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Politics of Holocaust Memory in Communist and Post-communist Romania: On Survivor Matei Gall's Multiple Life Stories
Author(s): Ionescu, Ștefan Cristian; Mihăilescu, Dana
Date: 2023
Topics: Holocaust Survivors, Holocaust, Oral History and Biography, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Post-1989, Communism
Abstract: One of the most interesting cases of political instrumentalization, selectiveness, and distortion of historical memory under the Romanian Communist regime was the case of the public remembrance of the Fascist/Nazi era and its atrocities in conjunction with the over-emphasis on the Communist resistance to it. The authors examine these aspects by means of Jewish Communist Matei Gall’s autobiographic narratives focusing on World War II violence over a forty-year time span. These include Masacrul, published as a novel in 1956, in Communist Romania, based on two articles that initially appeared in the Communist party’s newspaper România liberă in September 1944; and Eclipsa, published as a memoir in post-Communist Romania in 1997. The authors also consider two interviews Gall gave in 2009, and what they added to his previous life narratives as well as how generally his narratives, spanning from the immediate postwar context to the 2000s, contribute to Communist and post-Communist mnemonic frameworks of the Holocaust in Romania.