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Daughters’ Stories: Family Memory and Generational Amnesia
- Oral History Review
- Oxford University Press
- Volume 36, Number 2, Summer/Fall 2009
- pp. 188-206
- Article
- Additional Information
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After World War II, most Bulgarian Jews emigrated legally to Israel. Those who stayed had to take part in the building of socialism and integrate in a monolithic “socialist nation.” Thereby they had to “forget” their ethnic identity (“aided” by the state in various ways) and to become Homo politicus rather than Homo ethnicus. Since 1990, a revival of Jewish identity has begun in Bulgaria. Here I explore how the women of three generations from the same family reinvent their Jewish identity in their life stories. Drawing on this particular case, I suggest an approach to the question of the interplay of individual and collective memory. I focus on family and generation as different types of collectivities influencing individual memories and self-actualizations.