Reined into the service of the Cold War confrontation, antifascist ideology overshadowed the narrative about the Holocaust in the communist states of Eastern Europe. This led to the Western notion that in the Soviet Bloc there was a systematic suppression of the memory of the mass murder of European Jews. Going beyond disputing the mistaken opposition between “communist falsification” of history and the “repressed authentic” interpretation of the Jewish catastrophe, this work presents and analyzes the ways as the Holocaust was conceptualized in the Soviet-ruled parts of Europe. The authors provide various interpretations of the relationship between antifascism and Holocaust memory in the communist countries, arguing that the predominance of an antifascist agenda and the acknowledgment of the Jewish catastrophe were far from mutually exclusive. The interactions included acts of negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing. Detailed case studies describe how both individuals and institutions were able to use antifascism as a framework to test and widen the boundaries for discussion of the Nazi genocide. The studies build on the new historiography of communism, focusing on everyday life and individual agency, revealing the formation of a great variety of concrete, local memory practices.
Author(s): Kata Bohus, Peter Hallama, Stephan Stach
Edition: 1
Publisher: Central European University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Commentary: TruePDF
Pages: 341
Tags: Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945): Europe, Eastern: Historiography; Jews: Europe, Eastern: Historiography; Jews: Europe, Eastern: History: 20th Century; Jews: Persecutions: Europe, Eastern: Historiography; Europe, Eastern: Ethnic Relations; Communism: Europe, Eastern: Historiography; Fascism: Europe, Eastern: Historiography
Cover
Front Matter
Half Title
Title Page
Copyrigth Page
Table of Contents
Figures
Acronyms and Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: Historiography
Chapter 1: Edition of Documents from the Ringelblum Archive
Political Censorship
Editorial Changes as Internal Censorship?
Conclusion
Chapter 2: “A Great Civic and Scientific Duty of Our Historiography”
Miroslav Kárný
Holocaust Witness and Scholar
Class Struggle and Imperialism, or the Persecution and Murder of the Jews?
Conclusion
Chapter 3: The Conflicted Identities of Helmut Eschwege
Conclusion
Part Two: Sites of Memory
Chapter 4: Parallel Memories?
Mutually Exclusive Memories?
Screaming Silences? Memorialization of World War IIin Public Spaces
Marginalized Memory? Martyr Memorial Servicesin the Jewish Community
Conclusions
Chapter 5: Holocaust Narrative(s) in Soviet Lithuania
Agency and Power: Creating the Ninth Fort Museum
Creation of a Commemorative Idiom
Medialization of the Ninth Fort as a Site of Memoryin Soviet Lithuania:
Conclusions
Post Scriptum: Changes in the Memorialization in the 1980s
Chapter 6: Memory Incarnate: Jewish Sites in Communist Polandand the Perception of the Shoah
“The Ground is Burning Beneath My Feet”
New Legal Framework
Such Profanation is Unacceptable
Open Door to the Abyss
A Turning Point
The Final Years
Part Three: Artistic Representations
Chapter 7: Writing a Soviet Holocaust Novel
Literature and the Holocaust in the Soviet Union:The Example of Rybakov
Heavy Sand: Finding Facts and Making Use of Soviet Realist Templates
Heavy Sand: The Soviet Holocaust Narrative and Its Discontents
Conclusion: Remembering and Forgetting the Holocaust in the USSR
Chapter 8: Commissioned Memory: Official Representationsof the Holocaust in Hungarian Art
Introduction: Official Memory Politics and State Funded Projects
The Hungarian Memorial in Mauthausen
Victors vs. Victims: A Non-Commissioned Hungarian Plan
Victors vs. Victims: The Yugoslav Memorial
1965, Auschwitz: The Permanent Hungarian Exhibition
1965, Hungarian National Gallery
Conclusion
Chapter 9: Towards a Shared Memory? The Hungarian Holocaustin Mass-Market Socialist Literature, 1956–1970*
The Kádárist Cultural Landscape
Jews and Non-Jews: Responsibility and Guilt
Narrative Strategies
Fate and Memory
Official Criticism and the Issue of Reception
Conclusions: Towards a Shared Holocaust Memory?
Part Four: Media and Public Debate
Chapter 10: Distrusting the Parks: Heinz Knobloch’s Journalismand the Memory of the Shoah in the GDR
Heinz Knobloch
Herr Moses in Berlin
Meine liebste Mathilde
Der beherzte Reviervorsteher
Conclusion
Chapter 11: “We Pledge, as if It Was the Highest Sanctum, to Preservethe Memory”: Sovetish Heymland, Facets ofHolocaust Commemoration in the Soviet Union and theCold War
Yiddish in Postwar Soviet Union
Towards a Straightening of the Lopsided Historical Record
A Monument over Babyn Yar
Commemoration Activities in Popervāle, Latvia
Commemoration Activities in Medzhybizh, Ukraine
Conclusion
Chapter 12: “The Jewish Diaries . . . Undergo One Edition after theOther”: Early Polish Holocaust Documentation, EastGerman Antifascism, and the Emergence of HolocaustMemory in Socialism
The Jewish Historical Institute and Antifascist Literature in the GDR
The Three Books
The Censors’ Verdict on the Polish Books
The Intended Role of the Books in the East GermanPress Debate and their Effect
The Perception of the Books
Diffusion of Knowledge into Artistic, Documentary, and Educational Projects
Conclusion
Conclusions
Making Sense of the Holocaust in Socialist EasternEurope
Discursive Frameworks for Addressing the Holocaust
Eastern Europe in its Diversity
Making Sense of the Holocaust with Agency
Demarginalizing Eastern Europe
List of Contributors
Index
Back cover
