Invoking the “Yolocaust”?

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 92-111
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Political Correctness ◽  
National Context ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nazi Past

The present study understands comedy in relation to the Holocaust as an attempt by Germany’s third and fourth generations to create alternative forms of commemoration. Analyzing the country’s history of coming to terms with the Shoah, it highlights that recent forms of subversive satire are reacting to a crystallization in official memory politics through counter-discourse to political correctness and the defenders of moralism. The article finds that it is possible to combine comedy and Holocaust memory if Jewish victimhood is not spoofed and the limitations of official memory politics are debunked. Finally, it contends that not every historical assessment based on a local/national context can serve as a global blueprint. The recognition of national historical guilt and the establishment of distinct collective memories are still crucial for understanding specific pasts. Accordingly, German popular culture referring to the Nazi past differs from u.s. comedy dealing with the Holocaust.

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.

scholarly journals The reconfiguration of the European Archive in contemporary German-Jewish migrant-literature

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-54
Author(s):  
Jessica Ortner
Keyword(s):  
European Archive ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Migrant Literature ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Political Concern ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Mass Shooting ◽  
History Of ◽  
German Jewish

A considerable number of Eastern European migrant authors of Jewish origin are currently lifting Holocaust memory to a new level. Writing in German about events taking place in remote areas of the world, they expand the German framework of memory from a national to a transnational one. By partaking in reconsidering what is ‘vital for a shared remembering’ of Europe, this branch of writing reflects the European Union’s political concern for integrating the memories of the socialistic regimes in European history writing without relativising the Holocaust. In Vielleicht Esther, Katja Petrowskaja consults various national and private archives in order to recount the history of the mass shooting of over 30,000 Ukrainian Jews at Babij Jar – a canyon near Kiev. Thus, she ‘carries’ a marginalised event of the Holocaust into the German framework of memory and uncovers the layers of amnesia that have not only concealed the event amongst the Soviet public but also distorted and for ever made inaccessible her family’s past.

The Work of Testimony in the Age of Decolonization: Chronicle of a Summer, Cinema Verité, and the Emergence of the Holocaust Survivor

PMLA ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 119 (5) ◽  
pp. 1231-1246
Author(s):  
Michael Rothberg
Keyword(s):  
Turning Point ◽  
Discrete Event ◽  
Holocaust Survivor ◽  
Algerian War ◽  
The Public ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
First Time

The trial of Adolf Eichmann, in 1961, is generally considered a turning point in the history of Holocaust memory because it brought the Holocaust into the public sphere for the first time as a discrete event on an international scale. In the same year, Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin's film Chronicle of a Summer appeared in France. While absent from scholarship on memory of the Nazi genocide for over forty years, Chronicle of a Summer contains a scene of Holocaust testimony that suggests the need to look beyond the Eichmann trial for alternative articulations of public Holocaust remembrance. This essay considers the juxtaposition in Chronicle of a Summer of Holocaust memory and the history of decolonization in order to rethink the “unique” place that the Holocaust has come to hold in discourses on extreme violence. The essay argues that a discourse of truth and testimony arose in French resistance to the Algerian war that shaped and was shaped by memory of the Nazi genocide.

scholarly journals The Holocaust in Lithuania: The Key Characteristics of Its History, and the Key Issues in Historiography and Cultural Memory

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 261-279
Author(s):  
Stanislovas Stasiulis
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
The West ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Key Characteristics ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Considerable Impact

This article is part of the special cluster titled Conceptualizations of the Holocaust in Germany, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine since the 1990s, guest edited by Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe. The Holocaust is the darkest page of Lithuanian history: Nearly the whole Jewish community in Lithuania was destroyed, while a part of ethnic Lithuanians participated in this destruction. This article discusses three layers and periods of the Holocaust in Lithuania that have made a considerable impact on the perception of this traumatic period in Lithuanian society. The first period deals with the Lithuanian–Jewish relations during the German occupation in Lithuania (1941–1944). The second one is related to the Soviet reoccupation of Lithuania and discussions among Lithuanian émigrés in the West (1944–1990), which shaped the history of the Holocaust in Lithuania from the ideological (Soviet) and defensive (Lithuanian émigré) perspectives. The final part of this article discusses the historiography and Holocaust memory in independent Lithuania after the 1990s. Almost thirty years of independence mark not only the re-creation of some old myths and stereotypes in Lithuania, but also new groundbreaking and open discussions in society, concerning the perception of this dark page of Lithuanian history.

scholarly journals ‘Our’ vs. ‘Inherited’ Museums. PiS and Fidesz as Mnemonic Warriors

Südosteuropa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ljiljana Radonić
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
Holocaust Memorial ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Polish Jews ◽  
Second World

AbstractThe Polish and the Hungarian governing party, PiS and Fidesz, are mnemonic warriors who had already tried to enforce their memory politics during their first government terms, as their flagship museums, the Warsaw Rising Museum, opened in 2004, and the House of Terror in Budapest, opened in 2002, show. In museums they ‘inherited’ from their predecessors, the current governments either change content, as PiS at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, or ‘only’ battle against the directors in office, as happened at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest. Yet even mnemonic warriors cannot ignore international developments like the ‘universalization of the Holocaust’. As the author shows, the Polish and the Hungarian governments favored opening new museums over changing existing museums identified as ‘Jewish’, including those that explicitly deal with Polish and Hungarian complicity. New museums, like the Ulma Family Museum in southeastern Poland, the House of Fates in Budapest, and the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, focus on rescuers of Jews and uplifting messages of Polish and Hungarian heroism.

scholarly journals „Nasze” i „odziedziczone” muzea – PiS i Fidesz jako mnemoniczni wojownicy

Teksty Drugie ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (2020) ◽  
pp. 129-154
Author(s):  
Ljiljana Radonić
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
Warsaw Ghetto ◽  
Holocaust Memorial ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Polish Jews ◽  
Second World

PiS and Fidesz are mnemonic warriors who tried to enforce their memory politics already during their first government terms – as the analysis of their flagship museums, the Warsaw Rising Museum and the House of Terror in Budapest shows. The current illiberal governments treat museums they ‘inherited’ from their predecessors differently: While PiS changes content at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews and the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest ‘only’ lost their directors. Even mnemonic warriors must take international developments like the ‘universalization of the Holocaust’ into consideration. Kaczyński and Orbán favored opening new museums rather than changing museums identified as ‘Jewish’, even those that explicitly deal with Polish and Hungarian complicity. New museums, like the Ulma Family Museum, the House of Fates in Budapest and the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, focus on rescuers of Jews and heroic uplifting messages.

scholarly journals ‘We’re equal to the Jews who were destroyed. [. . .] Compensate us, too’. An affective (un)remembering of Germany’s colonial past?

2021 ◽  
pp. 175069802110440
Author(s):  
Sahra Rausch
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
Memory Politics ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
Class Actions ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Over Time

Following the globalisation of Holocaust memory in the 1990s, references to National Socialist crimes turned into a practise initiated by postcolonial memory carriers to claim recognition and reparation for colonial crimes – often by taking legal steps to qualify colonial crime a crime against humanity. This article argues that the globalised Holocaust memory established a distinctive emotional order. Consequently, marginalised memory groups align with this order to find a voice in official memory politics. The article examines emotional discourses in the OvaHerero class actions against Germany filed in 2001. It shows how media coverage hindered the recognition of colonial crimes when compared with the Holocaust. However, a diachronic contrast with the analysis of the renewed lawsuit filed this time by representatives of the OvaHerero and the Nama in 2017 shows how emotional discourses changed over time and transformed both colonial and Holocaust memory.

Muranów als Ruine: Zeitschichten der Erinnerung im Nachkriegs-Warschau

Aschkenas ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Meng
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nazi Past ◽  
Over Time

AbstractIn 1945, Warsaw’s prewar Jewish district, Muranów, lay in ruins. Almost no physical sites of Warsaw’s once rich Jewish history remained standing after the Holocaust. How have the residents of Warsaw – mostly non-Jews – dealt with the memories of this obliterated and ruined space? This article discusses from 1945 to the present several important attempts among largely non-Jewish Poles to remember and reflect upon the history of Warsaw’s Jewish past in the district of Muranów. Even though the tendency has in general been to forget, efforts to remember the Nazi past have surfaced during the last decades. The essay therefore suggests that the postwar history of memory in Warsaw may be thought of not in linear terms but rather in terms of multiple layers of memories that interact in complex ways over time.

The Mastered Past? Collective Memory Trends in Germany since Unification

2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Langenbacher
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Unintended Consequences ◽  
Federal Republic Of Germany ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
The Past ◽  
Memory Work ◽  
Holocaust Memory ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Second Period

The Federal Republic of Germany—both before and after 1989—has been influenced deeply by collective memories of the Nazi period and the Holocaust, a seemingly "unmasterable past." In a first phase after unification, memory trends, which had their origin in the mid 1980s, continued, but a second period, beginning around the 1999 move of the capital back to Berlin, however, witnessed the erosion of this older trend and the delayed rise of new memory dynamics. Substantively, there have been three vectors of memory concerning Nazi crimes, German suffering, and the period of division, especially regarding the German Democratic Republic. In this article, I outline the major collective memory dynamics and debates, first from a qualitative and then from a more quantitative perspective where I analyze the holdings of the German National Library. I conclude that an intense period of memory work characterized the postunification years, but the peak of concern was reached several years ago and the German future will be much less beholden to the past. Given inevitable normalizing trends and the unintended consequences of the hegemony of Holocaust memory, Germany's difficult historical legacy increasingly appears to be disappearing or even mastered.

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