A "Grammar of Exculpation" in Communist Historiography: Distortion of the History of the Holocaust under Ceausescu
A "Grammar of Exculpation" in Communist Historiography: Distortion of the History of the Holocaust under Ceausescu

Summary/Abstract: This aim of this article is to show how the history of the Holocaust was distorted by communist historiography during the Ceausescu regime in Romania. To this aim, the author conducts a content analysis on a representative sample of history books published in Romania during the 1970s and the 1980s and examines the main patterns of the communist discourse regarding the Holocaust, fascism and the Antonescu regime. On the basis of this analysis the paper concludes that historiography was strictly controlled at that time and that the RCP ideological blueprint prevailed over science, while historiography was used to illustrate Romania's self-victimization and serve the political enterprises of different communist regimes in an attempt to deny Romanian participation in the Holocaust. At the same time, the author argues that post-communist Romanian negationism has roots in this communist historiography on the Holocaust.

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