On neighbours and those knocking at the door: Holocaust memory and Europe’s refugee crisis

Abstract

ABSTRACTAt the height of the refugee crisis in Europe in autumn 2015, two public intellectuals, Jan T. Gross and G. M. Tamás, a Polish-American historian and a Hungarian Marxist philosopher, respectively, published articles arguing that Eastern Europe’s failure to respond in a humanitarian way to the refugee movements were reminders that the region was still trapped in its past. Specifically, they claimed that the memory of the Second World War, in which large numbers of people either sympathized with (Poland) or collaborated in (Hungary) the murder of the Jews, had not been worked through and remained a motivating force for dealing with ‘outsiders’. Stone's article analyses those by Gross and Tamás, and suggests that, although there is much to recommend them, they do not go far enough. The draconian response to the refugee crisis by no means characterizes only Eastern Europeans but has been a Europe-wide phenomenon. Stone suggests that it is important to recognize the revision of the post-war settlement that has been in train for several decades if one is to understand the way in which most European states have responded to the latest movement of people to Europe.