Obstacles to the Integration of the Holocaust into Post-Communist East European Historical Narratives

Factors that have made it difficult for post-communist East European societies to integrate the Holocaust into their historical cultures include the communist heritage, which downplayed the specifically Jewish Holocaust; sensitivity to charges that a nation was complicit in the murder of the Jews; the framing of East European histories as national narratives into which it is difficult to incorporate the experience of other nations; the feeling that Jewish suffering is recognized, while that of other East Europeans is not; the positive re-evaluation of the interwar and wartime politics and culture after the collapse of communism; the survival and revival of anti-Semitism, with new inputs from the Middle East and from Western Holocaust deniers; the construction in the West of the Holocaust as a centrepiece of twentieth-century history; the influence of East European diasporas; the embedment of the discourse on the Holocaust in the political divide between nativists and Westernizers; the deployment of accusations of Holocaust collaboration as an instrument of foreign policy; and debate over the restitution of confiscated Jewish property. Often these factors come together into a reinforcing discursive structure. The essay’s conclusion suggests how to overcome these obstacles to the integration of the Holocaust into East European histories.     

Narratives of suffering among older Jewish women

This paper analyzes what 30 elderly Jewish women said about suffering. Their views must be understood in the larger context of Jewish culture in America. A fundamental question here concerns the degree to which the Holocaust, the ultimate in suffering for Jews, is used as a personal comparison for the suffering of these women. Relatively few mentioned the Holocaust in their personal narrative of suffering. Nevertheless, the Holocaust was always a silent presence in these narratives. Our data analysis found seven themes in the in the interview material about suffering. These are: (1) a general lack of direct reference to the Holocaust as the exemplar of personal suffering; (2) a focus on the need to survive; (3) the pervasiveness of disease-related pain and discomfort; (4); miserable life experiences; (5) reviewing life and encountering the end of life; (6) discrimination; and (7) suffering as a cultural construct.Most people experience suffering at some point in their lives. Some may outlive their suffering, but most never forget it. While suffering at any one time may be intense, some people may grow away from this experience, particularly when their minds are set on other things. Narratives of suffering can become important personal testimonies and, for Jews, collective testimony. Accessing narratives of suffering through interviewing or conversation brings such experiences to the surface, painful as they might be. Yet each retelling of such a story represents a victory of sorts, as the teller says, “I am still here.”In this paper we examine narratives of suffering among 30 elderly American Jewish women age 80 and above. Nearly all were born in the United States, but were the first or second generation to be born here. While the emphasis on Americanism and becoming an American was quite strong among these immigrant generations and their children, a symbolic connection to the old country was still maintained through cultural praxis.     

Staging Traumatic Memory: Competing Narratives of State Violence in Post-Communist Hungarian Museums

The article examines the way three contemporary Hungarian museums–the House of Terror Museum, the Jewish Museum and the Holocaust Memorial and Documentation Center–represent the history of the Holocaust and the history of Jewish/non-Jewish relations. Reflecting different political agendas, each of the three museums offers a different interpretation of how the Holocaust fits into the larger narrative of Hungary's 20th century history. The article argues that post-communist public memory has been constructed through debates about these histories. By analyzing the three museums' displays, narratives and the debates surrounding them, the article argues that Hungarian public discourse has yet to come to terms with the meaning and place of “Jewishness” (and the way it has informed “Hungarianness”) in modern Hungarian history. Despite the centrality of Jews and Jewish-non-Jewish relations to the museums' narratives, none are able to offer a clear definition of what “Jewishness” means and how it functioned at different times throughout the 20th century.     

The Representation of the Holocaust in the Soviet Press, 1941–1945

Abstract

The article presents the first in-depth examination of the representation of the Holocaust in the Soviet press during the period of its perpetration, 1941–1945. The article illustrates that alongside growing anti-Semitism, both among the population and the regime, Soviet journalists, primarily Il'ya Ehrenburg and Vasilii Grossman, reported on the suffering and murder of European Jewry. The article examines the Soviet presentation of Nazi racial theory and compares it to the representation of Nazi racial theory in the American and British press during the war. The article looks at the reasons behind Soviet press coverage of the Holocaust, such as the use of atrocities to motivate the people to fight. It also examines the way in which the Soviet press used the Nazi persecution of the Jewish population as a means of distinguishing the fascist and socialist systems and highlighting the equality of all peoples, which it claimed existed in the Soviet Union. The article examines the Soviet representation of the behaviour of the Jews under occupation, focusing on the three main attributes — resistance, dignity and the brotherhood of the peoples. In general, the article strives to illustrate that the Soviet press reported on the Holocaust during the war and recognized the racial nature of the Nazi persecution and extermination of European Jewry.     

THE HOLOCAUST AS RECURRING REALITY: VICTIMIZATION THEMES AND JEWISH AMERICAN ETHNIC IDENTITY FORMATION

Drawing on sociological studies that document the regularity through which marginalized ethnic groups construct an ethnic identity, this article examines identity formation in the Jewish American context. A content analysis of 100 short stories written between 1946 and 1995 demonstrates how victim-oriented identities are created out of the more mundane experiences of everyday life. These stories, which were intended for consumption by Jewish American readers, describe daily life within the Jewish American community and, with surprising regularity, bring issues of victimization into the imagined experience for their readers. In addition, the analysis shows how Jewish American short story writers present the Holocaust, victimization, and anti-Semitism as contributing heavily to the processes of identity formation within the community. The discussion of the data concludes by arguing that, as the Jewish American community becomes further removed from the events of World War II, the Holocaust is becoming a more salient recurrent reality in the formation of a Jewish American identity that is increasingly tied to issues of victimization.     

Making a Mormon?: Peacemaking in U.S. Press Coverage of the Mormon Baptism for the Dead

In the Mormon doctrine of posthumous baptism, people can be invited into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) community through baptism even after their death. When it was reported that the LDS had baptized Jewish Holocaust victims, this caused an uproar in the American Jewish community. The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Victims deemed the Mormon practice disrespectful and inappropriate. This study analyzes the news coverage of the negotiations between the group and the Mormon church. While such negotiations would typically be ripe for conflict-privileging coverage, news coverage of these negotiations actually emphasized peacemaking. Using the lens of narrative theory, this study found that, in reporting on negotiations between American Jews and Mormons, the press attempted to mend relations rather than emphasize conflict.     

A teacher and his students: child Holocaust testimonies from early postwar Polish Bytom

ABSTRACT

The document presented here was created in 1945 in Bytom, Poland. It contains testimonies by Holocaust survivor children collected and put down in a notebook by their survivor teacher, Shlomo Tsam, in the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust. The testimonies shed light on Jewish children's experience in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust, describing oppression, flight, and survival in the words of the weakest segment of Jewish communities – children. The testimonies provide raw data on the encounters between Jews and non-Jews in the territories in which the “Final Solution” was carried out. It is thus an important source contributing to the burgeoning research on the involvement of local populations in the murder of the Jews, on one hand, and in saving Jews, on the other. The creation of this document, one of several collections of Jewish survivor children's testimonies produced in the immediate postwar years, is also indicative of post-Holocaust Jewish sensibilities and concerns regarding surviving children.     

Jews in the News – Representations of Judaism and the Jewish Minority in the Norwegian Contemporary Press

This article provides an analysis of how Jewish rituals and Jews as a minority group are represented and debated in the Norwegian press: How is “news about the Jews” framed by the media? Which discourses dominate the debates? Are notions of what it “takes to be Norwegian” put forward in these cases? The article is also an analysis of Jewish voices in the press, and based on the fact that Jewish advocates refer to minority-based legal rights suggests that the Jewish minority benefits from the use of a broader international human rights discussion in the press. I claim that a multicultural discourse provides the Jewish minority with language that makes it possible to argue for cultural rights without referring to Jewishness; offering protection against a general fear of anti-Semitism.     

Mosaic identity and style: Phonological variation among Reform American Jews1

Scholars of American Judaism have argued that American Jews are losing their sense of a distinctive Jewish identity, and the cultural practices concomitant with that identity. This general attrition has resulted in what many label the mosaic identity of American Jews, whereby multiple group affiliations exist in tandem and in conflict. Utilizing a reworked framework of language style (based on Bell 1984 , 2001 ), I demonstrate how the claim that Jewish‐affiliated practice is compartmentalized and relegated only to specifically Jewish contexts is supported through an examination of the variable pronunciation of word‐final /t/. This paper illustrates the ways in which quantitative and qualitative analyses can work together to create a more developed picture of Reform American Judaism.     

“Peaceful coexistence?” Jewish and Muslim neighbors on the eve of the Holocaust

Before the Holocaust, Jews and Muslims lived in close proximity in the kresy (borderlands) of northeastern Poland. While an abundance of literature exists on Jewish-Christian relations in Poland, no scholarly comparison of the history of coexistence specifically between Jews and Muslims in this territory has previously been done. This article is the first to document the living situation of these two Abrahamic faith minorities in interwar Poland. In a handful of small villages and even larger towns, they traded together on the market square, Muslims bought their meat from the local Jewish shochet, the Jews received fresh vegetables from their Muslim neighbors, and they even celebrated certain religious holidays together. These stories complicate previous arguments of self-imposed minority separateness which argue that social interactions between Jews and non-Jews were uniformly minimal and superficial.     

Teaching the Holocaust in America's Schools: Some considerations for teachers 1

This paper examines a number of variables that teachers must consider before beginning a study of the Holocaust with their students. Since Holocaust education should look very different depending upon the grade level of the students, it discusses how these variables come into play for different grades, as well as theoretical considerations for teaching the Holocaust in the classroom. It traces the history of Holocaust education in America's schools, discusses major approaches to presenting the topic, and explores the connection between Holocaust education and the teaching of morality.     

IT'S IN MY GENES: Biological Discourse and Essentialist Views of Identity among Contemporary American Jews

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, an era when immigrant groups were seen as divisible into races with distinct physical and mental traits, American Jews thought of themselves as a race. In the post-Holocaust era, however, racial language was eschewed, and American Jews instead adapted terms such as "community" and "ethnicity." Our research on unsynagogued Jews and adult children of Jewish intermarriage, however, revealed that many contemporary Jews actually continue to employ an essentialist understanding of Jewishness that emphasizes the biological, genetic basis of their identities. Their reliance on ascribed characteristics as central to their identities in an era when the idea of a Jewish race has been debunked, and when most scholars eschew racial categorizations, is surprising and constitutes the analytic focus of this article.     

Keeping the Past Alive: Memories of Israeli Jews at the Turn of the Millennium

We asked in an open-ended way in 1999–2000 what national and world events Israeli Jews consider most important from the past 60 years. Ten events were identified as foremost, including three from the time of independence and one that was quite recent. All the major memories are associated with efforts of the state through commemorations and in other ways to create a unitary collective memory. Five social background variables help account for which events are mentioned as most important: birth cohort, education, gender, ethnic origin, and religiosity. Other specific factors such as personal Holocaust experience and voting preferences are also considered.     

The intricacies of education about the Holocaust in Poland. Ten years after the Jedwabne debate,what can Polish school students learn about the Holocaust in history classes?

In many European countries, disparities have grown between history and the memory of the Holocaust. Debates on Polish–Jewish relations during the Holocaust and empirical studies in the field of education reveal that there is a gap between research and education. The emphasis in this paper is on the content of new history textbooks published after the 2008 educational reforms in Poland.     

Contextualising Fred Wander’s The Seventh Well

Between East and West: The Jews of Moscow, Kiev and Minsk. Robert J. Brym with the assistance of Rozalina Ryvkina, The Jews of Moscow, Kiev and Minsk: Identity, Antisemitism, Emigration, edited and with an introduction by Howard Spier. London: Macmillan and New York: New York University Press, both in association with the Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1994. 142 pp. Tables. Appendices. Illus. Name Index. Subject Index. £35.00 hardcover; $30.00 hardcover; $18.50 paperback.

A Jewish Ambassador at the Kremlin Court. Mordechai Altshuler, Yitshak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski (eds.), Sovetskiye evrei pishut llye Erenburgu 1943–1966 (Soviet Jews Write to llya Ehrenburg 1943–1966). Jerusalem: The Centre for Research and Documentation of East‐European Jewry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, 1993. 539 pp. Bibl. Name and Subject Index. Paperback.

An Encouraging Start. Yakiv Suslensky, Spravzhni heroi: pro uchast hromadian Ukrainy u riatuvaniiyevreiv vid fashystskoho henotsydu (True Heroes: The Part Played by Ukrainian Citizens in Rescuing Jews from the Fascist Genocide). Ed. I. F. Kuras et al. Foreword by Leonid Kravchuk. Kiev: Tovarystvo ‘Ukraina’, 1993. 152 pp. Photographs. (Hromadiany Ukrainy—pravednyky svitu 1 (Ukrainian Citizens—Righteous of the World, Series, no. 1)). Paperback. Printrun 25,000. ISBN 5–87168–026–7.

The ‘Rational Core’ of Nazism. Ernst Nolte, Streitpunkte. Heutige und künftige Kontroversen um den Nafionalsozialismus. Berlin/Frankfurt (Main): Propyläen, 1993. 493 pp.

Volume on Hungarian Holocaust Updated. Randolph L. Braham, The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, revised and enlarged ed., 2 vols. New York: The Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and Boulder, Co: Social Science Monographs, 1994. 1,486 pp. Illus. Chronology. Index. $310.50; £155.00 hardcover. (Distributed by Columbia University Press.)

Gray Dawn or Swan Song?. Charles Hoffman, Gray Dawn: The Jews of Eastern Europe in the Post‐Communist Era. New York: HarperCollins, 1992. 349pp. Index. Selected bibliography. $25.00 hardcover.     

Teaching Black History after Obama

This article is a reflection on the teaching of black history after the Obama presidency and at the dawn of the Trump era. It is both an analysis of the state of the academic field and a primer on how to integrate the past few decades of scholarship in black history broadly across standard K-12 curriculum. It demonstrates the importance of theorizing black history as American history rather than just including African American content in US History courses and offers specific methods that can shift the narrative in this direction even within the confines of a more traditional telling of the American past. Finally, it situates the voluminous work of historians of the black past as critical interventions in pedagogy necessary to challenge today's unrelenting attacks on public education.     

Style and Language Use among Youth of the New Immigration: Formations of Race,Ethnicity, Gender,and Class in Everyday Practice

In this article I consider “style” as a linguistic and cultural concept that can demonstrate how identities performed through language use are linked to topics of central concern in studies of immigrant youth, including racial and ethnic formation, generational cohorts, acculturation, assimilation, and gender. I draw on anthropological and sociolinguistic approaches to style not generally considered in migration studies and present ethnographic data of two cliques of Desi (South Asian American) teens in a Northern California high school. I argue that analyses of youth style can substantially complicate assimilation frameworks by highlighting the ways in which young peoples' linguistic practices may not fit neatly into commonly used analytical categories of “immigrant” and “American.” Focusing on how political economy and local histories inform power and difference that shape migration experiences for youth, the article moves beyond routinely examined areas of heritage language retention and loss to analyze the significance of youth performances of heritage languages as well as English.     

Friends or Enemies?: Generational Politics in the Korean American Community in Los Angeles

This paper examines generational politics in the Korean American community in Los Angeles. After outlining how the Immigration Act of 1965 led to the acceleration of generational transition in the contemporary immigrant experience, the paper focuses its attention on the entry of the post-immigrant generation into Korean American community politics. Relying on interviews and case studies, the entry of the post-immigrant generation is examined both as a source of new political resources for community mobilization as well as a new source of intra-community conflict. As greater numbers of the post-immigrant generation reach adulthood and become active in political affairs, the issue of generational politics will play an increasingly important role for shaping not only the political developments in immigrant communities but also the broader politics of the American society.     

Culture and Language: Bilingualism in the German–Jewish Experience and Across Contexts

This paper argues for the inherent connection between language and culture in the therapeutic setting, which is illustrated using an example of a bilingual therapy. It examines the bilingual interaction between a German-speaking second-generation Holocaust survivor and a German-speaking analyst of German descent. By paying attention to the shifts between German and English, it is possible to see how the therapeutic process is grounded in the culture and language of its participants. Using a hermeneutic perspective, this paper suggests that culture and history are disclosed in language in ways that are often outside of conscious awareness. The intersubjective nature of bilingual therapy is demonstrated by the fact that both client and analyst are participants in the process of language shifting. The role of language and the function of culture is considered across therapeutic contexts.     

Deciphering a Mystery: Digital Technology and the Revelation of Handwritten Texts by Marcel Nadjari and Other Members of the Jewish Sonderkommando in Auschwitz-Birkenau

ABSTRACT

Jewish Sonderkommando's handwritten notes – found among the earth and ashes – are key documents of Holocaust history. But their degree of preservation is poor. Digital technology comes to the rescue to restore the legibility of these documents potentially lost to history. This article provides some examples of the successful application of image processing, which considerably increases the sharpness of the text. Special filters and approaches managed to increase by fourfold the number of pages from Marcel Nadjari's notes that could be read before. The deciphered fragments of Nadjari's notes not only allow us to better understand the meaning of the entire document, but also make a connection to another Nadjari text, thus yielding a new, much deeper, understanding of both the author himself, the particular fate of Greek Jews in the Holocaust, and also their role in the life and death of the Jewish Sonderkommando in Auschwitz–Birkenau.