Abstract: The study, preservation and dissemination of the synagogues of Greece has been a 30-year project initiated by the author in 1993. It included a journey to cities throughout Greece, documenting synagogues—some in use, others abandoned or in ruins—engaging in surveys and interviews. The project focused on people, architecture, the urban context and local history. Over the years, the work evolved to give a form and a voice to invisible buildings and places once vibrant with Jewish life. Through digital tools, books, exhibitions and in-situ journeys, the author aims to make this invisible architectural and historic evidence visible again, and accessible to a wider audience. This chapter addresses the question “How lost synagogues become visible again?” The author unfolds a methodology that combines low and high tech, and examples of restoration and dissemination projects, spanning three-decades until today. The survey and study of the synagogues of Greece that began between 1993 and 1999 is still in progress. Architectural restorations were completed between 2016 and 2023, while numerous exhibitions, presentations and publications has made his work accessible to a wider audience since 1997.
Abstract: Our point of departure being that free speech by all sides must be protected and that pro-Palestinian speech is not antisemitic by definition, this chapter examines the extent to which Greek political parties’ critique of Israeli policies diachronically might implicitly or explicitly contribute to the dissemination of antisemitic mythopoesis. Moving beyond the conventional focus on far-right rhetoric, this analysis explores how antisemitic tropes are reproduced within the discourses of mainstream political actors, including the conservative party New Democracy and the socialist PASOK. Particular emphasis is placed on the Greek left, a heterogeneous political formation encompassing a broad spectrum of ideologies that ostensibly uphold human rights and progressive values. The presence of discriminatory discourse within such frameworks reveals the deep entrenchment of antisemitic attitudes in Greek society, where they function as a form of ideological common sense. By examining periods such as the Greek debt crisis and the War in Gaza starting in 2023, we argue that this latent antisemitism tends to resurface during periods of socio-political crisis and permeates the entire political spectrum, challenging assumptions about its marginality or exclusivity to far right politics and rhetoric. At this point, and in light of the turbulent historical moment we are witnessing—marked by an ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, the endless suffering of the Palestinean people and the widespread instability throughout the Middle East—we deem it necessary to clarify that it is not our intention to intervene in the broader debate surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In contrast, our objective is to examine the phenomenon of antisemitism through a historical, cultural, and political lens, with a specific focus on how public opinion is shaped with regard to Greek Jewish citizens—and Jews more broadly—within the discourse articulated by Greek political actors. We would like to explicitly state that antisemitism, in this context, is not to be understood solely as a contemporary political manifestation, but as a multidimensional and diachronic phenomenon. With reference to the events of October 7th and their aftermath, we align ourselves with the position articulated by Gabor Maté, who, discussing the trauma and Palestinian suffering, emphatically stated that: “Any colonial power does precisely what Israel is doing and has been doing. (…) So, there is nothing specifically ‘Jewish’ about this. It also goes along with the colonial trajectory
Abstract: The recent Israeli onslaught on Gaza has sparked bitter arguments on United Kingdom (UK) university campuses. These conflicts have intertwined with wider disputes over politics, cultural identity, freedom of speech, and also empathy. Both sides routinely accuse their opponents of a lack of empathy with the victims of violence with whom they themselves identify. This chapter sets these arguments, in relation to empathy with suffering in particular, in historical context, extending back to the 1930s. The memory of the Holocaust, and the rise since the 1990s, in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, of a form of empathy-focused Holocaust education, has fed into the politicization and weaponization of empathy in the context of the Middle East conflict. The chapter closes with four practical suggestions, which might help to unblock these unproductive, acrimonious, and emotionally charged disputes on British campuses.
Abstract: In 2009, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum took the experimental initiative of creating a Facebook page; since then, it has established accounts on other social media platforms, such as Instagram and Twitter, and is now followed by more than one million users across these networks. This chapter investigates the ways in which the Museum utilises social media, particularly with regard to its authority as an institution and site of Holocaust education and remembrance. On one hand, the Museum has fostered an online virtual community where Auschwitz victims are commemorated, the ethics of remembrance are discussed, and users’ feedback is sought and acknowledged. On the other hand, the institution uses social media to fact-check and criticise certain representations of Auschwitz, suggesting only those explicitly approved by the Museum are acceptable. This demonstrates a wider Museum dichotomy between retaining traditional, didactic practices and establishing contemporary, participatory ones.
Abstract: In this chapter, we investigate how four Italian and five German Holocaust memorials and museums, as well as three major internationally relevant Holocaust organizations, employed Facebook for Holocaust remembrance purposes during the period of pandemic lockdown. A comparison was made of the quantity and variety of activity on their Facebook pages during the months of April and May 2020, as compared with the same time span in 2019 and 2021. Although the study revealed major changes and adjustments in Holocaust institutions’ Facebook activities, both in terms of volume and type of content and regarding interaction strategies, the results show that the COVID-19 lockdown did not appear to trigger a radical change in Holocaust remembrance institutions’ use of social media. Despite the changes found in many Holocaust remembrance practices on Facebook and their growing use of digital media, the memorials and museums considered in this study appear to adopt a conservative stance in terms of the topics and themes addressed via social media and a general little change in the framework of commemoration policies. Also, despite a drive toward internationalization, as demonstrated by the Holocaust institutions’ increased use of English, there still appears to be a certain tension between local and global memories of the Holocaust.
Abstract: The severe restrictions on public life following the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic affected Holocaust memorials and museums worldwide, especially in Europe, Israel, and the United States. These measures posed significant challenges to contemporary forms of Holocaust commemoration, which were based on collaborative practices of remembering, particularly related to the experience of presence at the memorial sites. In our chapter, we ask in which ways the pandemic had an accelerating effect on global Holocaust memory by tracing, analyzing, and identifying the institutionalized use of online platforms and digital formats on social media. We present results from an online survey conducted with 32 key institutions in the field of Holocaust commemoration in the Spring and Summer of 2020 and discuss them in the context of various forms of digital activities initiated by Holocaust memorials and museums in response to the pandemic. For that purpose, we have created a comprehensive database of 45 digital projects, which were released in the first months of the pandemic, and conducted a multimodal analysis of selected projects. We identified a significant increase in social media use and digital tools, in particular video formats, helping institutions to communicate virtually with potential audiences. Memorials utilized various social media features like live streams, stories, and hashtags to implement elements of participatory memory culture that offer users the possibility to participate in new collaborative forms of mediated commemoration. In doing so, they helped to establish like-minded and co-creative commemoration communities.
Abstract: In our chapter, we investigate how the Covid-19 restrictions affected the translation of in-person commemorative ceremonies into online-only events. Whilst the majority of existing research has a relatively small scale, we have turned to the larger scope of social media data to examine wider online memory culture. To do so, we conduct comparative analysis of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram data from institutions organising commemorative events for the liberation of Neuengamme, the massacre at Srebrenica, and the liberation of Beau Bassin together with non-institutional posts using the hashtags from these institutions. Through this analysis, we aim to answer our main research questions: how do the online discourses by institutions and the wider public compare in relation to posts using shared hashtags during major commemoration periods during Covid-19 lockdowns? To what extent did the move to remote engagement during the pandemic reconfigure the so-called bifurcation of memory culture, between institutional and popular memory discourse (Hoskins, 2014) in any way that might suggest that the lockdowns evidence a change in commemoration practices? Our findings demonstrate that despite the major anniversaries marked in 2020, related memory institutions had little impact on social media, and their commemorative approaches in these spheres were not transformed by the pandemic.
Abstract: Antisemitische Stereotype sind heute in allen politischen und gesellschaftlichen Kreisen virulent, sie sind in hohem Maße integrativer Bestandteil rechtsextremer Ideologie, finden sich im globalisierungskritischen und im linken Umfeld und sind auch in der Mitte der Gesellschaft längst kein Tabu mehr. Seit Beginn der Zweiten Intifada im Herbst 2000, als sich erneut zeigte, welchen Mobilisierungseffekt die Radikalisierung des Nahostkonflikts auf antisemitische Einstellungen und Aktionen hat, zeigt sich, dass antisemitische Stereotype und Propaganda in verschiedenen europäischen Ländern auch unter Migranten und deren Nachkommen virulent sind, die aus der arabischen Welt, aus Nordafrika oder der Türkei stammen. Wobei diese antisemitischen Vorurteilsstrukturen kaum Anknüpfungspunkte an etwaige Traditionen im Islam aufweisen, sondern vielmehr Ergebnis einer von europäischen Vordenkern des Antisemitismus in die muslimische Welt getragenen Topoi sind, die dort inzwischen einen zentralen Stellenwert einnehmen und sich insbesondere in einer antizionistischen Variante gegen Israel, aber ebenso gegen Juden überhaupt richten (vgl. zum Antisemitismus in der arabischen Welt Tibi 2003). Entgegen verbreiteter Vorstellungen – nach denen Araber als Semiten keine antisemitischen Vorurteile hegen könnten – schließt der Begriff „Antisemitismus“ auch Judenfeindschaft von Arabern ein. Der Begriff Antisemitismus, der gegen Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts entstand, meint ausschließlich die Feindschaft gegen Juden und ist ein Konstrukt der Agitatoren seiner Entstehungszeit.
Abstract: Die Problematik des politisch-islamischen Antisemitismus (PIA) hat in den letzten Jahren zunehmend Aufmerksamkeit erfahren. In diesem Kapitel gehen wir der oftmals wenig berücksichtigten Frage nach, wie Jüdinnen:Juden die aktuelle Bedrohungslage erleben und ausdeuten. Dies untersuchen wir aus Perspektive einer phänomenologisch orientierten Wissenssoziologie mittels eines Mixed-Methods-Ansatzes. Unsere Studie umfasst die Analyse von 21 problemzentrierten Interviews mit Jüdinnen:Juden sowie die Auswertung eines Online-Surveys mit 295 jüdischen Befragten. Die Interviewanalyse ergab, dass das Erleben von PIA strukturidentisch zu anderen Antisemitismusformen verläuft. Die alltägliche Konfrontation führt zum Erleben dreier Begrenzungen: Im Vorfeld der möglichen Konfrontation ist es problematisch, dass diese nicht immer vollumfänglich antizipiert werden kann. Kommt es zur Konfrontation, sind selbstgewählte Alltagsrelevanzen eingegrenzt. Im weiteren Konfrontationsverlauf kann sich zudem die eigene Handlungsfähigkeit als begrenzt erweisen. Die Auswertung der quantitativen Daten kann hieran anknüpfend zeigen, dass viele Befragte von Begegnungen mit PIA berichten, den sie vor allem durch Aussagen, Sprache und Kontext der Täter:innen identifizieren. 29 % der Befragten gaben an, in den letzten zehn Jahren PIA in Form von Beleidigung, Vandalismus oder physischer Gewalt erlebt zu haben. Bezüglich der Bedrohungs- und Problemwahrnehmung unterscheiden sie deutlich zwischen „Muslimen“ und „radikalen Muslimen“ und sehen PIA als großes gesellschaftliches Problem an, das ihre Sicherheit und alltägliche Lebenswelt beeinflusst.
