Tormented Memories: The Individual and the Collective

Abstract

THIS ARTICLE SETS OUT TO probe the public debate that evolved in Israel over the dedication of a forest to the memory of King Boris III of Bulgaria. It will also address the image of Bulgaria in Israel's collective memory in relation to the rescue of Bulgarian Jews and to the deportation of the Macedonian and Thracian Jews to the death camps. This particular case study sheds light on the ways by which individuals and subgroups attempt to shape the Holocaust's historical consciousness. This effort is a consequence of contested memories of experiences during the Second World War, which furthermore demonstrates the existing tensions between individual memory and the construction of collective memory.' More importantly, it also reveals how subgroups form their identity and how they present themselves in the national arena, where the construction of collective memory is negotiated and shaped. While the number of survivors is naturally declining, the centrality of the Holocaust in Israeli society has not abated. Indeed, the impact of survivors' personal narratives on Israel's historical culture and consciousness has in fact deepened over time. The history of the Jews during World War II and the memory of the Holocaust occupy a central place within the Israeli discourse and self-identity. It is a multi-vocal discourse, which represents the variegated memory of the Holocaust and the different experiences of Jewish survivors during those years.2 Although the number of Holocaust survivors in Israel (and in the world in general) is declining due to aging, their personal narratives continue to have a great impact on the historical culture and in the consciousness of Israeli society.3 Psychologists suggest that there is a process of transference between parent and children, and often between grandparents and their grandchildren, of the individual wartime experiences of survivors. This process, thereby, enables the second and third generations