Holocaust Public Memory in Postcommunist Romania

Description

How is the Holocaust remembered in Romania since the fall of communism? Alexandru Florian and an international group of contributors unveil how and why Romania, a place where large segments of the Jewish and Roma populations perished, still fails to address its recent past. These essays focus on the roles of government and public actors that choose to promote, construct, defend, or contest the memory of the Holocaust, as well as the tools—the press, the media, monuments, and commemorations—that create public memory. Coming from a variety of perspectives, these essays provide a compelling view of what memories exist, how they are sustained, how they can be distorted, and how public remembrance of the Holocaust can be encouraged in Romanian society today.

List of Abbreviations
Memory under Construction: Introductory Remarks / Alexandru Florian

Part I: Competing Memories and Historical Obfuscation
1. Ethnocentric Mindscapes and Mnemonic Myopia / Ana Bărbulescu
2. Post-Communist Romania's Leading Public Intellectuals and the Holocaust / George Voicu
3. Law, Justice, and Holocaust Memory in Romania / Alexandru Climescu
4. Romania: Neither "Fleishig" nor "Milchig": A Comparative Study / Michael Shafir
5. "Wanting-not-to-Know" about the Holocaust in Romania: A Wind of Change? / Simon Geissbühler

Part II: National Heroes, Outstanding Intellectuals or Holocaust Perpetrators?
6. Mircea Vulcănescu, a Controversial Case: Outstanding Intellectual or War Criminal? / Alexandru Florian
7. Ion Antonescu's Image in Post-Communist Historiography / Marius Cazan
8. Rethinking Perpetrators, Bystanders, Helpers/Rescuers, and Victims: A Case Study of Students' Perceptions / Adina Babeş

Index

Sujets

• HISTORY
• The Holocaust
• History of Europe
• Eastern
• Holocauste
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 24 janvier 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253032720
• Langue: English

Extrait

HOLOCAUST PUBLIC MEMORY IN POSTCOMMUNIST ROMANIA
STUDIES IN ANTISEMITISM
Alvin H. Rosenfeld, editor
HOLOCAUST
Public Memory in Postcommunist
ROMANIA
Edited by
Alexandru Florian
Indiana University Press
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2018 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Florian, Alexandru, editor.
Title: Holocaust public memory in postcommunist Romania / edited by Alexandru Florian.
Description: Bloomington, Indiana : Indiana University Press, [2018] | Series: Studies in antisemitism | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017041142 (print) | LCCN 2017040235 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253032744 (e-book) | ISBN 9780253032706 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253032713 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)-Romania-Historiography. | Romania-Ethnic relations.
Classification: LCC DS135.R7 (print) | LCC DS135.R7 H645 2018 (ebook) | DDC 940.53/180720498-dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017041142
1 2 3 4 5 23 22 21 20 19 18
Contents
List of Abbreviations
Memory under Construction: Introductory Remarks / ALEXANDRU FLORIAN
Part I. Competing Memories and Historical Obfuscation
1 Ethnocentric Mindscapes and Mnemonic Myopia / ANA B RBULESCU
2 Postcommunist Romania s Leading Public Intellectuals and the Holocaust / GEORGE VOICU
3 Law, Justice, and Holocaust Memory in Romania / ALEXANDRU CLIMESCU
4 Romania: Neither Fleishig nor Milchig : A Comparative Study / MICHAEL SHAFIR
5 Wanting-Not-to-Know about the Holocaust in Romania: A Wind of Change? / SIMON GEISSB HLER
Part II. National Heroes, Outstanding Intellectuals, or Holocaust Perpetrators?
6 Mircea Vulc nescu, a Controversial Case: Outstanding Intellectual or War Criminal? / ALEXANDRU FLORIAN
7 Ion Antonescu s Image in Postcommunist Historiography / MARIUS CAZAN
8 Rethinking Perpetrators, Bystanders, Helpers/Rescuers, and Victims: A Case Study of Students Perceptions / ADINA BABE
Index
List of Abbreviations
AFDPR
Asocia ia Fo tilor De inu i Politici din Rom nia (Association of Former Political Prisoners in Romania)
ALDE
Alian a Liberalilor i Democra ilor (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats)
ANR
Alian a Noastr Rom nia (Our Alliance Romania)
BIRN
Balkan Investigative Reporting Network
BPN
Biroul Politic Na ional (National Political Office)
CA
Consiliul de Administra ie (Administrative Council)
FCER
Federa ia Comunit ilor Evreie ti din Rom nia (Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania)
FIDESZ
Fiatal Demokrat k Sz vets ge Magyar Polg ri Sz vets g (Federation of Young Democrats-Hungarian Civic Alliance)
GpR
Grupul pentru Rom nia (Group for Romania)
H SP
Hrvatska ista Stranka Prava (Croatian Pure Party of Rights)
HDZ
Hrvatska demokratska zajednica (Croatian Democratic Union)
HOP
Hrvatski oslobodila ki pokret (Croatian Liberation Movement)
HRT
Hrvatska radiotelevizija (Croatian Radio-Television)
IHRA
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance
IICCMER
Institutul de Investigare a Crimelor Comunismului i Memoria Exilului Rom nesc (Institute for the Investigation of Communist Regime Crimes and the Memory of the Romanian Exile)
INSHR-EW
Institutul Na ional pentru Studierea Holocaustului din Rom nia Elie Wiesel (Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania)
JTA
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
KGB
Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (Committee for State Security)
LPR
Liga Polskich Rodzin (League of Polish Families)
L SNS
L udov strana-Na e Slovensko (People s Party-Our Slovakia)
MCA
Asocia ia pentru Monitorizarea i Combaterea Antisemitismului din Rom nia (Center for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism in Romania)
MpR
Mi carea pentru Rom nia (Movement for Romania)
NATO
North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NCHA
National Central Historical Archives
NCSSA
National Council for the Study of the Securitate Archives
ND
Noua Dreapt (The New Right)
NDH
Nezavisna Dr ava Hrvatska (Independent State of Croatia)
PiS
Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc (Law and Justice)
PNL
Partidul Na ional Liberal (National Liberal Party)
PN CD
Partidul Na ional r nesc Cre tin Democrat (Christian Democratic National Peasants Party)
PRM
Partidul Rom nia Mare (Greater Romania Party)
PRON
Patriotyczny Ruch Odrodzenia Narodowego (Patriotic Movement for National Rebirth)
PSM
Partidul Socialist al Muncii (Socialist Labor Party)
PUNR
Partidul Unit ii Na iunii Rom ne (Party of Romanian Unity)
SC
State Council
Smer-SD
Smer-Soci lna Demokracia (Direction-Social Democracy)
SNS
Slovensk n rodn strana (Slovak National Party)
SNSPA
coala Na ional de Studii Politice i Administrative (National School of Political Studies and Public Administration)
SRI
Serviciul Rom n de Informa ii (Romanian Intelligence Service)
SS
Schutzstaffel
Tp
Partidul Totul pentru ar (Everything for the Country Party)
TVR
Televiziunea Rom n (Romanian Television)
UEFA
Union of European Football Associations
Memory under Construction
Introductory Remarks
This volume concludes a research project on Holocaust memory in post-communist Romania, supported by the Romanian Ministry of National Education, CNCS-UEFISCDI, under grant number PN-II-ID-PCE-2012-2-4-0620.
The project was prompted by what seemed to be a very simple question: how do we explain that seventy years after the end of the Second World War, in Romania the public memory of the Holocaust is still disputed, and approaches that minimize or even deny it have become more dominant in the public sphere?
To answer this question we should first examine the clear differences between the prevailing practices in public memory in countries with long-established memorial institutions and those in postcommunist countries.
E AST VERSUS W EST
According to Jacques le Goff, the victim became a subject of public memory after the First World War. 1 The subject was more fully developed at the end of the Second World War, when two types of victims were distinguished: on the one hand is the soldier and on the other hand is the civilian, who appears for the first time as the victim of a conflict that reached the limits of dehumanization. The history of the development of these two memorial subjects-soldiers and civilians-is different in the West and the East.
In Western Europe, memorials, plaques, busts, and street names remind the public of crucial moments of the Second World War, of military men and politicians who heroically dedicated their lives to fighting fascism or Nazism. Public spaces also memorialize those who opposed Hitler s Germany or his allied regimes by taking up arms against them (the Resistance Movement), as well as civilians who were exterminated because of their ethnicity or race. Moreover, the memory of the Holocaust as such was institutionalized in the 1970s by public commemoration policies in Western states.
Jean-Michel Chaumont, a scholar who analyzed the gradual steps by which Holocaust victims were publicly recognized and commemorated, noted competing public memories of the French and Belgian Resistance movements and the exterminated Jews. In The Competition of Victims (1997) he points out that until recently, there were no public monuments or textbooks to specifically evoke the fate of the Jews. 2 He reminds us that it was several decades before there were effective public reactions to concealment of the facts of the Holocaust. It was only in 1995 that the word Jew was engraved on the monument erected in memory of the victims of Auschwitz in the P re Lachaise cemetery in Paris, and in 1968, at the inauguration of the monument in Birkenau, Professor Waitz resigned from the chairmanship of the International Auschwitz Committee as a protest against the fact that Jews were not nominated as a group on commemorative plaques. It was a futile gesture, because the text was corrected only in 1994. 3
The situation was quite similar in Romania, where until two decades ago, the only victims commemorated on public monuments were antifascists who, following the ideology of class struggle, were sometimes described as representatives of the working class. However, there is an important difference between Romania and France: in Romania, until the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania issued its Final Report in 2004, the perpetrators of the Holocaust had always been cast as members of the fascist dictatorship. This was a strategy to deny the Holocaust in Romania by pointing toward anot