Week 10 Notes

Week 10 (3/22-3/24) 

Monday, 3/22:

takeaways from Spain and the Civil War:

  • Victims have largely been denied ways of expressing their memories of the Spanish Civil War – victims of the republic were recognized, but not victims of Franco
  • Victims have had to seek justice outside of Spain because of the 1977 Amnesty Law of political prisoners and criminals, and the Pact of Forgetting
  • Government is still invested in keeping the pact of forgetting alive – but is making small concessions
    • people on the left and right support the Amnesty Law
  • Memory occurs on several levels; the nation, the families of the victims, the victims themselves.
  • People continue to be actively invested in the politics of Francoism
  • Young people tend to forget because this topic has not been taught
  • ‘Memory boom’ caused pact of forgetting to unravel in the late 1990s/early 2000s
  • The focus on victimhood – does this make an ethical memory? How do we escape the trap of competing for victimhood?
  • Debate surrounding physicality of commemorations

Paper 3 and the Final Project

  • Paper 3 is due this weekend
    • analysis of a work of historical memory but that we haven’t talked about in class or haven’t discussed a lot in class
    • see assignments tab for more details
    • if you’re not sure, come to office hours!
  • Final project – due exam week
    • take an example of historical memory and some of the frameworks of memory we have discussed
    • Could be a 10-15 page research paper, a podcast, a zine, a short documentary, or something else! (contact Professor Shaya if you have other ideas!)
    • See assignments tab for more details

Introduction on Holocaust Denialism

  • ‘hard-core’ vs. ‘soft-core’ denialism
    • complete utter denial vs more subtle blame
  • Denialism has existed since the end of WWII, but has had a series of resurgences in the 1980s and today.
    • Institute for Historical Review (founded in 1979) – coincided with the memory boom of the Holocaust
    • journal specifically for Holocaust deniers with academic ties – claimed that they were ‘revisionists’ but were really deniers
    • today – social media has resurged Holocaust denialism
    • Denials are iterations of antisemitism
      • antisemitism has existed in Europe since the Middle Ages
      • grew extremely popular from the late 1800s to 1940s
        • Rise of scientific racism and pseudoscience
        • Dreyfus affair in France
        • Protocols of the Elders of Zion (falsified document)
      • After WWII
        • Didn’t lead to the end of antisemitism

Presentation of Deborah Lipstadt’s Article and ted talk – Isabel and Dylan

  • Lipstadt is a historian and Professor of Modern Jewish history
  • Personally comes from a Jewish background, studied abroad in Israel in college
  • What is Holocaust denial?
    • the idea that either the Holocaust didn’t happen or wasn’t as far-reaching as it was.
    • blames Jewish people for “making up” the Holocaust for their own personal gain.
    • facts vs. opinions vs. lies
      • Lipstadt argues that lies are not the same things as opinions, but deniers often dress up lies as opinions
    • Deniers range from those who actively write and spread information, people who read the information, or those who platform/engage with these ideas
    • largest motivation: antisemitism and demonizing the Jewish people
  • Lipstadt has spent many years researching these groups and individuals and wrote a book about it in the late 1990s
    • asks the key question, “for deniers to be right, who would have to be wrong?” all 6 million survivors, witnesses, perpetrators, historians.
    • also points out how deniers disguise their hate as rational discourse or simple “opinions”
  • was sued by David Irving (pseudo-historian, author) for libel because she called him a Holocaust denier.
  • she took on the case and won by tracing back his citations and proving that they were non-factual
  • the bigger impact: she factually and legally disproved the Holocaust denialism movement

Why does denialism stick around?

  • denialism isn’t based on reason- so can we reason deniers out of their beliefs?
  • is confronting a conspiracy theory responsible memory?
  • how do we try to combat denialism? is it worth it?
  • What is the value in de-platforming denialist content?

 

Wednesday, 3/24:

takeaways from holocaust denialism:

  • the differing levels of Holocaust denialism – overt denial vs. downplaying the atrocities
    • this makes denialism more common but often in lesser forms
  • antisemitism and Holocaust denial get bound up in criticisms of Zionism (advocacy for an Israeli state)
  • link between Holocaust denialism and antisemitism
  • who are the deniers? claimed historians, neo-nazis, politicians, authors, etc.
    • lesser denialism is everywhere: on social media, in academia, popular culture and press, politics, etc.
  • plays on the values of open debate and speculation, but are not themselves invested in coming to a compromise
  • raises the question: how does a society define truth? is it whoever says something the loudest, or what has the most evidence?

paper 3:

  • due Saturday
  • can take any primary source from 20-21st century Europe and explore/analyze it as a work of memory
    • memorial, film, museum, etc.

Communist memories in eastern Europe:

  • Cold war division in Eastern Europe lasted from about 1945-1989
    • uprisings in 1956 and 1968, but Communist influence remained until 1989
  • Eastern Europe fell under the “iron curtain” with Soviet-swayed governments
    • Germany split into four zones: one of which was controlled by the Soviet Union
    • Yugoslavia was the only state in Eastern Europe that never had Soviet troops on the ground
  • 1989- Soviet governments began to unravel
  • Communist governments were replaced with more democratic governments in the 1990s,
  • Did things work out after that? No, not entirely!
    • The rise of conservative nationalism in Eastern Europe:
      • Victor Orban in Hungary – ‘illiberal democracy’
      • Polish Law and Justice Party
      • backlash towards leftism and communism
    • The result? the development of an Eastern European memory that raises up the suffering caused by communism, but that minimizes the suffering of the Holocaust victims
  • Eastern Europe had a large Jewish population before WWII
  • The site of the atrocities was largely in Eastern Europe because of Nazi Germany’s occupation of the region

presentation on subotic’s article by isabel and Turner:

  • Memory of Holocaust in Eastern Europe: end of WWII-1960s
    •  WWII was seen as the victory of communism over fascism (Stalinist narrative)
    • marginalized the Jewish victims and claimed that they were not victims as they didn’t oppose fascism
  • 1970s-1980ss
    • in Germany, the only camps that were remembered were camps like Buchenwald where communist prisoners were kept
    • Jewish identity and religion were drowned out of the collective memory
  • 1990s-2000s
    • Western Europe
      • the Holocaust became a symbol for human rights issues
      • “never again” mentality that served to warn about how genocides develop
      • failed to recognize Jewish people as the central victims but rather delivered more of a general message
    • Eastern Europe
      • after the fall of communism, Eastern European nations wanted to remember the crimes of Stalin
    • Auschwitz vs. the Gulag
      • the crimes of Communism to be considered in the same way as Naziism
      • The Black Book of Communism argues that this comparison is simplified
  • Today
    • Memory inversion – the use of one memory to remember another
      • the Holocaust is directly appropriated to discuss the memory of communism
      • example: the Serbian memory of the Holocaust that is used to present Eastern Europeans
    • Memory divergance
      • the Holocaust is considered unique from other genocides and strictly the fault of the Nazis
      • Absolves local involvement, views Nazism as a “foreign import”
      • ex. Croation memory
    • Memory conflation
      • Holocaust is not recognized as just a part of WWII and not a distinct event
      • with its own historical legacy
    • Ontological insecurity
      • Ontological memory – sense of security in identity
      • Eastern Europe felt that it needed to form its own national memory to assert its national identity
      • this created the memory that Eastern Europe faced two separate genocides: the Holocaust and Stalinsm
      • Eastern European nations urged the EU to recognize Stalinism as they recognized the Holocaust
  • How can we apply this idea to American society?
    • Ontological memory in the United States is more based on the idea of the “liberators”
    • this idea has been called into question since the 1970s.
    • now the U.S. is facing an ontological crisis because their “superpower” status is being opposed
    • How do we build memories that are historically inclusive that can build a sense of consensus and national identity?
  • What about the European story?
    • Is there an EU identity that can be built from these “twin traumas”?
    • Is that itself is accurate?