The Pragmatics of Holocaust Heritage in the Twenty-first Century: Exploring the Concept Using the Case Studies of Terezín and Staro Sajmište
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Holocaust heritage across Europe is held to high standards of conservation, management, interpretation, and use, due to the belief that all such sites should be retained as or turned into places of memorialization as their primary function. This paper proposes that a pragmatic approach instead be taken towards Holocaust heritage in the twenty-first century and beyond. In acknowledgement that heritage practitioners today are not safeguarding this as a “found” heritage resource in 1945, but in the present day, it is argued that it is inevitable and perhaps unavoidable to make pragmatic decisions which take into account changes to such sites over the last 80 years. Site managers and other stakeholders are not in a position to make decisions based on a clean slate, devoid of post-war events and uses. Drawing on case studies from Serbia and Czechia, and adopting a three-pronged model of “heritage pragmatics,” this paper argues that our choices today should reflect and acknowledge past uses and aim towards more pragmatic solutions, letting go of idealistic aspirations more suitable for sites without a long history of reuse.
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This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
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18(1)
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37-56
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The Pragmatics of Holocaust Heritage in the Twenty-first Century: Exploring the Concept Using the Case Studies of Terezín and Staro Sajmište. 2025: 37-56. https://archive.jpr.org.uk/10.1080/2159032X.2024.2423319
