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An Inconvenient Past: Post-Communist Holocaust Memorialization
- Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies
- Purdue University Press
- Volume 29, Number 1, Fall 2010
- pp. 73-94
- 10.1353/sho.2010.0093
- Article
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This article examines the difficulties faced by three Eastern European countries in commemorating the Holocaust in the post-Communist era. Since 1989, many of these countries have sought to fashion new national identities by looking to their pre-Communist past. In the case of Slovakia and Hungary, however, their pre-Communist predecessors were Nazi allies, and while Poland never collaborated with Nazi Germany, the Home Army had a difficult and complicated relationship with Jews and Jewish underground organizations. I identify three basic approaches taken by these countries' memorials regarding the fate of their Jewish communities during the war: aphasia (an unwillingness to speak about the Holocaust), "deflective negationism" (shifting blame to others), and finally, an open examination of the Holocaust.