The Appropriation of Holocaust Memory in Post-Communist Eastern Europe

Jelena Subotić

doi:10.3828/mlo.v0i0.315

Abstract

This short essay explores the ways in which the visual and symbolic repertoire of cosmopolitan Holocaust memory has become appropriated to represent other types of historical crimes. Specifically, I examine to what extent has this instrumentalization of Holocaust memory fed into a crisis in cosmopolitan memory and the rise of its nationalized, particularized and populist variants. Focusing on post-communist Eastern Europe, I demonstrate how the familiar narratives and images of the Holocaust have been repurposed for two main goals: firstly, to normatively elevate the suffering of non-Jewish national majorities and equate it with the Holocaust; and secondly, to reposition the crimes of communism as the dominant criminal legacy of the twentieth century on a par with, and sometimes overtaking, the legacy of the Holocaust. I illustrate these arguments with brief examples of revisionist museum and commemorative practices in Poland, Hungary, Lithuania and Serbia. I conclude by thinking through some methodological and ethical dimensions of this research.

Highlights

As the EU made its Eastern European enlargement conditional on many domestic reforms, education about and memorialization of the Holocaust were some of the explicit expectations for candidate states.1 After a series of EU resolutions that dealt with the memory and legacies of the Holocaust, a major European institutional push to regulate its remembrance across the continent was the 2000 Stockholm Forum on the Holocaust, which
Subotić: The Appropriation of Holocaust Memory in Post-Communist Eastern Europe defined a common framework for European Holocaust remembrance, research and education (Allwork)
While many governments in East European states accepted this new regulation, signed relevant documents and adopted major parameters of the memory framework, being careful not to jeopardize the delicate process of EU accession, they rejected much of the established canon of European memory politics (Mälksoo; Littoz-Monnet)

Summary

Introduction

As the EU made its Eastern European enlargement conditional on many domestic reforms, education about and memorialization of the Holocaust were some of the explicit expectations for candidate states.1 After a series of EU resolutions that dealt with the memory and legacies of the Holocaust, a major European institutional push to regulate its remembrance across the continent was the 2000 Stockholm Forum on the Holocaust, which. Subotić: The Appropriation of Holocaust Memory in Post-Communist Eastern Europe defined a common framework for European Holocaust remembrance, research and education (Allwork).

Results

Conclusion