On the morning of August 5th, 2019, 8 million residents of Kashmir awoke to severed cellphone, landline, internet, and cable television services. Days before, 40,000 Indian troops were deployed into Kashmir, in addition to the hundreds of thousands already stationed in the region. Tourists, non-resident students, and Hindu pilgrims were forced to leave. Kashmiris knew that something catastrophic lay in the near future. And something catastrophic did: on August 6th, the BJP, India’s ruling Hindu-nationalist party, revoked Article 370, stripping Kashmir of the autonomous status it had held since 1954[1]. News outlets across the globe rushed to cover the flashpoint crisis, with Aljazeera going so far as to release a page that offered daily updates on the situation[2]. 

In mid-August, the UN Security Council convened over Kashmir, a topic that they had avoided discussing since 1971. The outcome of this long-overdue discussion? Not much. Over 120 days later, the catastrophe continues, yet the media and humanitarian coverage wane. Independent reports find that around 13,000 boys have been detained since August.[3] Schools, colleges, shops, and malls remain largely closed, and those that have opened struggle to operate. The internet blackout stretches on to its fifth month. However, the phrase “normalcy returns to Kashmir” swirls through headlines, replacing alarm bells with apathy. For a brief moment in September, the discourse surrounding India’s aggression in Kashmir featured the question of genocide. Now, pundits would declare the suggestion to be absurd. Indeed, no mass killing occurred. The lack of official and comprehensive figures on arrests and detainments confound claims of forcible transfer and separation. Are Pakistan’s warnings of genocide merely a product of decades of geopolitical rivalry and hostility towards India? Is the Kashmir crisis a bilateral issue? Would intervention violate national sovereignty? More questions circulate than answers. The compass of morality points nowhere. We will take comfort in this alleged return to normalcy. We will shield ourselves from responsibility by wallowing in our doubts. We will tell ourselves that intervention would be unwarranted. 

Furthermore, if history tells us anything, we would be wrong. US ambassador to the Ottoman Empire Henry Morgenthau urged the US government to take action as the Armenian genocide unfolded. The US refused to intervene, citing its desire to respect Turkey’s sovereignty and remain neutral[4]. The US and UK had been comprehensively briefed on Nazi extermination of European Jews as early as 1942, yet took no military action until 1945[5]. In 1994, the US not only refused to assist in humanitarian de-escalation efforts in Rwanda, but instead led efforts to actively remove UN peacekeepers stationed in Rwanda, blocked authorization of UN reinforcements, shied away from the term “genocide,” and allowed radio broadcasts inciting genocide against Tutsis to continue airing while possessing technology that could jam them. 

To be clear, the crisis in Kashmir is not a genocide. Not yet. Nevertheless, it should not need to be for the UN and other international actors to take action. Beyond Rebecca Hamilton’s assertion in the “G Word Paradox” that branding a situation as “genocide” triggers no immediate response, Kashmir’s decades-long profound vulnerability should be enough to compel states to act. The territorial dispute between India and Pakistan has forced the region into an existential limbo that leaves them beholden to the whims of both state powers, each of whom claims Kashmir fully as their own. While the internet blackout imposed this August constitutes the most extensive, Kashmir has experienced 53 internet shutdowns in 2019 alone[6], and more in 2018[7]. Pakistan-administered Kashmir has been functionally integrated into Pakistan (a move that many say is supported by the Kashmiris), while India’s abrogation of Article 370 in India-Administered Kashmir constitutes a flashpoint in a series of gradual tightenings of India’s hold. In fact, since 1989, over 67,000 Kashmiris have been killed.[8] Modi continues to hide behind a framework of interpretive denial, claiming that India’s aggression will promote economic prosperity and curb extremism[9]. The international community may temporarily take solace in these nicely-packaged justifications of human rights violations, yet this present inaction may stretch into another stain on the fabric of modernity. Those who lived during it will say that they wish they had known. Those who will learn about it will call it an aberration. Moreover, the Angel of History will perceive it as a “single catastrophe which keeps piling.” Kashmir has always been vulnerable, but now its vulnerability has reached a flashpoint. We can shield ourselves in doubt and denial, or we can take action before the crisis in Kashmir escalates to the point of no return. 

Tala Alfoqaha is a third-year student at the University of Minnesota double majoring in Mathematics and Global Studies with a regional focus in the Middle East and a thematic focus in human rights and social justice. In 2019, she was awarded the Human Rights Program’s Don Fraser Fellowship, and spent a summer interning at The Advocates for Human Rights in their International Justice program. She currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of The Wake Magazine, a student-run publication, and in her capacity as a student hopes to further pursue studies of mass-violence and ethnic cleansing, with a particular interest in the present-day implications of settler-colonialism on indigenous populations.

  [1] The U.N. Can’t Ignore Kashmir Anymore

[2] Kashmir under lockdown: All the latest updates

[3] Young boys tortured in Kashmir clampdown as new figures show 13,000 teenagers arrested

[4] The Great Crime

[5] Allied forces knew about Holocaust two years before discovery of concentration camps, secret documents reveal

[6] ‘I’m just helpless’: Concern about Kashmir mounts as communication blackout continues

[7] Internet Shutdowns

[8] 13 Killed As Violence Surges in Kashmir

[9] India Is Slowly Easing Its Lockdown in Kashmir. But Life Isn’t Returning to Normal

Two weeks ago I met with a community leader whose own community was devastated by a genocide that happened decades ago in a place halfway around the world. We talked about how his community marks the event, the pain its survivors continue to experience and the challenge of getting his new neighbors to care about something so foreign to them. One of the things he mentioned struck a chord with me: “Recognition is about completing the fabric of our wider community.” To him, recognizing genocide was not simply about recognizing the painful past of his people, but recognizing the shared humanity that ties us all together.

Two weeks ago the Armenian community finally had their story recognized. Following three weeks of White House-backed challenges, the Senate joined the House in calling the mass killings of Armenians a century ago genocide. The resolution officially calls for remembrance and to combat “denial of the Armenian Genocide or any other genocide” and “to encourage education and public understanding of the facts of the Armenian Genocide, including the role of the United States in humanitarian relief efforts, and the relevance of the Armenian Genocide to modern-day crimes against humanity.” 

This is an enormous victory for the Armenian community, and the result of decades of organizing and the mobilization of Armenian-Americans across the country, including those here in the Twin Cities. Federal recognition of the Armenian genocide fixes a historical wrong and will, hopefully, provide solace for the descendants of victims and survivors, many of which make up nearly the entirety of the Armenian-American community in the Twin Cities. Now that the painful history of the Armenian people is officially recognized it too is a part of the community fabric. 

When our Representative, Ilhan Omar, chose to vote “present” during the House’s vote on recognizing the Armenian genocide, I wrote that recognizing one genocide helps provide a basis for understanding other episodes of mass violence. It’s a common thought among many communities with shared histories as victims of genocide or mass violence: the idea that a better understanding of their traumatic pasts helps us not only understand the contemporary horrors of places like Syria, Myanmar and elsewhere, but also emboldens us to respond to these crises rather than resigning ourselves to the apparent inevitability of history repeating itself. In much the same way that communicating their stories helps weave a more complete fabric of the Twin Cities, the shared experience of genocide seemingly creates its own sense of a wider community globally.  

Recognizing the Armenian genocide was long overdue, and while we should relish in correcting this historical injustice, we should also be celebrating the opportunity for more communities striving for the chance to deliver their own stories. Until then, our community story will be left incomplete. 

Throughout this year, the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies has committed itself to empowering communities to share their histories and experiences. The Bridges of Memory project aims to connect survivor communities with resources at the university but also, more importantly, with other survivors of mass violence and genocide. 

In my meeting with the community leader last week, he talked about the pervasive feeling in his community that they are cursed, that they’d done something to deserve genocide, and that it was his mission to convince his community that their story wasn’t unique. The unfortunate reality is that it isn’t. Many communities in the Twin Cities have been irrevocably damaged by episodes of genocide and mass violence. It’s time we weave their stories into our collective fabric.

Joe Eggers is the research and outreach coordinator for the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota.

I acknowledge that the University of Minnesota Twin Cities stands on Miní Sóta Makhóčhe, the traditional, ancestral, and contemporary Homelands of Dakhóta Oyáte. The University occupies land that was cared for and called home by Dakota peoples from time immemorial. Ceded in the treaties of 1837 and 1851, I acknowledge that this land has always held, and continues to hold, great spiritual and personal significance for Dakota. By offering this land acknowledgment, I recognize the sovereignty of Dakota, and I acknowledge, support, and advocate for Indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those forcibly removed from their Homelands. I will continue to raise awareness of Indigenous peoples, histories, and cultures in my work, especially within social studies education, and I will continue to work to hold the University of Minnesota accountable to Dakota and other Indigenous peoples and nations. It is my sincere hope that the curriculum project discussed below will serve as a catalyst for recognizing and unsettling settler colonial narratives in social studies classrooms across Minnesota, especially sixth-grade Minnesota Studies classes.

In mid-August of 1862, the Pioneer and Democrat, as short-lived settler newspaper printed in St. Paul, Minnesota ran an article with the headlines:

“Terrible Indian Raid.
The Frontier Desolated
The Inhabitants Murdered
Shocking Barbarities.”

The article, a mix of news and editorial content common in early reporting, stated: “We can no longer shut our eyes to the fact that the Sioux Indians have commenced a war upon the settlements of our own frontier, and have massacred hundreds of men, women, and children.” Such accounts of what would come to be called the “Sioux Massacre” became the first rough drafts of the history of the war. Indeed, one of the earliest published histories of the war, Isaac Heard’s History of the Sioux War and Massacres, published by Harper and Brothers of New York in 1863, draws on reporting from, among other newspapers, the Pioneer and Democrat.

One hundred fifty years later, in mid-August of 2012, the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran a series titled: “In the Footsteps of Little Crow: 150 Years After the U.S.-Dakota War.” One article featured headlines quoting Taoyateduta (often known as Little Crow), a leader of the Dakota during the war:

“‘When men are hungry, they help themselves’

With his people starving and treaty payments too late to help, Little Crow is pushed toward war. A bloody confrontation lights the fuse.”

Such headlines seem to suggest a marked shift, both in terms of language and narrative, in how the U.S.-Dakota War is popularly portrayed, at least within the media.

What might these two articles, written 150 years apart, tell us about how popular narratives and collective memories of the U.S.-Dakota War have shifted over time in Minnesota? Take, for example, the shift from earlier articles that suggest an unprovoked “massacre” of Euro-American settlers to the later recognition of the continued maltreatment of the Dakota, who are ultimately “pushed to war.” Do shifting accounts of the war, as reflected in media reporting, mimic changing public memories and attitudes within the state, especially among non-Indigenous Minnesota’s, or are they simply examples of settler-constructed narratives shifting strategically over time to maintain settler dominance over land and ensure a “settler futurity” for generations to come?

These questions were central to a project led by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ Director, Professor Alejandro Baer , and Research and Outreach Coordinator, Joe Eggers, who, along with a undergraduate and graduate student researchers, gathered and analyzed hundreds of newspaper articles from Minnesota River Valley and the Twin Cities newspapers at 25-year intervals from 1862 to 2012. The aim of the project was to better understand how the U.S.-Dakota War has been remembered over time, with each generation, and space in Minnesota.

Using the rich data from this project, with additional funding from a Minnesota Legacy Grant, and in keeping with the CHGS’s  mission of educational outreach, I was asked to think about how the newspapers collected and analyzed during the project might be made available and useful for teachers and students. The result is a curriculum, “From the ‘Sioux Massacre’ to the ‘Dakota Genocide’: Minnesota’s ‘Forgotten War’ in the State’s Newspapers from 1862 to 2012,” which was designed to supplement a study of the U.S.-Dakota War in sixth-grade social studies classes.  

The curriculum is organized around a single-day core lesson plan, which was designed to be taught in one roughly-50-minute class period. This core lesson introduces students to examples of newspaper headlines from the Minnesota River Valley and Twin Cities, allowing them to catalog and analyze how the narratives of the war have varied over time and space.

Additional two and three-day lesson plans offer teachers and students the opportunity to extend the core lesson for deeper content and skills development through reading and analyzing examples of full-length articles and analyzing data form the project in the form of graphs and charts. Each lesson encourages students to engage in an attentive and thoughtful reading of newspaper articles as primary source documents, developing critical media literacy skills.

As I began to work on developing the curriculum, what I was most drawn to was the possibility for “authentic learning,” in which students would construct knowledge through the use of disciplinary-based inquiry that would also have value beyond the classroom. I imagined students doing work – reading and analyzing newspapers to draw conclusions about narratives of the U.S.-Dakota War – which would be very similar to the work that had been done by academics and student researchers at the University of Minnesota. This authentic work, involving qualitative research and analysis, would help them to understand the shifting nature of historical narratives over time.

However, despite the exciting possibilities for teachers and students to engage with this authentic learning, the curriculum should be taken up with a note of caution. First, the lessons, by and large, fail to bring much needed Dakota (and other Indigenous) voices and perspectives into the classroom, often framing the Dakota (and, to a lesser extent, settler) as perpetually static, monolithic, and opposing groups. Additionally, many earlier newspaper articles not only lack Dakota perspectives, but they are also filled with derogatory language, such as “red skins” or “savages,” which, without careful introduction and contextualization, could easily further perpetuate hurtful stereotypes. However, this fairly blatant derogatory language is perhaps less concerning than the more subtle erasure of Indigenous voices and perspectives within the narratives developed within the articles. These newspaper articles, after all, represent a settler archive, where even the more recent articles from 2012 were written by non-Indigenous authors and very often still lack Dakota voices. This provides a challenge for teachers and students to engage with these articles critically and read them not only for what is present but also for what is absent in the reporting and editorializing.

As with any study of history, students studying the U.S.-Dakota War should be pushed to examine sources and narratives critically and continuously ask questions to nuance their understanding of events and peoples. Despite its limitations, examining the shifting settler narratives of the U.S.-Dakota War over time and space within Minnesota may help students better understand the roots of contemporary debates, such as those to rename Historic Fort Snelling or Bde Make Ska, and become more thoughtful consumers of media.

Download the full curriculum: “From the ‘Sioux Massacre’ to the ‘Dakota Genocide’: Minnesota’s ‘Forgotten War’ in the State’s Newspapers from 1862 to 2012”. We are especially interested in hearing about your and your students’ experiences with the curriculum. Send any feedback to George Dalbo at dalbo006@umn.edu.

George Dalbo is the Educational Outreach Coordinator for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and a Ph.D. student in Social Studies Education at the University of Minnesota with research interests in Holocaust, genocide, and human rights education. Previously, he was a middle and high school social studies teacher, having taught every grade from 5th-12th in public, charter, and independent schools in Minnesota, as well as two years at an international school in Vienna, Austria.

Editor’s Note: A copy of this editorial appeared on MinnPost on November 18th.

In Spain, the far-right were also-rans, effectively discredited and shunned in mainstream circles and government affairs since the end of the Francoist period in the mid-1970s. Those days are long gone.

Vox, which promotes itself as the “patriotic alternative,” burst onto the national scene late last year in the elections in the southern region of Andalucía, sending shockwaves through Spanish politics. In the wake of this political upheaval came the general election in April, where the ultranationalist party received just over 10% of votes and won 24 seats in the 350-seat Parliament. That election resulted in no clear majority and plunged the country into another round of voting. In the Nov. 10 election, Vox more than doubled its previous results. Now 52 seats strong, Vox has become the third-largest political force in the country.

Rise is primarily tethered to the Catalan question

What does Vox stand for? And what explains this seismic shift in the Spanish political landscape? Vox shares many ideological traits with other right-wing populist parties in Europe that have gained traction in Austria, Italy, Germany or France — nationalism, anti-immigration, and Islamophobia — but the situation in Spain has its own peculiarities. Whereas most European far-right parties flourished in the wake of the financial crisis or the influx of refugees, Vox’s rapid rise is primarily tethered to the Catalan question. Seizing on growing agitation with regard to these political developments, Vox proposes to abolish regional autonomy and parliaments. This hard-line centralism has resonated strongly among voters after the separatist push in Catalonia and ongoing deadlock and instability in the region. Vox has anointed itself as the true savior of the country’s unity.

While reining in Catalonia is a core element in Vox’s political platform, its anti-migrant rhetoric is also unambiguous. They champion the idea of “Españoles primero” (Spaniards first), and spread falsehoods about a government bent on prioritizing migrants and discriminating against Spanish nationals. Their leaders traffic in familiar conspiracy theories. For instance, Vox’s leader, Santiago Abascal, likes to attribute Spain’s woes to the Hungarian Jewish philanthropist George Soros. On Twitter, he accused Soros of bankrolling illegal mass immigration (mirroring the myth propagated by populist leaders in Europe and by President Trump in the U.S.). Moreover, Vox points a finger at Soros as a driving force behind Catalan separatism.

Fixation with Muslim immigrants

The arrival of Muslim immigrants in the country is portrayed by Vox as an invasion. This fixation with Muslim immigrants dredges up age-old prejudices, which Vox resurrects for its own warped purposes. The party understands its political quest as a “reconquista” (reconquest), and in an act suffused with symbolism kicked off its April election campaign in Covadonga, in the northern region of Asturias, where the Christian King Don Pelayo defeated Muslim troops in the year 722. “We will not ask for forgiveness for our symbols, even if others are ashamed of them,” Abascal declared on that occasion. Vox’s populist politics call for an emboldened, unapologetic embrace of Spanish and Catholic identity. This identity is also under threat, they claim, due to “gender ideology” and “the dictatorship of progressive politics.”

While some of the elements noted above echo the Franco regime’s (1939-1975) National-Catholic precepts, Vox is neither openly nostalgic about the Franco dictatorship nor cut-and-dried fascist. Also taking its cues from other far-right parties in Europe, Vox is gaining popular support thanks to a strategic facelift that renounces or downplays some of its less socially acceptable ideas. For example, signs of explicit antisemitism and Holocaust denial are monitored closely and addressed by the party’s leadership. For the April elections, Vox nominated as a congressional candidate Fernando Paz, a journalist and right-wing historian who questioned the scope of the Shoah. After this became public, Vox backed down and replaced the candidate. ​

Vox also supports the state of Israel, and here as well the Spanish party falls in line with others in this new wave of European far-right parties (the German AfD, for instance, recently brought forward a motion calling for a complete ban of the Palestinian-led BDS movement, the campaign promoting a boycott of Israel). They see Israel as an ethno-national project to follow, hyping Israel as an implacable stronghold of civilization against the Islamic world.

An aura of legitimacy

Many Spaniards thought that the Franco regime’s demise had immunized the country against the scourge of the far right. This was wishful thinking. Vox can now flex its power in the Parliament, and the party’s positions are being granted an aura of legitimacy. Given the elections outcome, with the win of Socialists, the party will likely have no say in the next government’s formation. Vox, however, already has leverage in influencing policies in Madrid and Andalucía, where the party’s votes were instrumental for the formation of new conservative regional governments led by the center-right People’s Party and Ciudadanos (Citizens). The ball is now in the conservatives’ hands. Will they continue to sugarcoat Vox’s noxious ideas to obtain their support? What price will Spanish society pay for this Faustian bargain?

Alejandro Baer, Ph.D., is an associate professor of sociology and the Stephen C. Feinstein Chair and Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota.

Editor’s note: A copy of this editorial appeared on MinnPost on October 31st.

The Armenian genocide is an indisputable historical fact. The evidence that Ottoman officials set about on a systematic plan to annihilate its Armenian population is undeniable.

So too is the genocide of Native peoples in the United States, brought on by policies that varied from extermination to forced assimilation. The evidence of this points to “intent to destroy, in whole or in part” (U.N. Genocide Convention definition) the Native American populations in the United States.

On Tuesday, Congress voted to affirm its record on the Armenian genocide with formal recognition. Despite several congressional nonbinding resolutions, the House had never formally recognized the Armenian genocide. Until Tuesday. However, instead of addressing this historical injustice, Rep. Omar chose to vote “present,” essentially abstaining from the vote. She would later release a statement, in part stating: 

“A true acknowledgment of historical crimes against humanity must include both the heinous genocides of the 20th century, along with earlier mass slaughters like the transatlantic slave trade and the Native American genocide, which took the lives hundreds of millions of indigenous people in this country.”

The reality, though, is that recognition of one genocide does not diminish another. Drawing awareness of the Armenian genocide does not discount the historical and continued suffering experienced by Native or African peoples as a result of European colonialism. To that end, the recognition of one genocide has never been predicated on the continued denial of others. When the City Councils of Minneapolis and St. Paul declared that the 1862 U.S.-Dakota War paved the road to genocide, it didn’t mean that either city ignored other episodes of mass violence as a result.

Recognizing genocides does not lead to further ignorance of other genocides, as the representative suggests. The opposite is true. Recognition of genocide is an essential step in raising awareness of other episodes of mass violence.

Understanding painful aspects of history help build connections with other difficult parts of history and foster a greater awareness and empathy with the victims. Memory scholars Alejandro Baer and Natan Sznaider aptly describe this phenomenon, pointing to the fact that understanding episodes of genocide creates a “global memory constellation rather than a zero-sum game in which remembrance of history erases others from view.”

In fact, the concept of genocide was built on this very idea. Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin was shocked by the lack of legal recourse for the violence perpetrated against the Armenians when he coined the term genocide as a legal mechanism for understanding and prosecuting the crimes of the Holocaust. An understanding of episodes of genocide is fundamental to understanding others, and it is disheartening to see Omar ignore these interconnections.

Congressional recognition of the Armenian genocide comes at a particularly tense time in relations with Turkey and is seemingly caught up in contemporary turmoil. It is no small irony that the recognition of the Armenian genocides comes as the global community worries of another potential genocide in that region, that of the Kurdish people in Northern Syria. Nevertheless, recognition of the Armenian genocide was overdue and the continued absence of American recognition of the genocide allowed for the Turkish state rhetoric to grow into a century of denial.

It is time for Congress to acknowledge the genocide of Native peoples, too. Omar is right on that point. Her recognition of the Armenian Genocide would have been a step in that direction.

Joe Eggers is the research and outreach coordinator for the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota.

Editor’s Note: This is an updated post from August 2018. The updated version appeared on MinnPost on October 23.

Today the Spanish government removed the corpse of General Francisco Franco from the Valley of the Fallen, a grandiose mausoleum and basilica near Madrid that the Dictator had designed to eternally enshrine his victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). After much criticism and legal battles, Franco’s remains were moved to a family tomb in a cemetery in the outskirts of the capital.

Why has it taken so long to remove the body of a dictator from a sanctuary that celebrates his rule? 

A Pact of Oblivion

 In contrast to the ways we currently understand democratization efforts, the success of Spain’s Transición (the period between the death of Franco in 1975 and the completion of the new Constitution in 1978) was predicated on the assumption that the past is the past, and that silence is the key to paving the way to peace. Spain rapidly transitioned from authoritarianism to democracy, integrated into Europe, and achieved unprecedented economic prosperity. All these changes took place with no attention paid to the crimes committed and suffering inflicted by the Franco regime.

As a result of this unwritten “Pact of Oblivion,” the public presence of Francoist symbols remained largely untouched. The city of Madrid, in which I grew up during the years of the nascent democracy, had numerous visible signs of the dictatorship. The Valley of the Fallen was not an exception. The entire country was decorated with monuments, statues of the Dictator in parks and squares, and plaques in memory of the ‘‘Fallen for God and for Spain’’, which honored only those who perished in the war on the Francoist side. The one and five Peseta coins that I received as part of my allowance had Franco’s likeness engraved with the words “Francisco Franco. Leader of Spain by the Grace of God.” This currency was slowly removed from circulation but continued to be accepted as legal tender until the arrival of the Euro in 2002.

Beyond those immediately scarred by the dictatorship’s terror, the context and meaning of these Francoist symbols and monuments were progressively forgotten, as was the socio-political reality to which they bore witness. But with the turn of the century and the rise of a generation that had come of age in a modern, European, Spain, those old rusty statues and plaques, and the Franco mausoleum itself, started being looked at again with fresh eyes. The Valley of the Fallen is also the final resting place of Falangist Party founder Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera and contains the remains of some 35,000 civilians and soldiers, many of them Republicans executed by Franco’s regime, and transferred to the site on his orders. Many were startled by this spectral anachronism: an active Fascist monument in Europe?

Memoria Histórica

 In the 2000s, grassroots efforts began to locate and exhume the mass graves of the Republican victims of the Civil War and the Franco regime. The emergence of a strong social movement led by the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH) opened up intense debates about the way Spain had dealt, or rather not dealt, with the dictatorship and its victims. Spaniards started to look at the country’s past as Europeans and global citizens, and this involved playing catch up with Western Europe’s direct engagement and openly public wrestling with the memory of their own compromised or authoritarian regimes.

The Holocaust’s increased centrality to European memory politics contributed significantly to raising awareness in a new generation of scholars, artists, journalists, and activists regarding Spain’s blood-soaked past. Becoming European meant critically revisiting this, so to speak, Spanish Sonderweg, regarding the transition to democracy. Part of this dramatic paradigm shift in thinking about the Spanish past ultimately reframed the discussion, adopting terms and ideas around transitional justice, victims’ rights, and memorialization consistent with other nations on the continent.

The exhumation of corpses provided explicit undeniable material evidence of the repressive policies put in place by Franco and sparked an ongoing and emotional public debate over the regime’s concretely identifiable remains, including the Valley of the Fallen.

Irreconcilable narratives

 In 2007 the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) challenged for the first time the status quo with regards to public (non)remembrance of the Civil War and Francoism and proposed a bill for a law commonly known as Ley de Memoria Histórica (Historical Memory). The law was approved by the Parliament and included among its provisions the removal of Francoist symbols from public buildings and spaces. The Memory Law also called for measures to democratize the Valley of the Fallen, but recommendations of a commission appointed in 2011, were ignored during the following years of conservative Popular Party rule (2011-2018). The switch in governments last year brought the question concerning Franco´s remains and the mausoleum back on the center stage of the political agenda.

My colleague Francisco Ferrándiz, whom we hosted on two occasions at CHGS, was one of the members of the 2011 commission. In an interview he stated that “what we advocate for in our report goes beyond the Franco exhumation itself. We underscore the need to resignify the monument (…) the Francoist hierarchy of the site needs to be dismantled”.

While scholars of genocide and transitional justice, and memory activists across the globe will see such recommendations as a matter of reparation and a basic requirement of democratic life, Spanish society seems to be afraid of confronting this difficult past.

At the core of the Spanish memory, conflict are two irreconcilable narratives. The center-right People’s Party –unsurprisingly, given its historical affinity with the pre-democratic regime – stubbornly sticks to the language of the Transición, as if the country was still on the brink of fratricide. For “reconciliation” to happen, they claim, one should not drudge up the pain of the past. The left, however, highlights the unaccounted for atrocities that were committed by the Franco regime both during the war and the forty-year dictatorship that followed. 

There is an insurmountable distance between those who advocate for remembrance as a way of reparative justice and democratic education vs. those who see in forgetting a political virtue. An op-ed in the main conservative newspaper ABC last year, commenting on the governmental decision to dig up Franco from his celebratory resting place, could not characterize the latter position more vividly. The author welcomed the fact that his eleven-year-old son had not the slightest notion of this dark chapter of Spanish history. When driving past the Valley of the Fallen, and to the question “Daddy, who was Franco?”, he decided not to respond and changed the subject. The liberal papers, however, are welcoming the news of the exhumation and relocation. The most repeated word in these circles is: “Finally”.

The Spanish case invites reflections that go beyond its borders, resonating more broadly, not the least in the US. Why maintain monuments, if their foundations cry out for total reevaluation? What if we always lived with the discomfort of their symbolism, the very idea of why this structure existed in the first place? What if when we walked by them, and instead of welcoming us to remember, it was imperious, imposing, and upholding an ideal that wounds us instead?

The exhumation and the challenging process of reclaiming the Valle de Los Caídos for all of Spain’s people will undoubtedly be a source of friction. But in the end, even those who oppose Memoria Histórica will have to recognize that demystifying the most divisive symbol of the dictatorship, does not open old wounds but may help to close them finally.

Alejandro Baer is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota and the Stephen C. Feinstein Chair in Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Earlier this year, Cambodia marked the 40th anniversary of the collapse of the Khmer Rouge and the end of the genocide that left an estimated 1.5 to 2 million people dead and countless Cambodians displaced. It made sense then for the largest academic group dedicated to the study of genocide, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), to host its biannual conference in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, this past July. The conference would provide an opportunity for the country to demonstrate its resiliency and give attendees (myself included) a chance to see the lingering effects of mass violence in a place where its impacts are still clearly visible and permeate nearly every aspect of society.

On its surface, Cambodia appears to be rapidly improving. I spent two days in Siem Reap, the gateway to the famed Angkor Wat complex, before heading to Phnom Penh for the conference. The city boasted a lively marketplace, plenty of Western-friendly shops and restaurants, and a seemingly booming construction business. Phnom Penh was largely the same. Neon lights illuminated the night skies, and KFC restaurants dotted the streets. Although fewer in number than in Siem Reap, college aged backpackers weren’t uncommon in the capital city. I had seen enough travel shows in preparation for my trip to expect this. Anthony Bourdain remarked that his first trip to Cambodia was a terrible experience, owing largely to the lack of basic infrastructure, but just ten years later, he found the country had improved dramatically. Given that the conference was ten years later still, I had come expecting to see even more economic growth.

To some extent, that investment has come. Cambodia is the recipient of significant international investment; millions of dollars have come pouring in from China, Vietnam, the U.S., and elsewhere, promising jobs and much-needed infrastructure improvements. In theory, it should be a great time to be in Cambodia: its economy is one of the fastest-growing in Southeast Asia, and its human development index score has nearly doubled since the fall of the Khmer Rouge. But scratch beneath the surface a little, and it’s not all that it appears to be. While life in Cambodia is comfortable if you’re an urban elite, the economic boom has mostly left the rural Cambodians behind. The foreign investment has come with serious strings attached. Rumors have spread that a Vietnamese company is now controlling Angkor Wat and sending profits out of Cambodia, an agreement that would give oversight of the country’s most precious cultural treasure to a foreign company. Many of the new hotels that promised foreign tourists to the country sit mostly empty, and the ones that are open limit the accessibility for Cambodian merchants to interact with tourists. The Cambodians I talked to see this boom as largely a bust for them.

To rural Cambodians, the blame can primarily be placed at the feet of the government. Although public dissent is met with swift retaliation from the government, privately, the Cambodians I encountered were more than willing to share their frustrations with the ruling Cambodian People’s Party. The political party has dominated the country’s political landscape for decades and has functionally ruled Cambodia as an authoritarian single-party state since elections in late 2017. Before the genocide, the Cambodian People’s Party had been a communist party, formed to combat French colonial authority. A split with Pol Pot in the 1970s led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge and ultimately, genocide. Today, many of the party’s leaders were formerly connected to the Khmer Rouge. Prime Minister Hun Sen was battalion commander under the Khmer Rouge who fled to Vietnam during one of the purges under the regime.

A standard critique of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (the tribunal system established to bring the leaders of the Khmer Rouge to justice) is its narrow scope. Only five trials were scheduled, and only four were held. It wasn’t until I traveled to Cambodia that I realized how valid this particular criticism is. Traveling through a country with the pains of genocide still so clear, led by an authoritarian Prime Minister with a direct connection to the perpetrators of genocide, I can help but wonder: is this what resiliency and progress are really meant to look like? 

Joe Eggers is the Research & Outreach Coordinator for the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies.

Everybody has a family narrative or childhood story to tell. Elizabeth Warren’s is about her Native American ancestor; my mother’s about her German Jewish neighbor. And while Elizabeth Warren’s ancestor remains elusive, my mother’s neighbor and what I heard about him growing up has become more concrete over the years. It literally became concrete when in 2005 a Stolperstein (stumbling stone) bearing his name was installed in front of the house he had owned before he was deported and murdered in Theresienstadt.

Here is the story my mother told me. It was in late 1941 when she noted that Sally Cohen, an older gentleman and respected citizen (so she thought) had to wait in the corner of the neighborhood bakery store until everybody else was served. She also noted that he was now wearing a monstrous star-shaped yellow badge that said, “Jude.” My mother was 11 at the time and to this day hasn’t forgotten the sad and embarrassed look on Herr Cohen’s face. When she asked the adults why Herr Cohen was treated that way, she was told not to worry and that all of this was mandated by a new law.

The notion that everything in the Third Reich was done “according to the law” has always puzzled me. By voting for the Enabling Act in March 1933, the democratic parties had abdicated, more or less voluntarily, and transferred absolute power to the government. Hitler was free to write laws as he pleased and as perverse as he and his legal experts wanted them to be. Legal experts? Browsing through the “Who’s Who” of Hitler’s helpers it is astounding to see how many career-obsessed academics and law scholars were willing to sell their soul to the Nazis for the prospect of landing a prestigious job or professorship. In many cases, these positions opened up because they had been held by Jews who were forced to resign. One of the most notorious Nazi apologists was Carl Schmitt who called the Nuremberg Race Laws a “constitution of freedom” because “they freed Germany from the un-German concept of liberalism and equality.”

Find that outrageous? In an interview with the Financial Times, Russia’s strongman Vladimir Putin called liberalism “obsolete” the other day. Viktor Orbán proudly promotes his “illiberal democracy” model in Hungary and gets applause from fellow wannabe dictators in Italy and other European countries. And in the US, self-declared nationalist and Brexit fan Donald Trump has surrounded himself with people like Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo who don’t like liberalism either, at least not the 21st-century version that offers asylum to immigrants and marriage to same-sex couples. Well, they can’t recruit Carl Schmitt anymore to rewrite human rights law, but they can always copy and paste from the Bible. This is what Pompeo’s new Commission on Unalienable Rights seems to have in mind when they talk about reducing human rights to God-given or “natural rights.” I am guessing the human right to healthcare will be off the table too, since there is no mention of health insurance in the New Testament and resurrection from the dead is guaranteed anyway. God-given rights and natural law have been used to legally camouflage mankind’s most horrific actions including slavery, the crusades, and the Thirty Years’ War that left a third of central Europe’s population dead. Not to forget Gottesgnadentum (the divine right of kings) which would come in really handy for Pompeo’s boss if he wants to transition from a 4-year job to a life-time appointment.

Hitler also claimed that the “divinely ordained law of nature” was at the heart of Nazi ideology and jurisdiction and never got tired to enlist the support of the Almighty in his speeches. Alas, the law is only as good as the people who make or interpret it. I keep wondering if all the adults in that bakery store in 1941 really thought the Nuremberg Race Laws were “good” or if they were just rationalizing their guilty conscience away by pointing to the law. Children apparently sensed that something was fundamentally wrong. After Sally Cohen and his wife were deported in 1942, the official word was that they were “resettled to the East.” His textile and fabric store was confiscated by the Nazis and sold for very little money to his former competitors. For them, I assume, there was no question that it was a “good” law.

In the summer of 1943, my grandparents’ house and the bakery next to it burned to the ground during a bombing raid by the Allies. There were only a few things that survived the fire because they were stored behind a steel door in the basement. Among them is a table cloth that has never been used and still has the store’s label and handwritten price tag attached to it. It is from Sally Cohen’s store. Occasionally I take it out of the drawer, look at it and have a hard time trying to wrap my head around the past and the present.

Henning Schroeder is a former vice provost and dean of graduate education and currently a professor in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Minnesota. He’s at schro601@umn.edu. On Twitter: @HenningSchroed1.

Note: A longer story about Sally Cohen and his home can be found here (in German), produced by the Historical Society of Bergisches-Land

The following offers a recap, an update and another perspective to the Waldsee issue previously discussed in this blog 3/25/3019 by George Dalbo under the title “More than a name…” .  The current author discovered the history of the Waldsee name and has remained actively engaged in the Concordia Language Village response.

“We learned that our journey’s end was a place named Waldsee. When I was thirsty or hot, the promise contained in that name immediately invigorated me.”

Trains to Waldsee

This excerpt from Fatelessness by the Hungarian Jewish author Imre Kertesz, holocaust survivor and winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature, does not reveal the awful truth of where the train would take him.  “Waldsee”,  “Forest Lake” in English, was the name used by the German SS to ensure smooth transport of 440,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz – Birkenau between May 15 and July 9, 1944.  This was nearly half the total number of Jews murdered at the extermination camp. “Where are we going?” fearful passengers might have asked as they were pressed into train cars. “To Waldsee” came the soothing response. Once arrived, Hungarian Jews were forced to write postcards to their families back home, reassuring them of safe arrival.

Postcards from the edge

“My dearest ones, I feel fine. Hopefully you are all healthy. Please send an answer by postcard. When I’m healthy, I think of you a lot. “ So wrote Agnes Bamberger to her family in Budapest. Perpetuating the fiction, the card was stamped with a specially manufactured postmark, “Waldsee”.  Agnes Bamberger was murdered in a gas chamber at Auschwitz. Her family’s address was noted and passed along for the next transport.

At the other Waldsee, the German language camp in Bemidji that uses the immersion method of language teaching, the postcard rack stands empty. “Why don’t we sell postcards?” the sign reads, then explains the history of the Waldsee postcards from Auschwitz.

Happening upon history

I am not a scholar of the Shoah; I am not a trained historian of anything other than language. However, because of a recent connection with Concordia’s German Language Village in Bemidji, out of old habit, I put the search term “Waldsee + Nazi” in my Internet browser—what can I say, I’m Jewish.

Try it. All of the hits in some way reference the Nazi ruse (George Dalbo’s excellent blogpost is one of them).

With a sense of outrage, I wrote to Concordia Language Village’s (CLV) Executive Director Christine Schultze about my discovery.  “I can only assume that you knew of this and decided to keep the name anyway”, I wrote. Schultze wrote back immediately, “We were not aware…” More followed. I did not expect so comprehensive a response. There was an advisory group formed. I was put on it. There were meetings with alumni of CLV, current “villagers”, parents, teachers, staff, etc. Reactions were invited and then shared. A list of measures was decided on and the advisory group was kept in the loop.

I was hooked. Things were happening, but not fast enough. Months would go without an update. I felt a sense of ownership of this little controversy and so I would write reminders to my contact at CLV and cc: members of the Advisory Committee, “Dear…, I hope you are well. It has been … months since the last update on progress with the measures committed to by CLV…” Soon after, there would be another update to the group.

The Devil in the Detail

The Waldsee issue has become my private obsession. Is it really worth paying it so much attention? Of all the things to obsess about, it is after all, just a name. If my concern is about anti-Semitism past, present and future, surely there are larger and more relevant targets?

And yet, this is my target. The opportunity to offer hundreds of students from all over the US safe entry into what continues to be the most taboo topic in German history is priceless. That I can continue to be involved in this opportunity is not just a private obsession, it is also, a mission.

It is a just a name, but the devil is in the detail.

It’s Personal

I have a connection to the Shoah. My father was a refugee from Dortmund, Germany during the summer of 1938. According to the Yad Vashem list of Jews murdered in Auschwitz, three of my great-grandparents were among them.

Every Jew is touched in one way or another by the Shoah. For me, it is in my blood, my nightmares and my unbidden tears. Happening upon the history of the Waldsee name didn’t just affect me, it punched me in the gut.

I suppose every educator who delves into the horrors that humans visit upon each other struggles to balance outrage with cool academic rigor. I suppose what motivates any researcher of the Shoah is not morbid fascination, but a sense of the precious opportunity to change the future by carefully documenting and teaching about the past. That at least is my hope.

It is just a name, but the devil is in the detail. For me, my motivation to continue watching Waldsee is, to paraphrase Michael Corleone, “Keep your angels close and your devils closer”.
I do.

Alex Treitler has his BA and Masters from Columbia University. He has a second Masters from Uppsala University in Sweden. He is a translator and writer and runs his own business, www.yourstoryshared.com.

Thomas Schmidinger teaches at the University of Vienna in Austria and is both secretary-general of the Austrian Society for the Promotion of Kurdology and coeditor of the Vienna Kurdish Studies Yearbook.

He is an expert on Syria, Iraq, and Iran and the author of a number of books on migration, cultural integration, and the Middle East, several of which have been translated by U.S. publishers.

Dr. Schmidinger was invited by multiple U.S. Universities, institutions, and bookstores to give a series of lectures this September on his newest book, The Battle for the Mountain of the Kurds: Self-Determination and Ethnic Cleansing in the Afrin Region of Rojava (PM Press, 2019). The organizers and publishers worked for months on the book tour, and he had all travel plans and papers in order. Everything was set, or so it seemed.

When Dr. Schmidinger arrived at the boarding area on Thursday September 12th, 2019 for the connecting flight from Amsterdam to Minneapolis, where he previously spent a year as a research fellow at the University of Minnesota, he was detained and questioned by airline security about his research in Syria, Iraq, and Iran and his travels to these countries. The security personnel expressed their assurances that he would be allowed to board, but they needed to get the go-ahead from Washington, D.C. Then, the unexpected happened.

His travel was denied with absolutely no explanation by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Dr.Schmidinger could not fly despite the U.S. Embassy in Vienna stating that there is no formal travel ban from the U.S. State Department against him and despite having a valid Ten Year Multiple Entry Visa granted recently for a conference in Rhode Island just last year in the U.S.

This is clearly a politically motivated action by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security who have banned many scholars and activists, as well as PM Press authors, from entering the country. Along with the reprehensible travel ban of people from six Muslim-majority countries and growing crackdowns on immigrants and refugees, Homeland Security seems to be increasing their scrutiny of people who are critical of U.S. domestic and foreign policy. They are secretly placing them on the No-fly List without explanation. The problem is getting worse, and the political consequences are serious and disturbing.No-fly list. No-drive list. No-walk list. No-talk list. When will it end?

Dr. Schmidinger pondered these questions and more on his return trip to Vienna, “Does Homeland Security now prevent scholars on Iraq, Syria, Iran or Jihadism to enter the U.S.? Do they prevent other scholars on Kurdish Studies to enter the U.S.? Do they prevent people who work in deradicalisation and rehabilitation of Jihadis? Did they get some Turkish propaganda lies and follow instructions from Ankara? I really don’t know, but I would be curious to find out. Until now, I just know that after years of traveling to the U.S., after living and working in Minnesota for a whole year, after being invited to 4th of July parties in the residence of the American ambassador, it seems that I am seen as an enemy and security threat now.”
The Battle for the Mountain of the Kurds: Self-Determination and Ethnic Cleansing in the Afrin Region of Rojava appears to be the book Homeland Security does not want you to read – if you need another reason to buy it, read it, and share it.

– Statement by PM Press and Andrej Grubacic, editor of KAIROS book series and the Chair of the Anthropology and Social Change Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, CA
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Thomas Schmidinger is a political scientist and a cultural and social anthropologist. He teaches at the University of Vienna and is both secretary-general of the Austrian Society for the Promotion of Kurdology and coeditor of the Vienna Kurdish Studies Yearbook. He is the author of a number of books on migration, cultural integration, the Middle East, and other topics, several of which have been translated. His previously translated book is Rojava: Revolution, War and the Future of Syria’s Kurds was published by Pluto Press in 2018. His newest book is The Battle for the Mountain of the Kurds: Self-Determination and Ethnic Cleansing in the Afrin Region of Rojava (PM Press, 2019), part of the KAIROS series imprint of the Anthropology and Social Change Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, CA.
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Thomas Schmidinger’s book tour for The Battle for the Mountain of the Kurds was to be as follows:

Friday, September 13th at 12noon – Minneapolis, MN at the Institute for Global Studies at the University of Minnesota, Social Sciences Building 267 19th Avenue S, Room 710

Monday, September 16th at 7pm – Berkeley, CA at Books Inc., 1491 Shattuck Ave

Tuesday, September 17th at 7pm – San Francisco, CA at the California Institute of Integral Studies -First Floor Lobby, 1453 Mission St. Hosted by the Anthropology and Social Change Department and cosponsored by the Bay Area Mesopotamia Solidarity

Wednesday, September 18th at 7pm – Philadelphia, PA at The Wooden Shoe Books 704 South St. Cosponsored by Wooden Shoe Books and The Radical Education Department (RED)

Thursday, September 19th at 7pm – New York, NY at Bluestockings Books 172 Allen St, Sponsored by Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—New York Office

More information at pmpress.org

More information about KAIROS at http://www.pmpress.org/content/article.php/Kairos

For press inquires, please contact:
Stephanie at PM Press – stephanie@pmpress.org
Steven at PM Press – steven@pmpress.org
Thomas Schmidinger – thomas.schmidinger@univie.ac.at