Abstract: Since the end of the USSR, post-Soviet Jewry has evolved into an ethnically and culturally diverse Russian speaking community. This process is taking place against the gradual inflation of a collective identity among Russian-speaking Jews that survived the first post-Soviet decade. The infrastructure for this new entity is provided by new local (or ethno-civic) groups of East European Ashkenazi Jewry with specific communal, subcultural, and ethno-political identities (“Ukrainian,” “Moldavian,” or “Russian” Jews, e.g.). These communities demonstrate a changing balance of identification between their countries of residence and the “transnational Russian-Jewish community”, and they absorb a significant number of persons of non-Jewish and ethnically heterogeneous origins as well.
This book discusses identity, community modes, migration dynamics, socioeconomic status, attitudes toward Israel, social and political environments, and other parameters framing these trends using the results of a comprehensive sociological study of the extended Jewish population conducted in 2019–2020 by this author in the five former-Soviet Union countries (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Kazakhstan).
Abstract: In all, 90% of Polish Jews, more than 3 million people, were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust, and 90% of the survivors left Poland. The survivors and their heirs, most of them not currently living in Poland, saw their land confiscated by the Nazis, nationalized by the communists and reprivatized and sold to others. Poland is the only country in the EU not to have a comprehensive restitution law. The issue of land restitution is still present in current debate in Poland, as part of a broader discussion over the Second World War, communism, privatization and corruption. While Poland blocked all restitution claims in 2021, Jewish communities as well as other governments called Poland to adopt a comprehensive restitution law for everyone. Now, 30 years after the fall of communism, what justifies such claims? This paper argues that forward-looking collective responsibility is the most helpful concept to understand the Jewish restitution problem in Poland today, and claims that any future settlement of this issue should be based on it. By applying this concept, as developed by Iris Marion Young, to the Polish restitution case, we look into the past – not to look for people to blame, but to look for social connections that have implications for the present. This way, we can remember the past, learn from it and heal relationships between people without being slaves to it.
Abstract: This paper uses archival and ethnological research to analyze the fates of former synagogues during two totalitarian regimes in present-day Slovakia. The processes described here were catalyzed by the Holocaust. Between 1938 and 1945, over 100,000 Jews from Slovakia were murdered. Out of the 228 Jewish religious communities (JRCs) active before the war, only 79 were reconstituted after liberation. Most were later disbanded because of aliyah to Palestine/Israel. Their abandoned synagogues passed into the administration of the newly founded Central Union of Jewish Religious Communities (CUJRC). During the Communist era (1948-1989), the majority of these synagogues were sold because the CUJRC did not have sufficient resources for their maintenance.
The second section of this paper discusses synagogues in different parts of Slovakia to show how representatives of the CUJRC tried to ensure the temples’ new owners did not violate their religious dignity. Purchase and sale agreements generally prohibited using the synagogues for entertainment purposes, instead preferring their conversion into warehouses, silos, workshops, etc. Although, as soon as the 1940s, part of the community requested that the synagogues be used as cultural centers, this did not happen on a large scale until after the revolution of 1989. A synagogue is not defined by its four walls but rather by the activities that take place inside it. The repurposed buildings are frequently located in regions with no active Jewish organizations. They are mere relics of the past and, bar a few exceptions, do not contribute to the renewal of traditional Jewish life. Believers nevertheless tend to have a negative view of the events that are held in the former synagogues, with some going as far as to consider them disrespectful. Even many secular Jews feel that the former synagogues do not fulfil their original purpose and have definitively transformed into non-synagogues.
Abstract: Since the unification of the two German states in 1990, antisemitic attitudes have been repeatedly polled in cross-sectional or longitudinal national surveys (e.g., the long-term GFE surveys). So far, comparative studies analyzing the development of antisemitism in East and West Germany over a longer time period are scarce. The study covers a time span of 30 years to investigate two forms of antisemitism (classical and secondary), especially with respect to inner-German differences. Applying model-based age-period-cohort analyses (APC) with a total of 19 available representative surveys (maximal period: 1991–2021), theory-driven hypotheses are tested. The statistical approach and respective findings are discussed with emphasis on several challenges accompanying the utilized heterogenous data and different survey modes. Findings reveal that life-cycle effects play a decisive role in the attitudinal development and distribution of antisemitic attitudes. Moreover, approval of antisemitism is to some extent cohort related in both East and West Germany, while disentangling period effects empirically poses challenges due to data limitations. Furthermore, the observed APC structures differ for classical and secondary antisemitism. The chapter concludes with a critical discussion of the results, limitations, and some further thoughts on the open science philosophy in applied social science research.
Abstract: The fall of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of the communist regimes in Europe represented a radical change for Judaism on the continent. The most striking change occurred, naturally, in Central and Eastern Europe, that is, in those countries that were behind the Iron Curtain, such as Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia or the German Democratic Republic. There, while the political decomposition of the Soviet bloc was gaining traction, thousands of people rediscovered their Jewish origins – forbidden, concealed, or silenced under communism, giving rise to a process of Jewish revivalism. In this context, numerous Jewish philanthropic organizations came to the region to support these developments with the mission of renewing local Jewish communities. The process involved a multitude of actors – Jewish agencies, organizations and foundations based in the United States, Europe and Israel – and entailed the mobilization of professionals, specialists and financial resources. This thesis explores the concrete dynamics of this cross-border mobilization of Jewish philanthropic bodies in favor of the Jewish communities of East Central Europe after the fall of communism in 1989. It studies in-depth the historical origins and evolution of transnational Jewish solidarity in modern times, enquires about the Jewish agencies and organizations that started to operate in Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall, especially, but not only, their sources of financing and the circulation of economic resources. Finally, it gives an account of the narrative corpus that emerged about European Jews before and during this process, identifying those actors who created and mobilized these narratives.
Abstract: In August 1945, a small group of Jewish industrialists was tried in absentia by the military court in Maribor, Yugoslavia. They were convicted of “war crimes” and sentenced to confiscation of property. Part of the nationalization policies of the new Communist government, the episode related to specifically Jewish experiences before, during, and after the Holocaust. Subsequent legal cases seeking redress involved agencies of Yugoslavia, Switzerland, Great Britain, the United States, and post-1991 Slovenia over several decades. This article reconstructs the sources, circumstances, and complex consequences of the legal cases in order to uncover structural and ideological factors underpinning the repeated failures of Jewish survivor claims. It sheds light on the memory wars shaping political life in Eastern Europe today, and it sharpens understandings that should facilitate efforts towards restitution of Jewish property.
Abstract: Les manifestations de nationalisme et d’antisémitisme qui accompagnèrent la transition furent souvent interprétées en termes de retour du même. En témoignent des expressions chargées en connotations primordialistes telles que « retour des nations et du nationalisme », « réveil des nationalismes », « retour des vieux démons ». Effet « réfrigérant » de la domination du Parti-État, « vide idéologique » postcommuniste, telles furent, dans un premier temps, les explications communément invoquées pour en expliquer la réactivation.
C’est oublier que l’effondrement idéologique du communisme en Europe du Centre-Est a largement précédé celui du Mur de Berlin, et que les passions nationalistes n’avaient jamais été mises au frigidaire sous le régime communiste. Instrumentalisées par certaines élites du Parti comme par des fractions de l’opposition, elles n’ont pas attendu l’effondrement du Mur de Berlin pour se déployer. Reste que leurs manifestations récentes sont d’autant plus difficiles à interpréter en bloc que l’hétérogénéité sociologique de l’Europe du Centre-Est s’approfondit depuis la désintégration de l’Empire soviétique et que le concept même de nationalisme désigne parfois des réalités sociales et politiques diamétralement opposées.
En partant de l’idée que « le renouveau du nationalisme en Europe de l’Est est moins la cause de la situation actuelle que sa conséquence », nous montrerons à partir de l’exemple polonais, que celui-ci participe en réalité d’un phénomène classique de réinvention d’une tradition…
Abstract: Bulgarian Jews to a large extent escaped the horrors of the Holocaust, yet their opposition to the antisemitic policies of Bulgarian governments during the war led a disproportionate number of them to join left-wing opposition groups and eventually perish in the anti-fascist struggle. Fallen Jewish partisans, relatively well-known during the socialist period, were nevertheless commemorated first and foremost as communists, rather than as heroes from one of Bulgaria's minorities. The communist post-war regime's reluctance to recognize Jewish anti-fascist activity separately and the mass exodus of Bulgarian Jews to Israel, as well as the persistent antisemitism within the Eastern Bloc, all contributed to the marginalization of the memory of Jewish anti-fascism before the collapse of communism. The 1989 transition resulted in further neglect of Jewish suffering and martyrdom as the very premise of their heroic actions – anti-fascism – was erased and replaced by the new anti-communist mnemonic canon. Post-1989 Bulgaria even gradually rehabilitated controversial figures from the pre-1944 ruling elite by virtue of their anti-communist credentials. Curiously, a single fallen female Jewish partisan, Violeta Yakova, has received public attention that has evaded her fellow martyrs. Her name resurfaced as Bulgarian nationalists began organizing the annual Lukov March – a torch-lit procession commemorating a pro-fascist interwar general assassinated by Yakova. The case of the Bulgarian-Jewish partisan can therefore provide a much-needed revisiting of the way that Jewish anti-fascism has been commemorated and reveal the complex dynamics of contemporary memory politics, antisemitism, and right-wing populism in Bulgaria.
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.
Topics: Jewish Identity, Jewish Renewal, Jewish Revival, Main Topic: Identity and Community, Jewish Continuity, Post-1989, Educational Tours, Birthright (Taglit), Interviews, Jewish Leadership, Young Adults / Emerging Adulthood
Abstract: In Hungary, during the decades of the communist regime, mentioning Jewish values or wounds would not have fit into the idealistic consensus (and uniformity, even more). So, virtually 100,000 Hungarian Jews tried to hide or forget their roots.
After the regime change in 1989, the Jewish revival progressed with tremendous force. The children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, who had hardly heard anything about Judaism or even about the history of their family at home, suddenly “reinvented” Jewish life. Institutions and grassroots places with an informal, but distinctly Jewish spirit, were born. For the new generations their Jewishness became a positive, almost “sexy” distinction from anybody else.
Interestingly, literature did not take over this vibrant revival. Despite the fact that the significant part of the Hungarian writers, especially the winners of international awards, are of Jewish descent. Thus, Jews are overrepresented in Hungarian literature. Nevertheless, this is a traditional tendency in Hungary that writers don’t really like to belong to minority groups. That’s why, Jewish themes or even the topics of the Holocaust and the representation of the life of the Second Generation, hardly fit into this mainstream perception. Recently, some of the Third and the Fourth Generation - mostly lesser-known, younger writers and especially women - have already begun to investigate the repressed memory of their families.
Abstract: After the 1968 emigration, very few Jews remained in Poland, and even more miniscule was the number of “Jewish Jews.” Since then the number has grown somewhat, and much of it is due to the process of de-assimilation; i.e., some people with Jewish ancestors raised in completely Polonized families began to recover, reclaim, and readapt their Jewish background. An analysis of this phenomenon is offered with a series of putative reasons for its occurrence. The individuals constituting the “products” of de-assimilation are the majority of Polish Jews today and form much of the current leadership. While individuals everywhere can strengthen their ties to the Jewish people and can experience teshuvah or another kind of “Judaization,” the process of de-assimilation does not seem to be reducible to those moves. It begins with no Jewish identity, and is highly dependent on the attitudes and cultural trends in the majority society. It does not remove the de-assimilationists from the majority culture. The phenomenon is general and deserves to be studied as a sociological mechanism working in other cases of assimilation to a majority culture. In the Jewish case, it is especially dramatic. Probably the first example can be found in the evolution of the Marrano communities settled in Holland. The presence of de-assimilation seems to differentiate some European, first of all East European, communities from the globally dominant American and Israeli ones. Probably this rather new concept is needed to describe a significant part of the world of the Jews of twenty-first century Europe.
Abstract: Książka Więcej niż stereotyp. „Żydokomuna” jako wzór kultury polskiej oparta jest na analizie dyskursu ntykomunistycznego i antysemickiego we współczesnej Polsce i ich wzajemnych powiązań. Jej powstaniu towarzyszyła intencja uszeregowania trzech zachodzących na siebie procesów: 1) intensyfikacji i rozwoju dyskursu antysemickiego w synergii z wciąż zyskującą na znaczeniu polityką historyczną, 2) powstawania nowych teorii interweniujących w pole badań nad antysemityzmem, 3) pojawiania się nowych zjawisk w sferze społecznej, które miałyby być tymi teoriami wyjaśniane.
Na tle dotychczasowych ujęć tematu podejście autorki wyróżniają rozbudowane rozważania metodologiczne, a zwłaszcza wypunktowanie niedostatków kategorii stereotypu i wyjście poza nią w kierunku kategorii wzoru kultury. Kategoria stereotypu sugeruje, że mamy do czynienia z błędem poznawczym, aberracją lub pomyłką. Zaproponowaną w książce analizę antysemityzmu charakteryzuje tymczasem całkowite zerwanie z koncepcją „ziarna prawdy”, na której zasadza się większość definicji stereotypu jako uproszczonej wizji jakiegoś wycinka rzeczywistości. Podążając tropem Sandera Gilmana, autorka traktuje treści stereotypów jako materiał do analizy grupy
wytwarzającej stereotypy. Takie podejście pozwala na wykorzystanie motywu „żydokomuny” do opisania status quo współczesnej kultury polskiej w zakresie wyobrażeń o żydowskości i o komunizmie. Autorka dowodzi, że przekonania na temat Żydów są integralną częścią kultury, wypracowaną i reprodukowaną w jej prawomocnych obiegach. Są one generowane, produkowane i używane do podtrzymywania pewnej całości kulturowej i pozostają w harmonii z jej pozostałymi elementami. Autorka broni tezy o „żydokomunie” jako motywie współcześnie konstytutywnym dla koherencji kulturowej, generowanej w ramach paradygmatu antykomunistycznego.
Książka ma dowieść, że antykomunizm nie tylko stanowi komponent tradycji antysemickiej, ale w dużej mierze ukształtował taki model badań nad antysemityzmem, w którym możliwość zdiagnozowania i rozmontowania tego ideologicznego konstruktu jest strukturalnie zablokowana. Strukturę tę umacnia fakt, że – za sprawą szantażu antysemicką zbitką „żydokomuny” zastosowanym wobec szkoły frankfurckiej na uchodźctwie – zbudowano ją niejako „rękami Żydów” – badaczek i badaczy, którzy po drugiej stronie żelaznej kurtyny w początkach zimnej wojny rozwinęli koncepcję relacji międzygrupowych, próbując ten szantaż obejść. Podążając tropem Stuarta Svonkina i Avivy Weingarten, autorka śledzi historię powojennego konstruowania narzędzi badawczych antysemityzmu w duchu psychologii społecznej przy równoczesnym odchodzeniu od kategorii socjologicznych. W książce wypunktowane zostają niedostatki takiego podejścia, ponieważ koncentruje się ono na szacowaniu indywidualnych podmiotów antysemityzmu, definiując antysemityzm podług cech nieadekwatnych do jego współczesnej konstrukcji. Tymczasem kategoria wzoru kultury pozwala przenieść punkt ciężkości z pytania o to, kto jest antysemitą, na pytanie o to, jakie
treści kulturowe cyrkulujące w rozmaitych rejestrach kultury, także tych najbardziej oficjalnych, są zakorzenione w antysemickich kategoriach postrzegania rzeczywistości oraz jakie są funkcje tych kategorii dla stabilizowania zastanego porządku. Takie ujęcie pozwala na uchwycenie mechanizmów odtwarzania motywu „żydokomuny” we
współczesnym dyskursie i jego funkcjonalności.
Zaproponowana w książce krytyka słownika pojęć używanych do analizy antysemityzmu obejmuje także terminy wypracowane w łonie nauk społecznych na Zachodzie, stosowane do półperyferyjnych warunków ostkomunistycznego kraju Europy Wschodniej. W książce znajdziemy krytykę powierzchownego przyswojenia kategorii: intersekcjonalność, białość, imperializm. Rozważając przystawalność amerykańskiego dyskursu o rasie i rasizmie do warunków polskich, autorka stara się dowieść, że użycie niektórych pojęć bez zważania na lokalny kontekst okazuje się mieć odwrotny wydźwięk w stosunku do intencji, które stały za ich wypracowaniem.
Ostatnia część książki poświęcona jest recepcji piętna „żydokomuny” przez napiętnowanych. Rozważania na ten temat wynikają z założenia autorki, że tylko przemoc symboliczna – przemoc, którą jednostki i grupy zadają same sobie, uwewnętrzniając przekonania grupy dominującej na własny temat i odgrywając przeznaczone im
przez grupę dominującą role (gościa, sublokatora, aspirującego, podejrzanego, niszczyciela, wroga itd.) – zapewnia tym przekonaniom pełną stabilność kulturową i możliwość bezkolizyjnego wypełniania określonych funkcji w kulturze. Zadając pytanie o to, w jaki sposób czytać narracje mniejszościowe, autorka mierzy się z metodologicznym impasem powodowanym faktem, że struktura dyskursywna stawia w upośledzonej pozycji tych uczestników dyskursu, którzy – bez względu na to, jaką mają tożsamość wybraną – postrzegani są przez pryzmat tożsamości wymuszonej. Nosicielki
i nosiciele piętna są w kulturze dominującej pozycjonowani jako stronniczy. Jest to jeden z efektów mistyfikacyjnego uniwersalizmu. Czy zatem, analizując narracje napiętnowanych, należy brać pod uwagę piętno podmiotu? Czy nie jest to powtórzenie – w imię analizy – gestu napiętnowania? Z drugiej strony, czy pominięcie piętna nie byłoby niedopuszczalnym przeoczeniem, skoro wiemy, że autorka/autor pisze w obrębie kultury, która z przyczyn strukturalnych, pod groźbą przemocy, nie chce dopuścić jej/go do głosu na równych prawach? By przełamać ten impas, autorka proponuje oryginalny, czterostopniowy schemat analizy dyskursu w badaniach nad recepcją piętna.
Abstract: Established in 1843, the Jewish residential quarter in Samarkand (located at the time in the Bukharan kingdom, and today in independent Uzbekistan) has been emptied of its Jewish residents in the wake of the Soviet Union’s demise. Since then, physical markers testifying to their history in the neighbourhood have also been eroding. This process has been organic, rather than a deliberate program of erasure. Still, these shifts in the built environment fit within Uzbekistan’s larger project of state-building, as Jewish homes and communal structures belie the Russian and Soviet colonial legacy, which has been spurned since independence. Drawing on recent and historical accounts, as well as my own observations in the 1990s and in 2013, this article documents the built environment in the very moment of transition, as physical structures transform and are separated from the history and memories that enlivened them. With this disappearance, a tourist opportunity for encountering global Jewish diversity is lost, and Uzbekistan’s project of nation-building – absent its historical minority populations – is further solidified.
Abstract: In the early years of the 21st century it appeared that the memory of the Holocaust was secure in Western Europe; that, in order to gain entry into the European Union, the countries of Eastern Europe would have to acknowledge their compatriots' complicity in genocide. Fifteen year later, the landscape looks starkly different. Shedding fresh light on these developments, The Perversion of Holocaust Memory explores the politicization and distortion of Holocaust remembrance since 1989.
This innovative book opens with an analysis of events across Europe which buttressed confidence in the stability of Holocaust memory and brought home the full extent of nations' participation in the Final Solution. And yet, as Judith M. Hughes reveals in later chapters, mainstream accountability began to crumble as the 21st century progressed: German and Jewish suffering was equated; anti-Semitic rhetoric re-entered contemporary discourse; populist leaders side-stepped inconvenient facts; and, more recently with the revival of ethno-nationalism, Holocaust remembrance has been caught in the backlash of the European refugee crisis.
The four countries analyzed here – France, Germany, Hungary, and Poland – could all claim to be victims of Nazi Germany, the Allies or the Communist Soviet Union but they were also all perpetrators. Ultimately, it is this complex legacy which Hughes adroitly untangles in her sophisticated study of Holocaust memory in modern Europe.
Abstract: Kristallnacht, 1938, was a defining moment, changing the course of history. Can the Jewish heritage destroyed before and during World War II be reconstructed? This paper will link eschatological thought and the relevant Mishnaic texts, in particular the value of holiness and its attributes both in time and place. Can a synagogue be de-sanctified? Is the value in the material or the use?
Reviewing these tragic events, the possible criteria for reconstructing the architectural components of Jewish life should be considered, through the evidence of history, the record of events, values of the past, and the new realities of the future. Another significant concern is not so much in understanding the changing and diverse values of a community but the approaches toward the interpretations of these values. In this debate, where existential or historical models play a major role, Judaism tends toward the former, recalling events over time and the allegory in the facts.
What remained in Europe were the ruins, the memory of places and events, and the resilience of the human spirit. However, there are compounded memories and multiple voices, ever changing, challenging the identities of real and virtual communities. How do we evaluate the facts and the extended contexts over time that demand renegotiation of their meaning and interpretation?
On current projections, the Jews may become an insignificant number in European society over the course of the twenty-first century. Can these buildings, as reconstructed, live without the spirit of the people; can new people inhabit the reconstructions, or is the ruin the true manifestation of the course of history? The divergent case studies of the three ShUM cities, Speyer, Worms, and Mainz, in Germany provide a glimpse into the debate and an appraisal of the moment in time.
There are common attitudes facing recovery and reconstructions for uprooted communities after tragedies that leave scars on history. The case studies of Jewish heritage reconstruction and the considerations of impermanence provide another perspective to the restorations of the Bamiyan Buddhas and together a chilling evidence to the consequences of racism.
