Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe

18. The “Unmasterable Past”? The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Slovakia

549 nina pauloviþová 18. The “Unmasterable Past”? The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Slovakia European identity, based on the principle of “unity in difference,” represents a contested terrain of multiple discourses. The historical theme of the Holocaust stands out among these discourses as a common moral denominator that unifies Europeans concurrently on mental, emotional, and political platforms.1 The Holocaust’s powerful moral imperative is expected to guard modern society against ethnic hatred and overcome mutual suspicions and unconscious fears between the East and the West. Whereas the West looks at Eastern European history and memory as being “‘out of control,’ with tribal passions, blood feuds, and ‘primitive’ ethnic strife ‘threatening stability in Europe,’” the Eastern European perception of its own region’s history and memory yields the signs of victimization, amnesia, and nostalgia.2 This chapter aims to offer insight into the reception of the Holocaust within the context of the Slovak Republic’s transformation to democracy. Given the power of the Holocaust as a signifier of an all-embracing moral code behind the construction of “Europeanness ,” the reception of the Holocaust in Slovak society can be readily seen as a litmus test of the ability of the state to safeguard the fragile democratic system and curb extreme expressions of ethnic Slovak nationalism that exclude Jews and other minorities. The effort to rehabilitate the wartime Slovak state as a constitutive part of Slovak national identity implicitly invokes an attempt to belittle and relativize the Holocaust past in Slovakia. The representation of the Holocaust is mediated through various forms of memory politics. The nationalists’ “forgetting memory mode” passes over the crimes of the wartime Slovak state in silence while celebrating the achievements of the first Slo- 550 pauloviþová vak Republic. The integrationists’ mode of memory as resistance to an induced state of amnesia brings the crimes of the wartime Slovak state to public attention. But even the integrationists’ denunciation of wartime crimes can be seen to be a result of political maneuvering toward a more efficient integration of Slovakia into European Union structures rather than a sincere effort to come to terms with a problematic past on a moral plane. Finally, the recent public discourse in Slovakia also yields what German writer Günter Grass has described as the “disabled” mode of memory, that is, the uneven approach that focuses on the Holocaust of the Jews and neglects the Holocaust of the Roma.3 Deviation from the path to democracy, instability of the party system , and the rapid process of Europeanization represent key factors that distinguish Slovakia’s politics from its Central European neighbors such as the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary.4 It is generally agreed that the process of democratization in Slovakia took longer than in other countries of the region. Once the democratic forces of Mikuláš Dzurinda’s cabinet replaced Vladimír Meþiar’s gambling with postcommunist nationalism in 2002, Europeanization was carried out at a pace that stunned foreign observers. Slovakia entered the European Union enlargement in May 2004.5 For this reason, Christopher Lord and Erika Harris have pointed to the case of Slovakia as an example of the positive reaction of a small successor state to the external pressure of Europeanization. Yet the mere establishment of democratic institutions in Slovakia did not guarantee the stability of the democratization process. Particular streams in society strived to resurrect historical traditions, practices, and identities associated with the ethnic nationalism6 and clericalism of the historically controversial Slovak statehood of 1939–45. Not surprisingly, such attempts to resurrect the Hlinka-Tiso heritage often fell on fertile ground due to the weakness of domestic policy. A fragmented party system that now and then produces a new splinter political entity, lack of cohesion among the representatives of the Mikuláš Dzurinda’s center-right coalition,7 and general public fatigue with involvement in political developments represent the key features of the Slovak political scene of the postcommunist era. Slovak-Hungarian ethnic tension and the prejudicial treatment of Roma citizens have remained at the center of post-1989 internal developments of the state.8 The post-1989 reconstruction 18. The “Unmasterable Past”? 551 of identity propelled the institutionalized efforts to appropriate the memory of the nation. Traditional institutions such as Matica Slovensk á, the Slovak Academy of Sciences, and the newly established Nation’s Memory Institute molded the past into their own respective ideological casts...