Memory and Commemoration

Abstract

AbstractIn the decades after the war Jews as genocide victims were not commemorated for they did not fit into a national heroic narrative. In the aftermath of the Eichmann trial in 1961 the Jewish genocide began to be memorialized. The concept of “the hidden child” emerged following the First International Gathering of Children Hidden during World War II held in New York City in 1991. Hidden children organized, constructed collective memories, and acquired a standing and public voice. Some realized that their rescuers had not been recognized. This leads to an analysis of Yad Vashem, the institution set up to memorialize all aspects of the Holocaust and to honor the Righteous Among the Nations, the non‐Jews who risked their lives to rescue Jews. Contemporary concerns with the nature of collective memory frame the aesthetic, social, and political aspects of honoring the Righteous. The commemorative trajectories of Righteous priests and nuns are then compared, and the later recognition of nuns highlighted. The final issue is why the Church did not commemorate the postwar rescue of Jewish children. The chapter focuses on the tensions arising when some Catholic authorities prevented the return of baptized Jewish orphans to their former Jewish identity. The refusal to return the orphaned children was a double annihilation. The commemoration of Father Joseph André and Father Bruno Reynders, who set up their own resistance networks and saved both Jewish adults and children, is discussed as an example of how memory can be universalized. Commemoration can also favor armed resistance over civil resistance and be gendered: a recent plaque, memorializing the Armed Partisans' feat of snatching from a convent and leading to safety a group of girls threatened by deportation, omits mention of Mother Superior Sister Marie‐Aurélie, whose negotiating skills enabled the rescue.