Abstract: This article addresses the persistence of anti-Semitism in Romania, placed in the context of some recent debates concerning the memory of the Holocaust in the country, as well as in the area of Central and Eastern Europe more broadly. It argues that, despite significant improvements in terms of legislation, the memory of the Holocaust remains a highly contested issue in contemporary Romania, torn between the attempts to join in the European memory of the Holocaust and local legacies that on the one hand focus primarily on the suffering of Romanians under the communist regime, and on the other perform a symbolic “denationalisation” of the Jewish minority in the country, whose own suffering is thus excised from national memory. It does so by focusing in particular on the debates surrounding the adoption of Law 217/2015, meant to clarify earlier legislation on Holocaust denial, and comparing them with those prompted by the Ukrainian “memory laws” passed in the same year. Taking into account both the national and international reactions to these very different pieces of legislation, the article shows the still-persisting discrepancy between a (mostly Western) “European” memory of the legacy of the twentieth century and local memory topoi characteristic of the countries that were part of the former socialist bloc.
Abstract: The paper argues that the recent history of Holocaust Studies in Lithuania is characterized by major provision (for research, teaching and publishing) coming from state-sponsored agencies, particularly a state commission on both Nazi and Soviet crimes. Problematically, the commission is itself simultaneously active in revising the narrative per se of the Holocaust, principally according to the ‘Double Genocide’ theories of the 2008 Prague Declaration that insists on ‘equalization’ of Nazi and Soviet crimes. Lithuanian agencies have played a disproportionate role in that declaration, in attempts at legislating some of its components in the European Parliament and other EU bodies, and ‘export’ of the revisionist model to the West. Much international support for solid independent Lithuanian Holocaust researchers and NGOs was cut off as the state commission set out determinedly to dominate the field, which is perceived to have increasing political implications in East-West politics. But this history must not obscure an
impressive list of local accomplishments. A tenaciously devoted group of Holocaust survivors themselves, trained as academics or professionals in other fields, educated themselves to publish books, build a mini-museum (that has defied the revisionists) within the larger state-sponsored Jewish museum, and worked to educate both pupils and the wider public. Second, a continuing stream of non-Jewish Lithuanian scholars, educators, documentary
film makers and others have at various points valiantly defied state pressures and contributed significantly and selflessly. The wider picture is that Holocaust Studies has been built most successfully by older Holocaust survivors and younger non-Jews, in both groups often by those coming to work in it from other specialties out of a passion for justice and truth in history, while lavishly financed state initiatives have been anchored in the inertia of nationalist regional politics.
Abstract: The successful incorporation of Eastern European states into the European Union, NATO and the Western pro-democratic family of nations usually focuses on the import of ideas, governmental and societal structures, and products, from West to East, and of large movements of East European populations westward. Often overlooked in the export of ideas has been the intensive, expensive and industrial-scale effort to rewrite the history of the Holocaust and World War II in the direction of Double Genocide and Holocaust Obfuscation, a trend spurred on dramatically by the decline in East-West relations and the increasingly frightening movement of Russia toward revanchist authoritarianism that threatens its neighbors. The paper argues that no good can or will come from the adaptation of models of bogus nationalist history rooted in far-right, ultranationalist thought in the liberated states of Eastern Europe. Double Genocide and its corollaries as currently practiced and underwritten by state budgets, represent a threat to history, freedom of thought and speech, equal rights and ultimately, a ruse to insert far-right academic revisionism disguised as anti-Russian activity into Western discourse.
Topics: Antisemitism, Antisemitism: Muslim, Antisemitism: Far right, Anti-Zionism, Holocaust Denial, Holocaust Memorials, Holocaust Education, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Jewish - Muslim Relations
Abstract: This article analyzes contemporary antisemitism and Holocaust distortion in Eastern Europe. The main argument is that Brown and Red, Nazism and Communism, respectively are not at all equal. In Eastern Europe, in particular, antisemitic ideology is grounded on the rehabilitation of anticommunist national “heroes.” The history of the Holocaust is thereby distorted. Based on Maurice Halbwachs’s theory of “social frameworks,” the author shows how “competitive martyrdom,” the “Double Genocide” ideology, and “Holocaust obfuscation” are intertwined. Empirically, the paper examines these concepts in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, Serbia and Croatia, and Romania.
Abstract: After 1989, post-communist countries such as Poland and Moldova have been faced with the challenge of
reinventing their national identity and rewriting their master narratives, shifting from a communist one to an
ethnic-patriotic one. In this context, the fate of local Jews and the actions of Poles and Moldovans during the
Holocaust have repeatedly proven difficult or even impossible to incorporate into the new national narrative. As
a result, Holocaust denial in various forms initially gained ground in post-communist countries, since denying
the Holocaust, or blaming it on someone else, even on the Jews themselves, was the easiest way to strengthen
national identities. In later years, however, Polish and Moldovan paths towards re-definition of self have taken
different paths. At least in part, this can be explained as a product of Poland's incorporation in the European
unification project, while Moldova remains in limbo, both in terms of identity and politics – between the Soviet
Union and Europe, between the past and the future.
