2024 - 2025 FACTORY student led: CYPRUS 1941–1949: UNDER BRITISH CONFINEMENT

Between 1941 and 1949, Cyprus became a site of British-led confinement for various distinct groups: Jewish refugees from displaced persons camps, Italian, German and other prisoners of war, Jewish and Palestinian militants who were fighting against the British occupation in Palestine, and German colonizers who built settlements across Palestine. While Jewish Holocaust survivors were detained by British authorities during their attempt to reach Palestine, German Templers were forced to leave their colonies in Palestine and interned as enemy nationals during and after World War II. The presence of the different groups on the island reflects the upheavals of a world in transition that is shaped by empire, war, colonialism, and displacement.

This Factory session explores these distinct but overlapping histories while focusing to examine how Cyprus became a crossroads between different movements in and out of Palestine. One was driven by antisemitic persecution and Zionist settler-colonial aspirations, the other by colonial entanglements and geopolitical shifts. Through storytelling that is based on archival footage and artistic research on site, Stellar invites the participants to map locations, timelines and the different actors that shaped life on Cyprus between 1941–1949.

The tension between being displaced, being a settler, seeking refuge, being a survivor of persecution, and participating in the colonisation of Palestine is examined through the concept of “the implicated subject” by Michael Rothberg.¹ The historical discussion, open dialogue, and artistic engagement invites participants to critically engage with broader questions of inherited trauma, legacies from one's ancestors, and how to build multilayered narratives through personal or fictive storytelling.

The mind map will be continued in a follow-up event at Middelburg through collective painting as well as storytelling and brought back to Cyprus afterwards.

¹ Rothberg, Michael. The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019.