Yellow Star, Red Star

Jelena Subotic

Description

Yellow Star, Red Star asks why Holocaust memory continues to be so deeply troubled-ignored, appropriated, and obfuscated-throughout Eastern Europe, even though it was in those lands that most of the extermination campaign occurred. As part of accession to the European Union, Jelena Subotic shows, East European states were required to adopt, participate in, and contribute to the established Western narrative of the Holocaust. This requirement created anxiety and resentment in post-communist states: Holocaust memory replaced communist terror as the dominant narrative in Eastern Europe, focusing instead on predominantly Jewish suffering in World War II. Influencing the European Union's own memory politics and legislation in the process, post-communist states have attempted to reconcile these two memories by pursuing new strategies of Holocaust remembrance. The memory, symbols, and imagery of the Holocaust have been appropriated to represent crimes of communism.Yellow Star, Red Star presents in-depth accounts of Holocaust remembrance practices in Serbia, Croatia, and Lithuania, and extends the discussion to other East European states. The book demonstrates how countries of the region used Holocaust remembrance as a political strategy to resolve their contemporary "ontological insecurities"-insecurities about their identities, about their international status, and about their relationships with other international actors. As Subotic concludes, Holocaust memory in Eastern Europe has never been about the Holocaust or about the desire to remember the past, whether during communism or in its aftermath. Rather, it has been about managing national identities in a precarious and uncertain world.

Sujets

• Histoire
• The Holocaust
• War crime
• History of Europe
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501742415
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

 YELLOW STAR, RED STAR

YELLOWSTAR, RED STAR

Holocaust Re me mbra nce a f t e r Co mmunis m

JelenaSubotic´

CORNELLUNIVERSITYPRESS Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2019 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

First published 2019 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Subotic, Jelena, author. Title: Yellow star, red star : Holocaust remembrance after communism / Jelena Subotic´. Description: Ithaca, [New York] : Cornell University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019019610 (print) | LCCN 2019020851 (ebook) | ISBN 9781501742408 (cloth ; alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)— Europe, Eastern—Historiography. | Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Europe, Eastern—Influence. | Memorialization—Political aspects—Europe, Eastern. | Nationalism and collective memory—Europe, Eastern. | Post-communism—Europe, Eastern. Classification: LCC D804.348 .S83 2019 (print) | LCC D804.348 (ebook) | DDC 940.53/1860947—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019019610 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019020851

Cover photograph: Auschwitz victims deported from Yugoslavia, displayed at the Yugoslav National Exhibition, Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum (1988). Used courtesy of the Museum of Yugoslavia.

ForDougandLeo,always

 Co nt e nt s

List of Illustrationsix Preface and Acknowledgmentsxi List of Abbreviationsxix

 The Big Gray Truck 1. The Politics of Holocaust Remembrance after Communism

2. At the Belgrade Fairgrounds 3. Croatia’s Islands of Memory 4. The Long Shadows of Vilna  The Stakes of Holocaust Remembrance in the Twenty-First Century

Index229

1

17 45 97 150

205

 I l lu s t r at i o n s

Maps 1. Camps and execution sites in Serbia 2. Camps and execution sites in Croatia 3. Ghettos and execution sites in Lithuania

Figures 1. Restaurant at the site of the former Semlin death camp, Belgrade, Serbia 2. Monument to the Jewish victims of fascism, Jewish Sephardic Cemetery, Belgrade, Serbia 3. The flower monument at Jasenovac 4. Defaced monument to civilians shot by Italian occupation forces, Bilice, Croatia 5. Crumbling remains of the Stara Gradiška concentration camp, Croatia 6. Vilna ghetto after the war, 1945–46 7. Display at the Tolerance Center Museum, Vilnius, Lithuania 8. Memorial stone (Stolperstein)placenidmemyro of Yitzchak Rudashevski, Vilnius, Lithuania

51 104 159

5

60 117

120

121 169 192

199

ix