Can memory be a bad thing? Readers must have stumbled over a recent headline that said, “Plan to open a new Holocaust Museum in Budapest faces criticism – from Jews.”Isn’t creating such a museum, as any other project that raises awareness and educates on the Holocaust, always something praiseworthy?

Holocaust memory seems to be at a problematic crossroad. While it is remembered across borders, the story and the messages it entails vary. The Budapest case is a good example of how a memorial project can be motivated more by contemporary politics than by a genuine desire to convey historical truths. The Hungarian Jewish community, among others, fears that – in a context of growing nationalism – the museum will downplay the role of Hungarian collaborators and stress instead the Hungarian rescuers. Moreover, it is likely that the planned museum will put the Nazi genocide of Jews on the same plane as postwar communist persecution. In Eastern Europe, equating the Nazi genocide to Stalin’s crimes is part of a generalized politics of victimization.

Yet, there are also memory politics involved where some groups emphasize the Holocausts’ uniqueness. In Italy and Spain (former Nazi Germany’s allies and sympathizers), highlighting the singularity of the Holocaust results very often in self-exculpation regarding the (Fascist and Francoist) crimes. The very uniqueness of the Holocaust, as invoked by conservative politicians at Holocaust Memorial Day ceremonies, allows them to draw a radical distinction between Nazism and Fascism (both in its Italian, a la Mussolini, and its Spanish, a la Franco, forms). It allows for memorializing without probing into one’s own past.

The Holocaust, a symbol of absolute evil and supreme infamy, is also all too easily projected as a metaphor onto totally different phenomena. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for instance, has become a catch-all for analogies and equivalences with the Holocaust. Contemporary antisemites now claim that the main victims of the most radical case of genocide (Jews) have turned into the most recent and significant perpetrators. As European scholars have pointed out some of these arguments have now found their way into the Holocaust Memorial Day event itself.

A growing preoccupation in a memory culture gone global is that the Holocaust will be open to all sorts of distortions, abuses and instrumentalization.

But is there a correct memory of the Holocaust? The Holocaust has become the paradigmatic Never Again and the slogan can serve as a monument, a ceremony, a museum, a pledge. In all cases, it transcends time and place and constitutes a moral imperative, an ethics of avoidance. But its true meaning is disturbingly vague. What are the lessons of the Holocaust contained in its remembrance? The EuropeanNever again (“Never again fascism!”) differs fundamentally from Jews’, European or not, “Never again victims!”. The former may urge towards non-violent action and disarmement while the latter may advocate to be on guard, armed or even strike preemptively.

The German-Jewish philosopher and sociologist Theodor Adorno provided a valuable insight that can lead us out of the quagmire of proper memory. He wrote that Hitler had imposed a new categorical imperative upon mankind. And this imperative was not remembrance per se, but to arrange thoughts and actions so that Auschwitz will not repeat itself. In other words, he suggested that we inquire into the forces that gave rise to the evil. Thus, when we commemorate or educate about the Holocaust and other genocides, we may have to take a step back in our identification with heroes or victims and, above all, shorten the distance we put between the perpetrators and ourselves.

Alejandro Baer is the Stephen Feinstein Chair and Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He joined the University of Minnesota in 2012 and is an Associate Professor of Sociology. 

Jewish Poland Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places

by Erica T. Lehrer

Since the end of Communism, Jews from around the world have visited Poland to tour Holocaust-related sites. A few venture further, seeking to learn about their own Polish roots and connect with contemporary Poles. For their part, a growing number of Poles are fascinated by all things Jewish. Erica T. Lehrer explores the intersection of Polish and Jewish memory projects in the historically Jewish neighborhood of Kazimierz in Krakow. Her own journey becomes part of the story as she demonstrates that Jews and Poles use spaces, institutions, interpersonal exchanges, and cultural representations to make sense of their historical inheritances.

Something insidious, but sadly not unexpected, is happening in the Central African Republic (CAR)-over the past twelve months mass killings have been taking place in the CAR, a former French colony in a very rough neighborhood (it borders the Sudan’s to the East, Chad to the North, and DRC to the South). Things came to a head in March when the former president Francois Bozizé was deposed by a group of Muslim militants (Séléka) whom instigated sectarian killings and human rights abuses against the largely Christian populace. This has resulted in the formation of self-defense groups (Anti-balaka meaning ‘sword/machete’ in the Sango language) formed to protect the victims. This conflict is complicated by the fact that there are claims of the Séléka getting support from mercenaries in Sudan and Chad.

On the 5th of December, the UN voted to allow the French to send 400 troops into the CAR who would augment the already present AU battalion of 3600. The French intend on increasing this number to 1200 troops in the coming days following a sudden outbreak of killings within the last fortnight of women and children by Séléka forces (meaning ‘union’ in the Sangolanguage) that has resulted in 500 deaths and 189,000 fleeing their homes in Bangui. Fears of retaliatory attacks have become more pronounced leading both Burundi and Rwandato pledge to send troops to the country. While the number of deaths might seem deceptively low for a nation of about 4.6 million, it only accounts for Bangui since correspondents have not been able to venture outside that area.

In a letter by Medecins Sans Frontieres to the UN humanitarian system, MSF has accused the UN of indifference to the plight of the victims. It states that in the year that this atrocity has unfolded UN aid officials have done nothing but collect data that is related to the fighting and not provided assistance to the displaced people sheltering on the same compound as the officials.

It is important to note that this is not “another Rwanda” as has been suggested by some. This is a power grab by a cabal of rebels that seeks to control the vast minerals that are present in CAR. It is not an attempt to rid CAR of its Christian population but rather an attempt to instill fear and submission by a belligerent group. While there may be what some UN officials have called the seeds of genocide this does not ipso facto mean that “another Rwanda” is at hand. It is however, an atrocity that is fast degenerating and a humanitarian catastrophe that is getting worse. The international community finds itself at a crossroads like it has on several occasions (Syria and Mali being the most recent). The French and the AU have taken a proactive role in trying to mitigate the situation but more is needed. The UN humanitarian system also has to step up and rise to the challenge.

This weekend the first signs of hope appeared. Michel Djotodja, the current president and former leader of the Sélékaleader said that he is willing to negotiate with Anti-balakaforces. The only problem is that he barely has control of the capital city and some of his former fighters have gone their own way. This is coupled by the fact that no one is sure how much control the faction of Anti-balaka that is willing to negotiate is representative of the movement itself. All of this is compounded by the fact that Anti-balaka has no recognizable structure further throwing into doubt who the president is actually going to negotiate with. Is it simple? No. Is it hopeless? No. It will require some rolling up of sleeves by the UN, AU, France and possibly the UNSC. This development is, however, a small but positive step that has to be fostered and natured by the international community, the sooner the better

Wahutu Siguru is the 2013 Badzin Fellow in Holocaust and Genocide Studies and PhD candidate in the Sociology department at the University of Minnesota. Siguru’s research interests are in the Sociology of Media, Genocide, Mass Violence and Atrocities (specifically on issues of representation of conflicts in Africa such as Darfur and Rwanda), Collective Memory, and perhaps somewhat tangentially Democracy and Development in Africa.

Who was Benjamin Murmelstein? Why would Claude Lanzmann dedicate over 3 hours to him in his latest film The Last of the Unjust? Murmelstein was a rabbi and teacher from Vienna, third Jewish elder of the Thereseinstadt ghetto, and the only surviving Jewish elder of any of the Jewish Councils set up by the Nazis. Condemned by many in the Jewish Community as a traitor and a Nazi collaborator he was tried and acquitted by the Czech authorities after the war settling in exile in Rome where he lived until his death in 1989.

He testified at the trial of Thereseinstadt Commandant Karl Rahm and wrote and published a book of his experiences in Terezin: Il ghetto-modello di Eichmann (Theresienstadt: Eichmann’s Model Ghetto), in 1961. He submitted the book to Israeli prosecutors to use at the Eichmann trial (Adolf Eichmann, SS officer in charge of the deportation of the Jews of Europe) a submission that went unused.

Murmelstein had much valuable information to offer, especially on Eichmann So much so that if Murmelstein’s testimony had been used it would have dispelled any notion of the dispassionate Nazi bureaucrat who only followed orders as defined by Hannah Arendt’s term the “banality of evil.” Instead we would have seen Eichmann as a man who loved his job and pursued it with zeal and passion above and beyond what was required by his superiors. We would also have seen a corrupt man who lined his own pockets with Jewish funds for both personal and professional gain, as the extra money afforded him the financial independence to run his department apart of the bureaucratic machine and away from the eyes of his superiors.

So why is Murmelstein’s story coming to light now and why did Lanzmann wait nearly 40 years to make this film? Possibly the world was not ready for such a controversial and ambivalent figure. In 1975 Lanzmann interviewed Murmelstein for a project he was working on which later became the critically acclaimed 9-hour documentary Shoah. The interviews show that Murmelstein lived in the center of what Primo Levi referred to as the “grey zone” in his book The Drowned and the Saved. Levi’s theory is that those of us who did not experience the lager (camps) and ghettos cannot place ourselves in a position to judge those that were there, nor can we view the Holocaust as something that is black or white, good or evil. We simply cannot know what we would do to survive under the circumstances.

Murmelstein is clear that he was no saint and that he loved power, danger and adventure that went with the job of being a Jewish community leader and later elder.  But he also speaks in terms of the expectations that others had in times that were not ordinary. Murmelstein towards the end of the film tells Lanzmann that in Thereisenstadt there were no saints. “There were martyrs, but martyrs are not necessarily saints.”

Murmelstein points out that many people tried to conduct life as they had under normal circumstances but there was nothing normal about Thereseinstadt, the model ghetto the Nazis had created to fool the world and the Jews imprisoned there about the “Final Solution.” While Murmelstein claims his intentions were to save as many Jews as he could, others viewed him as a tyrant, a collaborator, and a man who only cared about himself. Yet many times in the interviews Murmelstein speaks of the opportunities he had to escape with his family to England and to Palestine, but he remained feeling it was his responsibility.

As the film begins we watch the now 87-year-old Lanzmann read from Murmelstein’s book in Prague, Nisko, and Theresienstadt.  One might wonder if this is an egotistical ploy by Lanzmann, but as the Murmelstein interviews unfold and the 3 1/2 hours go by we realize that Lanzmann has a real affection for Murmelstein, so much so he has become a surrogate witness. Lanzmann has become Murmelstein’s voice, reading passages of his beautifully worded testimony in the places that Murmesltein describes, thus collapsing time, bringing past and present together in the same space, much as he did in Shoah.

Here amidst the past and present we hear Murmelstein in his own words, we are drawn to Murmelstein much like Lanzmann is by his bold storytelling, his intelligence, knowledge of mythology, literature and history.  He seems to be telling the truth about his experiences, admitting to his flaws and the perceptions of his decisions.

The Last of the Unjust will not be remembered as a landmark documentary about the Holocaust like Shoah. Still, it is an important work that represents a different approach to Holocaust documentary. Lanzmann acts as a surrogate witness, in this case representing an extraordinary and at the same time flawed character steeped in moral ambivalence. Lanzmann offers the viewer a much more complex and deeper understanding of humanity during the Shoah by giving a voice to a survivor whose testimony was silenced by those who were not yet ready to hear what he had to say.

Jodi Elowitz is the Outreach Coordinator for CHGS and the Program Coordinator for the European Studies Consortium. Elowitz is currently working on Holocaust memory in Poland and artistic representation of the Holocaust in animated short films. 

Last month, the EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) released a comprehensive study on the experiences of antisemitism among Jews in 8 European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom)-whose Jews comprise 90% of the EU’s total Jewish population.

The FRA study indicates that two-thirds of Jewish respondents consider antisemitism to be a problem today in their countries. Three-fourths believe the problem has gotten worse in the past five years, and 68% percent say they at least occasionally avoid wearing, carrying or displaying things that might help people identify them as Jews in public.

A distinctive feature about this study is that it is centered on European Jews’ experiences and perceptions, rather than on “counting” antisemites -who nowadays often reject having an antisemitic standpoint or motivation- and antisemitic incidents, which often go unreported. Is there seepage of antisemitism into the European mainstream? Yes, according to Europe’s Jews.

The study offers what classic sociologist W.I. Thomas labeled the “definition of the situation” by social actors – in our case: Jews in Europe, who increasingly feel uncomfortable, pressured and even threatened as Jewish citizens in their respective countries. And, as Thomas wrote in his famous theorem, situations defined as real are real in their consequences. Almost half of those surveyed in Belgium, France, and Hungary indicate they have considered emigrating because of the situation.

These results, which confirm findings of earlier studies done by outside organizations, state agencies and local Jewish communities, are disturbing. They should serve as a wake up call for policy makers, educators and researchers.

While the issue of antisemitism is very often downplayed in academia, CHGS takes that call with the importance and the rigor it deserves. On December 5th we hosted, together with the Center for Austrian Studies, an interdisciplinary panel discussion on antisemitism: then and now. We brought together scholars from the United States and Europe and explored continuities and discontinuities in the history of antisemitism, its current intellectual sources and expressions in different contexts. This event -which will be soon available on our YouTube channel – laid the foundation for what we expect to be an ongoing and much needed scholarly discussion on this topic.

Best wishes for a happy, productive and healthy 2014.

Alejandro Baer is the Stephen Feinstein Chair and Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He joined the University of Minnesota in 2012 and is an Associate Professor of Sociology. 

Kristallnacht: Violence, Memory, and History

Edited by Nathan Wilson, Colin McCullough

What did people hear about Kristallnacht outside of Germany in 1938 from governments and media sources? How did governments and ordinary people respond to the plight of the Jewish community there? How have lives been affected by Kristallnacht in the seventy years since its occurrence? This interdisciplinary study of erasure and enshrinement seeks to answer these questions, exploring issues of memory and forgetting (in both the material and symbolic sense), and how the meaning of Kristallnacht has been altered by various actors since 1938.

An extraordinary international exhibit is touring Minnesota this month: Lawyers without Rights. Jewish Lawyers in Germany Under the Third Reich. The display was created by the German and American Bar Associations and was brought here as an outreach initiative of the Federal District Court of Minnesota. The exhibit reflects a time in Germany when individual rights and the rule of law were systematically disregarded.  
My own grandfather, Walter Mieses, was one of the many lawyers whose destiny was tied to the fate of democracy. He was born in Leipzig in 1900. At the age of 28 he became the youngest judge in the state of Saxony, serving at the Regional Court in Leipzig.

In 1929 he resigned his position in the civil service and became a private attorney, representing clients before the Court of Appeals of the State of Saxony, in Dresden. In April 1933, the National Socialist decree that refused all Jewish judges, public prosecutors, and lawyers access to the courts brought his brilliant career to a halt. In the same year he emigrated to Buenos Aires (Argentina).

Walter Mieses never practiced law again. But his passion for the legal profession and his profound sense of justice and fairness, led him to become a frequent contributor to Argentina’s immigrant and national newspapers, writing articles on civil and criminal law, international affairs, and Jewish-German relations. He died of injuries suffered in a bus accident in Buenos Aires in 1967.

I never met my grandfather but I grew up hearing stories about Opa Walter. Now, thanks to this important effort of Minnesota’s legal community, his story and that of many other Jewish German lawyers, judges and prosecutors will become known to a broad audience. For that I am personally grateful.

Some lawyers, like my grandfather, were able to escape Nazi-Germany to rebuild their lives in another country. But too many of his colleagues, like millions of others, did not escape. Their fate was incarceration and murder.

This exhibit pays homage to all these lawyers by teaching an important lesson: the rule of law is as fragile as glass and its destruction is always the prelude of atrocities.

Alejandro Baer is the Stephen Feinstein Chair and Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He joined the University of Minnesota in 2012 and is an Associate Professor of Sociology. 

Myron Kunin passed away at the age of 85 last week. It was Myron’s passion for art that brought him together with Stephen Feinstein. Together they curated Witness and Legacy, a major commemorative art exhibition to mark the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz that debuted in St. Paul in 1995 and traveled until 2002. That collaboration began the friendship and vision that lead to the founding of our Center in 1997.

We will honor Myron’s his legacy as we strive to fulfill our mission of educating all sectors of society about the Holocaust and other genocides.

May his memory be a blessing to us all.

Obituary: Myron Kunin, businessman, patron of the arts
Star Tribune 10-31-2013

My Parents II, 1946. Henry Koerner (1915-1991)

This painting from Myron Kunin’s  collection has been associated with the Center since it was used to promote the Absence/Presence exhibition of 1999. It was also used as the cover photo for Dr. Stephen Feinstein’s book of the same name.

The Order Has Been Carried Out: History, Memory, and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre in Rome

by Allesandro Portelli

Winner of the 2005 Oral History Association Book Award

On March 24, 1944, Nazi occupation forces in Rome killed 335 unarmed civilians in retaliation for a partisan attack the day before. Alessandro Portelli has crafted an eloquent, multi-voiced oral history of the massacre, of its background and its aftermath. The moving stories of the victims, the women and children who survived and carried on, the partisans who fought the Nazis, and the common people who lived through the tragedies of the war together paint a many-hued portrait of one of the world’s most richly historical cities. The Order Has Been Carried Out powerfully relates the struggles for freedom under Fascism and Nazism, the battles for memory in post-war democracy, and the meanings of death and grief in modern society.

“Students here seem to have a more emotional connection to the Holocaust”

Falko Schmieder is a DAAD visiting professor at the University of Minnesota and is currently teaching the course “History of the Holocaust.” He has studied Communications, Political Science and Sociology at various German Universities. Since 2005 he has worked as a researcher at the Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin. Together with Matthias Rothe, the course “Adorno, Foucault, and beyond” is being offered through the Department of German, Scandinavian and Dutch. Falko Schmieder will give a lecture at the CHGS Library (room 710 Social Sciences) on The Concept of Survival on November 20th at 12 p.m.

What are the main differences between students in the US and in Germany regarding knowledge of and attitude towards the Holocaust?

After my first experiences here I would say the German students tend to know more about the historical preconditions of the Holocaust, especially the long tradition of religious anti-Judaism, and, of course they have more detailed information about German History in general. On the other hand, the students here seem to have a more emotional connection and a more political access to the subject. Many of them have come in contact with Holocaust survivors in High school, as part of their educational training, and because of the many Holocaust Survivors who emigrated to the US and started a new life here it’s a more deeper innervated history. By the way, I am very fortunate to have the Holocaust Survivor Dora Zaidenweber coming to my class to speak this semester. I attended the presentation of her book The Sky Tinged Red, and was moved to learn about her personal story. I was astonished how many young people attended this program.

What do you expect your students to come out of your course?

I would like to make them aware of two things in particular: First, that modern antisemitism has a long prehistory, which is not limited to German history; and second, that antisemitism is in no way a thing of the past. Although it might have changed some of its features, it is still relevant today – at the end of my lecture I will deal with the phenomenon of antisemitism without Jews, and I will discuss some examples of contemporary reactions on the banking crisis in Germany, in which you clearly can find a revival of old antisemitic stereotypes.

How do you approach these sensitive and difficult issues in the classroom?

 In the first class, when I introduced myself to the students, I showed some photographs that I took in Berlin shortly before coming to Minneapolis. These photographs show two Berlinian Jewish institutions, and how they are monitored by surveillance cameras and by the police. The American students were very surprised to learn that it’s still necessary to constantly protect Jewish organizations and sites in this country, because of the fear (and possibility) of antisemitic attacks.

How does  Holocaust studies relate to your current research?

My current research project is on the History of the Concept of Survival, for which the Holocaust and its aftermath is of great importance. The rupture in history is reflected in the invention of many new concepts: think of “survivor syndrome,” “survivor guilt” and others, or in the disruption of traditional meanings of concepts. It is revealing that Claude Lanzmann or the well-known Spanish writer and Holocaust Survivor Jorge Semprún replaced the term “survivor” with “revenant” because older meanings of survival or survivorship no longer seemed appropriate to deal with the traumatic experiences in the extermination camps.