Sacrifice versus suffering: Examining unheard stories of the past

Amid the bombs and attacks of World War II, the British government instituted food rationing to ensure its limited supplies would last. But those wartime policies triggered a “catastrophic” famine around the globe in Bengal, part of the British colonial empire in India, says Rafaella Lambrinos, a fourth-year Penn history major with a concentration in European history who wrote an honors thesis comparing the two.

The former was viewed as a well-planned “patriotic sacrifice,” while the latter was ignored until the Bengal peoples’ suffering was documented and publicized, explains Lambrinos, from Freehold, New Jersey. “A lot of food resources were diverted from Bengal and sent to the homefront to sustain the rationing policy in Britain, but few resources were allocated for the population in Bengal,” Lambrinos says, which, in part, led to the famine. Her research examines the two occurrences to study the bigger picture of “how powerful institutions determine which narratives are preserved and which are erased,” she says.

Lambrinos’ experience as a student fellow in the SNF Paideia Program and her history major put her on the path to the topic. Support from the SNF Paideia Dialogue Fund Award and from the Department of History allowed her to visit archives in London to discover firsthand sources about both topics, and the Paideia Program “has really shaped the way I study history,” she says.

“I have learned that it is important to listen beyond my own beliefs and perspectives, and to make space for the resonance of what the other person is saying. This kind of listening means setting aside my assumptions and personal biases so that I can fully hear and understand the experience of others,” Lambrinos says.

In London, she dug into records at the British Library and the Imperial War Museum, looking at government correspondence, shipping memos, testimony in the House of Commons, and newspaper clippings to learn more about what the British government was aware of in Bengal. Wartime censorship rules restricted journalists from writing articles about what was going on, but a British editor at one Indian newspaper was able to publish photos from Bengal to get the word out. “There were these emaciated bodies in the streets—really harrowing photographs,” Lambrinos says.

She also studied what was happening in the United Kingdom, looking at leaflets on rationing and recipes. “They have this wartime feel to them—like ‘war and peace pudding’—and they were more lighthearted and visually appealing. They wanted people to read them, to believe in them, and to side with the government,” she says.

The contrast between the two allowed Lambrinos to think about how personal sacrifice or suffering can be documented in one context and silenced in another. “You learn about how imperial power structures control the way that our historical records are understood,” she says.

Her research gave her deeper insights into the study of history. “Studying history is not just collecting factual information to try to understand a historical moment, but it really requires bearing witness to the experiences of others,” she says. These unconventional sources and reading original source material, Lambrinos says, have given a voice to those whose struggles have previously been silenced. Uncovering these stories, she says, “brings depth to our understanding of both the past and the present.”

In the fall, Lambrinos is headed to Penn Carey Law. “I’m excited about the prospect of using the skills I’ve developed over the last four years to help solve complicated legal problems in an ever-evolving legal landscape, and to devote time representing pro bono clients in matters that implicate significant civil and personal rights,” she says.