Cum pot fi compromise studiile despre Holocaust. O analiză a volumului Holocaust Public Memory in Poscommunist Romania, publicată la Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2018
How to compromise research on the Holocaust. An analysis of the book Holocaust Public Memory in Poscommunist Romania, published by Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2018

Summary/Abstract: The article is a critical analysis of the book Holocaust Public Memory in Poscommunist Romania, Indiana University Press. I showed that the contributors to this book, all (with one exception) employees or collaborators of the „Elie Wiesel” Institute, use an ethnicitized and ideological approach in studying the Holocaust, that contrasts them relative to communist crimes. They ignore the issue and the relevance of the „political genocide”, and the consistent literature on this topic. I explained why the request, by a part of the Romanian intellectual elite, to give communist crimes an attention „symmetrical” to that offered Nazi crimes is not an expression of a “parochial viewpoint”, as the book suggests. I gave several examples that show that this approach has become a doctrine of European bodies. In the last part of the article I discuss the personal attacks by two of the contributors to the volume published by Indiana University Press. Arguing that the accusations leveled by the two, Alexandru Florian and Michael Shafir, are purely calumnious, I stress that the publishing house compromises its reputation by hosting such expressions contrary to professional deontology.

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