The Europeanization of Holocaust Memory and Eastern Europe

2016 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marek Kucia
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
European Countries ◽  
European Level ◽  
Council Of Europe ◽  
East European ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Process And Outcome ◽  
The Impact ◽  
And Diffusion

Drawing upon developments in cultural and social memory studies and Europeanization theory, this article examines the Europeanization of Holocaust memory understood as the process of construction, institutionalization, and diffusion of beliefs regarding the Holocaust and norms and rules regarding Holocaust remembrance and education at a transnational, European level since the 1990s and their incorporation in the countries of post-communist Eastern Europe, which is also the area where the Holocaust largely took place. The article identifies the transnational agents of the Europeanization of Holocaust memory—the European Union’s parliament, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and its Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, as well as the United Nations. It analyzes chronologically the key Holocaust-related activities and documents of these agents, highlighting East European countries’ varied and changing position towards them. It examines synchronically the outcome of the Europeanization of Holocaust memory by these transnational agents—a European memory of the Holocaust—identifying its key components, discussing the main aspects, and illustrating the impact of this process and outcome upon the memory of the Holocaust in the East European countries. The article argues that the Europeanization of Holocaust memory has significantly contributed to the development of Holocaust memory in Eastern Europe, although other agents and processes were also involved.

Yellow Star, Red Star

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelena Subotic
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Political Strategy ◽  
The European Union ◽  
World War ◽  
East European ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
New Strategies

This book asks why Holocaust memory continues to be so deeply troubled—ignored, appropriated, and obfuscated—throughout Eastern Europe, even though it was in those lands that most of the extermination campaign occurred. As part of accession to the European Union, the book shows, East European states were required to adopt, participate in, and contribute to the established Western narrative of the Holocaust. This requirement created anxiety and resentment in post-communist states: Holocaust memory replaced communist terror as the dominant narrative in Eastern Europe, focusing instead on predominantly Jewish suffering in World War II. Influencing the European Union's own memory politics and legislation in the process, post-communist states have attempted to reconcile these two memories by pursuing new strategies of Holocaust remembrance. The memory, symbols, and imagery of the Holocaust have been appropriated to represent crimes of communism. This book presents in-depth accounts of Holocaust remembrance practices in Serbia, Croatia, and Lithuania, and extends the discussion to other East European states. It demonstrates how countries of the region used Holocaust remembrance as a political strategy to resolve their insecurities about their identities, about their international status, and about their relationships with other international actors. As the book concludes, Holocaust memory in Eastern Europe has never been about the Holocaust or about the desire to remember the past, whether during communism or in its aftermath. Rather, it has been about managing national identities in a precarious and uncertain world.

scholarly journals On Becoming a Non-Jewish Holocaust Writer: Yann Martel’s Beatrice and Virgil

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Rachel F. Brenner
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Jewish Identity ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The World ◽  
Family Level ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Origins

To appraise Martel’s non-Jewish perspective of Holocaust thematic, it is important to assess it in the context of the Jewish relations with the Holocaust. Even though the Jewish claim to the uniqueness of the Holocaust has been disputed since the end of the war especially in Eastern Europe, the Jewish response determined to a large extent the reception of the disaster on the global scene. On a family level, the children of survivors have identified themselves as the legitimate heirs of the unknowable experience of their parents. On a collective level, the decree of Jewish annihilation constructed a Jewish identity that imposed an obligation to keep the Holocaust memory in the consciousness of the world. Martel proposes to supersede the history of the Holocaust with a story which would downplay the Jewish filiation with the Holocaust, elicit an affiliative response to the event of the non-Jewish writer and consequently integrate it into the memory of humanity at large. However, the Holocaust theme of Beatrice and Virgil refuses to assimilate within the general memory of humanity; rather, the consciousness of the event, which pervades the post-Holocaust world, insists on its constant presence. The omnipresence of the Holocaust blurs the distinctions between the filiative (Jewish) and affiliative (non-Jewish) attitudes toward the Jewish tragedy, gripping the writer in its transcendent horror. Disregarding his ethnic or religious origins, the Holocaust takes over the writer’s personal life and determines his story.

A major study on Ottoman architecture in Hungary

1982 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-73
Author(s):  
Géza Fehérvári
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
East European ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
The World ◽  
Ottoman Architecture ◽  
South Eastern Europe ◽  
Art And Architecture

Recent years have witnessed an increasing interest in Turkish art and architecture, an interest that embraces not only the monuments in Turkey proper but also those which were erected in south-eastern Europe during the Ottoman occupation. Thus a few years ago, when in conjunction with the World of Islam Festival a symposium was held in Edinburgh dedicated to Islam in the Balkans, the participants dealt with Islamic monuments in Bulgaria, Rumania, Greece and Yugoslavia. The Ottoman monuments of Hungary are admittedly not as numerous as those of these south-east European countries; nevertheless,they represent the achievements of a period which is justifiably called the ‘classical’ period in Ottoman art.

scholarly journals Is There the Holocaust without a Film Music? Analyzing a Croatian and a Serbian Film about the Holocaust

2017 ◽  
pp. 181-195
Author(s):  
Renata Jambrešić Kirin
Keyword(s):  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Film Music ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Socially Relevant ◽  
Historical Issues ◽  
The Impact

This article implies that the impact of cinematic fiction on the capability to imagine and comprehend the trauma of the Holocaust is formed at the intersection of aesthetic, moral, social and ideological frames in particular society. Cinema had a special role for the unification of the Holocaust memory since 1990. In the post-Yugoslav cinema two feature films (Lea and Darija, 2011 and When Day Breaks, 2012) represent the cinematic paradigm shift in dealing with the difficult heritage of the Holocaust in Croatia and Serbia following the break of communism. Although they suffer from apolitical approach to historical issues and mitigate the consequences of local collaboration with the Nazis, as well as take the child as „the figure of infantilization” of the Holocaust (Hirsch 2012), their influence on the “postmemory generation” and the pedagogy of trauma in the region is significant and socially relevant.

scholarly journals Back to the kitchen? Gender role attitudes in 13 East European countries

2010 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Éva Fodor ◽  
Anikó Balogh
Keyword(s):  
Gender Role ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Important Determinant ◽  
Gender Role Attitudes ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Opinion Formation ◽  
East European ◽  
Material Conditions

This paper explores the determinants of gender role opinions in 13 post-communist Eastern European societies using survey data from the project EUREQUAL. Our main findings consist of two parts. First, contrary to the expectations of scholars who emphasize the lack of gender/feminist consciousness in Eastern Europe, we argue that gender indeed is an important determinant of gender role opinions in post-communist societies: as elsewhere women express more liberal attitudes than men. Second, we argue that the interaction of other determinants of gender role opinions with gender also follows patterns described in the literature for more developed capitalist countries. In this respect, therefore, East European countries seem to fit the general trends of gender role opinion formation. As explanation we point to a connection between women’s material conditions and their gender role attitudes, not denying the importance of cultural difference – if primarily as exception – to this process. Zusammenfassung Dieser Artikel untersucht, auf Basis von Umfragedaten des EUREQUAL-Projektes, die Determinanten von Einstellungen zu Geschlechterrollen in 13 postkommunistischen osteuropäischen Gesellschaften. Unsere Hauptergebnisse bestehen aus zwei Teilen. Erstens: Wir legen dar, dass – entgegen den Erwartungen von Wissenschaftler(inne)n, die das Fehlen eines Gender- oder feministischen Bewusstseins betonen – dass Gender in postkommunistischen Gesellschaften tatsächlich eine wichtige Determinante der Meinungen über die Geschlechterrollen ist: Wie auch anderswo bringen Frauen liberalere Einstellungen als Männer zum Ausdruck. Zweitens: Wir argumentieren, dass die Interaktion anderer Determinanten der Meinungen zu den Geschlechterrollen mit Gender gleichfalls den Mustern folgt, die in der Literatur im Bezug auf weiter entwickelte kapitalistische Gesellschaften beschrieben werden. In dieser Hinsicht scheinen die osteuropäischen Gesellschaften sich den allgemeinen Trends der Herausbildung von Meinungen zu den Geschlechterrollen anzugleichen. Zur Erklärung verweisen wir auf den Zusammenhang zwischen den materiellen Lebensbedingungen von Frauen und ihren Einstellungen zu den Geschlechterrollen, ohne jedoch die Bedeutsamkeit kultureller Unterschiede – wenn sie auch eher Ausnahmen sind – abzustreiten.

scholarly journals Financialization and Income Inequality in Selected European Countries, 2004–2013

e-Finanse ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 20-32
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Golebiowski ◽  
Piotr Szczepankowski ◽  
Dorota Wisniewska
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Gini Coefficient ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
Value Added ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Total Employment ◽  
The Gini Coefficient ◽  
Synthetic Indicator ◽  
The Impact

Abstract The article examines the impact of financialization on income inequality between 2004 and 2013, through a panel analysis of seven European countries. Moreover, it attempts to examine differences in the perception of the phenomenon between the selected European countries belonging to the G-7 and countries from Central and Eastern Europe. The results demonstrate the existence of individual effects, which means that the level of inequality under examination is influenced predominantly by country-specific factors. The most significant correlation is noticeable between the level of unemployment and the degree of income inequality. An increase in unemployment is accompanied by a rise in the disproportions in the level of income that individual citizens have at their disposal whereas a decrease in the unemployment level contributes to an improvement of the GINI coefficient. Simultaneously, the results confirm the existence of significant correlations between the level of the GINI coefficient and such financialization indicators as the share of employment in finance in total employment and the contribution of the financial sector to total value added creation. The most prominent dependency was discovered when a constructed synthetic indicator was adopted as an indicator of financialization. At the same time, analysis of the synthetic country financialization indicator points to a conclusion that the level of financialization is higher in European countries belonging to the G-7 (especially Great Britain) than in countries from Central and Eastern Europe.

Memory Wars in the East European Frontier: In Search of Research Methodology

2021 ◽  
pp. 55-63
Author(s):  
Daniil A. Anikin ◽  
◽  
Andrey A. Linchenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
East European ◽  
German Model ◽  
Western European ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
Soviet Legacy ◽  
The Impact

Within the framework of this article, the theoretical and methodological framework of the philosophical interpretation of the concept “memory wars” was analyzed. In the context of criticism of allochronism and the project of the politics of time by B. Bevernage, as well as the concept of the frontier by F. Turner, the space-time aspects of the content of memory wars were comprehended. The use of Bevernage's ideas made it possible to explain the nature of modern memory wars in Europe. The origins of these wars are associated with an attempt to transfer the Western European project of “cosmopolitan” memory, in which Western Europe turns out to be a kind of a “referential” framework of historical modernity, to the countries of Eastern Europe after 1989. The uncritical use of Western European historical experience as a “reference” leads to a superficial copying of the politics of memory, which runs counter to the politics of the time in Eastern Europe. In Eastern Europe, the idea of two totalitarianisms is presented as a single and internally indistinguishable era, and the politics of modern post-socialist states are based on the idea of a radical spatio-temporal distancing from their recent past. The article analyzes the issue of the specifics of the Eastern European frontier, the conditions for its emergence and the impact on modern forms of implementation of the politics of memory. The frontier arises as a result of the collapse of the colonial empires and becomes a space of symbolic struggle, first between the USSR and Germany, and then between the socialist and capitalist blocs. The crisis of the globalist project of the politics of memory and the transfer of the German model of victimization to the territory of the Eastern European frontier leads to the competition of sacrificial narratives and the escalation of memorial conflicts, turning into full-fledged memory wars. The hybrid nature of the antagonistic politics of memory in the conditions of the frontier leads to the fact that not only the socialist past, but also the national trauma of individual states becomes the subject of memory wars. The increasing complexity of the mnemonic structure of the frontier is associated with the emergence of a number of unrecognized states, whose memory politics, in contrast to the national discourses of Eastern European states, is based on a synthesis of the Soviet legacy and individual elements of the imperial past.

scholarly journals Organic versus Conventional Farming—A Paradigm for the Sustainable Development of the European Countries

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 4279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia-Elena Cristache ◽  
Mariana Vuță ◽  
Erika Marin ◽  
Sorin-Iulian Cioacă ◽  
Mihai Vuţă
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Organic Farming ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Plant Protection ◽  
European Countries ◽  
European Level ◽  
Conventional Agriculture ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Agricultural Engineering ◽  
The Impact

Although organic farming is an important topic for society, at the European level there have been few achievements so far. Despite its constant increase, the demand for organic food in Europe is outweighing the development of this sector. As such, we aim to assess the interaction between conventional and organic agriculture, as well as their impact on the value of agricultural production at the European level. The main objective of this article is the assessment of the impact of organic farming, as compared with conventional agriculture, on sustainable development of European countries. Therefore, we used panel models based on data collected from the Eurostat database. We found that an increase of 1% of the organic farming areas will generate a contraction in agricultural production of 0.278%, whereas a 1% increase in the production of fertilizers would generate an increase of 0.260% in agriculture production. Moreover, an increase of 1% in the production of plant protection substances and in gross capital formation would generate increases of 0.1190% and 0.0933%, respectively, in agriculture production. The obtained results depend mainly on the characteristics of work on land, as some agricultural engineering methods (crop rotation, pest control, use of fertilizers etc.) influence productivity and production.

14. European Politics into the Future

2021 ◽  
pp. 256-269
Author(s):  
Catherine E. De Vries ◽  
Sara B. Hobolt ◽  
Sven-Oliver Proksch ◽  
Jonathan B. Slapin
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
European Countries ◽  
European Politics ◽  
Democratic Deficit ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
European Democracy ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Impact

This chapter explores recent changes in European politics and looks to the future for European democracy as it stands now. The chapter explores the ongoing political change that can be seen within European countries and also at the European Union (EU) level. It aims to highlight four important debates about the state of democracy in Europe. These are: the debates about the rise of political fragmentation and its consequences for democracy; democratic backsliding in central and eastern Europe; the impact of the United Kingdom leaving the EU on democracy; and the democratic deficit in EU politics.

The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union (Part 3)

2005 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Kramer
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Political System ◽  
Mikhail Gorbachev ◽  
East European ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
External Context ◽  
Final Segment ◽  
Extended Analysis ◽  
The Impact

This is the concluding part of a three-part article that discusses the transformation of Soviet-East European relations in the late 1980s and the impact of the sweeping changes in Eastern Europe on the Soviet Union. This final segment is divided into two main parts: First, it provides an extended analysis of the bitter public debate that erupted in the Soviet Union in 1990 and 1991 about the “loss” of Eastern Europe and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. The debate roiled the Soviet political system and fueled the hardline backlash against Mikhail Gorbachev. Second, this part of the article offers a concluding section that highlights the theoretical implications of the article as a whole. The article, as the conclusion shows, sheds light on recent literature concerning the diffusion of political innovations and the external context of democratization and political change.

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