2020/01/01 by Jelena Subotić · 1 citation
Psychology · Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration #Polish-Jewish Holocaust Memory Studies #Balkans: History, Politics, Society #The Holocaust #Communism #Appropriation #Narrative #Sociology #The Symbolic #Aesthetics #History #Political science #Law #Literature #Psychoanalysis #Epistemology #Politics #Psychology #Art #Philosophy
paper · doi:10.3828/mlo.v0i0.315
openalex publication_date 2020/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/06
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.