Bringing the Dark Past to Light

The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe

John-Paul Himka, Joanna Beata Michlic

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780803225442
• eBook ISBN: 9781496210203
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Eastern European History
• Index: History

Despite the Holocaust's profound impact on the history of Eastern Europe, the communist regimes successfully repressed public discourse about and memory of this tragedy. Since the collapse of communism in 1989, however, this has changed. Not only has a wealth of archival sources become available, but there have also been oral history projects and interviews recording the testimonies of eyewitnesses who experienced the Holocaust as children and young adults. Recent political, social, and cultural developments have facilitated a more nuanced and complex understanding of the continuities and discontinuities in representations of the Holocaust. People are beginning to realize the significant role that memory of Holocaust plays in contemporary discussions of national identity in Eastern Europe.

This volume of original essays explores the memory of the Holocaust and the Jewish past in postcommunist Eastern Europe. Devoting space to every postcommunist country, the essays in Bringing the Dark Past to Light explore how the memory of the "dark pasts" of Eastern European nations is being recollected and reworked. In addition, it examines how this memory shapes the collective identities and the social identity of ethnic and national minorities. Memory of the Holocaust has practical implications regarding the current development of national cultures and international relationships.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. “Our Conscience Is Clean”: Albanian Elites and the Memory of the Holocaust in Postsocialist Albania
• 2. The Invisible Genocide: The Holocaust in Belarus
• 3. Contemporary Responses to the Holocaust in Bosnia and Herzegovina
• 4. Debating the Fate of Bulgarian Jews during World War II
• 5. Representations of the Holocaust and Historical Debates in Croatia since 1989
• 6. The Sheep of Lidice: The Holocaust and the Construction of Czech National History
• 7. Victim of History: Perceptions of the Holocaust in Estonia
• 8. Holocaust Remembrance in the German Democratic Republic—and Beyond
• 9. The Memory of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Hungary
• 10. The Transformation of Holocaust Memory in Post-Soviet Latvia
• 11. Conflicting Memories: The Reception of the Holocaust in Lithuania
• 12. The Combined Legacies of the “Jewish Question” and the “Macedonian Question”
• 13. Public Discourses on the Holocaust in Moldova: Justification, Instrumentalization, and Mourning
• 14. The Memory of the Holocaust in Post-1989 Poland: Renewal—Its Accomplishments and Its Powerlessness
• 15. Public Perceptions of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Romania
• 16. The Reception of the Holocaust in Russia: Silence, Conspiracy, and Glimpses of Light
• 17. Between Marginalization and Instrumentalization: Holocaust Memory in Serbia since the Late 1980s
• 18. The “Unmasterable Past”? The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Slovakia
• 19. On the Periphery: Jews, Slovenes, and the Memory of the Holocaust
• 20. The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Ukraine
• Conclusion
• Contributors
• Index