Obstacles to the Integration of the Holocaust into Post-Communist East European Historical Narratives
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Abstract
Factors that have made it difficult for post-communist East European societies to integrate the Holocaust into their historical cultures include the communist heritage, which downplayed the specifically Jewish Holocaust; sensitivity to charges that a nation was complicit in the murder of the Jews; the framing of East European histories as national narratives into which it is difficult to incorporate the experience of other nations; the feeling that Jewish suffering is recognized, while that of other East Europeans is not; the positive re-evaluation of the interwar and wartime politics and culture after the collapse of communism; the survival and revival of anti-Semitism, with new inputs from the Middle East and from Western Holocaust deniers; the construction in the West of the Holocaust as a centrepiece of twentieth-century history; the influence of East European diasporas; the embedment of the discourse on the Holocaust in the political divide between nativists and Westernizers; the deployment of accusations of Holocaust collaboration as an instrument of foreign policy; and debate over the restitution of confiscated Jewish property. Often these factors come together into a reinforcing discursive structure. The essay’s conclusion suggests how to overcome these obstacles to the integration of the Holocaust into East European histories.
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Volume/Issue
50(3-4)
Page Number / Article Number
359-372
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Link to article (paywalled), Obstacles to the Integration of the Holocaust into Post-Communist East European Historical Narratives
Link to article in JSTOR, Obstacles to the Integration of the Holocaust into Post-Communist East European Historical Narratives
PDF (via academia.edu), Obstacles to the Integration of the Holocaust into Post-Communist East European Historical Narratives
Link to article in JSTOR, Obstacles to the Integration of the Holocaust into Post-Communist East European Historical Narratives
PDF (via academia.edu), Obstacles to the Integration of the Holocaust into Post-Communist East European Historical Narratives
Bibliographic Information
Obstacles to the Integration of the Holocaust into Post-Communist East European Historical Narratives. 2008: 359-372. https://archive.jpr.org.uk/10.1080/00085006.2008.11092588
