Bringing The Dark Past To Light

Despite the Holocaust's profound impact on the history of Eastern Europe, the communist regimes successfully repressed public discourse about and memory of this tragedy. Since the collapse of communism in 1989, however, this has changed. Not only has a wealth of archival sources become available, but there have also been oral history projects and interviews recording the testimonies of eyewitnesses who experienced the Holocaust as children and young adults. Recent political, social, and cultural developments have facilitated a more nuanced and complex understanding of the continuities and discontinuities in representations of the Holocaust. People are beginning to realize the significant role that memory of Holocaust plays in contemporary discussions of national identity in Eastern Europe. This volume of original essays explores the memory of the Holocaust and the Jewish past in postcommunist Eastern Europe. Devoting space to every postcommunist country, the essays in Bringing the Dark Past to Light explore how the memory of the "dark pasts" of Eastern European nations is being recollected and reworked. In addition, it examines how this memory shapes the collective identities and the social identity of ethnic and national minorities. Memory of the Holocaust has practical implications regarding the current development of national cultures and international relationships.

Antisemitism is a topic on which there is a wide gap between scholarly and popular understanding, and as concern over antisemitism has grown, so too have the debates over how to understand and combat it. This handbook explores its history and manifestations, ranging from its origins to the internet. Since the Holocaust, many in North America and Europe have viewed antisemitism as a historical issue with little current importance. However, recent events show that antisemitism is not just a matter of historical interest or of concern only to Jews. Antisemitism has become a major issue confronting and challenging our world. This volume starts with explorations of antisemitism in its many different shapes across time and then proceeds to a geographical perspective, covering a broad scope of experiences across different countries and regions. The final section discusses the manifestations of antisemitism in its varied cultural and social forms. With an international range of contributions across 40 chapters, this is an essential volume for all readers of Jewish and non-Jewish history alike.

Holocaust Education in Lithuania is based on a six-year, multi-sited ethnographic research project that was conducted to analyze the effects of the controversial policies of Holocaust education which were introduced as conditions of membership for access into post-Soviet western alliances. In order to understand how individuals take up transnational policies and programs intended to support democratization, Beresniova delves into rarely discussed issues. She looks at the means through which inherent cultural and political assumptions have had an impact on the ways in which memory and history are used in educational programs. She also scrutinizes the motivating factors for involvement in Holocaust education, such as the importance of community building, civic activism beyond the topic of the Holocaust, and the perceived power of the international community in dictating domestic education policy guidelines. Beresniova contends that educators must acknowledge the political and cultural elements in Holocaust education programs and policies, or risk undermining their own efforts. This book is recommended for scholars of anthropology, education, history, political science, and European studies.

Women and Holocaust: New Perspectives and Challenges expands the existing scholarship on women and the Holocaust adopting current approaches to gender studies and focusing on the texts and context from Central-Eastern Europe. The authors complicate earlier approaches by considering the intersections of gender, region, nationa, and sexuality, often within specifically delineated national settings, including the Czech/German, Hungarian, Hungarian/Austrian, Lithuanian, Polish/Israeli, Romanian/US-American, and Slovak. In these essays, the communist regimes after WWII often provide a productive framework for studying women and the Holocaust. This truly international volume features contributions by eminent authors, including pioneers in the field, as well as upcoming literary scholars and historians who delve into previously unmapped archives, explore cinematic representations and digital testimonies.

In studies of a common European past, there is a significant lack of scholarship on the former Eastern Bloc countries. While understanding the importance of shifting the focus of European memory eastward, contributors to this volume avoid the trap of Eastern European exceptionalism, an assumption that this region’s experiences are too unique to render them comparable to the rest of Europe. They offer a reflection on memory from an Eastern European historical perspective, one that can be measured against, or applied to, historical experience in other parts of Europe. In this way, the authors situate studies on memory in Eastern Europe within the broader debate on European memory.

Now in its second edition, this book takes a fresh, probing look at one of the greatest human tragedies in modern history. Beginning with a detailed overview of the history of the Jews and their two-millennia-old struggle with the anti-Judaic and anti-Semitic prejudice and discrimination that set the stage for the Holocaust, David M. Crowe discusses the evolution of Nazi racial policies, beginning with the development of Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitic ideas, their importance to the Nazi movement in the 1920s and 1930s, and their expanding role in the evolution of German policies leading to the Final Solution in 1941 – the mass murder of Jews throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. The German program involved the creation of death camps like Auschwitz and Treblinka and mass murder sites throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. While the Jews were the principal victims, other groups who were deemed racial or biological threats to Hitler’s goal of creating an Aryan-pure Europe were also targeted, including the Roma and the handicapped. This book discusses Nazi policies in each country in German-occupied Europe as well as the role of Europe’s neutrals in the larger German scheme-of-things. It also takes an in-depth look at liberation, Displaced Persons, the founding of Israel, and efforts throughout the western world to bring Nazi war criminals and their collaborators to justice. This second edition includes a new chapter on the importance of memory and the Holocaust, the evolution of interpretative Holocaust scholarship and media, recent controversies about national responsibility, and the work of Holocaust museums, archives, and libraries in Israel, Germany, Poland, and the United States to promote Holocaust education and memory. It concludes with the rise of Neo-Nazism, white nationalism, and other movements in Germany and the United States, and their relationship to questions about Holocaust memory and its lessons. Comprehensive and offering a detailed historical perspective, this is the perfect resource for those looking to gain a deep understanding of this tragedy.

On October 14, 1943, Aleksandr "Sasha" Pechersky led a mass escape of inmates from Sobibor, a Nazi death camp in Poland. Despite leading the only successful prisoner revolt at a World War II death camp, Pechersky never received the public recognition he deserved in his home country of Russia. This story of a forgotten hero reveals the tremendous difference in memorial cultures between societies in the West and societies in the former Communist world. Pechersky, along with other Russian and Jewish inmates who had been prisoners of the Nazis, was considered suspect by the Russian government simply because he had been imprisoned. In this volume, Selma Leydesdorff describes the official silence in the Eastern Bloc about Pechersky’s role in the Sobibor escape and how an effort was made to recognize his actions. The narrative is based on eyewitness accounts from people in Pechersky’s life and a discussion of the mechanism of memory, mixing written sources with varied recollections and assessing the collisions of collective memory held by the East and the West. Specifically, this book critiques the ideological refusal of many societies to acknowledge the suffering of Jews at Sobibor. Offering fascinating insights into a crucial period of history, emphasizing that Jews were not passive in the face of German violence, and exploring the history of the Jews who fell victim to Stalinism after surviving Nazism, this is valuable reading for students and scholars of the Holocaust and the position of Jews under Communism.

A major contribution to our understanding of present-day historical consciousness through a study of memory laws across Europe.