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Transnational and Counter-Memorial Practices: Antisemitism, Nationalism, and the Second World War in Sjón's Works
Author(s): Guðmundsdóttir, Gunnþórunn
Editor(s): Badley, Linda; Dagsdóttir, Úlfhildur; Mose, Gitte
Date: 2024
Topics: Antisemitism, Holocaust, Literature, Main Topic: Antisemitism, Memory, History
Abstract: In several of Sjón’s works, there is a preoccupation with the Second World War, especially the issues and ideologies at stake in the run-up to the conflict and in its aftermath. This is evident, for instance, in his trilogy CoDex 1962 and in his most recent novel Korngult hár, grá augu (Red Milk). The issues addressed in these texts are, for instance, the fate of the Jewish immigrant in Iceland, and the peculiar circumstances of the rise of neo-Nazism in post-war Iceland. The memory of the war in Iceland is in many ways at odds with the narratives established elsewhere in Europe. The particular circumstances of the country—occupied by allied forces from 1940 onwards, with its concomitant incursion of modernity, urbanisation, and creation of wealth in what had historically been a very poor country—have greatly influenced how the war is memorialised, or more to the point rather, not memorialised in Iceland. This chapter looks at how Sjón’s novels engage with the ruling national narrative and go against that memory by telling an alternative history of the war, focussing on transnational and marginalised histories and cultures that historically have been ignored in Icelandic cultural memory.
Anti-Semitism in Romania: Historical Legacies, Contemporary Challenges
Author(s): Cârstocea, Raul
Date: 2014
Topics: Antisemitism, History, Main Topic: Antisemitism
Abstract: The present article offers a brief survey of the modes of manifestation of anti-Semitism in Romania, from the time of the establishment of the state in the 19th century and until present day. While aware of the inherent limitations of attempting to carry out such and endeavour in the space of a short article, we believe that adopting such a broad historical perspective allows for observing patterns of continuity and change that could help explain some of the peculiarities of the Romanian varieties of anti-Semitism, as well as draw attention to the importance of a phenomenon that was central (albeit to varying degrees in different historical periods) to Romania's modern history, and that is still visible in the country today. In doing so, the author aims both to provide a survey of the existing literature on the subject for the English-speaking audience, as well as to point out some gaps in the literature which call for further research on the subject. Finally, while the article will be limited to the case-study of Romania, some of the patterns of prejudice explored in its pages display clear parallels with the situation in other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, while others point to context-specific particularities that render the Romanian case distinct from other countries in the region.
Rescue for Political Use: The Populist Consensus on the Fate of Bulgarian Jews During the Second World War
Author(s): Otova, Ildiko
Date: 2024
Topics: Holocaust, Holocaust Commemoration, Populism, Post-1989, Nationalism, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory, History, Politics
Abstract: In recent years, the fate of the Jews in Bulgaria during the Second World War has aroused the research interest of humanities scholars from various disciplines, with a number of studies published (see e.g., and many of the following cited (Avramov 2012. “Спасение” и падение. Микроикономика на държавния антисемитизъм в
България, 1940–1944 [“Rescue” and fall. Microeconomics of State Anti-semitism in Bulgaria, 1940–1944]. Sofia: Sofia University “St. Kl. Ohridski; Daneva 2013; Krsteva 2015; Koleva 2017)). Many rely on research on the construction of memory. At the same time, fewer research efforts seem to have focused on how the topic has become politicized in the years since 1989 (see e.g. Benatov 2013. “Debating the Fate of Bulgarian Jews during
World War II.” In Bringing the Dark Past to Light the Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe, edited by John-Paul Himka, and Joanna Beata Michlic, 108–31. University of Nebraska Press; Ragaru 2020. Et les Juifs bulgaresfurent sauvе…Une histoire des savoirs sur la Shoah en Bulgarie. Paris: Science Po). The aim of this paper is to offer precisely this perspective on the topic of non/rescue, and in the last ten years. Politicization has traditionally been understood as the process of attributing salience to an issue of public interest through various channels such as political discourse and media, and in the presence of the multiple and diverse opinions associated with it (deWilde, Pieter. 2011. “No polity for old politics? A framework for analyzing the politicization of European
integration.” Journal of European Integration 33 (5): 559–75; de Wilde, Pieter, Anna Leupold, and Henning Schmidtke. 2016. “Introduction: the differentiated politicisation of European governance.” West European Politics 39 (1): 3–22). In some texts on the politicization of the migration crisis in Bulgaria in the years since 2012, the author shows how a topic can be politicized in the absence of political debate and in the context of a dominant
populist understanding, multiplied by various power actors – politicians, institutions, media and intellectuals (see e.g. Otova, Ildiko, and Evelina Staykova. 2022. Migration and Populism in Bulgaria. London: Routledge). For the purposes of this paper, by politicization the author will understand the blurring of ideological differences of interpretations of who the savior is in a populist consensus around the construction of the rescue narrative
for foreign policy use, but mostly as a nation-building narrative. The focus of this article is on the last ten years, in which the political interpretations and actions surrounding the commemoration of the 70th in 2013 and 75th in 2018 and the 80th anniversary in 2023 of the events surrounding the so-called rescue of Bulgarian Jews are particularly interesting. It is during these last years that populism has become the norm for the political scene in Bulgaria. Populism is not the obvious entrance to the topic, but it is the political framework within which the politicization of the topic of the rescue is developing, and a possible theoretical entrance. Populism became a persistent part of Bulgarian political life more than a decade after the beginning of the democratic changes of 1989. There are
several key factors involved in this process-exhaustion of the cleavages of the transition period, but especially the transformation of party politics into symbolic ones (Otova, Ildiko, and Evelina Staykova. 2022. Migration and Populism in Bulgaria. London: Routledge). Symbolic politics deal more with emotions and less with ratio and facts;
they build narratives that are often nationally affirming. The article does not claim to be exhaustive, especially in its presentation of historical facts. The limits of this rather political science approach are many. On the other hand, however, it adds to the research effort with a missing glimpse into the interpretations of the no/rescue theme and could open the field for further in-depth research.
Perceptions of the Holocaust in Slovak Historiography and Among the General Public after the Establishment of the Slovak Republic in 1993
Author(s): Nižňanský, Eduard; Bohová, Katarína
Editor(s): Zoufalá, Marcela Menachem; Glöckner, Olaf
Date: 2023
Topics: Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Holocaust Education, Holocaust, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Denial, History, Politics, Post-1989
Abstract: This text and study presents a brief overview of the most important trends in the Slovak historiography of the Holocaust within recent three decades. Prior to 1989, the Holocaust was a topic marginalized in the country’s historical research. The most important finding that emerges from the analysis of Slovak literature on
the Holocaust is that, besides its obvious historiographic dimension, it was frequently meant to serve political purposes (including in the area of education). The works published after 1989 can be categorized as follows: collections of documents; memoirs; the perspective of the minority; the problem of local aggressors;
the social background of the Holocaust; legal analysis of anti-Jewish legislation; oral history; the so-called Slovak revisionism; and connection between the historiographic and political levels. In this text, we analyze the link between historiography and politics in the example of Vladimír Mečiar’s cabinet and revisionist publications. We also consider the impact of revisionism on the formation of national symbols (the case of a memorial of Ferdinand Ďurčanský) as well as the historiography situated between science and the Catholic Church’s interpretation of history
(of the Slovak state and the beatification of bishop Ján Vojtaššák).
Pamięć o Holokauście w Mołdawii
Translated Title: Memory of the Holocaust in Moldova
Author(s): Sineaeva-Pankowska, Natalia
Date: 2015
Topics: Holocaust, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Memorials, History, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory
Abstract: W Mołdawii problem pamięci o Holokauście związany jest z pytaniem o tożsamość, a w związku z tym – z różnymi narracjami historycznymi. Z kolei zagadnienia tej pamięci i tutejszej tożsamości wiążą się ściśle z historią Rumunii, dlatego w artykule mowa będzie także o tym kraju.
An Innocence Recovered: The Gross Affair as the Result of the Polish State’s Historical Politics Since 2004
Author(s): Janicka, Elżbieta
Editor(s): Grudzińska-Gross, Irena; Matyjaszek, Konrad
Date: 2022
Topics: Antisemitism, Holocaust, Holocaust Commemoration, Memory, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, History
Lived multidirectionality: "Historikerstreit 2.0" and the politics of Holocaust memory
Author(s): Rothberg, Michael
Date: 2022
Topics: Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory, Holocaust, Holocaust Commemoration, History, Antisemitism, Post-Colonial
Abstract: This essay assesses the acrimonious debates about Holocaust memory that took place in Germany in 2020-2021 and that have come to be known as Historikerstreit 2.0. These debates call up older controversies, especially the 1986 Historikerstreit (Historians' Debate) in which Jürgen Habermas took on conservative historians who sought to relativize the Nazi genocide. The Historikerstreit concerned the relation between Nazi and Stalinist crimes and the question of German responsibility for the Holocaust; today's controversies involve instead the relation between colonialism and the Holocaust and racism and antisemitism as well as the ongoing crisis in Israel/Palestine. As the current debates reveal, the dominant Holocaust memory regime in Germany is based on an absolutist understanding of the Holocaust's uniqueness and a rejection of multidirectional approaches to the genocide. While that memory regime represented a major societal accomplishment of the 1980s and 1990s, it has reached its limits in Germany's "postmigrant" present. Yet, as an example of migrant engagement with the Holocaust illustrates, German society already includes alternative practices of memory that could transform the German model of coming to terms with the past in productive ways.
Der Mythos vom »Import«. Islamische Codes und europäische Ideologie im muslimischen Antisemitismus
Translated Title: The Myth of the »Import«. Islamic Codes and European Ideology in Muslim Anti-Semitism
Author(s): Henning, Philip
Date: 2022
Topics: Main Topic: Antisemitism, Antisemitism: Christian, Antisemitism: Muslim, History, Islam, Immigration
Abstract: Today’s anti-Semitism in European societies is often said to have been imported on a large scale by Muslim immigrants. It needs to be revealed that this is a historically abbreviated representation useful for particular political purposes – especially from the right. The influence of medieval European-Christian anti-Judaism and modern anti-Semitism on the Muslim world has a centuries-old history and is usually disregarded in the debate. Nevertheless, there are clear anti-Jewish terms and conventions in Islamic tradition. However, some of these codes are not immediately recognizable as anti-Jewish to a European audience. They are still widely used in today’s politics and popular culture of Muslim societies both in the Middle East and the West. The article aims to provide orientation on the genesis and development of this cultural exchange of hate and refute one-sided accusations.
Återkomsten: antisemitism i Sverige efter 1945
Translated Title: The return: antisemitism in Sweden after 1945
Author(s): Bachner, Henrik
Date: 2004
Topics: Antisemitism, History, Main Topic: Antisemitism
Abstract: Före andra världskriget var antijudiska stereotyper vanliga och relativt accepterade i svensk kultur. Men vad hände med denna idétradition efter 1945? Hur påverkades antisemitismens legitimitet av Förintelsen? Har antijudiska motiv förekommit i debatten om Israel och vad innebar den antisionism som växte fram från slutet av 1960-talet?

Henrik Bachner undersöker den antijudiska tanketraditionens uttryck och utveckling i Sverige från krigsslutet fram till vår egen tid. I blickfånget står den breda politiska kulturen och det offentliga samtalet, inte den högerextrema propagandan. Återkomsten visar hur fördomar, under decennier närmast förvisade från den politiska debatten, med tiden vinner allt större utrymme. Boken kastar ljus över ett länge ignorerat kapitel i den svenska samtidshistorien.
Sepharad – object of investigation? The academic discourse about Sepharad and Sephardim in Spain
Author(s): Menny, Anna
Date: 2015
Topics: Jewish - Non - Jewish Relations, Attitudes to Jews, Jewish Heritage, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, Sephardi Jews, Memory, Jewish History, History
Abstract: The article discusses Sepharad as an object of investigation in Spanish (academic) discourse over the last two centuries. The historic overview can reveal a shift from a mere theological interest in Hebrew as a biblical language to an interest motivated by the idea of Sephardic Jewry as part of the national heritage, which emerged in the context of the Spanish nation-building process at the end of the nineteenth century. The discourses about Sepharad remained contradictory during the Francoist dictatorship, as can be illustrated by the example of the Instituto Arias Montano. Recent developments in Spain, which are analysed in the third part of the article, point to a process of diversification and popularisation when it comes to the Iberian–Jewish past.
The Perception of the Holocaust in Historiography and in the Romanian Media
Author(s): Florian, Alexandru
Editor(s): Glajar, Valentina; Teodorescu, Jeanine
Date: 2011
Topics: Holocaust, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Denial, History, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Media
Abstract: The historiography and the memory of the Holocaust, of the Romanians, and of Romanian Jews can be understood only through knowledge of the peculiarities of the Holocaust in Romania within the wider context of Holocaust Studies. Certain characteristic features of the history of the modernization of Romania in the twentieth century turned the “Jewish problem” into an ideologically active element, present on a large scale in the public sphere. Unquestionably, the tragedy of the Romanian Jewry was bound up with the European context, but it also had its own manifestations because of the political regime in Romania from 1938 to 1944. Six decades ago, Lucretiu Pătrăşcanu accurately remarked that “anti-Semitism in Romania still remains a Romanian phenomenon, which should be examined in its specific nature, and not only in what it imitates” (1944, 171). Romanians never embraced this research project; instead, they explained the Romanian Holocaust by blaming it on imported Fascism. One of the most frequently invoked reasons for this neglect is the ideology of national Communism; in this view, everything Romanian was good, while the origin of evil was always from outside. According to this preconception, risen to the rank of a “theory” of history, atrocities either did not occur in Romania from 1938 to 1944 or, if they happened, were caused by external forces.
Caught Between History and Politics: The Experience of a Moldovan Historian Studying the Holocaust
Author(s): Dumitru, Diana
Editor(s): Miller, Alexei; Lipman, Maria
Date: 2012
Topics: Holocaust, Holocaust Education, History, Jewish History, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial
The Evolution of Holocaust Studies in Moldovan Historiography: 1991–2017
Author(s): Dumitru, Diana
Date: 2017
Topics: Holocaust Education, Holocaust, History, Jewish History, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial
Victim of History: Perceptions of the Holocaust in Estonia
Author(s): Weiss-Wendt, Anton
Editor(s): Himka, John-Paul; Michlic, Joanna Beata
Date: 2013
Topics: Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Holocaust, History, Holocaust Commemoration
The Sheep of Lidice: The Holocaust and the Construction of Czech National History
Author(s): Frankl, Michal
Editor(s): Himka, John-Paul; Michlic, Joanna Beata
Date: 2013
Topics: Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Holocaust, History, Holocaust Commemoration
Overcoming History through Trauma. The Hungarian Historikerstreit
Author(s): Kovács, Éva
Date: 2016
Topics: Holocaust, Holocaust Commemoration, History, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory, Memorial, National Identity, Nationalism
Abstract: In the mid-summer of 2012, a sort of Historikerstreit broke out in Hungary. The main topics of the controversy were the language of and the attitude to the history of the Holocaust. In what follows I will argue that the Hungarian Historikerstreit is closely related to both the renaissance of the Horthy era (1920–1944) in current Hungarian politics and the ambivalent attitude towards the Holocaust in public memory. Since 2010, Hungary has celebrated ‘Trianon commemoration day’, remembering on the peace treaty of Trianon after the First World War. In today’s Hungary, Trianon seems to be a permanent trauma of the nation not only in the public memory but also in history writing. In spite of the fact that many respected scholars argue that currently the construction of the trauma of Trianon has a hegemonic position in Hungarian social memory and that the Holocaust cannot compete with it, I will show that the Trianon trauma is a construction of the current politics of history, which overshadows the tragic experiences of the First World War. Moreover, Trianon and the Holocaust are strongly interconnected historical events, which cannot be understood separately.
Juifs et Judaïsme dans les manuels d'histoire des lycées en France
Author(s): Allouche-Benayoun, Joëlle
Date: 2005
Topics: Attitudes to Jews, Education, Main Topic: Education, Schools: Non-Jewish, Schools: Seconday / High Schools, History, Jewish History, Curriculum
Debating, obfuscating and disciplining the Holocaust: post-Soviet historical discourses on the OUN–UPA and other nationalist movements
Author(s): Rossoliński-Liebe, Grzegorz
Date: 2012
Topics: Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory, Holocaust, Holocaust Commemoration, Communism, History, Nationalism
Abstract: After the dissolution of the Soviet Union the archives of the former republics and satellite states of this multiethnic empire were opened. This allowed historians to investigate the history of nationalist and radical right organisations and armies that, during the Second World War, had been involved in the Holocaust and other atrocities. Among them was the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists. For a long time the history of these movements was unknown or distorted by Soviet propaganda and propagandist publications written during the Cold War by veterans of these movements living in the West and cooperating with Western intelligence services. The dissolution of the Soviet Union was simultaneously accompanied by the “rebirth” of nationalism that was not free from antisemitism and racism, and which triggered different types of nationalist distortions of history and obfuscations of the Holocaust. Post-Soviet historical discourses were shaped not only by journalists or political activists, but also by radical right historians. These discourses impacted as well on historians who in general were critical of the post-Soviet rehabilitation of nationalism, war criminality or East Central European fascism. Concentrating on Ukrainian and Polish history, this article explores how the radical right historical discourses appeared in the post-Soviet space, what types of historians were involved in them and what kinds of distortions and obfuscations have predominated.
Destins juifs: De la révolution française à Carpentras
Author(s): Birnbaum, Pierre
Date: 1995
Topics: Citizenship, Antisemitism, Assimilation, Jewish History, History, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: En transformant les Juifs en citoyens, la Révolution française bouleverse leur statut. La logique révolutionnaire, hostile par principe aux corps intermédiaires, incite les Juifs à renoncer à leur structure communautaire propre. L'intégration à la Nation est désormais leur but : c'est seulement dans la sphère privée qu'ils peuvent préserver leurs traditions et leur fidélité.

Pierre Birnbaum ne se contente pas de retracer l'histoire des épousailles entre la France et ses Juifs, avec ses temps forts, ses moments de crise et ses grandes figures. Il développe une thèse originale : après avoir été longtemps l'agent de l'uniformisation républicaine et laïque, c'est aujourd'hui l'Etat qui incite les Juifs à se constituer en une communauté, largement « imaginaire ». Philosémitisme républicain et antisémitisme nationaliste se renforcent curieusement et « communautarisent par le haut » les Juifs français, tentés eux-mêmes de reconstituer, « par le bas », une communauté.

Le chemin de la Révolution française à Carpentras symboliserait-il le passage imprévu de la citoyenneté à la communauté ?
Toward a Greek History of the Jews of Salonica?
Author(s): Avdela, Efi
Date: 2014
Topics: Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Jewish History, History, Holocaust Education, Memory
Abstract: Modern Greek historiography has rendered Salonican Jews invisible in the national historical narrative, while those occasional works appearing in the past decades have treated them as a coherent and isolated community. In the 1970s and 1980s, a leftist historiography challenged the nationalist narrative but replaced it with a methodological ethnocentrism. The “new Greek history” was almost exclusively preoccupied with state formation, failed modernization, class structure, and the impact of the West, neglecting various religious, gender, and ethnic internal “others.” Only in the 1990s did the politics of identity and memory provide a space for the emergence of an interest in Greek-Jewish history. However, reliance on the homogenizing and static concept of community (borrowed from Greek historiography) and the absence of bottom-up, sociohistorical works still result in the exclusion of Salonican Jewry from the historiographical mainstream. The Greek-Jewish historiography of Salonica shares many of the negative features of Greek historiography, and both should turn to a systematic and multidimensional study of crossings and interrelations between axes of difference.
Jewish Life in Ukraine at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century: Part One
Author(s): Gidwitz, Betsy
Date: 2001
Topics: Demography, History, Jewish Organisations, Jewish Leadership, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Abstract:

This survey of contemporary issues in Ukrainian Jewish life provides detailed information on the following topics: contemporary Ukrainian political and economic climate; Jewish history; Jewish demography; contemporary antisemistism; indigenous Jewish leadership; the role of international Jewish organizations; and Ukrainian national Jewish organizations.
 
Unmögliche Heimat. Eine deutsch-jüdische Geschichte der Bundesrepublik
Translated Title: Impossible Home. A German-Jewish history of the Federal Republic
Author(s): Kauders, Anthony D.
Date: 2007
Topics: German-Jewish Relations, History, Jewish History, Post-War Jewish History, Post-War Reconstruction, Jewish Revival, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: Nach dem Holocaust schien es undenkbar, dass in Deutschland wieder Juden leben könnten. Doch viele, die überlebt hatten, blieben, andere kehrten zurück, zum Missfallen der Juden im Ausland. So war das Leben in der Bundesrepublik zunächst geprägt von fehlendem Schuldbewusstsein bei Nichtjuden und Schuldgefühlen bei Juden, die sich für ihr Bleiben rechtfertigen mussten. Wie sich das komplizierte Verhältnis zwischen Juden und Nichtjuden entwickelte, welche Rolle jüdisches Leben in der jungen deutschen Demokratie spielte und wie jüdische Gemeinden wieder Fuß fassten, beschreibt Anthony Kauders erstmals auf breiter Quellengrundlage.
Kein Weg als Deutscher und Jude. Eine bundesrepublikanische Erfahrung
Author(s): Brumlik, Micha
Date: 2000
Topics: Jewish Identity, Memory, History, Main Topic: Identity and Community
Abstract: Als Ezer Weismann, der israelische Staatspräsident, Anfang des Jahres 1996 Deutschland besuchte, erregte er mit seiner Äußerung Aufsehen, er könne nicht begreifen, daß Juden noch immer in Deutschland leben wollten. Ignatz Bubis, der damalige Vorsitzende des Zentralrats der Juden in Deutschland, der sich dezidiert als ein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens versteht, widersprach. - Wie sieht ein Jude der 68er Generation sein Leben in der Bundesrepublik? Micha Brumlik ist in der Bundesrepublik aufgewachsen, hier hat er sich politisch und publizistisch eingemischt. In seiner eindrücklichen Schilderung jüdischen Lebens in Deutschland nach dem Krieg beleuchtet er die neuerdings wieder viel diskutierte Frage, was jüdische Identität heute ausmacht. Dabei streift er nicht nur die Schmerzzonen deutsch-jüdischen Erinnerns der letzten Jahre, die mit den Namen Börneplatz, Fassbinder-Affäre, Bitburg und dem Holocaust-Mahnmal verbunden sind, er geht auch weiter zurück, erinnert sich der eigenen Kindheit in den fünfziger Jahren, um die Grundlagen eines jüdischen Selbstverständnisses freizulegen, das von der Fluchterfahrung der Eltern vor den Nazis bestimmt war. Zur Nachkriegsgeschichte gehört wesentlich auch das politisch empfindliche Verhältnis der Bundesrepublik zum Staat Israel. Micha Brumlik hat dort einige Zeit studiert und in einem Kibbuz gelebt. Er fragt nach dem Verhältnis eines nicht orthodox lebenden Juden zur Religion, denkt über den Zionismus und verschiedene Spielarten des Antizionismus nach, nimmt eine Neubewertung seines Engagements für die politische Linke vor - und kommt zu der Einsicht, daß er immer wieder zwischen allen Stühlen gelandet ist, landen mußte. In Brumliks Verknüpfung von erzählendem Rückblick und politischer Analyse wird nicht nur die Geschichte der Bundesrepublik auf besonders scharfsichtige Weise kenntlich. Hier zeigt sich auch, daß ein Leben als Jude in Deutschland - allen Anfeindungen, Sozialisationsbrüchen und Spannungen zum Trotz - ein starkes Selbstverständnis provozieren kann, das mit extremen Widersprüchen produktiv umgeht
Еврейская автономная область: между мифом и реальностью
Translated Title: Jewish Autonomous Region: Between Myth and Reality
Author(s): Бренер, Иосиф Семенович
Date: 2010
Topics: History, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: Extended abstract can be found via the link below
Jews and other Europeans - Old and new
Author(s): Bauman, Zygmunt
Date: 2008
Topics: Holocaust, History, Antisemitism, Assimilation, Citizenship, Communism, Main Topic: Other
Abstract: In the late nineteenth century the great European project of nation-building was set in motion. It was meant to end in a Europe of unified nation-states, each with its own language, history, traditions and a people undivided in its loyalty. The local or ‘merely ethnic’ communities would be effaced, subsumed into the homogeneous nation. Assimilation was the means whereby outsiders would become insiders, strangers would become citizens.

The Second World War, and the Holocaust, brought this project to its end, laying bare the contradiction at its heart. Outsiders could not be assimilated since their loyalty was, by definition, always voluntary and therefore always seen as untrustworthy. As the historical epitome of the European outsider, Jews accordingly remained suspect despite all their ingenious efforts to assimilate. They experienced first-hand the ambivalence of the assimilatory drive, which was, from their point of view, to become like everyone else, and, from their hosts’ point of view, to deepen belonging by emphasizing difference.

Nowhere were the challenges and miseries of this process more pronounced than in the demographically complex nations of East-Central Europ. With the disappearance of Eastern European Jewry, the drama of Jewish assimilation came to an end.

In post-war Europe Jewish assimilation has, with the demise of the crusading spirit of nationalism, dissolved into a mundane and generalized show of conformity that runs alongside postmodernity’s emphasis on a seemingly infinite variety of privatized identities and choices. The sting has been taken out of Jewish assimilation, not because it was achieved, but because the life-and-death pressures to homogenize are no longer there.

Those few generations of European Jews who were forced to wrestle with the contradictions of assimilation were arguably the pioneers of the postmodern condition, making visible the ambiguities that mark contemporary existence for all Europeans. It is this that counts as the Jews’ most profound contribution to contemporary European culture.
Jewish Spain: A Mediterranean Memory
Author(s): Linhard, Tabea Alexa
Date: 2014
Topics: History, Jewish Culture, Islam, Sephardi Jews, Jewish - Muslim Relations, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage
Abstract: What is meant by ""Jewish Spain""? The term itself encompasses a series of historical contradictions. No single part of Spain has ever been entirely Jewish. Yet discourses about Jews informed debates on Spanish identity formation long after their 1492 expulsion. The Mediterranean world witnessed a renewed interest in Spanish-speaking Jews in the twentieth century, and it has grappled with shifting attitudes on what it meant to be Jewish and Spanish throughout the century.

At the heart of this book are explorations of the contradictions that appear in different forms of cultural memory: literary texts, memoirs, oral histories, biographies, films, and heritage tourism packages. Tabea Alexa Linhard identifies depictions of the difficulties Jews faced in Spain and Northern Morocco in years past as integral to the survival strategies of Spanish Jews, who used them to make sense of the confusing and harrowing circumstances of the Spanish Civil War, the Francoist repression, and World War Two. 

Jewish Spain takes its place among other works on Muslims, Christians, and Jews by providing a comprehensive analysis of Jewish culture and presence in twentieth-century Spain, reminding us that it is impossible to understand and articulate what Spain was, is, and will be without taking into account both "Muslim Spain" and "Jewish Spain.""
From Soviet Jewish affairs to East European Jewish affairs: A 24-year retrospective on the shifting priorities of Jews in east-central Europe
Author(s): Klier, John D.
Date: 2000
Topics: Jewish Community, Jewish Revival, History, Main Topic: Other
Estonia and its Jews: An Ethical Dilemma
Author(s): Lane, Nicholas
Date: 1995
Topics: Jewish Revival, Jewish Community, Jewish Culture, History, Main Topic: Other
Upon The Doorposts of Thy House: Jewish Life in East-Central Europe, Yesterday and Today
Author(s): Gruber, Ruth Ellen
Date: 1994
Topics: Jewish Heritage, History, Jewish History, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage
Abstract: A detailed description of the homes, synagogues and workplaces along with the practices and beliefs that comprised the Jewish world of Eastern Europe for hundreds of years until the Holocaust, including an intimate look at who and what remains today. Layers excerpts from oral histories, literary reflections and poems with the author's own interviews, research and photographs to form a rich, multi-dimensional tapestry of a vanished world.