Holocaust education in the ‘Black Hole of Europe’: Slovakia’s identity politics and history textbooks pre- and post-1989

Abstract

Holocaust education in Slovakia stands at the confluence of diverse discourses of state and supra-national legitimation. Principles of national self-determination, minority rights, and political ideologies inform and lend credence to how Slovaks’ national and state identities are narrated in Slovak history textbooks. For small nation-states with limited economic and military power, such as Slovakia, tapping into these discourses is critical to the state’s survival as they signal belonging to larger entities – whether that be the Soviet bloc, the European Union, or more obtusely ‘the West’ – and thus help to forge alliances with more powerful states. However, actors in these same nation-states can be adept at reimagining these international discourses to meet their own national agendas. Through an analysis of secondary-school textbooks published before and after the fall of state socialism, this article evidences how these competing discourses interact to alternately advocate for, obstruct, and complicate the narration of the Holocaust across time and regime change in Slovak schools.