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The purpose of this volume of PUBLIC POLICY.bg is to draw attention to a topic that is usually considered primarily a matter of history. Thus, Holocaust remembrance is usually debated by historians. The study of this past is often in narrowly specialized academic units of Jewish studies or in Holocaust Studies Centers. Such academic structures exist in many universities around the world. They have long developed an extremely high level of expertise on this historical heritage. Conferences are held, exclusive publications appear in many languages. This autonomous scientific space is being reproduced and developed further. The problem, however, is that it remains relatively encapsulated and isolated within the narrow boundaries of experts on the subject. It can be said that the first problem that caused us to dedicate this issue of the Holocaust Remembrance Policy journal was the need to draw attention to the interdisciplinary nature of these studies and highlight the importance of horizontal links between different scientific fields in them.
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During the interwar period, the Jewish population of Bucharest lived in the so-called “Jewish Neighbourhood”. With the establishment of the communist regime, the very existence of the Jewish community living in Bucharest was threatened and it almost disappeared because of the urban reconfiguration and of the political decisions which determined the Jewish population to gradually leave the country. Although the physical evidence of this community was destroyed, its cultural memory is still preserved in various forms with literature being one of these. Born in the Jewish Neighbourhood and through his detailed descriptions of his life in the Bucharest ghetto, I. Peltz managed to transform his prose into an instrument for preserving the memory of this community which got lost as time passed by. The present paper aims to identify in three of I. Peltz’s novels, Calea Văcărești (1933), Foc în Hanul cu tei (1934) și Israel însângerat (1946), those elements which shape the cultural profile of the Jewish community living in Bucharest before and during the interwar period. In addition, it investigates to what extent the cultural memory of a minority community manages to become an integral part of the national cultural memory by following the way in which I. Peltz’s literature succeed to enter and position itself within the Romanian literary canon. The purpose of this article is to draw the attention on the cultural and political practices used to control the process of formation of the national cultural memory. It is important to point out that these practices had almost entirely promoted the cultural identity belonging to the majority.
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The memory of the Holocaust in Romania (i.e. the participation of the Romanian authorities in the atrocious crime of the Holocaust) was distorted and occulted in the Romanian public consciousness after the end of the Second World War. It was only in the last two decades, more precisely after the public debates initiated by the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, chaired by Elie Wiesel, and especially after the publication of the Final Report (2004), that the Romanian authorities’ accountability for the Holocaust timidly penetrated the public discourse. However, this memorial recovery has had only a minor impact, limited to only a few academic discursive communities. As a marginal part of the memory generated by the ruptures of recent history, the traumatic memory of the Holocaust in Romania remains to be recovered in the Romanian public discourse. One of the writers fully dedicated to this recovery process is Cătălin Mihuleac, who in two recent novels, America over the pogrom (2014) and Deborah (2019), fictionally reconstructs two major traumatic events of the Holocaust in Romania: the Iași Pogrom (1941) and the deportation of the Romanian Jews in Transnistria. Using as a theoretical framework the notions of postmemory (Hirsch 2012) and prosthetic memory (Landsberg 2004), this paper analyzes these two novels, trying to show their importance as an act of a recent “memorial atonement” in the Romanian culture.
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The quantitative and qualitative participation of communist Jews in the power apparatus of “People’s Poland” was exceptionally large, and in some segments (the central party apparatus, secret police, propaganda) even dominating. Jewish minority enjoyed autonomy and relative privileges in Poland. It was in fact a mapping of the situation from the Soviet Union of the twenties. The purpose of this article is to summarise the results of research on the involvement of Jews in the apparatus of communist authorities in Poland so far, based on scientific and source publications, and partly the author’s own research in this area. The article reminds us of the myth of “Judeo-Communism” (żydokomuna) in the power apparatus of “People’s Poland”, where it came from and what was its influence on anti-Semitic attitudes in Polish society. Next, the number and influence of Jews in the structures of the communist authorities in the Stalinist period and in the times of Gomułka is characterised with particular emphasis on the security apparatus. It also looks into the reasons for such involvement of Jewish on the communist side and their promotion in the power apparatus, and the problem of their national identity. The article is an attempt to verify the myth, i.e. to determine how much it coincided with reality.
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The aim of the study. The article describes peculiarities of the formation processes of the Russian-Jewish intellectuals in the second half of the XIX - early XX centuries identifies socio-psychological factors of these processes. Research methods: identity theory is used to analyze the contradictory way of assimilation and emancipation of Jews in the Russian Empire; substantiation of the phenomenon of revolution, opposition and political activity of representatives of the Russian-Jewish intellectuals; the origins of the revolutionary movement in the Russian Empire, as well as the place and role of Jews in the modernization of late imperial Russia. Scientific novelty. For the first time, it was used the theory of identity in the study of the social and cultural phenomenon of the Russian-Jewish intellectuals, highlighting the factors that influenced the peculiarities of its formation and development in the second half of the XIX–early XX century. in the Russian Empire and hypothesized a crisis of identity of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia, one of the consequences of which was the revolution of radical Russian-Jewish intellectuals. Conclusions. It has been proved, that the development of the revolutionary nature of some of the Russian-Jewish intelligent people (“assimilants”) was influenced by the social and cultural values of Gaskali, the peculiarities of the social consciousness of the Russian intelligentsia, anti-Semitism, and the situation of non-authentic Jews.
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Review of: Piotr Filipkowski - Piotr M.A. Cywiński, Auschwitz. Monografia Człowieka; Oświęcim: Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau, 2021, 584 s.
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By combining microhistorical and regional approaches with theoretical findings from fascism, Holocaust, and genocide studies, this chapter examines the interaction between the Nazi, Ustaša and Arrow Cross movements in the city of Osijek. By analyzing the ideologies and praxis of the three fascist movements, this paper demonstrates that the future they wanted to build remained vague, contested, and contradictory despite many shared goals and enemies. Instead of bringing the three fascist movements together, antisemitism became a tool of competitive nation-building which contributed to the failure to create a genuinely transnational fascist front in a single city. Determining the pace of genocidal destruction became an instrument in the competitive fascist-elite-building. By relying on the concept of “genocidal consolidation”, this chapter argues that the Holocaust in Osijek became one of the primary means in the attempted consolidation of power by one fascist group at the expense of the other. Attempts to neutralize rival fascist elites in the struggle for political dominance on the regional level brought unintended consequences of significantly delaying the deportations of Jews of Osijek compared to the cities in the Independent State of Croatia.
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Review of Mirjana Kasapović - Ivo Goldstein, ANTISEMITIZAM U HRVATSKOJ OD SREDNJEGA VIJEKA DO DANAS, Fraktura i Židovska vjerska zajednica "Bet Israel" u Hrvatskoj, Zaprešić i Zagreb, 2022., 632 str.
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Stationed in Iași during the Pogrom of 1941, later advancing into Bessarabia and crossing the Dniester River towards Odessa, the 14th Infantry Division supervised and coordinated the advance of its units through regions where many localities were home to large Jewish communities. This study aims to analyze the way in which this large military unit of the Romanian Army trained and mobilized its own units immediately after the withdrawal from Bessarabia and Bukovina in the summer of 1940, until the start of the Romanian-German offensive. Another aim is to reconstruct, by using the orders received and issued by the14th Division, the criminal urges or encouraging silences that enabled the destruction of the Jewish communities in Bessarabia and Bukovina.
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The present study aims at offering an analysis of A.C. Cuza’s antisemitic discourse and of the solutions he identified for the solving of what he called the “Jewish problem”. Moreover, by analyzing the anti-Jewish rhetoric brought forward by A.C. Cuza and its dynamics in time, my purpose is to prove that the legal measures implemented by A.C. Cuza after he came to power in late 1937 were no result of a political conjunction, but the materialization of a political project he had been struggling for during half a century.
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During the Covid-19 pandemic, researchers and observers from various social fields noted a qualitative and quantitative increase in the most diverse antisemitic reactions. The history of antisemitism provides a solid explanation for this phenomenon. The social and economic crises and the epidemics – particularly the plague epidemic of the 14th century – show that societies had a violent reaction and blamed the Jews for the unwanted effects hard to explain under those circumstances. An overview of historical facts from open and public sources regarding these conspiracy theories and their violent outcomes makes up the former part of this paper. The latter part focuses on the antisemitic discourse and the multiplication of conspiratorial reactions during the Covid-19 pandemic and concludes the existence of three stances within this pattern, namely hate speech against the Jews, the Jewish conspiracy to rule the world and get rich, and Holocaust denial or trivialisation. Numerous reports, studies, research, and scientific papers noted the increase in antisemitism against the pandemic backdrop. They represented resources for the qualitative analysis in this paper’s latter part. The primary conclusion shows that – in the pandemic context and through social media – the antisemitic discourse and acts increased significantly, without adding any novelty or depth to the conspiratorial ideas.
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At the beginning of the 20th century, the mass migrations of Jews from Russia were caused by anti-Semitic tensions and pogroms—most of them traveled to the USA and Great Britain, but some of them chose Bulgaria. From 1902 to 1904, 1,277 Jews moved from the Romanov Empire to Bulgaria with a plan to settle in Southern Dobruja; departures in this direction also occurred in the years to follow. Although the Bulgarian state policy towards the local Jewish minority was relatively tolerant, the attitude towards the Jews emigrating from abroad was vastly different and based on anti-Semitic motivations. The authorities in Sofia bent the law to prevent Jewish settlement in Dobruja, which was accompanied by protests from Russian diplomacy. This article is based on the original studies of the materials found in the State Archives in Varna, Bulgaria.
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Review of: Catastrophe and Utopia. Jewish Intellectuals in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. Hrsg. von Ferenc Laczó und Joachim von Puttkamer. (Europas Osten im 20. Jahrhundert, Bd. 7.) De Gruyter. Berlin – Boston 2017. VIII, 355 S. ISBN 978-3-11-055543-1. (€ 49,95.)
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Review of: Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945. Bd. 15: Ungarn 1944–1945. Hrsg. von Regina Fritz. De Gruyter Oldenbourg. Berlin – Boston 2021. 850 S. ISBN 978-3-11-0365002-8. (€ 59,95.)
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Life under Stalinism in the 1930s challenged Jews, particularly the young, with innumerable compromises to their religious and ethnic identity, yielding unexpected responses during World War II and the Holocaust. This article analyzes how Jewish youth raised in 1930s Vitebsk in the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic acquired firsthand knowledge of the language and customs of their Slavic neighbors, and how some of this cohort harnessed their experiences and understanding in their attempts to survive during the Holocaust. Bolshevik policies unique to Soviet Belarus affected its Jews in ways distinct from their counterparts elsewhere in the Soviet Union. Nationalities and religious policies as well as the Five-Year Plans and the Great Terror served as the context for this situation, shaping and distorting transmission of Jewish traditions along with changing the dynamics of the family and social relationships. Young Jews in Vitebsk learned Slavic languages and culture from their neighbors, in Soviet schools, and through other means. After the German invasion in 1941, the application of these skills and knowledge are a common thread through the survival narratives of young Holocaust survivors from Soviet Vitebsk.
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This article argues for using personal accounts in reconstructing the inner lives of interethnic communities in Eastern Europe in times of crisis. Focusing on the Eastern Galician town of Buczacz as representative of numerous other such communities, it also suggests that the events of the Holocaust must be seen within the larger context of coexistence and violence since 1914. After briefly examining the relevant historiography, the article turns to a close analysis of the diary of a Polish headmaster, written in 1914–1922; the World War II diary of a Ukrainian gymnasium teacher, and recollections of the Holocaust by a Jewish radio technician, composed in 1947. All three men lived in Buczacz; all three wanted their accounts to be read by others, but they are only now being made available to the public by the author. Each provides a strikingly different perspective: that of a Polish nationalist educator whose sons were fighting to create an independent Poland; that of a Ukrainian activist who resented Polish rule and Jewish influence but felt ambivalent about wartime and genocide profiteering by fellow Ukrainians; and that of a young Jew who meticulously recorded both collaboration and rescue by his gentile neighbors and ended up fighting in a local Polish partisan unit. And yet, seen together, these personal narratives shed light on aspects of mass violence in that region largely missing from more general or nationally oriented histories.
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Focusing on coexistence in towns and villages of the former Šariš Zemplín County during World War II, our article exposes the shifting meanings assigned to belonging in what was a multiethnic borderland region and an economic periphery. Informed by works on community construction and meaning, we understand “locals” as being formed by diverse and at times conflicting social experiences that are nevertheless rooted in the same physical environment. We draw on late witness testimonies by Jewish survivors and Gentile neighbors to investigate the roles of public and private spaces in how a sense of community was revoked. Since the redrawing of boundaries was made into a public concern in the 1930s, the redefining of “locals” along ethnoreligious lines had a deep situational dimension, with local norms and experiences shaping the ousting of the Jews from what was historically a shared space. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and methodological implications of our research for writing integrated histories of the Holocaust, mindful of relationships between people, objects, but also places.
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This article examines the advantages and limits of late non-Jewish witness testimonies in Holocaust research. Grounding my conclusions in more than 150 biographical interviews conducted in small communities of contemporary Western Ukraine (historically Eastern Galicia) in 2017–2019, I dwell on the specificity of such sources and offer guidelines on how to work with them. As I show, late witness testimonies typically consist of multiple layers that can only be understood when analyzed within the wider life story of the interviewee, and when read against a deep knowledge of local history. When following these introduced guidelines, late non-Jewish witness interviews can be an extremely valuable source, especially for rural communities where no Jewish testimonies are available. This source allows us to further examine the complexity of identity and belonging, estrangement and intimacy, in ethnically mixed communities during World War II and immediately after, but also memories of the nonexisting world today
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