Abstract: The interest in the Holocaust – Nazi Germany's concentrated attempt to exterminate European Jewry – has become increasingly noticeable in the Scandinavian countries during the last decades, with a growing number not only of dissertations, monographs and other publications, but also public debates and controversies relating to this event. This new upsurge of interest in the Holocaust reflects the dynamics and the contested nature of collective memories of wartime Scandinavia more broadly. This article highlights, broadly speaking, the development of Holocaust historiography in Scandinavia; the changing perspectives, interpretations, debates and focus from the immediate post-war years to the present day. It argues that, despite the fact that the Holocaust was truly a European-wide phenomenon transcending national borders, Holocaust studies have mainly been produced as nation-centred histories. Only with the end of the Cold War and with a paradigmatic shift from ‘the event’ to ‘the memory’ has a new form of Holocaust remembrance begun, ‘the cosmopolitanization of Holocaust remembrance’, which transcends borders and makes memory cultures coincide. In Scandinavian historical cultures and historiography, then, the 1990s marks the starting point of a process by which Holocaust remembrance has become officially embedded into European memory.
Abstract: Since the end of the Cold War, most European nations – including those in Eastern Europe – have reassessed their role in the Holocaust. Although the Finnish scholarly community, as well as the wider public, is now beginning to participate in this process, Finland has been one of the last countries in Europe to recognize that it cannot assume a total immunity or innocence in this Europe-wide event. This article examines the ways in which the Holocaust has entered Finnish historiography over the last decades. Holmila and Silvennoinen's argument is two-fold. First, they hold that there are many contextual matters, such as the absence of visible anti-Semitism, which have for a long time worked as a sufficient barrier to keep Finland disconnected from the Holocaust. Second, they argue that there are important theoretical and methodological underpinnings, especially the so-called ‘separate war thesis’, which has been utilized as a convenient, if no longer tenable, explanation that Finland was very different from all other Axis nations. They also seek to point out the directions in which the Finnish scholarly community is now going in its search for a more nuanced approach to the Holocaust.
Abstract: Seven-hundred-and-seventy-two Jews were deported from Norway during World War II, and Norway was de facto the only Scandinavian country incorporated in the Nazi Final Solution. Holocaust discourse in Norway has concentrated on only a few, but vital, topics: the awareness of the Final Solution among Norwegian perpetrators, the ‘image’ of the perpetrator, the role of the Norwegian police, and, finally, to what extent the Jews were offered help by the organized resistance.
The views on these topics have changed considerably in the years since 1945, both in public discourse and in academic research. In the public discourse, the topics have regularly re-emerged, from the early 1960s until today. Academic works, however, appeared late; not until the 1980s. From the mid-1990s, the interest in Holocaust-related topics has become far more present, resulting in more academic, as well as public, interest.
Abstract: This article deals with a subject that has been sensitive in the Jewish community in Sweden since the time of the Holocaust, namely the widespread image of the Stockholm Jewish Community as being negative towards letting Jewish refugees find a safe haven in Sweden during the Nazi persecution and mass murder. This image has previously been explained by the alleged ineffectivity of the Stockholm Jewish Community to aid the refugees and Swedish Jewry's failure to integrate them into the community. The present article, however, shows that this image was also a result of political differences between Jewish organizations, groups, and individuals, internationally as well as in Sweden. It was also due to an exaggerated belief in, and misconception of, the influence of the Swedish Jews on the Swedish administration of refugee aid, and resulted in personal feuds in which this negative image was accentuated. Furthermore, the image of the reluctant Swedish Jews has been reproduced and used by Swedish officials to avoid taking responsibility for the country's previous restrictive policy towards Jewish refugees. These accusations have cross-fertilized with the allegations from the inter-Jewish debate, further cementing the negative image of the Stockholm Jewish Community's responses to the Holocaust and the preceding persecutions.
Topics: Antisemitism: Far right, Antisemitism: Muslim, Attitudes to Jews, Attitudes to Israel, Islamophobia, Jewish Perceptions of Antisemitism, Holocaust Commemoration, Authoritarianism, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Populism, Political Parties, Politics
Abstract: In the early 2020s, two seemingly unrelated political developments came to a head in the Netherlands. First, in January 2020, then-Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the center-right VVD party issued an official apology on behalf of the Dutch government for its complicity in the deaths of more than 100,000 Dutch Jews in the Holocaust. Second, in the November 2023 national elections, Geert Wilders’s anti-Muslim, pro-Israel PVV party won the highest percentage of votes, leading to the formation of a far-right cabinet under Prime Minister Dick Schoof in July 2024. In this article, we argue that this double consolidation of the historical legacy of the Holocaust and of racist, right-wing politics has put Dutch Jews in a dangerous bind. On the one hand, the memory of the Holocaust and the contemporary safety of Dutch Jews have been elevated as a paramount concern in Dutch institutional, legal, and political life. On the other hand, Dutch Jews have been positioned as the perennial would-be victims of violent antisemitism—virtually always, it is falsely imagined, at the hands of Dutch Muslims. The historical persecution of the Jews in the Holocaust is now used to underwrite a “proprietary” form of Jewish victimhood in the present: non-Jewish white Dutch people position themselves as the saviors of Jews, and thereby claim ownership over their past, their collective fate, and the political means to secure their safety.
Abstract: Introduction. This study addresses the representation of ethnic minority cultures in online museum collections, which often reflect diverse viewpoints. We propose a data-driven methodology to construct a large-scale multi-viewpoint knowledge graph, using Jewish cultural heritage as a case study.
Method. We developed an LLM-based pipeline that combines object typing, named entity recognition, relation extraction, enrichment, and clustering.
Results. An analysis of 647,951 records and 178,444 extracted subjects from the collections of Jewish museums across the globe revealed diverse thematic emphases: Israel and the Netherlands prioritised religious themes, while others highlighted everyday life. Surprisingly, only Australia emphasised the Holocaust.
Conclusion(s). The central contribution of this study is the development of a knowledge organisation system capable of tracing major trends and identifying patterns in the polyvocality of perspectives. The methodology provides quantifiable, scalable analysis of multi-viewpoint cultural heritage, extendable to other minorities.
Abstract: This roundtable offers a collaborative, multi-vocal forum on the topic of teaching Jewish Studies in the Nordic region, featuring contributions from scholars and instructors based in Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden. Conceived as a reflective platform, it weaves together critical insights, pedagogical experiences, and institutional perspectives. Topics include national contexts, classroom practices, both conventional and experimental curricular offerings, strategies for integrating Jewish Studies into broader academic frameworks, and reflections on the impact of 7 October 2023. Beyond mapping current conditions, the roundtable aims to envision what Jewish Studies in the Nordics could become, foregrounding both the challenges and the possibilities that shape its future
Abstract: Wir untersuchen Manifestationen von Online-Antisemitismus im deutschen Sprachraum anhand von Tweets über Jüdinnen, Juden und Israel aus den Jahren 2019–2022. Die manuell annotierten Zufallsstichproben von insgesamt mehr als 8000 Tweets geben Aufschluss darüber, wie in sozialen Medien im deutschen Sprachraum vor dem 7. Oktober 2023 über jüdisches Leben und Israel gesprochen wurde.
Auch wenn nur ein kleiner Teil der Kommentare, mit 312 Nachrichten etwa vier Prozent, antisemitisch laut der IHRA-Definition von Antisemitismus waren, zeigen sie eine große Bandbreite an Formen von Antisemitismus auf. So wird sichtbar, dass viele der nach dem 7. Oktober 2023 gemachten Anschuldigungen gegen Israel auch schon vorher vorhanden waren.
Aber auch die als nicht antisemitisch gelabelten Posts bilden viele unterschiedliche Aspekte und Perspektiven ab, mit denen in Deutschland über jüdisches Leben und Antisemitismus gesprochen wird. Ein Thema war die Shoah. Dabei wurden zum Teil fragwürdige Vergleiche gezogen, etwa zwischen der Verfolgung von Jüdinnen und Juden während des Nationalsozialismus und zeitgenössischen Themen. Beispiele dafür sind die öffentliche Kritik an Personen, die sich gegen Maßnahmen zur Eindämmung der COVID-19-Pandemie stellen, das Diskriminierungsempfinden von Muslim_innen oder AfD-Sympathisant_innen sowie das Leid der Palästinenser_innen. Ein weiters Thema war Antisemitismus und die Verurteilung dessen, meist allgemein, gelegentlich aber auch konkret in Bezug auf eine bestimmte Äußerung oder Handlung. Eine zentrale Erkenntnis der Untersuchung ist, dass sich die meisten Online-Diskurse, in denen die Begriffe „Juden“ oder „Israel“ verwendet wurden, in irgendeiner Form mit Antisemitismus in Vergangenheit oder Gegenwart befassten – der Alltag von Jüdinnen, Juden und Israelis spielte dagegen eine untergeordnete Rolle.
Abstract: This article addresses the interrelation between the state and its ethnic minorities, and the ideological labor furnished by these minorities, as it applies to postwar German Jewry. The German Jewish community of today is not organically related to German Jewry as it existed before 1933; although, to ennoble its genealogy, its representatives lay claim to that Jewish past. There is a contradiction, therefore, between attempts to connect to prewar German Jewry on the one hand and, on the other, the community’s signaling, for many years at least, a rupture with this past with statements such as “this is not my country” and “sitting on packed suitcases.” However, with significant immigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union since the late 1980s, a viable new Jewish community in Germany has come into being. It is increasingly characterized by uniform and central institutions as well as—especially since the war in Gaza and an escalation of antisemitism—an increasingly close relationship to German society and politics.
Abstract: Gdańsk with its multinational past, a thriving Jewish community in the prewar period, the history of the November pogrom and Kindertransporten, and a small, yet rather active Jewish community in the twenty-first century is an example of an attempt at refocusing the memory of the Jewish presence by demarginalising it: just like the Jewish merchants were finally allowed to settle within the city walls in the nineteenth century, the memory of the Jewish history – and presence – might be reconstructed, reconceptualized and redefined both via fleeting actions (walks, performances or barely visible sgraffito), the official educational programmes, state policy, and other memory practices, to mention only a popular Jewish culture festival Zbliżenia, organized in Gdańsk since 2013. Thus, as Kapralski (2017, p. 172) states, “[m]emoryscapes form a matrix of possible attitudes towards the past that can be activated in the commemorative actions of individuals and groups”.
Abstract: In an extremely critical public sphere surrounding Jewish–Muslim relations in Germany, the multi-award-winning miniseries The Zweiflers has uniquely navigated this intense scrutiny, depicting a nuanced subplot of Jewish–Muslim coexistence. Inspired by HBO’s The Sopranos, the series centres on the Zweifler family, exploring their complex intergenerational dynamics, transnational diasporic ties and alleged connections to Frankfurt’’s underworld. While initially lauded for its portrayal of a modern German-Jewish identity, this article takes a closer look at the significant theme of Jewish–Muslim cooperation in post-war Germany. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Frankfurt’s Bahnhofsviertel (train station district), where the series was filmed, The Zweiflers is critically analysed and compared with insights from that long-term fieldwork. This analysis is further contextualized by engaging with the crucial works of diasporic artists and post-migrant filmmakers, alongside scholarship on urban multiculture and anti-essentialist concepts in sociology and cultural studies. The Jewish–Muslim relationships depicted in the series are not merely fictional; they reflect real, historically evolved partnerships characterized by a collective will to overcome contradictions. This nuanced depiction counters static assumptions about community relations often found in the polarized debates surrounding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, offering a vital contribution to understanding contemporary German society.
Abstract: Following Russia's 2022 invasion, Ukrainian ethnic and religious communities within the state and diaspora fragmented and reconstituted along linguistic lines. Whereas the Russian language once connected ex-Soviet émigrés, the war transformed language ideologies—particularly in the communities of Ukrainian refugees. This article shows how Ukrainian Jews, many of whom remain Russian-speaking among themselves, have come to draw a line between svoi (one of our own) and others among the larger Russian-speaking population—that is, those who are not Ukrainian or who do not support Ukraine in the war. This ethnographic research focuses on Ukrainian-Jewish refugees in Berlin and beyond, and seeks to shed light on the evolutions, tensions, and contradictions in their practice of the Russian and Ukrainian languages. Viewed against the backdrop of other studies of Russian-speaking diasporas, it illustrates the ideologies that have come to compose the new, developing sense of Ukrainian-Jewish belonging.
Abstract: The events of October 7, 2023, and their aftermath have intensified social and political tensions across Europe, profoundly impacting both Jewish and Muslim communities. This article explores the phenomenon of dual silencing, where members of these communities face exclusion, misrepresentation, and suppression in public discourse. Jewish voices, often conflated with Israeli state politics, encounter rising antisemitism, while Muslim perspectives are increasingly marginalized amid heightened Islamophobic/anti-Muslim rhetoric. Through an analysis of personal accounts, public testimonies, media narratives, political responses, and societal attitudes, this study examines how both communities experience symbolical erasure and selective amplification depending on shifting political agendas. Using the Czech context as a case study, this article argues that the post-October 7 discourse has deepened existing societal fault lines and significantly influenced how Jewish and Muslim identities are negotiated in the public sphere. The study concludes by considering the implications of this dual silencing for intercommunal relations, and the future of pluralism in Europe.
Abstract: This article explores the ways in which oral testimonies of Jewish survivors allow a critical reflection on the understanding of gratitude as a social emotion in the context of hiding under German occupation in Poland. Examined alongside oral interviews with non-Jewish rescuers and helpers, these testimonies unveil the social hierarchy between the non-Jewish majority and the Jewish minority. Consequently, the article scrutinizes the topoi of ‘an ungrateful Jew’ within the context of the Polish public sphere which excludes Jewish narratives, experiences, and memories. Based on oral history interviews and in-depth individual interviews with Jewish survivors, rescuers, and helpers, their descendants, as well as residents of two Polish towns in the Lublin area, Biłgoraj and Izbica, the article presents two case studies of rescue and survival. The analysis investigates the narratives, cultural norms involved, and the underlying power dynamics between rescuers or helpers and Jewish individuals.
Abstract: Nach dem Angriff der klerikal-faschistsichen Hamas auf Israel im Oktober 2023 kam es sehr schnell zu einer Mobilisierung für die Ziele der Terrororganisation. Diese waren von Anfang an getragen von antisemitischen Tropen und gingen einher mit einem rasanten Anstieg der antisemitisch motivierten Straft- und Gewalttaten. Relevante Trägergruppen dieses Antisemitismus sind dem eigenen Selbstverständnis nach im linken politischen Spektrum positioniert. Zeigt diese Mobilisierung eine bisher übersehene Verbreitung antisemitischer Ressentiments auch in der politischen Linken an? Und was sind mögliche Ursachen für das Vorkommen des Antisemitismus in Gruppen, für die Gerechtigkeitsnormen zum erklärten Selbstverständnis gehören? Auf Grundlage der Daten der Leipziger Autoritarismus Studie 2024 können wir zeigen, dass der Antisemitismus auch innerhalb der Linken verbreitet ist, wenn auch die Rationalisierung des Ressentiments teilweise anders ausfällt. Auffällig ist, dass innerhalb jüngerer Befragter der Antisemitismus häufiger anzutreffen ist, als bei älteren – mit Ausnahme des Schuldabwehrantisemitismus. Wir diskutieren diese Befunde auf auf kritisch-theoretischer Basis.Nach dem Angriff der klerikal-faschistsichen Hamas auf Israel im Oktober 2023 kam es sehr schnell zu einer Mobilisierung für die Ziele der Terrororganisation. Diese waren von Anfang an getragen von antisemitischen Tropen und gingen einher mit einem rasanten Anstieg der antisemitisch motivierten Straft- und Gewalttaten. Relevante Trägergruppen dieses Antisemitismus sind dem eigenen Selbstverständnis nach im linken politischen Spektrum positioniert. Zeigt diese Mobilisierung eine bisher übersehene Verbreitung antisemitischer Ressentiments auch in der politischen Linken an? Und was sind mögliche Ursachen für das Vorkommen des Antisemitismus in Gruppen, für die Gerechtigkeitsnormen zum erklärten Selbstverständnis gehören? Auf Grundlage der Daten der Leipziger Autoritarismus Studie 2024 können wir zeigen, dass der Antisemitismus auch innerhalb der Linken verbreitet ist, wenn auch die Rationalisierung des Ressentiments teilweise anders ausfällt. Auffällig ist, dass innerhalb jüngerer Befragter der Antisemitismus häufiger anzutreffen ist, als bei älteren – mit Ausnahme des Schuldabwehrantisemitismus. Wir diskutieren diese Befunde auf auf kritisch-theoretischer Basis.
Abstract: We provide a comparative analysis of how European radical left parties (RLPs) politicise the Israel – Palestine and Russia – Ukraine conflicts. Examining the positions of 25 RLPs, we test four hypotheses examining variation in Israel-hostility, Russia-related stances, cross-conflict coherence, and the dynamics of war fatigue. Patterns of politicisation are complex and there is no unified party family response. We show that while no RLP is Israel-friendly, levels of Israel-hostility vary substantially and tend to intensify as the Gaza war persists. By contrast, positions on Russia – Ukraine remain deeply divided, with no linear shift towards Russia-friendliness. Ideological subtype shapes, but does not determine, party responses, while broader contextual factors, most notably the ‘Trump effect’, repoliticise questions of European security. However, further politicisation is limited by the weakness of cross-conflict coherence. Several parties express consistent anti-imperialist logic in their response, but most disaggregate their critiques. RLP foreign policy emerges as ideologically-driven but contextually responsive.
Abstract: This article examines how normative logic embedded in reparations law continues to shape contemporary German criminal law, taking the Luxembourg Agreement of 1952 between the Federal Republic of Germany, the State of Israel and the Jewish Conference on Material Claims against Germany (JCC) as its very conceptual point of departure. Against the backdrop of rising antisemitic criminal offenses in Germany, the article focuses on the amendment of Section 46 (2) of the German Criminal Code (StGB; Strafgesetzbuch), which explicitly includes antisemitic motives among the circumstances relevant for sentencing. While this amendment has been criticized as merely declaratory or even ‘symbolic’, this article argues that such criticism overlooks the deeper legal genealogy of state responsibility that ultimately originates in the Luxembourg Agreement. Antisemitic motives intensify culpability and wrongfulness because they engage the foundational commitments of the post-war legal order that emerged in response to antisemitic state-driven violence. Explicitly naming such motives in sentencing law therefore constitutes a crucial institutional function by shaping investigative practices, judicial reasoning, and normative expectations within the criminal justice system. From a criminal legal perspective, the article develops an account of motives as normative indicators that affect both culpability and wrongfulness. Antisemitic motives, it argues, intensify the Unrechtsgehalt of an offense because they negate the equal moral status of the victim and symbolically attack the legal order that emerged in response to antisemitic state violence. The article concludes that the explicit inclusion of antisemitic motives in Section 46 (2) StGB reflects a coherent and legally grounded response to historically specific injustice and underscores the role of criminal law in stabilizing responsibility within the German legal order.
Abstract: This article seeks to open a discursive space in which to reflect on issues of Holocaust historiography arising from emerging research on personal archives collected by “ordinary” people in relation to the Holocaust. The explorations, intended as a discussion piece, are anchored in a specific context, namely that of the Dorrith Sim Collection (DMSC) which is held in the Scottish Jewish Archives Centre (SJAC) in Glasgow. This collection offers a focus to concretize the historiographical discussion in a largely un-researched collection, while enabling consideration of a range of related collections and publications. The article investigates the historiographical practices of those involved in the collection, preservation, presentation, and publication processes, and considers the inherent ethical choices, choices that highlight the agency of the family, the archivist, and the scholar. Ethical choices, here, the investment of specific meanings and claims to significance, are amplified in this context because of their connection to genocide. I suggest that a “transparent historiography” that accounts for the research process within the published narrative could address the challenges arising from the necessity to be selective about what to collect, preserve, and write about, and how to do so. I borrow from other fields of research and professional practice to highlight possible avenues along which to advance historiographical discussion.
