The Appropriation of Holocaust Memory in Post-Communist Eastern Europe

Abstract

This short essay explores the ways in which the visual and symbolic repertoire of cosmopolitan Holocaust memory has become appropriated to represent other types of historical crimes. Specifically, I examine to what extent has this instrumentalization of Holocaust memory fed into a crisis in cosmopolitan memory and the rise of its nationalized, particularized and populist variants. Focusing on post-communist Eastern Europe, I demonstrate how the familiar narratives and images of the Holocaust have been repurposed for two main goals: firstly, to normatively elevate the suffering of non-Jewish national majorities and equate it with the Holocaust; and secondly, to reposition the crimes of communism as the dominant criminal legacy of the twentieth century on a par with, and sometimes overtaking, the legacy of the Holocaust. I illustrate these arguments with brief examples of revisionist museum and commemorative practices in Poland, Hungary, Lithuania and Serbia. I conclude by thinking through some methodological and ethical dimensions of this research.