guess that would have affected quite a lot of people.’ UKFG2R8: ‘Yes, well, Coventry got blitzed, a bomb went through the Cathedral [laughter]. That was problematic.’ (UKFG2, 26 July 2012) ‘Well, I suppose there are different kinds of ‘difficult’ aren’t there, because I mean obviously, the whole thing around the Blitz is difficult in the sense that it was a very traumatic experience for the city, but I suspect that in some ways it’s less difficult in the sense that there is almost like a kind of agreed narrative of that and what it meant and that Coventry, I suppose, kind of sees itself as a bit 7 The cancelling of new workshops and the fact that members of a smaller outreach team became increasingly stretched in order to carry out planned programmes in the museum had a negative impact on our recruitment of focus group participants (see Methodology note above). 8 As a result of the air raid more than 1,200 people, mainly civilians were killed in Coventry in 1940- 1942. of a survivor city and obviously that was an incredibly traumatic experience for those involved, you know, quite a few of whom are still around. But it’s acquired a sort of symbolic value in relation to how the city sees itself, so it’s probably not a very sort of disputed narrative I suppose…’ (UKE1, 13 January 2012) Being an undoubtedly tragic event in the city’s history, the memories of the Blitz, however, play an important constitutive role for Coventry people as a ‘mnemonic community’ providing them with a common ground of a well-established historical narrative. As one of our experts pointed out, for the older generation the Blitz became a sort of extreme traumatic experience against which all other ‘difficult times’ are measured: ‘I think now even to do with things like the cuts in the public sector in particular people mostly ...