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Commemorating the holocaust in public spaces: the case of Zagreb, Croatia
Author(s): Schellenberg, Renata
Date: 2026
Topics: Holocaust Memorials, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial
Abstract: This article examines Holocaust memorial culture in Croatia by focusing on the installation and reception of recent memorials in Zagreb, such as Stolpersteine (2020-) and the 2022 Monument to Victims of the Holocaust and the Ustaša Regime. It explores the impact Croatian state history had on shaping public understanding of the Holocaust, exposing persistent revisionist tendencies when determining culpability of World War II crimes. Croatian memorial culture is viewed through a theoretical framework that illustrates global challenges facing Holocaust memorialization, namely, the trivialization and relativization of Holocaust suffering and the inevitable generational remove from the historical occurrence itself.
Holocaust distortion and the creation of Schrödinger’s mass graves: the precarity of truth at sites of Holocaust heritage in Europe
Author(s): Carr, Gilly
Date: 2026
Topics: Holocaust: Distortion, Holocaust, Holocaust Commemoration, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial
Abstract: Holocaust distortion is a threat to Holocaust sites today. How does this manifest in practice, and can we always distinguish between those who operate in good faith on the one hand, and bad actors on the other? This paper explores its impact at European case studies of mass graves. The paper has three overall aims: first, to explore Holocaust distortion in Europe today; second, to discuss how Holocaust distortion impacts mass graves in particular, creating ‘Schrödinger’s mass graves.’ Third, this paper questions the motives of ‘good faith’ actors, who reveal themselves as quite the opposite through their actions towards experts.
Golgotha in paradise: memory and martyrdom in a former Polish shtetl
Author(s): Weizman, Yechiel
Date: 2026
Topics: Holocaust: Collaboration, Holocaust Commemoration, Ethnography, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory
Abstract: This article examines how local complicity in the Holocaust is negotiated, silenced, and revealed through the spatial memoryscape of Rajgród, a small town in northeastern Poland where Poles participated in the murder of their Jewish neighbors in the summer of 1941. Using a microhistorical lens, it analyzes how knowledge, denial, and memory are inscribed in physical spaces and communal practices, rendering space a cultural text. Drawing on personal and municipal records and ethnographic fieldwork, the article shows how Catholicism, nationalism, and ritual symbolism shape collective remembrance and moral hierarchies of suffering in post-socialist Eastern Europe.
The Holocaust and Jewish identity: the case of Daugavpils
Author(s): Vasiljeva, Elina; Olehnovica, Ilze
Date: 2026
Topics: Holocaust Commemoration, Jewish Identity, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Interviews
Abstract: The study is based on semi-structured interviews. Knowledge about the Holocaust is an essential component of Jewish identity. The generation under discussion serves as a pivotal point in uncovering the theme of the Holocaust: transitioning from a lack of information during the Soviet era to gaining knowledge and establishing traditions of commemoration in independent Latvia. This study examines the cognitive and emotional aspects of the Holocaust. The cognitive aspect is related to historical facts. The emotional aspect is reflected in experiences and narratives. For this generation, the Holocaust has become one of the defining factors in understanding Jewish identity.
‘Never right to make comparisons’? Holocaust memory, climate crisis, and the debate over appropriate discourse
Author(s): Tollerton, David
Date: 2025
Topics: Climate Change, Holocaust Commemoration, Memory, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial
Abstract: This article considers the relationship between the Holocaust and the increased threat of mass violence due to climate change. Extreme weather events, resource deprivation, and population movements are likely to cause societal stresses which make genocide more probable, but the link between this and memory of the Holocaust has proven contentious. Starting with Archbishop Justin Welby’s apology for invoking the Holocaust during international climate negotiations in 2021, this article considers the history and causes of such controversy, arguing that there are selected ways in which it is reasonable and useful to bring Holocaust memory into dialogue with the climate crisis. .
Representations of the Holocaust in Swedish secondary school history textbooks
Author(s): Persson, Magnus P. S.
Date: 2026
Topics: Holocaust Education, Curriculum and Schoolbooks, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial
Abstract: The article analyzes how the Holocaust is portrayed in Swedish high school history textbooks over seven decades. Based, among other things, on the pedagogical guidelines of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), it evaluates the quality and scope of the textbooks' content. The results show an increased emphasis on the Holocaust and anti-Semitism in recent decades. However, Jewish life before and especially after the genocide is still largely absent, as is the representation of Jewish voices during the Holocaust itself. The study concludes that significant improvements are possible in how textbooks address various aspects of the Holocaust.
Vlogging Auschwitz: new players in Holocaust commemoration
Author(s): Łysak, Tomasz
Date: 2022
Topics: Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Memorials, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Social Media, Tourism
Abstract: Content creators on YouTube have started documenting their visits to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in vlog form. This social media format has enabled influencers to assume the role of popular historian, endowing their trips with a sense of moral responsibility. Critical tools should be applied not only to content analysis but also to metadata and various methods of curating visibility on the platform. Additionally, mechanisms of self-promotion and the fate of official narratives of commemoration in an era of user-generated content are of interest. Is this new cohort of popular history practitioners a welcome development in the field of commemoration?
Walking-with, re-membering the Holocaust: Forced Walks: Honouring Esther, a case study of somatic and digital creative practice
Author(s): White, Richard S.
Date: 2022
Topics: Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Memorials, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial
Abstract: The paper discusses a walking and multi-media arts project seeking to renew agency in Holocaust testimony and generate contemporary resonances. Forced Walks is a programme of speculative, socially engaged experiments, initiated by artists Richard White and Lorna Brunstein. Honouring Esther (2015–2017), the first Forced Walks project, walked the route of a Nazi Death March digitally transposed to Somerset (UK), subsequently retracing it in Lower Saxony, Germany. The project engaged walkers in co-creating an immanent reflective space materialized in mark-making, social media and installation. An emergent hybrid somatic/digital process, ‘making the return’ in a specific Holocaust context, is presented.
Eulogy of a different kind: Letters to Henio and the unsettled memory of the Holocaust in contemporary Poland
Author(s): Popescu, Diana I.
Date: 2019
Topics: Ethnography, Holocaust Education, Holocaust Commemoration, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory, Theatre, Youth
Abstract: Letters to Henio is an emblematic example of an audience participatory memorial practice developed by the Grodzka Gate – NN Theatre Centre in Lublin. This article provides an ethnographic account of this initiative and presents insights from an audience research study conducted with young people in 2016. It discerns the immediate impact this initiative has on young participants’ attitudes towards commemoration of Holocaust victims. This research indicates a departure from polarized narratives of the Holocaust which tend to dominate the Polish memory discourse, and the presence of more ambiguous, messier and fragmented positions towards the Holocaust among younger generations of Poles.
Global patterns, local interpretations: new Polish museums dedicated to the rescue of Jews during the HolocaustFootnote
Author(s): Wóycicka, Zofia
Date: 2019
Topics: Holocaust: Righteous Gentiles, Holocaust Memorials, Holocaust Commemoration, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Museums
Abstract: This article examines four recently (re)opened Polish exhibitions dedicated to people who helped Jews during World War II: The Eagle Pharmacy/Kraków, the Żabińskis’ Villa/Warsaw, The Ulma Museum/Markowa and the Holocaust gallery in Polin/Warsaw. Each display approaches the topic from a different standpoint, revealing the scope of possible narratives on Jewish rescue in contemporary Poland. The study argues that while the establishment of these museums is part of a broader European trend to commemorate 'the Righteous', global patterns are being adapted to local needs. Though national memory politics sets a general framework, much depends on the actual stakeholders and core audiences.
The meanings of Auschwitz in Poland, 1945 to the present
Author(s): Kucia, Marek
Date: 2019
Topics: Holocaust Memorials, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory, National Identity
Abstract: The article discusses the development of the symbolic meanings of Auschwitz in Poland since the end of the Second World War, taking into account the context of Polish history and memory, in particular the memory of the Holocaust and disputes surrounding it. Analyzing various kinds of representations, the article examines chronologically the major symbolisms of the former camp – Polish, international, universalist, and Jewish – as well as pointing to others, and identifying the periods of their development. The article argues that Auschwitz has had various meanings in Poland. At present, it is, among others, a symbol of the Holocaust, but not the symbol thereof.
Holocaust education in transition from live to virtual survivor testimony: pedagogical and ethical dilemmas
Author(s): Marcus, Alan S.; Maor, Rotem; McGregor, Ian M.; Mills, Gary; Schweber, Simone; Stoddard, Jeremy; Hicks, David
Date: 2022
Topics: Holocaust Survivors, Holocaust Education, Holocaust Memorials, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Museums, Oral History and Biography
Abstract: This article explores the pedagogical challenges and ethical dilemmas related to the use of Virtual Interactive Holocaust Survivor Testimony (VIHST) in place of live survivor testimony. The National Holocaust Centre and Museum (UK) uses 3D interactive digital as an attempt to replicate the meaningful learning experiences of listening to a live survivor. Data was collected through interviews with survivors and museum staff. Key findings include how survivors are chosen to participate, whether testimonies can or should be edited for pedagogical purposes, and challenges associated with virtual testimony that do not exist with live survivor testimony.
At engagement’s edge: heritage experts and Holocaust education in Belarus
Author(s): Allwork, Larissa
Date: 2024
Topics: Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Education, Interviews, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial
Abstract: Using semi-structured interview methodology and qualitative ‘thick description’, original interviews were recorded with heritage experts who educate about and engage the public with Holocaust history in Belarus. Significantly, the interviews explored grassroots realities and gave voice to practitioners at risk of marginalization in Belarus’s repressive cultural politics. Rigorously analyzing these research interviews within the context of regionally relevant academic literature and an online international workshop (2021), an original interpretation is offered. Namely, that Belarus has historically shifted from an opportune moment regarding Holocaust engagement and education to being ‘at engagement’s edge’ following the August 2020 elections and Ukraine conflict (2022).
Learning about and from the Holocaust? On the limits of Holocaust education as civic education
Author(s): Witherow-Culpepper, Willa; Williams, Timothy
Date: 2025
Topics: Holocaust Education, Evaluation, Policy, Politics, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Anti-Racism
Abstract: Policymakers promote Holocaust education for achieving civic and anti-racist outcomes, yet the empirical efficacy of Holocaust education is questionable. We suggest that Holocaust education remains politically popular in the USA and UK as the Holocaust’s framing as an exceptional event allows framing education as non-partisan and apolitical. However, such focus on the Holocaust as universalized, ahistorical and apolitical constitute core weaknesses as an educational device. Also, we argue that Holocaust education grounds suffering in a unique historical moment that lack clear ties to today's issues. The article suggests a more cautious reliance on Holocaust education for civic and anti-racist outcomes.
Round table discussion: after the war – beginning life anew in the aftermath of violence
Author(s): Aleksiun, Natalia; Exeler, Franziska; Weizman, Yechiel; Waligórska, Magdalena
Date: 2024
Topics: Holocaust, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Ukraine-Russia war (since 2014), Holocaust Survivors, Trauma
Official memory politics, the ‘genocide of the soviet people,’ and the distortion of the Holocaust in modern Russia
Author(s): Pakhaliuk, Konstantin
Date: 2024
Topics: Holocaust Commemoration, Ukraine-Russia war (since 2014), Politics, Memory, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial
Abstract: This article is devoted to the political use of Holocaust memory in contemporary Russia. Under Putin, the Russian state has adopted an utilitarian approach. Initially, Holocaust was a tool for positioning Russia on the international stage (the Red Army as the savior of the Jews), and later as a means of exerting moral pressure on political elites in Eastern European countries that promoted the memory of communist crimes. In the context of the full-scale war against Ukraine, the newly articulated concept of the ‘genocide of the Soviet people’ serves both symbolic border with the West and tool to victimize Russians.
Site-seeing: reflections on visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum with teenagers
Author(s): Richardson, Alasdair
Date: 2021
Topics: Holocaust Education, Educational Tours, Evaluation, Interviews, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Teenagers
Abstract: This paper considers how the Auschwitz Birkenau State Museum is experienced by teenage visitors on organized visits with the Holocaust Educational Trust (UK). The findings presented are based on semi-structured interviews with twelve 17 year olds, exploring their emotional engagement with the sites and how they perceive and understand this emotional interaction. The findings suggest that young people experience their visit in a variety of ways, and that this is an incomplete and ongoing process in their learning. The paper raises a number of considerations for educators taking educational visits to the museum, to support pupils in their learning.
In the shoes of the other: an educational trip to Auschwitz Birkenau increases high-school students’ perspective taking and identification with Jews
Author(s): Lindén, Magnus; Björklund, Fredrik; Wilkes, George
Date: 2025
Topics: Holocaust Education, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Holocaust Memorials, Educational Tours, Psychology, Surveys, Teenagers, Schools: Non-Jewish, Schools: Seconday / High Schools
Abstract: We investigated whether empathy and identification with Jews as a group is affected by a Holocaust education trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Data was collected before and after the trip and compared with a control group. The mean level of both perspective taking and identification with Jews as a group increased in the educational-trip group. Increased closeness to Jews as a group was related to increased perspective taking. We discuss the role for Holocaust education in fostering an understanding of Jewish life and culture and for stimulating perspective taking by providing an opportunity to put oneself in the shoes of the other.
Topos of the Jewish treasure in postwar Polish, Belarusian and Ukrainian shtetls
Author(s): Waligórska, Magdalena
Date: 2024
Topics: Antisemitism, Attitudes to Jews, Holocaust, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory, Interviews
Abstract: While the fascination with ‘Jewish gold’ and the belief that Jews possess riches long predates the Holocaust, it was the systematic dispossession of Jews during World War II that fueled the myth of ‘Jewish treasures’ to an unprecedented extent. Based on ethnographic field research in six former shtetls: Iŭje and Mir in Belarus, Biłgoraj and Izbica in Poland and Brody and Berezne in Ukraine, and diverse sources, including testimonies of survivors, archival documents, memoirs, and literary texts, this paper discusses the longevity of the myth of Jewish treasures in the post-Holocaust East-Central European provinces and analyses its social consequences.
A history of overwriting: Jewish cemeteries in postwar Poland, Ukraine and Belarus
Author(s): Duch-Dyngosz, Marta; Friedman, Alexander; Sorkina, Ina; Waligórska, Magdalena
Date: 2024
Topics: Cemeteries, Ethnography, Holocaust, Main Topic: Culture and Heritage, Jewish Heritage, Memorial, Memory
Abstract: Focused on the post-1944 history of Jewish cemeteries in three towns: Iŭje (Belarus), Berezne (Ukraine) and Biłgoraj (Poland) this paper examines different local trajectories of repurposing and overwriting Jewish cemeteries. This comparative study goes beyond the top-down policy analysis to include the ways the local population participated in and reacted to these acts of overwriting. We complement the historical consideration with an ethnographic approach that explores how ‘overwritten’ Jewish cemeteries have been used by the local inhabitants, how they featured on their mental maps, what myths and narratives they triggered, and what spatial practices their new status afforded.
Echoes of the Shoah: British Jewry and the Bosnian War
Author(s): Summers, Luke
Date: 2024
Topics: Memory, War, Holocaust, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial
Abstract: This article explores how British Jews responded to the Bosnian War of 1992-1995. It questions how Jewish memories of the Holocaust influenced the way the community responded to the genocide in Bosnia. Using the British Jewish press as its source base, it identifies how British Jews extensively referenced the Shoah when responding to events in Bosnia. Highlighting a lack of international action to stop the Holocaust, British Jews attached a moral imperative to military intervention in Bosnia. It probes the idea that genocide in the Balkans had an important role in the expansion, and universalization, of Holocaust consciousness in the 1990s.
From theory to praxis in genocide education: to what extent are IHRA guidelines reflected in the opinions and classroom experiences of independent-school educators?
Author(s): Adamson, Daniel
Date: 2023
Topics: Holocaust Education, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Teachers, Teaching and Pedagogy, Schools: Non-Jewish
Abstract: This research project explores the extent to which historic guidelines for teaching about the Holocaust (provided by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)) align with the experiences of practising independent-school teachers in the UK. This article presents data from a small-scale exploratory case study carried out in summer 2019 at two different independent-schools in England. Overall, results suggested that there was no definitive alignment between official teaching guidelines and their enactment in classrooms. Teachers’ opinions on what to teach about genocide are more similar to those outlined in existing guidelines than their views on how to teach about genocide. The outcomes of this research advance the case for greater collaboration between educational institutions and practising teachers.
Teaching and learning about the Holocaust: a systematic scoping review of existing research
Author(s): Pistone, Isabella; Andersson, Lars M.; Lidström, Allan; Mattsson, Christer; Nelhans, Gustaf; Pernler, Tobias; Sager, Morten; Sivenbring, Jennie
Date: 2024
Topics: Main Topic: Antisemitism, Antisemitism: Education against, Holocaust Education, Bibliography and Literature Reviews
Abstract: This scoping review aims to map and summarize practice-based research that evaluates outcomes in teaching and learning about the Holocaust (TLH). It focuses on providing an overview of the characteristics of existing literature and synthesizing the educational interventions’ effects evaluated in previous studies. Nineteen bibliographical databases were searched for relevant empirical research published from 1945 to 2020 worldwide. After screening and relevance assessment, 117 research publications were identified for inclusion in the review. The included material was analysed by bibliometric analysis, thematic analysis of educational approaches, and narrative synthesis of outcomes. Based on the bibliometric analysis, the findings suggest that practice-based research on TLH’s educational outcomes is a neglected subfield within the academic field of TLH, with a lack of cumulative development across studies. The scoping review also showed a dominance of studies conducted with qualitative study designs. The narrative synthesis of outcomes showed that these studies provide important insights into how interventions within TLH impact students; nonetheless, these studies need to be supplemented with knowledge from quantitative studies. Without such knowledge, we have a knowledge gap that could imply that TLH interventions are implemented arbitrarily, that students do not learn the intended lessons, or that the lessons are not lasting.
Representations of Holocaust protagonists in history education in Polish primary schools under the rule of the Law and Justice party
Author(s): Stec, Katarzyna; Sadlik, Sylwia; Kucia, Marek
Date: 2024
Topics: Holocaust Education, Curriculum, Schools: Non-Jewish, Political Parties, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial
Abstract: This article examines how the ‘historical policy’ of the Law and Justice party influenced Holocaust education in Poland at the mandatory primary school level (7–14-year-olds). It analyzes the party’s programs vis-à-vis the Holocaust and the representations of Holocaust protagonists – perpetrators, victims, and others – in the history core curriculum, history textbooks, and teaching practice as presented by teachers in interviews. The analysis shows that the representations of Holocaust protagonists in Polish primary school history education are considerably influenced by the nationalist approach originating from the ruling party's ‘historical policy’ and stressing the salvation of Jews from the Holocaust by Poles.
Nurturing the pain: audiovisual tributes to the Holocaust on YouTube
Author(s): Makhortykh, Mykola
Date: 2019
Topics: Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Memorials, Social Media, Internet, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory, Russian-Speaking Jews
Abstract: This article examines how digital technology interacts with Holocaust remembrance in post-socialist countries. Using the Lviv pogrom of 1941 as a case study, it explores how Russophone and Ukrainophone web users engage with audiovisual tributes to this event on YouTube. The article scrutinizes user engagement with Holocaust memory on two levels: the level of representation (how the pogrom is represented on YouTube) and the level of interaction (how users interact with tributes to the pogrom). The article suggest that digital media can democratize existing memory practices, but it does not necessarily lead to more pluralist views on the past.
Creating a youth ambassador: a critical study of a Swedish project on teaching and learning about the Holocaust
Author(s): Flennegård, Ola
Date: 2024
Topics: Holocaust Education, Holocaust Memorials, Holocaust Commemoration, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Students, Educational Tours
Abstract: This article focuses on a project within the government-supported Swedish Committee Against Antisemitism program. To our knowledge, this is the first study to employ full-project interviews and participant observations to explore Swedish study trips to Holocaust memorial sites. It applies the educational concepts of qualification, socialization, and person-formation inspired by educational theorist Gert Biesta. Students acquired qualified concepts regarding the Holocaust's ‘what' and ‘why’ dimensions. However, findings indicate that attention should be paid to how external organizers risk narrowing the potentials of education about the Holocaust due to a lack of preexisting relations among students, and between educators and students.
Holocaust memory and political legitimacy in contemporary Europe
Author(s): Subotić, Jelena
Date: 2023
Topics: Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Memorials, Holocaust, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory, Politics, Post-1989
Abstract: This article analyzes how Holocaust memory serves to consolidate political legitimacy in contemporary Europe. In the aftermath of communism, post-communist states performatively adopted the established Western memory canon while rejecting much of its focus on the uniqueness of Jewish suffering. Instead, they refocused the gaze on the suffering of non-Jewish national majorities. This approach provided cover and protection to Western governments, which have been reluctant to seriously address national mythologies that emphasize resistance and downplay complicity and collaboration in the Holocaust. Holocaust memory became decoupled from the Holocaust and is better understood through the prism of contemporary European politics.
Polticized memory in Poland: anti-communism and the Holocaust
Author(s): Korycki, Kate
Date: 2019
Topics: Antisemitism, Communism, Holocaust, Holocaust Commemoration, Jewish - Non - Jewish Relations, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory
Abstract: In this article, I trace how political and intellectual elites in contemporary Poland weave the stories of the recent past, paying particular attention to narratives of Polish-Jewish relations and imbrications with communism. I first outline the three main narrations of the past and identify their divergent themes; I then specify their consonant and similar motifs. I demonstrate that despite differences, all major political actors conflate communism with Jewishness and circulate the myth of Żydokomuna. In so doing, they discursively establish the symmetry of suffering between the groups, and they affect the way contemporary Poles remember the Holocaust.
‘Millions of Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Jews, People of All Ethnicities’: teaching and remembering the Holocaust in Russian schools
Author(s): Konkka, Olga
Date: 2023
Topics: Holocaust Education, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Schools: Seconday / High Schools
Abstract: The article investigates how the history of the Holocaust is taught and remembered within Russian secondary education. It questions the accuracy and ‘cosmopolitan’ character of this memory in various discourses produced in and for schools. The first part analyses how the persecution and annihilation of Jews by the Nazis is presented in history curricula and textbooks. The second part explores discourses within different extracurricular activities such as students’ research projects, school museums, and commemorative ceremonies. The article argues that the narrative of the Holocaust is often incomplete because it doesn’t fit into the ‘master narrative’ of the Great Patriotic War.
Public and private memory: teaching the Holocaust in French classrooms
Author(s): Mann, Heather
Date: 2022
Topics: Holocaust Education, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory, Oral History and Biography, Interviews
Abstract: History teachers are unique in their practice of memory, for they have opted, whether consciously or unconsciously, for a profession which advances a collective understanding of the past. This article explores teachers’ intergenerational memories of the Holocaust and the Second World War in France, analysing how these influenced the way in which teachers approached these histories in their classrooms. Through ‘life history’ interviews conducted with teachers in France in 2018, it asks whether teachers found personal or family histories to be “useful” in the classroom, or whether they remained silent or hidden.
Memories of the Holocaust: Slovak bystanders
Author(s): Vrzgulová, Monika
Date: 2017
Topics: Holocaust, Holocaust Commemoration, Attitudes to Jews, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Oral History and Biography, Memory
Abstract: This study focuses on the way witnesses of historical events communicate their past experiences – how and what they choose to recall. By acknowledging the role of subjectivity in the recollections, it represents an addition to the existing body of predominantly historical works on the Holocaust in Slovakia. The study recognizes that subjectivity is present on the microlevel of every society and thus influences how witnesses remember historical events. Narratives analyzed within this study also suggest the diversity of memory and recollection – a factor which needs to be appreciated in further research of life under both authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. It is this diversity that allows us to go beyond stereotypical interpretations of the past and the role of actors – be it “victims,” “perpetrators,” or “bystanders” – in historical processes.
The second life of Jewish belongings–Jewish personal objects and their afterlives in the Polish and Belarusian post-Holocaust shtetls
Author(s): Waligórska, Magdalena; Sorkina, Ina
Date: 2022
Topics: Artefacts and Material Culture, Attitudes to Jews, Holocaust, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory
Abstract: This article examines the ways in which Jewish personal belongings that have been appropriated by gentiles during, and in the aftermath of, the Holocaust have been identified, demanded back, passed down from generation to generation, and commodified. Focusing on Biłgoraj and Izbica (Poland), and Mir and Iŭje (Belarus), our objective is to determine whether the Jewish identity of personal belongings appropriated by local non-Jewish communities during, or in the aftermath of, ‘Holocaust by bullets,’ survived in the postwar communities in which they have been circulating, and define what role they played for the postwar relations between Jews and non-Jews.
Victims, Perpetrators, Bystanders? Witnessing, Remembering and the Ethics of Representation in Museums of the Holocaust
Author(s): Holtschneider, K. Hannah
Date: 2007
Topics: Holocaust Education, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Museums, Photography
Abstract: Intersecting discourses situated in historiography, museum studies, education, trauma theory and photography, this article explores the possibilities and ethics of making sense of representations of the Holocaust in the Imperial War Museum London. The argument challenges assumptions about learning, witnessing and memorialising in Holocaust museums and explores ethical implications of the deployment of visual evidence of the Holocaust for educational purposes. Rather than providing answers to these challenges, the article seeks to initiate further interrogation of learning strategies in Holocaust exhibitions through the engagement of different academic disciplines in an interdisciplinary context.
Remembering Jews in Poland: the encounter between Warsaw’ s POLIN Museum and rural memories of Jewish absence – divergent aims and needs
Author(s): Kubica, Aleksandra; Van de Putte, Thomas
Date: 2019
Topics: Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust, Holocaust Memorials, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory, Museums, Rural and Small Town
Abstract: The POLIN Museum runs a traveling exhibition (Museum on Wheels) which has visited places in rural Poland since 2014. The exhibition’s aim is to teach about ‘the centuries of coexistence of Jewish and Polish culture.’ The Holocaust is one of the elements presented but is not central. Our content and lexicometric analysis of interviews with visitors from five towns visited by MoW in 2015 and 2016 indicates that the needs articulated by visitors differed from POLIN’s agenda. We show that the Holocaust and Jewish absence in the rural Poland of the present were the most prominent topics appearing, not the continuity of Jewish life and culture. Although it was not its central aim, the three days visit of MoW has created opportunities for local communities to address the void left after the Holocaust. For our analysis, we traced the museum’s discourse on the one hand and the ‘discourse of absence’ of the visitors on the other hand on the basis of keywords. From these two sets of keywords, we quantitatively mapped the prominence of both discourse and combined it with a more qualitative content analysis of specific segments of the interviews of which our corpus is composed.
The Holocaust memory in Mszana Dolna – local involvement in the commemoration and educational programs
Author(s): Wloszycka, Malgorzata (Malgosia)
Date: 2019
Topics: Holocaust, Holocaust Education, Holocaust Commemoration, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory, Oral History and Biography, Attitudes to Jews, Youth
Abstract: This paper examines how the contemporary community of Mszana Dolna, a town in southern Poland, deals with the memory of the Holocaust and the local Jewish community. The town, a place of a massacre of almost 1000 Jews in August 1942, rediscovered its Jewish heritage at the beginning of the 2000s through two main activities. One is the local commemoration of the shooting of Jews of Mszana. The other is the local schools’ involvement in the educational programs on the history and culture of Polish Jews. The article explores how the memory of Jews in Mszana evolved through the last two decades and the impact it had on the community of the town.
‘Proud to be British; and proud to be Jewish’: the holocaust and British values in the twenty-first century
Author(s): Critchell, Kara
Date: 2020
Topics: Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Survivors, Holocaust Education, Attitudes to Jews, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, National Identity
Abstract: As we approach the post-witness era this paper investigates the changing role of the Holocaust and Holocaust survivors in twenty-first century British politics and culture. In the first part, the article discusses the ways in which, through their role in educational initiatives and commemorative culture, survivors have acquired an increased visibility in British understandings of the Holocaust. For a significant period of time, this process was characterized by a tendency to abstract survivors from their Jewish identities to ensure that they could more easily act as mediators of a universalized, yet highly domesticated, Holocaust narrative with meanings for contemporary British society. However, in the second part the article will argue that, starting from the second decade of the twenty-first century, it is also possible to discern an increasing acknowledgement of British Holocaust survivors’ ‘difference.’ It will be suggested that British politicians have attempted to mobilize survivors, the Anglo-Jewish community they are seen to represent, and the Holocaust more in general, in Britain’s domestic battle against Islamic extremism and in the pursuit of the rather elusive concept of ‘British values.’
Intercultural Legacies of the International Task Force: Lithuania and the British at the turn of the Millennium
Author(s): Allwork, Larissa
Date: 2015
Topics: Holocaust Memorials, Holocaust Commemoration, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial
Abstract: In the first 15 years following the collapse of Communism, and among pre-existing national and local efforts, there were also a number of international collaborative attempts to draw renewed attention to the memory of the genocide of the Jews in Lithuania during the Second World War. These efforts included the establishment of an ITF British/Lithuanian ‘Liaison Project’ (2000–03) as part of the work of the Task Force for International Co-operation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research (ITF, which has been renamed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance [IHRA] in 2013). It will be argued that the British/Lithuanian ‘Liaison Project’ offers an example of intercultural memory work which enriches and nuances the research of scholars such as Tony Judt, Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider. This is because the British/Lithuanian ‘Liaison Project’ can be interpreted in terms of British and Lithuanian political, cultural and foreign policies in relation to Europe and the memorialisation of genocides in the global arena at the turn of the millennium.
The Holocaust in the National Curriculum After 25 Years
Author(s): Pearce, Andy
Date: 2017
Topics: Holocaust Education, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Curriculum
Abstract: This article provides a historical overview of the position of the Holocaust within the National Curriculum since 1991. Through close analysis of the five iterations of the curriculum, it traces changes and continuities in how teaching and learning about the Holocaust has been stipulated by successive governments. By contextualizing these with reference to shifts in England’s Holocaust culture, it is shown that the National Curriculum has acted as a fulcrum for the evolution of Holocaust consciousness. However, it is also argued that many of the faults and failures, challenges and shortcomings within the National Curriculum are symbiotic and closely entwined with wider issues in Britain’s Holocaust culture.
The uses and the abuses of education about the Holocaust in Poland after 1989
Author(s): Ambrosewicz-Jacobs, Jolanta
Date: 2019
Topics: Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust, Holocaust Education, Holocaust Memorials, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial
Abstract: New historiography of the Holocaust, revealing the dark pages of national histories, stained with the facts of group and individual collaboration with Nazi Germany, makes the Polish state (like some others: Ukraine, Baltic states, Hungary), national groups, and individuals, feel uncomfortable. Disparities have grown between Holocaust research and education elsewhere but it was only Poland that passed a law which attempted to redefine Polish collective identity with reference to attitudes toward Jews during the Holocaust. This article investigates challenges of education about the Holocaust in Poland, including post-1989 strategies and initiatives in the context of post-memory of the Shoah.
The Development of Holocaust Consciousness in Contemporary Britain, 1979–2001
Author(s): Pearce, Andy
Date: 2008
Topics: Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Memorials, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial
Abstract: This paper seeks to summarise how history and memory of the Holocaust has evolved in Britain from the late 1970s to the creation of Holocaust Memorial Day in 2000. Through reconstructing events and turning points, the paper demonstrates the development of British Holocaust consciousness while also placing it within a broader international context. It is argued that Holocaust Memorial Day marked the apex of a complex process but did not herald the end of British ‘memory-work’; indeed, it is suggested that there is a pressing need to reconsider how the day was created and continues to function.
Remembering the Holocaust on the fault lines of East and West-European memorial cultures: the new memorial complex in Trastsianets, Belarus
Author(s): Waligórska, Magdalena
Date: 2017
Topics: Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Holocaust Memorials, Memory, National Identity
Abstract: The article addresses the emerging memorial spaces on the fault lines of the post-Soviet and Western memorial cultures. Taking as a case study the Memorial Complex in Trastsianets, located on the fourth biggest site of Nazi mass killing in Europe, it analyses the way Belarus revisits its memorial paradigms and factors the Holocaust into its national narrative. Looking at the political underpinnings of the project, rivaling artistic visions and the transnational diplomatic efforts involved, the article examines how different stakeholders negotiate the symbolic significance and material appearance of this major but little known Eastern European Holocaust site.
“Romantic Auschwitz”: examples and perceptions of contemporary visitor photography at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum
Author(s): Dalziel, Imogen
Date: 2016
Topics: Holocaust Memorials, Holocaust Commemoration, Jewish Museums, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial
Abstract: Visitor photography at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum is becoming increasingly popular in the age of the Internet, social media and digitalization. People visit the Auschwitz Museum for a number of reasons, and their motivations for taking photographs at the site also vary. Several of the primary reasons to photograph Auschwitz given by the sixteen participants in this study will be explored in this paper. The ethical dilemma surrounding the taking of ‘selfies’ will also be considered.
The concentration camp brothels in memory
Author(s): Bogue, Nicole
Date: 2016
Topics: Holocaust Memorials, Holocaust Commemoration, Jewish Museums, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial
Abstract: This paper examines the differing representations of the history of concentration camp brothels. It examines how two specific sites of memory, Ravensbrück Gedenkstätte and Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum have taken dichotomous approaches in whether to explore this difficult and marginal experiences of around two hundred women who were forced to serve in prisoner camp brothels. Building on research visits to both sites in 2013, it evaluates and argues that differing national sensitivities, roles the topographies play in memory and history and the pressures of visitor numbers to the sites are fundamental in these juxtaposing representations.
‘We became British aliens’: Kindertransport refugees narrating the discovery of their parents’ fates
Author(s): McDonald, Chad
Date: 2018
Topics: Holocaust Survivors, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory, Oral History and Biography
Abstract: This article utilizes a thick description to explore the post-war lives of Kindertransport refugees. In particular, it examines the spatial dimension of discovery: how the Kinder learnt of their parents’ murders or were reunited with them following years of separation. The article argues that distance and proximity are key to how the Kinder frame these difficult memories. While the parents may be absent in the public memorials dedicated to a redemptive portrayal of the scheme, they are certainly present within the Kinder’s own narratives. And it is these narratives we need to be more attuned to.
Arts of witness or Awkward objects? Vernacular art as a source base for ‘bystander’ Holocaust memory in Poland
Author(s): Lehrer, Erica; Sendyka, Roma
Date: 2019
Topics: Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Memory, Holocaust Commemoration, Holocaust Memorials, Holocaust, Anthropology, Artefacts and Material Culture, Folklore
Abstract: Based on preliminary research, we ask what insights can be gleaned about Polish Holocaust memory and testimony by examining the prolific art made by Polish ‘folk’ artists, via a range of disciplinary approaches. What can art history, visual culture studies, oral history, anthropology, memory studies, and museum studies tell us about the motivations, functions, and ethical implications of such works? Can they be considered acts of witness? Broadly, our text considers the status of ‘art naïve’ in the contexts of Holocaust representation, ethnographic museology, and bystander testimony.