(Beiträge Zur Geschichte Des 20. Jahrhunderts) Jacob S. Eder, Philipp Gassert, Alan E. Steinweis (Eds.) - Holocaust Memory in A Globalizing World-Wallstein Verlag (2017)

Beiträge zur Geschichte
des 20. Jahrhunderts

Herausgegeben von
Norbert Frei
Band 22
Holocaust Memory
in a Globalizing World
Edited by Jacob S. Eder, Philipp Gassert
and Alan E. Steinweis
Dedicated to the Memory of Gilad Margalit
(1959-2014)
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Table of Contents
Jacob S. Eder
Holocaust Memory in a Globalizing World:
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Arnd Bauerkämper
Holocaust Memory and the Experiences of Migrants:
Germany and Western Europe after 1945 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Oliver Rathkolb
Holocaust Perceptions of Immigrants in Austria:
The Hidden European Dimension of Holocaust Memory . . . . 45
Annemarike Stremmelaar
Between National and Global Memory:
Commemoration of the Second World War in the Netherlands . . 61
Tony Kushner
The Murder of Stephen Lawrence:
Racism, the Post-Colonial, and the Holocaust in Britain . . . . . 77
Fabien Jobard
The French Humorist Dieudonné:
Between Anti-Racism, Antisemitism, and Holocaust Denial . . . 95
Michal Shaul
Israeli Ultra-Orthodoxy and the Holocaust:
Global, Local, and Domestic Dimensions of Memory . . . . . . 111
Batya Shimony
Our Holocaust: Reclaiming Shoah Memory in the Works
of Second-Generation Mizrahi Authors in Israel . . . . . . . . . 125
Sarah Ozacky-Lazar
Holocaust Memory among Palestinian Arab Citizens in Israel:
Personal Sympathy and National Antagonism . . . . . . . . . . 140
Aomar Boum
The Logic of Antisemitism:
A Moroccan Immigrant Narrative about Jews in Sweden . . . . . 153
Clarence Taylor
Contested Visions:
African American Memories of the Holocaust. . . . . . . . . . . 171
Daniel Stahl
Anti-Jewish Genocide: Jewish Discourses about the Crimes
of the Argentinian Military Junta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Shirli Gilbert
Remembering the Racial State:
Holocaust Memory in Post-Apartheid South Africa . . . . . . . 199
Yulia Egorova
Memory of the Holocaust in India:
A Case Study for Holocaust Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Jonathan Goldstein
Holocaust and Jewish Studies in Modern China:
Functions of a Political Agenda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
Notes on Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
Holocaust Memory in a Globalizing World
Introduction
Jacob S. Eder
About one and a half decades ago, in the summer of 2000, Tariana Turia,
New Zealand’s Associate Minister for Maori Affairs and herself a mem-
ber of New Zealand’s indigenous Maori community, sparked a public
controversy by equating the Maoris’ experiences during the colonial pe-
riod with the fate of Europe’s Jews during the Holocaust.1 Addressing
the nation’s Psychological Society, Turia pondered the long-term conse-
quences of traumatic experiences and contemporary suffering among the
Maori, many of whom live in wretched circumstances, very much like in-
digenous minorities in other former European colonies. She said: »I un-
derstand that much of the research done in this area has focused on the
trauma suffered by the Jewish survivors of the holocaust [sic !] of World
War Two. I also understand the same has been done with the Vietnam
veterans. What seems to not have received similar attention is the holo-
caust suffered by indigenous people including Maori as a result of colo-
nial contact and behaviour.«2
Turia’s statement received significant public attention and – not sur-
prisingly – negative reactions, above all from New Zealand’s political
elites, the media, and Jewish organizations, all of which rejected her com-
parison as inaccurate and inappropriate.3 She was, in fact, probably the
first high-ranking non-German politician from a Western nation to ac-
cuse a predecessor of her own government of having committed a »holo-
caust« (historians in general do not consider the treatment of the Maori
under British colonial rule an act of genocide4). From Maori scholars
and interest groups and the political Left, however, Turia received sup-
port. Several commentators not only agreed with her, but also equated
1 MacDonald (2003), pp. 386-389. For the following see also: the epilogue of Eder
(2016), pp. 197-209.
2 »What Tariana Turia said – in full,« NZ Herald, 31 August 2000, http://www.
nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=149643 (22 July 2016).
3 Cf. for the problem of analogies to the Holocaust, e. g., Steinweis (2005), pp. 276-
289, and Assmann (2010), pp. 110 f.
4 MacDonald (2003), pp. 383 f. This marks a difference, for example, in compari-
son to the cases of Australia’s Aborigines or Native Americans.
jacob s. eder
the colonial »oppressors« with Hitler and argued that »many Jews have
taken ownership of [the term] ’holocaust’ to describe the extreme horror
of their […] genocide, […] [which] serves to demean and belittle suffer-
ing by other people.«5 And as recently as 2012, New Zealand saw another
controversy when Keri Opai, a Maori scholar, drew similar parallels in a
radio interview, comparing crimes committed by the British during New
Zealand’s colonial period with the Holocaust. He said: »If you really
knew what went on, all the awful stuff, that really does break down to a
holocaust [sic!]. I know we might get in trouble for saying those words
but it is absolutely true. That is what happened, we are still recovering
from that.«6
Referring to a »Maori Holocaust« in this context clearly served a num-
ber of political purposes, such as raising awareness of the crimes of colo-
nialism and/or drawing parallels to the history of victimization of other
persecuted or ostracized minorities. Yet these references also reflect a
discourse characteristic of many parts of the world. There can be little
doubt that in many European countries, Israel, and North America, the
Holocaust has become a paradigm for mass crime and genocide, a meta-
phor for barbarism and human rights violations, and the fate of the Jews
has become a universally recognized point of reference for other victim
groups.7 Today, Holocaust memory certainly constitutes a key compo-
nent of historical consciousness and political culture in unified Germany,
many other European countries, Israel, and the United States. But also
in places like New Zealand, a country home to a host of Holocaust mu-
seums, memorials, and educational programs, it apparently makes per-
fect sense for the indigenous minority to reference the Holocaust when
talking about its own victimization.
Aside from the controversial and at times even ideologically charged is-
sue of comparing genocides and the related question about the »unique-
ness« of the Holocaust,8 one can identify at least two further transna-
tional links that underscore the complexity and interconnectedness of
the engagement with the Holocaust on a global scale. First, Holocaust
5 As quoted in ibid., p. 391.

6 Suzannah Hills, Academic sparks outcry for comparing Britain’s colonisation to
New Zealand to Holocaust, Daily Mail, 6 February 2012, http://www.dailymail.
co.uk/news/article-2097261/Academic-sparks-outcry-comparing-Britains-coloni-
sation-New-Zealand-Holocaust.html (22 July 2016).
7 Levy and Sznaider (2001); Eckel and Moisel (2008), pp. 9-25; Assmann and Con-
rad (2010), pp. 1-16. See also: Garber (1994).
8 See, e. g.: Rosenfeld (1999), pp. 28-61.
8
holocaust memory in a globalizing world
memory has gained such an important position in New Zealand, a coun-

try far away from the former sites of Nazi extermination camps, that it
seems to block out, or at least overshadow, the history of victimization
of local, indigenous minorities. Second, it is very likely that Maori repre-
sentatives had been looking abroad for inspiration. As the political scien-
tist David MacDonald has argued, they »have been strongly influenced
in the recent past by North American indigenous activists […], whose
arguments and style have been borrowed to advance Maori interests.«9
*
This volume addresses how a multifarious engagement and confronta-
tion with the aftermath of the Holocaust has emerged, developed, and
changed in numerous locations around the globe. Few historical events
have had a comparable significance for world – and especially Euro-
pean – history in the 20th century. None have made a similar impact on
politics, society, and culture, broadly defined, in the countries of the Ho-
locaust’s perpetrators, its victims, and its so-called bystanders, and also
in countries with no apparent connection to the mass murder of close
to six million European Jews during the Second World War. This vol-
ume, however, does not only set out to ask how mainstream or majority
societies – as loaded as these terms may be – have engaged with the lega-
cies of the Holocaust, but it also intends to look beneath the surface and
across national, social, and ethnic dividing lines. The essays assembled
here thus explore and elaborate on the following questions: How have
minority groups, with their own experience of violence or persecution,
responded to manifestations of Holocaust memory? How has the Holo-
caust evolved as the epitome of the suffering of a minority at the hands
of the majority and thus gained paradigmatic significance? How has de-
mographic change affected Holocaust memory in those countries that
have a historical link to the Holocaust? How have immigrants engaged
with the crucial role that Holocaust history plays in the political culture,
media, and educational systems of the West? How and why have societ-
ies that were not affected by Nazi occupation and extermination policies
engaged with the legacies of the Holocaust, and what does the Holocaust
mean to the residents of those countries?
Given the significance of the mass murder of Europe’s Jews as a cen-
terpiece for the West as a community of memory, we know relatively lit-
9 MacDonald (2003), pp. 383, 396 f.
9
jacob s. eder
tle about how minorities, some of whom have experienced or internal-

ized the memories of other acts of violence, persecution, and genocide,
have reacted and adjusted to these memorial cultures.10 Pursuing this an-
gle will provide key insight into the integrative social function of histor-
ical narratives, but will also expose their limits. We also need to explore
how mainstream memory cultures have attempted to address or integrate
minorities and ask why and to what extent the legacies of the Holocaust
have gained salience in societies and countries not directly affected by
Nazi anti-Jewish policies, such as South Africa or China. This volume
pays close attention to the internal dynamics of these processes as well as
to the relevant political goals and rhetorical strategies. It takes interna-
tional, transnational, and global connections into consideration, while
also paying attention to the national, regional, and local contexts. And
it examines the tensions that have emerged between these national and
cultural particularities, on the one hand, and the universal dimensions of
Holocaust memory, on the other.11
The volume analyzes the development and functioning of Holocaust
memory in several countries and regions of the globe. Fourteen case stud-
ies focus on the evolution and function of Holocaust memory discourses
in Europe, North and South America, Israel, South Africa, and Asia. The
volume locates and analyzes contradictions within, and challenges to, a
development that scholars have come to refer to as the »globalization«
or »universalization« of Holocaust memory.12 It by no means aims for a
comprehensive view – a potentially endless and probably impossible un-
dertaking – and it also explicitly excludes certain regions of the world,
such as former Communist Eastern Europe and the countries of the for-
mer Soviet Union, not because these cases would be not relevant or im-
portant, but rather because post-Nazi, post-Fascist, and post-Communist
societies in Europe have developed according to specific dynamics that
have been analyzed in a growing body of scholarship.13 Instead, the vol-
10 See, e. g.: Georgi (2003) and Jikeli (2012). Cf. the announcement for the 2016
Dachauer Symposium zur Zeitgeschichte, Geschichte von gestern für Deutsche
von morgen? Die Erfahrung des Nationalsozialismus und historisch-politisches
Lernen in der (Post-)Migrationsgesellschaft, http://www.dachauer-symposium.
de (5 August 2016).
11 See, e. g.: Bauerkämper (2012a), pp. 15 f.
12 Levy and Sznaider (2001), and Assmann and Conrad (2010).
13 See, e. g.: the relevant chapters in Blacker, Etkind, and Fedor (2013); Brum-
lik (2010); Flacke (2004); Müller (2002); Fugo, Kansteiner, and Lebow (2006);
Mink and Neumayer (2013); Pakier and Wawrzyniak (2015).
10
ume aims to provide case studies in order to offer a new perspective on

the development of Holocaust memory in a global perspective and will
pay specific attention to non-Western countries and non-Western mi-
norities. This introduction will briefly situate the book in the historical
as well as historiographical context, and then outline seven perspectives
from which to approach its subject matter.
*
The Holocaust is today considered a transnational event, as Nazi Ger-
many and its allies persecuted and killed Jews and other victim groups in
almost all territories under their control during World War II.14 As nu-
merous scholars have shown over the past years, the afterlife of the Ho-
locaust has also become a transnational phenomenon.15 The links among
the various memorial cultures connected to the Holocaust require some
explanation. The origins of these connections lie in the developments of
the 1960s and 1970s, yet have exerted their full force only since the 1990s,
when Holocaust commemoration experienced dramatic growth, not
only in Europe, but also on a global level.16 The Eichmann Trial, the Six-
Day War, and the broadcast of the NBC miniseries Holocaust in 1978/79
accelerated a process that led to the designation of a multitude of mur-
derous anti-Jewish policies of Nazi Germany as a discrete event, the »Ho-
locaust.« Interconnected international and transnational Holocaust me-
morial cultures, however, are mostly a phenomenon of the last 20 years or
so. The past two decades have seen a boom in the creation of memorials,
museums, educational programs, and of scholarly and academic institu-
tions dedicated to the study of the Holocaust.17
Since the end of the Cold War and accompanying the process of Euro-
pean integration, the Holocaust has become a negative »founding myth«
in Europe.18 In 2005, Tony Judt even suggested that »Holocaust recogni-
14 See, e. g.: Schmid (2008), p. 174. For the following, see also: Eder (2016), espe-
cially pp. 199 ff.
15 In addition to the already cited volumes, see, e. g.: the epilogue of Judt (2005),
pp. 803-831; Allwork (2015); Kübler (2012); Kroh (2008); Müller (2007); Rupnow
(2008); Ruprecht and Koenig (2015); Surmann (2012).
16 Eckel and Moisel (2008). See also: Novick (1999).
17 See, e. g.: Shosh Rotem (2013).
18 Goldberg (2012), p. 188. See also: Kübler (2012), pp. 11-30, and Pakier and Stråth
(2010).
11
jacob s. eder
tion« had become »our contemporary European entry ticket.«19 Judt was
also thinking of countries like Poland, which needed over 60 years to ac-
knowledge responsibility for the suffering of Polish Jews during World
War II and only did so during the final phase of its accession negotia-
tions with the EU. The acknowledgement of responsibility for one’s past
crimes – a difficult process for many collaborators of the Nazi regime
as well as former colonial powers or countries like Serbia – and the pro-
motion of »lessons« from such events have since become key elements of
what it means to belong to the European political community.
Such an endeavor is perhaps best exemplified by the creation of the
so-called Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Edu-
cation, Remembrance, and Research, inaugurated in Stockholm in 1998.
Its founding led to the first international political summit of the new
millennium with a large number of political leaders, including 23 heads
of states, in attendance.20 Under its current name, International Holo-
caust Remembrance Alliance, this organization aims to specify, for in-
stance, regulations for commemoration ceremonies or the place of the
Holocaust in high school education.21 The designation of a Holocaust
Remembrance Day on January 27, the day the Red Army liberated the
Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1945, marks another example of at-
tempts to install the Holocaust into a pan-European, global memory.
Since 2005 the United Nations has also officially remembered the victims
of National Socialism on that day, but it would be misleading to speak
of a European or even worldwide »homogenization« of Holocaust mem-
ory.22 Instead, national differences and distinctions have remained intact
(or were even reinforced), as the very divergent modes of commemorat-
ing January 27 across the European continent illustrates.23
Obviously, this development extends far beyond European borders
and has affected places far from the historical sites of the Holocaust. The
Association of Holocaust Organizations, for example, lists several hun-
dred full and affiliate members worldwide and extends well beyond Jew-
ish organizations, for which the memory of the Holocaust has an obvious
19 Tony Judt, Europe: Rising from the House of the Dead, The Globalist, 25 Au-
gust 2010, http://www.theglobalist.com/europe-after-world-war-ii-rising-from-
the-house-of-the-dead/ (22 July 2016).
20 Assmann (2010), pp. 101-105. Cf. Kroh (2008), pp. 111-200, and Kübler (2012),
pp. 17 f.
21 Allwork (2015), pp. 147-155.
22 Rupnow (2008), p. 70.
23 Schmid (2008).
12
significance.24 While memorials, museums, and scholarly centers exist in

many countries, the United States deserves special attention. The prod-
ucts of its memorial culture have shaped the debates over, the imagery
of, and the understanding of this event well beyond the North American
continent, especially outside the walls of the academic ivory towers.25 In
the United States, the Holocaust represents – unlike any other historical
event, including slavery or the fate of Native Americans – absolute evil
and the antithesis to the values of America’s civil religion. It has become
a paradigm for assessing human behavior, a unique »moral reference«
point for all political strata of American society, and the bearer of univer-
sal »lessons.«26 The proclivity to appropriate the Holocaust for political
purposes sometimes takes extreme and extremely ahistorical forms. This
does not only include comparing abortion or the breeding and slaugh-
tering of animals for human consumption to the Holocaust, but also us-
ing the event as an historical example to make a case against gun control,
as put forward by former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson
in 2015.27
To cite another recent example from mainstream American life, since
1993, the United States has had a national Holocaust Memorial Museum
on the Mall in Washington.28 On the occasion of the museum’s 20th an-
niversary celebration in 2013, former President Bill Clinton, who had
been present at the museum’s opening ceremony, reminded his compatri-
ots that this museum was America’s »conscience.«29 His speech illustrated
the paradigmatic significance of Holocaust memory for the contempo-
rary United States. Clinton described the Holocaust as a »human disease«
and as a »virus« that the »Nazis gave to the Germans,« which ultimately
could be reduced to »the idea that our differences are more important
than our common humanity.« According to Clinton, this »virus« had not
only caused Germans to perpetrate the Holocaust, but was also to blame
24 Rosenfeld (2011), pp. 9 f. See also: the Association of Holocaust Organizations’
members directory: http://www.ahoinfo.org/membersdirectory.html.
25 Novick (1999); Eder (2016); Flanzbaum (1999); Mintz (2001).
26 Novick (1999), pp. 11-15. See also: Judt with Snyder (2012), p. 273.
27 Rosenfeld (2011), pp. 74 f., and Alan E. Steinweis, Ben Carson Is Wrong on Guns
and the Holocaust, New York Times, 14 October 2015, http://www.nytimes.
com/2015/10/15/opin ion/ben-carson-is-wrong-on-guns-and-the-holocaust.html?_
r=0 (22 July 2016). See also: Cole (1999).
28 Linenthal (2001).
29 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, U. S. Holocaust Museum 20th
Anniversary Tribute (Video), 29 April 2013, C-Span, http://www.c-span.org/
video/?312271-1/us-holocaust-museum-20th-anniversary-tribute (22 July 2016).
13
jacob s. eder
for the discrimination of women in Pakistan or the terrorist attack on

the Boston marathon in 2013. Through this utterly ahistorical misrepre-
sentation of (German) antisemitism and the Holocaust, and by using the
experiences of Jews during the Third Reich as a vehicle for moral lessons,
Clinton affirmed an alleged moral superiority of the United States as well
as the centrality of the Holocaust’s lessons for such a view of the world:
if America succeeded in promoting the »truth« of the Holocaust to »all of
human kind,« the world would become a better place.30
Yet it is not only Holocaust commemoration that has experienced dra-
matic growth internationally. The same can be said about the scholarly
study of this event, including its aftermath, which has led to the emer-
gence of a truly international and very diverse academic field. This vol-
ume is by no means the first scholarly attempt to engage with this sub-
ject matter, which has been the focus of a significant body of scholarship.
Even though it is neither possible nor necessary to provide a comprehen-
sive overview of recent scholarship on this topic, a few significant histo-
riographical landmarks should be mentioned. Sociologists Daniel Levy
and Natan Sznaider have written one of the most frequently cited books
on this subject, Erinnerung im globalen Zeitalter: Der Holocaust, in which
they argue that the Holocaust represents the epitome of evil in the con-
text of a »cosmopolitanization« of Holocaust memory.31 Accordingly, ref-
erences to the Holocaust mostly serve to criticize human rights violations,
while minorities and other groups across the globe have come to identify
with Jews as the »archetypical« victims of historical and political injus-
tice. Taking Levy/Sznaider, but also Peter Novick’s book on the Holocaust
in American Life, as a starting point, Jan Eckel and Claudia Moisel have
published a collection of mostly European empirical case studies to fur-
ther investigate the »universalization« of the Holocaust.32 Their volume
includes, for example, chapters on the reception of the Eichmann Trial
in Belgium and the Netherlands as well as on the development of Holo-
caust Remembrance Day in Europe. In their volume Memory in a Global
Age, Aleida Assmann and Sebastian Conrad attest to the »global career«
of Holocaust memory, but aim to explore more broadly the connections
between globalization and memory debates.33 Michael Rothberg’s book
Multidirectional Memory marked another significant contribution to this
30 Ibid.
31 Levy and Sznaider (2001). The English translation was published under the title
The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age (2006).
32 Eckel and Moisel (2008), and Novick (1999).
33 Assmann and Conrad (2010), p. 8. See also: Conrad (2016), pp. 64 f.
14
literature.34 Rothberg has argued, in short, that the memory of the Holo-
caust and other events, such as slavery and colonialism, are not compet-
itive and mutually exclusive, but rather one should consider »the public
sphere as a field of contestation where memories interact productively
and in unexpected ways.«35 Recently, the volume Marking Evil by Amos
Goldberg and Haim Hazan has offered yet another new approach to the
study of Holocaust memory in the global age.36 Goldberg and Hazan ex-
plore how »global« – and not only European or American – Holocaust
memory has actually become. However, they mostly concentrate on the
discursive dimensions of this subject, for instance by examining Holo-
caust testimony or its poetic representations; they do not focus on the
political level of the implementation and functioning of memorial cul-
tures in historical perspective.37
In contrast to many earlier contributions, the present volume inte-
grates an exceptionally large variety of scholarly perspectives on the is-
sue of Holocaust memory in a globalizing world, and all of its essays
are original contributions that are solidly based on empirical research.
The volume’s goal is not only to assess and discuss the development and
functioning of Holocaust memory around the globe, but also to specifi-
cally focus on the impact of Holocaust memory on relations between the
Western and the non-Western world.
*
This introductory essay seeks to propose seven perspectives in order to
provide a framework for the individual essays of the volume, and also to
point to new ways to approach the study of Holocaust memory in a glo-
balizing world. First of all, globalization and the changes it has brought
about form the preconditions for most of debates and developments that
the book examines.38 The terms »globalization« and »global« serve a dual
purpose: on the one hand, they provide the historical context for an in-
creasing worldwide salience of Holocaust memory; on the other hand,
they help to define the volume’s focus of investigation, a »global« phe-
nomenon, as it were, namely the worldwide proliferation of commemo-
34 Rothberg (2009c).
35 As summarized in Rothberg (2015), p. 213.
36 Goldberg and Hazan (2015).
37 See my review of Goldberg and Hazan (2015), in: Central European History 49,
no. 2 (June 2016), pp. 291 ff.
38 See: Conrad (2016).
15
jacob s. eder
ration and memorialization of the Holocaust.39 Every country, society, or

social group explored in the essays of this book have been influenced by
the developments that have made the world a »smaller,« more connected
place. An historically unprecedented level of mobility and movement has
re-shaped the spheres, spaces, and communities of memory. At the pres-
ent – and in contrast to past decades – nation-states no longer provide
the only, or the central, framework for the formation of memory and
identity. Many national myths, such as the notion of Austria as »Hitler’s
first victim« or France as a nation of resisters, have had to be revised, as
they could no longer be insulated against contradiction and questioning
narratives from abroad.40 One of the more recent examples of the shat-
tering of what Tony Judt called »self-serving local illusions« under pres-
sure from abroad is the case of Switzerland.41 Switzerland’s restrictive im-
migration policies during World War II, denying Jewish refugees a safe
haven, as well as economic collaboration with the Nazi regime and the
holding of Jewish assets in Swiss banks, were not openly discussed in the
Alpine republic before the 1990s. Only significant pressure from abroad,
for instance by the World Jewish Congress and the U. S. government un-
der Clinton, propelled Switzerland to face these past misdeeds and pro-
vide compensation payments for its victims.42
But examples like the Holocaust Museum in Washington and the
statements of Maori Leaders in New Zealand show that discourses about
the Holocaust have taken a global dimension. This calls for an analysis
of the paths, changes, transformations, and modes of transportation, as
it were, of Holocaust memory. One needs to look at the people who have
crossed borders and have influenced memorial cultures. These include,
of course, the migration of survivors of the Holocaust to locations out-
side of Europe, but also more recent patterns of migration – be they per-
manent or temporary. The impact of tourism should not be underesti-
mated and, of course, scholars also belong to a highly mobile species, and
they have left their own significant imprint on the formation of memo-
rial cultures.43 But the most significant changes have come about as the
39 See, for example: Gerstenberger and Glasman (2016).

40 Judt (2005), pp. 803-831, and Assmann and Conrad (2010), p. 5. See also: Flacke
(2004; 2 vols.), and Knigge and Frei (2002).
41 Judt (2005), pp. 812 f.
42 See, e. g.: Surmann (2012), and Independent Commission of Experts Switzerland
– Second World War (2002) and also Barkan (2000).
43 See, e.g.: the growing body of scholarship on so-called »dark tourism«, for exam-
ple Foley and Lennon (2000), and the more recent summary by Will Coldwell,
16
results of mass communication – television, movies, and more recently

the Internet – which have created new and much larger audiences, also
on a global level. In connection with these changes, one also needs to lo-
cate the impact of such processes of communication on individual nation
states, the old frameworks, as it were, for debates about memory, and also
ask how the effects of globalization on memorial cultures have differed
across national borders.
Secondly, so-called »internal globalization« and its consequences on the
global boundaries of Holocaust memory need to be considered.44 Glo-
balization has not led to a synchronization of memorial cultures across
borders. The diverse forms of commemoration of January 27 are a good
example. If one tries to locate the role and significance of minorities, es-
pecially immigrants, in this context, it does not suffice to look at the pat-
terns of migration or the flow of information and knowledge. Instead,
the effects of »internal globalization« need to be taken into account,
which Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider have described as the »process
[…] which implies that issues of global concern are able to become part
and parcel of everyday local experiences and moral life worlds of an in-
creasing number of people.«45 If one understands Holocaust memory
as an »issue of global concern« this would be a way to make sense of its
widespread impact.46 To add another layer to these considerations, the
field of migration history has put forward the concept of transcultural-
ism, which helps to frame and explore the consequences of this constel-
lation. High-tech means of transportation and communication actually
enable people, especially immigrants, to live transcultural lives, which
means that they can »live in two or more different cultures« at the same
time.47 In doing so, they are able to create numerous linkages between
their places of origin and destination. These connections also change the
societies with which they are connected, inevitably affecting questions of
identity and memorial cultures.
This also means, however, that the resistance in some parts of the
world to accepting Holocaust memory as a core value or »moral norm«
can impact Western societies. The Arab World may serve as the most
Dark tourism: why murder sites and disaster zones are proving popular, The
Guardian, 31 October 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2013/oct/31/
dark-tourism-murder-sites-disaster-zones (5 August 2016).
44 Assmann and Conrad (2010), p. 8.
45 As summarized by ibid. See also: Levy and Sznaider (2002), p. 88.
46 Assmann and Conrad (2010), p. 8.
47 Harzig, Hoerder, and Gabaccia (2009), pp. 83 ff.
17
jacob s. eder
striking example. Here, the Western »claims to the Holocaust’s universal-

ity, […] are received […] as a form of Euro-American imperialism in the
field of memory.«48 Such efforts, which are also often seen as attempts to
legitimize Israel and its policies, are questioned and rejected in a number
of ways. Strategies include drawing explicit parallels between Nazism and
Zionism, or invoking the antisemitic trope of a »Jewish conspiracy« that
instrumentalizes the Holocaust. In fact, the International Conference to
Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust, commissioned by former
Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad in 2006, served not only to
question and deny Israel’s right to exist, and to provide a forum for Ho-
locaust denial, but it was also an attack on the transatlantic West and its
values more generally.49 The repercussions of such debates on immigrant
and minority communities within Western countries thus need to be
taken into account. A combination of the methodologies of various sub-
fields, such as memory studies and migration history, could actually lead
to new sets of questions and productive ways to address them.
On a more basic level, we can further distinguish how Holocaust
memory culture has shaped the attitudes of the majority of a society to-
wards minorities, and how minorities have engaged with the memorial
culture of the respective majority. The perspective of majority or main-
stream societies constitutes the third angle of investigation. In Western
Europe, Holocaust memory has clearly shaped policies and attitudes to-
wards minorities and immigrants. Indeed, the process of European inte-
gration itself can be seen as a response to the Second World War and the
Holocaust, which has made inner-European migration a comparetively
uncomplicated process.50 »Holocaust consciousness,« more generally, has
served to create widespread awareness of, and political action against, rac-
ism, xenophobia, and antisemitism. On an international level, the lega-
cies of the Holocaust, at least as a rhetorical device, have served to protect
the lives of minorities, notably during the NATO campaign against Serbia
to protect Kosovo Albanians in 1999. Not only in Germany, the slogan
»Never Again« has served to legitimize this »humanitarian« intervention,
which was not sanctioned by the United Nations.51 As the examples of
Rwanda and more recently Darfur have shown, however, Americans and
48 Assmann and Conrad (2010), p. 9; see also: Assmann (2010), pp. 98 f.

49 Nazila Fathi, Holocaust Deniers and Skeptics Gather in Iran, New York Times,
11 December 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/11/world/middleeast/ 11c
nd-iran.html?_r=0 (5 August 2016). See also: Assmann (2010), p. 113.
50 See: Kübler (2012), p. 28.
51 See: Steinweis (2005).
18
Europeans are much more reluctant to protect the lives of minorities out-
side the boundaries of their geographic spheres of influence, despite the
fact that these genocides were also discussed in the context of, and with
clear references to, the Holocaust.
Yet as Nancy Foner and Richard Alba have demonstrated, the indi-
rect institutional reactions or consequences of Holocaust memory have
not necessarily enhanced the standing of all minorities and immigrants
in Western European societies. This applies specifically to Muslims, the
largest ethno-religious group of immigrants in most of postwar West-
ern Europe. While similar statements could be made about France or
the Netherlands, the case of Germany makes this ambiguous indirect ef-
fect of Holocaust memory abundantly clear. For example, Jewish immi-
grants from the former Soviet Union have received much more support
from German government authorities with regard to immigration rights,
legal status, and religious activities than have immigrants from Turkey.
The contemporary problems of the Turkish immigrants do not, despite
their large numbers, receive the kind of attention that Jewish immigrants
have received in Germany.52 Holocaust memory has also not benefitted
the Roma, a core victim group of Nazi extermination policies, in Euro-
pean societies, and they are still massively discriminated against in many
countries.53
The earlier references to Tariana Turia and her claims about the
»Maori Holocaust« lead us to the fourth perspective, the reactions of mi-
norities to the majority society’s Holocaust memorial culture in the dis-
cursive and public spheres. The examples of Turia and other Maori voices
illustrate the referencing and the appropriation of the fate of the Jews
during the Holocaust as a means to make a certain point to the main-
stream society – rightly assuming that it will understand this message.
Taken from a completely different context, a very intriguing case can be
made about Kosovo Albanians. Not only has the »West« – or the mem-
bers of NATO in this case – perceived their victimization at the hands of
Serbia through the lens of the Holocaust, but Kosovo Albanians them-
selves have actively relied on parallels and analogies to the fate of Euro-
pean Jews during the Holocaust in constructing a national identity for
the Republic of Kosovo after its declaration of independence in 2008.54
Indeed, identifying themselves as the »Jews« of former Yugoslavia has
52 Alba and Foner (2010).

53 See, e. g.: Knesebeck (2011).
54 Boguslaw (2011).
19
jacob s. eder
not only helped them come to terms with their own suffering,55 but it
has also worked towards mobilizing Western sympathies as well as sup-
pressing debates and memories of war crimes committed by the Kosovan
army. As such, scholars should always look at several angles when consid-
ering such cases of self-identification with the victims of the Holocaust.
It has not only been a strategy utilized to raise awareness and sympathies
abroad, but also a tool employed to come to terms with one’s own history
of violence and victimization.
Fifth, not only the transmission of discourses about historical events,
but also the movements of peoples are of crucial concern for the context
of this volume. This panorama would be incomplete without bringing
migration and the processes connected with it into the equation. Obvi-
ously this is a fairly broad and complex issue, which is why a number of
brief observations and questions will have to suffice. Older theories of
migration have described a kind of circular pattern of immigration, ac-
cording to which new immigrants and their descendants go through sev-
eral stages, namely contact – competition – accommodation – assimilation,
until they are fully absorbed into their society of destination.56 As part
of these processes, they also become integrated into a new community
of memory while losing their old identities and connections to varying
degrees. Such assumptions have been challenged by the aforementioned
theories about globalization and transculturalism. In order to understand
the connection between migration and memory, one needs to closely ex-
amine the ways in which immigrants, for whom the Holocaust is not a
common heritage, are confronted with Holocaust memory in Western
societies and how they have responded. Naturally, such processes have
played out differently according to the national or ethnic background of
the immigrants and the context in which they have settled.
In Germany, such questions have been addressed, for example, in po-
litical education and in the multicultural or globalized classrooms of the
school system,57 but it is quite difficult to fully assess the results. Opin-
ion polls have been inconclusive. When the German weekly Die Zeit, for
example, conducted a survey in 2010 among Turkish citizens living in
Germany and German citizens of Turkish ancestry, the results were con-
tradictory. While about 50  stated that all people residing in Germany,
regardless of origin and citizenship, should engage with the history of
55 Ibid., p. 18.
56 See, e. g.: Hahn (2012), pp. 34 ff.
57 See, e. g.: Kühner (2008), pp. 52-65.
20
the Holocaust, 68  stated that they knew very little or hardly anything
about this history. Interestingly enough, 60  thought that Germany did
not provide a model of how to deal with a criminal past.58 These conflict-
ing results call for more research and perhaps for alternative methods of
analysis.59 Immigrants, of course, have not only been exposed to Holo-
caust memorial cultures, but also bring their own memories of migration
and sometimes persecution, victimization, and war to their countries
of destination. In some cases, they have been exposed to, or influenced
by, forms of engagement with the Holocaust and World War II in their
home countries.60 Obviously, this can include a very wide spectrum of
collective memories concerning victimization, occupation, or collabo-
ration. As mentioned earlier, discursive cultures and political debates in
their countries of origin that are not connected to specific memories of
World War II are also part and parcel of this constellation.
One factor that has received quite a bit of scholarly attention, for ex-
ample, is the disproportionally large degree of antisemitism and disin-
terest in the history of the Holocaust, or even Holocaust denial, among
Muslims in Europe, especially in Germany, France, and the UK.61 While
this certainly does not apply to a majority of Europe’s Muslim popula-
tion, one does need to consider that such positions are at times actively
propagated by Islamist groups and their media outlets from abroad. Yet
one also cannot ignore the fact that such attitudes must generally be seen
against the backdrop of the Arab-Israeli conflict. To make a complex situ-
ation even more complicated, one also needs to ask how immigrants have
related their own experiences of discrimination and exclusion to what
they know about the persecution of the Jews during the Third Reich.
In this context, the aforementioned survey stated that 80  of German
Turks think their situation cannot be compared to the Jews under Nazi
Germany. But this also means that a significant minority, about one
fifth, of the community does not rule out drawing this parallel. All these
58 Bernd Ulrich, Özlem Topcu, and Heinrich Wefing, Geteilte Erinnerung:

Deutschtürken und der Holocaust, Zeit Online, 21 January 2010, http://www.
zeit.de/2010/04/Editorial-Umfrage/komplettansicht (22 July 2016).
59 See, e. g.: the announcement for the 2016 Dachauer Symposium zur Zeitges-
chichte, Geschichte von gestern für Deutsche von morgen? Die Erfahrung des
Nationalsozialismus und historisch-politisches Lernen in der (Post-)Migrations-
gesellschaft, http://www.dachauer-symposium.de (5 August 2016). See also the
chapter by Arnd Bauerkämper in this volume.
60 Cornelißen (2010).
61 See, e. g.: Gryglewski (2013), and Jikeli (2013).
21
jacob s. eder
factors need to be taken into account when we try to answer questions

about how immigrants have adjusted to and altered memorial cultures of
Western societies. Yet while these points show that there is a very wide
spectrum of minority reactions to the memorial cultures of the majority,
one of the most pressing question for future research is whether these
reactions have impacted and changed the majorities’ memorial cultures.
The recent arrival of large numbers of new refugees, many from Syria,
and the intention to integrate them in Germany, and elsewhere, under-
scores the necessity of research on this specific aspect of integration.
Some of these factors may indeed be difficult to explore, at least for
historians, considering the kind of sources they commonly rely on. One
issue, however, lends itself to historical analysis – namely the policies of
institutions and organizations in charge of preserving and shaping the
memory of the Holocaust. The sixth perspective suggests that we look
at how these institutions have addressed and responded to minorities.
Many outreach programs aimed at immigrants, especially young peo-
ple, have been sponsored by the institutions that have taken responsibil-
ity for the former Nazi concentration camps. For example, the Concen-
tration Camp Memorial Neuengamme near Hamburg, in cooperation
with a number of other institutions, recently offered a seminar series en-
titled »How does history concern me?« This seminar focused above all
on teaching about the history of National Socialism and the local sites
connected to this history.62 Clearly, such a project aimed at integrating
immigrants into the Federal Republic’s community of memory. To cite a
different example, the aforementioned International Holocaust Remem-
brance Alliance makes the protection of minorities in contemporary so-
cieties one of the primary lessons to be learned from teaching the Holo-
caust. As one of the reasons in favor of supporting Holocaust education,
the Alliance states the following in its teaching guidelines: »It helps stu-
dents develop an awareness of the value of diversity in a pluralistic society
and encourages sensitivity to the positions of minorities.«63
As a third and final example, the Holocaust Museum in Washington
has been making a fairly strong effort to reach out to a number of mi-
nority groups in the United States, particularly African Americans. It
was certainly no coincidence that another speaker at the aforementioned
62 Seminarreihe: Was hat Geschichte mit mir zu tun?, 11 September 2012, http://le-
rnen-aus-der-geschichte.de/Teilnehmen-und-Vernetzen/content/10697 (22 July
2016).
63 International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Educate: Why Teach About the
Holocaust, http://www.holocaustremembrance.com/node/315 (22 July 2016).
22
ceremony with Bill Clinton was Rebecca Dupas, an African American

poet and high school teacher, who was at the time in charge of the mu-
seum’s outreach programs to high schools. Introduced as someone who
had not »inherited« but »chosen« »the legacies of the Holocaust,« her
speech drew a clear parallel between the historical significance of Mar-
tin Luther King and Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel in the
contemporary United States. Dupas did not mention the centuries of
inequality and racism that African Americans have faced in her country,
but maintained that it was the Holocaust that provided high school stu-
dents with the »lesson of a life time.«64 This statement not only offers a
striking example of the »externalization of evil«65 – i. e. the tendency to
draw »lessons« from events that were not part of American history – but
is also a clear indicator of efforts to integrate a minority group with its
own history of oppression, slavery, and inequality into American Ho-
locaust memory culture. This is, however, only one side of the story, as
there has been opposition by African Americans against such endeavors.
They have argued, for example, that it actually distracts attention away
from racism and slavery.66
Nevertheless, these three examples illustrate that the efforts to inte-
grate minorities into the Holocaust memorial culture of the majority
have actually accelerated the processes of the universalization of the Ho-
locaust. In order to make the Holocaust a relevant point of reference for
those minority groups who do not see themselves in a direct continuity
of the events of World War II, it has had to be framed in more and more
universal terms, connecting this history with pressing questions to which
minorities can relate. These include, for example, human rights viola-
tions or the experiences of discrimination of minorities in Western so-
cieties. It is certainly no coincidence that the seminar series of the Con-
centration Camp Memorial in Neuengamme began with a presentation
by a representative of Amnesty International, who talked about precisely
such issues.
The seventh and last perspective also has to do with institutions, but it
takes a different angle by looking at the conflicts that have accompanied
64 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, U. S. Holocaust Museum 20th An-

niversary Tribute (Video), 29 April 2013, http://www.c-span.org/video/?312271-1/
us-holocaust-museum-20th-anniversary-tribute (22 July 2016).
65 See, e. g.: Detlef Junker, Die Amerikanisierung des Holocaust, Frankfurter All-
gemeine Zeitung, 9 September 2000.
66 See, e. g.: Flanzbaum (1999), pp. 1-17, as well as the chapter by Clarence Taylor in
this volume.
23
jacob s. eder
the growth and the changes in Western Holocaust memorial cultures. As

Jewish Holocaust survivors and Jewish interest groups or organizations
have – at least outside of Germany – been at the forefront establishing
institutions that deal with Holocaust memory, these conflicts are very of-
ten connected to the relationship between the Jewish and the non-Jewish
portions of the population. In addition to the controversy in New Zea-
land, one could easily find a number of examples for such conflicts, such
as an episode that took place in 1977 in the city of Philadelphia. That
year, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, an NGO advocating
the rights of Jews and fighting antisemitism, managed to convince the
local board of education to make the teaching of the Holocaust a manda-
tory component of high school curricula. This decision led to fierce and
openly antisemitic reactions from American citizens of German descent,
an old and very well established group in Philadelphia. The latter feared
that Holocaust education could block out knowledge of the positive con-
tributions of German immigrants to US society, as well as lead to wide-
spread anti-German sentiment. German Americans even reached out to
West German diplomats and government authorities, who then subse-
quently opposed and even tried to impede a Holocaust-centered memo-
rial culture in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s.67
This case is particularly intriguing because self-identified Germans in
the United States struggled as a minority with an evolving Holocaust
memorial culture. However, one can examine such a constellation maybe
even more clearly by looking at a debate that took place only a few years
ago and approximately 2,000 kilometers northwest of Philadelphia, in
Winnipeg. This city of 600,000, located in central Canada, may seem an
unlikely place for a debate about Holocaust memory, but the opposite is
true. Winnipeg saw a long and multilayered controversy about the con-
tent of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, which opened in late
2014 and became Canada’s sixth national museum.68 This museum was
envisioned and initiated in the late 1990s by Izzy Asper, a Jewish busi-
nessman, as a human rights museum with heavy emphasis on the Holo-
caust. Its mission changed significantly when the Canadian government
took over the project in 2007, mainly to secure the funding and the oper-
ational costs of this fairly large enterprise. Nevertheless, the museum still
depends to a large extent on private donations. With the government’s
67 Eder (2016), pp. 17-28.

68 For a detailed account of the museum’s founding history see: Chatterley (2015),
pp. 189-211.
24
involvement, the institution, however, became dedicated not only to the

promotion of human rights and the teaching of ethics, but also to the
state’s policies of »diversity, inclusiveness, and multiculturalism.«69 In ad-
dition to several galleries dedicated to human rights in history and in the
present, as well as a Holocaust gallery (which is located at the narrative
and physical center of the museum), it also includes a gallery on »Indig-
enous Perspectives« and a gallery dedicated to mass atrocities, officially
called »Breaking the Silence.«70
And it was precisely this gallery – not so much the question of Cana-
dian or colonial crimes against indigenous peoples – that caused this in-
stitution a lot of trouble. This gallery was supposed to portray all four
genocides officially recognized by the Canadian government in addition
to the Holocaust – namely the Armenian Genocide, Rwanda, Srebrenica,
and the Holodomor, the man-made »Great Famine« of 1932/33 that killed
about three million Ukrainians. This plan set off a debate in which two
minorities, namely Jewish and Ukrainian Canadians, not only compared
their own respective histories of victimization, but also argued about
which atrocity was best suited to educate contemporary and future gen-
erations of Canadians about human rights.
Representatives of Canada’s Ukrainian minority of 1.3 million – the
world’s third largest Ukrainian population – campaigned for several
years to give the »Great Famine« the same extensive treatment as the
Holocaust in the museum. They argued that it could be used as »a lens
through which to teach an important aspect of the human-rights story,
about how a dictatorial state can use food, a basic human right, to con-
trol and destroy people.«71 Yet the strategies of Ukrainian interest groups
did not only include making such rational points, but also directly at-
tacked Canada’s Jewish community, comparing, for example, the claim
for the centrality and uniqueness of the Holocaust in the museum to
Stalin’s anti-Ukrainian policies. Jewish groups referred to the »unique-
ness« argument, but also maintained that the museum was originally
conceived as a Holocaust museum, which had helped to secure funding
from the Canadian Jewish community. Debates about the comparability
of the crimes of the Soviet and Nazi regimes thus do not only take place
in former Eastern Europe and the historical profession, but also in places
where Europeans have settled and migrant community leaders have been
69 Williams (2011), p. 4.
70 Galleries, Canadian Museum of Human Rights, https://humanrights.ca/galler
ies (22 July 2016).
71 As quoted in Williams (2011), p. 4.
25
jacob s. eder
making the commemoration of their suffering a key aspect of their iden-

tity politics.72 It speaks volumes about the status of Canada’s First Na-
tions that they were virtually absent from the debate about which mem-
ory to enshrine in the museum.
The museum retained its original plan to put the Holocaust at the
center of its narrative, but it continues to officially insist that it wants
neither to compare the suffering of different groups, nor to commemorate
the victims of the genocides portrayed in the museum. Instead, the mu-
seum’s aim is to teach ethics, portraying the Holocaust as the »archetypi-
cal collapse of democracy into genocide from which human rights lessons
can be drawn.«73 The aim of promoting universal lessons for present-day
Canada, however, has diminished the value of the institution for the po-
litical leaders of the different immigrant groups, and also for the circle of
potential donors, who are clearly more interested in the commemorative
aspect of the museum. During the construction, this led to a decrease in
donations and hence a delay in the completion of the project. The ex-
ample of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, however, reveals
the interpretative as well as the practical problems that emerge when the
desire to commemorate atrocities of particular interest to one minority
group comes into conflict with the desire to promote universal lessons
from these events.
This controversy raises yet another question. The Canadian museum
does not, despite the central place the Holocaust holds in this concept,
make an attempt to portray or explain this event in its historical entirety.
Rather, it focuses on ethical and human rights questions that emerge
from the Holocaust, such as the role of so-called bystander nations like
Canada. While such a normative approach is highly problematic in and
of itself – and anyone who has ever visited the Museum of Tolerance in
Los Angeles will be able to attest to the ahistorical and almost inevitably
superficial nature of such endeavors – this decision indeed makes one
wonder about how such controversies affect the popular understanding
of actual historical events.
Of course, the broader meanings of historical events are always in flux,
and it would be naïve to assume that the Holocaust would be excluded
from interpretative modifications. But one certainly needs to be mindful
of the limited knowledge that will be conveyed to future generations of
72 Moses (2012), p. 217. On historical politics of the Ukrainian diaspora see: Rosso-
linski-Liebe (2014), pp. 397-430.
73 Moses (2012), pp. 232 f. See also: ibid., p. 217.
26
Canadians if they are confronted with the history of the Holocaust only
in terms of its significance for the history of human rights. As such, his-
torians should consider what actually happens to the »Holocaust narra-
tive« – its terminology, iconography, and imagery – when it travels, gets
appropriated, politicized, and maybe even abused outside of its original
historical context. There are clear indicators that the transformation of
Holocaust memory over the past decades has led to distortions of histor-
ical understanding of the events before 1945.74
Indeed historians need to ask themselves not only whether the histor-
ical specificity of the events leading to the extermination of almost six
million European Jews is being pushed more and more into the back-
ground, at least in public forms of engagement with this history. Histo-
rians must also ask if Western audiences at large have reached a point of
saturation. In the United States, some scholars have complained rather
worriedly in the recent past about a growing »Holocaust fatigue.«75 And
Alvin H. Rosenfeld has warned his readers, for example, that the increas-
ing »dissemination« of the Holocaust in the public sphere, its »use as a
metaphor for victimization in general« or as a backdrop for movies and
TV series will eventually trivialize and vulgarize »a catastrophic history.«76
In the end, efforts to integrate increasingly diverse populations into
Western Holocaust-centered memory cultures will probably have a similar,
if unintended, effect. In Germany and maybe Austria, such changes would
not occur hastily, as these countries do have a special historical responsibil-
ity. But as debates about the Canadian museum or Bill Clinton’s reflections
about the »virus« of intolerance show, new forms of engagement with the
Holocaust may very well lead to increasingly abstract and watered down in-
terpretations and representations of this calamitous event.77
*
The essays collected in this book take up several of the perspectives and
questions outlined above, while also adding new points of view and new
empirical evidence to the discussion. They are organized according to
their geographic distance to Germany, the largest successor state of the
Third Reich. As such, the volume first explores, broadly speaking, the
74 See, e. g.: Rosenfeld (2011).

75 Schweber (2006), pp. 44-50.
76 Rosenfeld (2011), pp. 10 f., and cf. Snyder (2015).
77 See: Judt with Snyder (2012), pp. 277-283.
27
jacob s. eder
question of how minorities of non-European origin have engaged with

the legacies of the Holocaust in a number of Western European societies.
Arnd Bauerkämper begins with an analysis of the connection between
Holocaust memory and the experiences of migrants in Western Europe,
paying specific attention to Germany in this context. Oliver Rathkolb’s
essay explores the perceptions of young immigrants in Austria, taking into
account the distinctly different process of coming to terms with the Nazi
past in the smallest successor state of the Third Reich. The next three es-
says deal with countries in Western Europe. Focusing on the Dutch case,
Annemarike Stremmelaar asks how Turkish and Muslim residents have
engaged with the practices of Holocaust and war memory in the Nether-
lands. Tony Kushner takes the debate about the murder of Stephen Law-
rence, the young, black victim of a racist attack, and its comparison to
the fate of Anne Frank, as a starting point for discussing the relationship
between Holocaust memory and anti-racist memory work in the United
Kingdom. The next essay moves the focus to France – and to a debate
that is still ongoing. Fabien Jobard illuminates French discourse about
anti-racism, antisemitism, and Holocaust denial after the attacks on
the satire magazine Charlie Hebdo, as well as the recent terrorist attacks
claimed by ISIS, by looking at the public career of the highly controver-
sial, yet very successful, black humorist, Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala. The
book’s section on European societies closes with an essay that focuses on
Muslim views of, and relations to, Jews. Aomar Boum takes the example
of Ahmed Rami, a North African radio host in Sweden, as a case study to
explore the disturbing phenomenon of »Muslim antisemitism« and asks
how it connects to the logics of Holocaust denial.
Israel deserves specific attention in any comparative or international
study of Holocaust memory. It would be highly misleading, however, to
speak of an »Israeli« form of engagement with the legacies of the Holo-
caust. Instead, the book’s three essays on Israel provide a complex and
multifaceted picture. Michal Shaul looks at how ultra-Orthodox Jews
have engaged with the Holocaust as both a historical event as well as
a theological challenge; she points to parallels to, as well as differences
with, the »Zionist version« of Holocaust memory. Batya Shimony then
looks at another minority group in Israel, Jews from Asia and North Af-
rica, or Mizrahi, who came to Israel soon after the state was founded
and were the first group of immigrants integrated into its society. She
explores the tensions between Jews of European origin and Mizrahi
concerning the memory of the Holocaust as it played out in the works
of a number of second-generation Mizrahi writers. In a further essay,
28
Sarah Ozacky-Lazar explores how the discourse about the Holocaust has
shaped the relationship between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel.
The book’s last group of essays significantly broadens the geographi-
cal perspective of the volume. Clarence Taylor critically examines the en-
gagement with the history of the Holocaust by African Americans in the
United States, who have sometimes drawn parallels between what is at
times referred to as the »Black Holocaust« and the suffering of Europe’s
Jews under Nazi Germany. Focusing on Argentina, Daniel Stahl explains
why and how the discourse about Jewish victims of the Argentinian Junta
has relied on comparisons to the Holocaust in order to create a separate
group of victims, the category of the »disappeared Jews.« In her contri-
bution on South Africa, Shirli Gilbert shows how historical analogies to
the Holocaust have served as a benchmark for assessing the crimes of the
Apartheid regime, ultimately helping to facilitate the country’s transition
to democracy. Yulia Egorova then shifts the focus to India, a country that
often receives negative or critical headlines for the widespread popularity
of Hitler or its trivialization of Holocaust memory. Egorova makes the
case that institutionalizing Holocaust education could not only prevent
such problematic developments but also facilitate a coming to terms with
tragic events in recent Indian history. The final essay of the volume illu-
minates the genesis of Holocaust and Judaic Studies in Modern China.
Jonathan Goldstein analyzes how the institutionalization of these fields,
along with public forms of remembrance, such as museums, have devel-
oped as part of the political agenda of the Communist regime, for exam-
ple with regard to its relations with Israel.
Although no case study specifically about New Zealand is included in
the book, attentive readers may wonder what happened to Tariana Turia
and her career in politics. To make a long story short, she suffered no
permanent political disadvantages. As a matter of fact, she has actually
held several high-ranking offices in various New Zealand governments.
Maybe this is another indicator of the degree to which engagement with
the memory of the Holocaust differs and depends on the national con-
text, as such problematic analogies to the Holocaust have – and still can –
end political careers in Germany.78
One final thought about the future development of the field: if his-
torians in the West are really serious about taking global perspectives,
78 Think of, for example, the scandal about the CDU politician Martin Hohmann’s
speech on the occasion of German Unity Day in 2003, in which he referred to
Jews as »a nation of perpetrators.« Hohmann was later expelled from the CDU
but kept his seat in the Bundestag until 2005.
29
jacob s. eder
extending the spatial limits of their investigations, and leaving their

Euro-centric point of views behind, will they not inevitably have to pay
less attention to the memory of the Holocaust, but instead make an ef-
fort to integrate those views for which a different history marks the cen-
terpiece of their memorial culture? If we want to incorporate the study of
memorial cultures into the writing of global history, we cannot take our
Western preoccupations as a universal given, but rather we will have to
critically re-examine them. Such a de-centering of Europe (or America)
in our scholarly agendas will probably also challenge our understanding
of the Holocaust in the context of global history. Such a question, and
the host of problems it implies, is well worth our attention. This volume
intends to broaden and deepen the basis for this scholarly discussion.
30
Holocaust Memory and the Experiences of Migrants
Germany and Western Europe after 1945
Arnd Bauerkämper
Studies of migration and of memory are often pursued independently of

each other. Whereas investigations of migration are mainly based on so-
ciological concepts, historical research on memory has primarily been in-
spired by approaches used in cultural studies. More specifically, scholarly
works on Holocaust memory are rarely related to the history of migration
to Europe since 1945.1 Yet approaches to history and memory are crucial
in the »permanent negotiation of participation, positioning and identity«
in migrant societies.2 Conversely, integrating migrants and taking into
account the experiences of immigration can enrich historiography and
supersede the still dominant paradigms of national history.3
The Problem and the Challenge

In 20th century European history, immigration has called into question
many predominant notions of entrenched and homogeneous memory
cultures. The memories of migrants often do not conform to, and indeed
often clash with, the entrenched national memories that constitute con-
temporary studies of memorialization. Migration has resulted in multiple
memories and has created cross-border spaces of commemoration. Since
the 1960s, hybrid memory cultures have emerged in major West and
Central European states. As demonstrated in recent studies, the terms
of migrants’ contemporary self-identifications are more influential to
their perceptions and interpretations of the Holocaust than their ethnic
and national origins.4 The frameworks of particular national and ethnic
memories and identities are still strongly rooted in these societies, despite
being challenged by the experiences of immigration. The ensuing con-
flicts between the two groups, as well as between specific communities
* I am grateful to Lars Breuer (Freie Universität Berlin) for his helpful comments
on the draft.
1 Bungert (2008), p. 197, and Hintermann (2013), p. 149.
2 Can, Georg, and Hatlapa (2013), p. 178.
3 Ohlinger (2010), pp. 14, 18.
4 Georgi (2003), p. 309, and Georgi (2009), p. 103.
31
arnd bauerk ämper
of migrants, have largely been ignored by politicians and scholars. More

attention should be given to the specific memories of migrants, and the
ways they represent these memories. Further, more emphasis is to be
placed on the processes of adaptation and resilience by the second and
third generations of migrants. Studies of narratives, groups, and the rela-
tionship among different social and ethnic groups will enrich historical
scholarship by calling concepts of supposedly homogeneous (national)
memory cultures into question. These investigations may also contribute
to more deliberate policies in societies that have experienced migration.
In particular, political decisions need to take diverse and frequently con-
trasting memories into account.5
Many scholars and politicians have advocated for interactive memory
cultures in European societies. Yet this plea has encountered obstacles.
First, post-1945 memories of the Holocaust in Europe have changed. Af-
ter a brief period of intense recollections in the late 1940s, memories of
the Holocaust were put aside for narratives of self-victimization and the
implementation of heroic myths in most countries. Following the politi-
cal rupture of 1989-91, however, a more self-critical narrative of guilt and
responsibility emerged – especially (but not exclusively) in Western Eu-
rope, whereas memories of communism have overshadowed reflections
on the Holocaust in former Communist states.6
Second, migrants of the second and third generations have been urged
by native-born Europeans to adapt the memories of their parents and
grandparents to the prevailing memory cultures. Thus, societal pressures
caused migrants to modify the diversity of their memories regarding the
annihilation of European Jewry. Such a relationship between the long-
time residents and the immigrant minorities is asymmetrical. Germans
and their ancestors, in particular, were the major perpetrators in the Ho-
locaust. They had to face questions about their individual guilt and col-
lective responsibility, as they are directly tied to the mass murder of the
Jews by their ethnic and national origin. In conceptual terms, memo-
ries that are restricted to these »ethical« communities tend to separate
the migrants from Holocaust memorialization. Yet many migrants share
a moral concern about, and empathy with, the sufferings of the Jews –
even though their ancestors were not involved in the oppression or mur-
der of European Jews. As members of a moral community, they remem-
ber the extermination of the Jews as human beings. Thus, two modes of
5 Kölbl (2009), p. 66; Hintermann (2013), pp. 151 ff.; Georgi (2009), p. 91.
6 For a more detailed investigation, see: Bauerkämper (2012a).
32
holocaust memory and the experiences of migr ants
interrelated memorialization co-exist in European migration societies,

especially in Germany.7
Third, Holocaust education raises a more general problem with re-
gard to the memorialization of the mass murder of the Jews. According
to prevailing didactic practices, school and university instruction aims at
learning for the future. In order to gain meaning for university students,
pupils, and the entire society, the past has to be related to the present and
its study should convey lessons for the future. However, the Holocaust
represents a fundamental civilizational rupture and the ultimate denial
of basic human values and rights. Thus, this destructive event does not
seem to provide any message for human development. Resolute appeals
to prevent genocides in the future or programs on human rights educa-
tion do not solve this profound dilemma. In fact, the Holocaust needs
specific teaching programs, such as those developed by the Task Force for
International Cooperation at the Stockholm Meeting on the Holocaust
in May 1998. Holocaust education also received a major impetus from
the Washington Conference on Holocaust Era-Assets in November and
December 1998. In addition, national governments launched teaching
programs, such as the Levande historia in Sweden (established in 1998).
Not least, 600 delegates from 46 countries decided to expand Holo-
caust education at the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust
from January 26-28, 2000. These teaching programs have attempted to
strike a balance between the pitfalls of universalizing or singularizing the
mass murder of the Jews. Despite these international initiatives and the
transformation of European societies into multi-ethnic communities,
national frameworks continue to dominate the narratives of Holocaust
memory. In order to transform into more self-reflective, multi-perspec-
tival, and inclusive memory cultures, the experiences of all ethnic groups
must be included within the national frameworks of Holocaust memory.
European societies have undergone considerable immigration since the
Second World War, and the specific recollections of these immigrants
need to be integrated into memory cultures.8
7 Margalit (2004). Also see: Meseth (2002), pp. 125 f., 131; Kleiser (2005); Can,
Georg, and Hatlapa (2013), p. 179.
8 Kroh (2008); Kroh (2009); Meseth (2002), pp. 125, 128. Also see: Diner (2000).
33
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Memories of the Holocaust and the Second World War

in Europe since 1945
Holocaust memories are not uniform throughout all European coun-
tries. They are fractured and contested, both between states and within
national borders. Therefore, migrants are faced with a plurality of com-
peting memories that they need to process and check with regard to their
relevance for their particular cultural backgrounds. In general, memory
cultures in Europe are heterogeneous and split by internal conflicts, quite
irrespective of the migrants. Thus, conflicting memories and particu-
lar material interests prevented a comprehensive reconciliation between
Germans and their neighbors – as the continued negotiations on com-
pensation for the victims of Nazism from the late 1950s and early 1960s
through to the 1990s abundantly demonstrate. While the West German
Finance Ministry refused to acknowledge any ideological motivation on
the part of the former resistance fighters in various European countries,
West Germany’s Foreign Office was keen to appease public opinion in
the neighboring states. In the end, however, the German delegates re-
fused to acknowledge any genuine anti-Nazi political motivations by for-
mer resistance fighters in foreign countries. This denial effectively ques-
tioned the legitimacy of the combat and the post-war identities of many
Europeans. In the negotiations with Italy and Norway, in particular, the
West German delegates refused to mention resistance fighters in the trea-
ties, leaving decisions concerning the distribution of payments to these
former opponents of Nazi occupation in the hands of their new political
partners in the NATO and the European Economic Community.
When West German newspapers reported on financial transfers to
members of the Italian Resistenza in 1964, the responsible politicians of
the Federal Republic of Germany were showered with protests from an-
gry citizens.9 These critics had clearly stuck to the entrenched view that
resistance fighters were illegal partisans or even criminals. All in all, con-
flicts over memories prevented a comprehensive reconciliation through
bilateral negotiations. Up until now, the official treaties concluded be-
tween the governments have been used as tools by German authorities to
protect them from individual claims by the victims of Nazi occupation.
This strategy was legally confirmed by the International Criminal Court
9 Bauerkämper (2012b), p. 192.
34
in Den Haag; its ruling of February 2012 rejected demands for compen-
sation by Italian victims of Nazi occupation.10
Europeans shared a wilful disregard of the Holocaust in the 1950s and
1960s. Thus, most migrants to European states were not pressed to relate
their memories of the Holocaust. The mass extermination of the Jews did
not occupy a central place in memory cultures. West Germans, for ex-
ample, portrayed themselves as victims of the Second World War rather
than perpetrators. They tended to belittle the crimes that the army had
committed during the war. Whereas the SS units were demonized, pol-
iticians, intellectuals, and historians exempted the regular troops of the
Wehrmacht (and thereby millions of soldiers) from guilt and responsibil-
ity. West Germany needed the generational change of the 1960s to chal-
lenge this self-exculpatory view. A number of events in the 1960s finally
forced West Germans to critically review their involvement with Na-
tional Socialist rule and oppression, particularly the student and protest
movement of the 1960s, the death sentence against Adolf Eichmann in
Jerusalem in 1961, and the trial against the SS guards of the Auschwitz
concentration camp in Frankfurt from 1963 to 1965. During a visit to the
Warsaw Ghetto on December 7, 1970, Chancellor Willy Brandt dropped
to his knees, a demonstration of his reverence for the dead Jews. This act
reverberated through the media, where it was hailed as a symbol of West
Germany’s willingness to achieve a genuine reconciliation with the Nazi
past. Although contemporary opinion polls demonstrated that most
West Germans did not support Brandt’s gesture of reconciliation, the
long-lasting silence about German atrocities was eventually lifted. No-
tions of self-victimization receded, and a gradual reconsideration of the
past and a readiness to engage in self-criticism became the hallmarks of
the new »negative memory« that accepted Germany’s burdens, guilt, and
responsibility vis-à-vis its European neighbors.11
This sense of remorse intensified with the emergence of public mem-
ories of the Holocaust in the 1970s. The mini-series Holocaust shocked
many West Germans in early 1979. It gave rise to feelings of shame and
guilt toward the Jewish victims. The series was broadcast in almost all
West European states in 1979, and it raised wider questions concerning
the responsibility of »ordinary« Germans in the Holocaust. The increased
awareness of the mass murder of the Jews was by no means restricted
10 Focardi and Klinkhammer (2006), pp. 471, 486, 491, 493 f., 503 f., 506; Frøland
(2005); Levsen (2000), p. 70.
11 Gassert and Steinweis (2006), and Mausbach (2006).
35
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to Germany. It also triggered soul-searching among non-Germans in

Western and Central Europe. This led to the break-up of dualistic resis-
tance-versus-collaboration memory politics in France, Norway, Italy, and
Austria over the course of the 1980s and 1990s. Influential politicians in
these states came to acknowledge that at least some of their citizens had
sympathized with Nazi policies of repression or had participated in Nazi
crimes under the conditions of occupation.12 In the course of the 1990s,
politicians of various European states offered their formal apologies to
Jewish victims on behalf of their countries. In 1991, for instance, Austrian
Chancellor Franz Vranitzky abandoned the established view that Aus-
trians had been the »first victims« of the Third Reich. During his state
visit to Israel, Vranitzky acknowledged Austrian guilt and responsibility
for the Holocaust. Two years later, French President Jacques Chirac con-
ceded that French policemen had assisted the German occupational au-
thorities with the deportation of Jews under the Vichy regime.13
The atrocities committed in Rwanda and the wars that tore apart Yu-
goslavia also evoked memories of the Holocaust. The determination to
prevent genocide prompted Germany’s decision to intervene in Kosovo,
as Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer stated in 1999. American Jews, too,
voiced analogies between these events and the Holocaust. It was against
this backdrop of intensifying human rights debates that memories of
Jewish fates in the 1930s and early 1940s rose in prominence. The United
Nations General Assembly had passed the Convention on the Preven-
tion and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide only one day before the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December 10, 1948). Yet the
extermination of the Jews had been neglected in collective memory and
public remembrance in the 1950s and 1960s. It was only in the 1980s and
1990s that Holocaust memory gained a transnational dimension. Simul-
taneously, migration into most European societies increased. Although
the rise of a transnational Holocaust memory and the experiences of
(forced) migration were separate developments, the two are intertwined.
Both factors presented major challenges to the efforts of political and so-
cial elites to forge a self-critical and exclusive memory culture that con-
formed to international agreements, such as the Task Force for Interna-
tional Cooperation on Holocaust Education.14
12 Marchart, Öhner, and Uhl (2003).

13 Bauerkämper (2012a), pp. 231, 373, and Uhl (2004), p. 48.
14 Steinweis (2004), and Quataert (2009). Also see: Jötten and Tams (2012), and
Klein (2012).
36
References to human rights have increasingly shaped memories of the

Holocaust and challenged the nation-state’s hegemonic role in memori-
alization. Yet universalistic memories have by no means replaced national
remembrances. In fact, national and more cosmopolitan memories co-
alesce throughout Europe. Despite the »de-territorialization of Holo-
caust memories,«15 national institutions still strongly shape memories.
In East-Central European states, in particular, the turn towards a more
cosmopolitan, self-reflexive, and self-critical memory has even been ac-
companied by a renationalization.16 In general, a »reflexive particular-
ism« has emerged in the ongoing process of negotiations between »vari-
able modes of national belonging and cosmopolitan orientations toward
the supranational or pan-European.«17 Since the 1980s, more cosmopoli-
tan values that center on human rights have redefined and reconfigured
nationhood and national memories. Heroic narratives have undoubtedly
receded in national memory cultures in favor of more sceptical remem-
brances that concentrate on the plight of victims. Yet even this reorienta-
tion has by no means been uncontested and universal in Europe.18
Migrants and the indigenous population have increasingly been con-
fronted with the Holocaust since the 1980s, although this confrontation
occurs in different forms. Altogether, the »native born population and
the immigrant population (and its children) live in separate worlds of
commemoration.«19 However, few empirical studies of the role of the
Holocaust in everyday communication in small communities (like fam-
ilies) have been published – both with regard to migrants and the na-
tive-born population. Thus, knowledge about the pressure facing immi-
grants to position themselves vis-à-vis the extermination of the Jews in
European societies seems to be limited.20
Migrants from Muslim, Arabic, and East European States

As mentioned, more self-critical memories of the Holocaust and increas-
ing immigration coalesced in Western and Central Europe in the 1970s.
It was only in that decade that migrants had to relate their specific nar-
ratives to memory cultures that increasingly highlighted the mass exter-
15 Levy and Sznaider (2006), p. 28.
16 Heinlein, Levy, and Sznaider (2005), pp. 225, 239.
17 Levy, Henlein, and Breuer (2011), p. 139.
18 Lagrou (2013); Levy (2013); Levy and Sznaider (2004).
19 Motte and Ohlinger (2006), p. 159.
20 Welzer (2007); Welzer, Moller, and Tschuggnall (2002).
37
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mination of the Jews. The process of integration has been particularly

painful for Muslim and Arabic immigrants, as their memories have been
colored by the Nakba (»catastrophe«): the flight and expulsion of Pal-
estinians from the territory of the new Israel during and after the 1948
Arab-Israeli War. This conflict and the Six-Day War of 1967 have given
rise to a sense of enduring self-victimization among Arabs, often pre-
venting them from acknowledging the Jews as victims of the Holocaust.
When entering European states, Arabic immigrants are confronted with
the mass extermination of European Jews, as it is a cornerstone of na-
tional memory cultures. Although they are not tied to the Holocaust by
their origin, societal influence requires they adapt to the prevailing mem-
ory cultures. In Germany, in particular, Arabic immigrants have to po-
sition themselves to the memory culture related to the mass extermina-
tion of the Jews in order to be respected and integrated into the general
community. Studies of Muslim youth in Germany have identified four
types of access to the Holocaust: self-victimization, leading to an identi-
fication with Jews as a persecuted minority (1), the recognition of Ger-
man bystanders, confirming apologetic narratives (2), the appropriation
of the Holocaust in order to draw attention to the marginalized status of
minority groups (3), and a universal approach emphasizing the omnipres-
ent need and demand to preserve and protect human rights (4). As recent
studies have demonstrated, migrants have usually been more detached
from the Nazi past than the native-born population.21
Immigration has changed the make-up of European societies since
1945, resulting in shifting attitudes and the changing shape of memory
cultures. In this context, migrants’ memories serve present-day needs as
much as memories of the native-born population. Given the longstand-
ing conflict between Zionist Jews and Arab nationalists in Palestine since
the interwar years, many Muslims have presented themselves as indirect
and secondary victims of the Second World War. According to this view,
their expulsion was a result of the foundation of the state of Israel, which
in turn was legitimized by the Holocaust. In the eyes of traditional Zion-
ist Israeli politicians and intellectuals, »New Historians« have given rise
to a revisionist interpretation of recent Jewish history by stigmatizing
Israel as a state of perpetrators rather than victims. These Jewish critics
have attacked Ilan Pappé, in particular; he has decried an Israeli »memo-
ricide« and charged the Zionists with erasing the plight of the Jewish ref-
ugees from history. The ongoing conflicts between Jews and Arabs in the
21 See: Georgi (2003), pp. 105, 299-309, and Kölbl (2009), p. 68.
38
Middle East have been complemented and reinforced by disputes that

have divided Israelis since the 1990s. At the same time, Muslim migrants
continue these complex debates in Europe.22
In the ongoing competition surrounding Jewish or Arabic victimhood,
some Muslim organizations tend to belittle or even ignore the plight of
the Jews. German historian Günther Jikeli’s interviews with 117 young
Muslims in Berlin, Paris, and London, conducted from 2005 to 2007, for
instance, highlight their lack of knowledge about the Holocaust. More-
over, many interviewees downplayed the mass extermination of the Jews.
These Muslim respondents equated the Holocaust to other genocides
and drew analogies to the plight of the Palestinians under Israeli rule. In
fact, hatred of the Jews has obviously profoundly shaped perceptions of
the Holocaust among the Muslim respondents. A sizeable proportion of
them share antisemitic stereotypes and conspiracy theories. They have
taken up »secondary antisemitism« and hold Jews responsible for ex-
ploiting the Holocaust for political ends. Not least, these respondents
defended the Germans in a variety of ways, such as rejecting (imagined)
accusations of collective German guilt. Although outright denial of the
Holocaust is rare, some Muslim immigrants obviously share the view that
the fate of the Jews in the Third Reich has been exploited by Israel’s lead-
ers for their vested interests, in particular in their conflict with the Pal-
estinians. In 2006, for example, 17  of Muslims in Britain believed that
the importance of the Holocaust is overstated and the number of Jewish
victims is exaggerated. Evidence from France even suggests that teach-
ers in schools with high proportions of Muslim pupils tend to ignore the
Holocaust as a topic in their lessons. Though these findings also apply
to long-standing residents, selective memories at the expense of the Jews
have been particularly pronounced among Muslim migrants in many
West and Central European societies.23
Yet by no means do all Muslims underplay the extermination of the
Jews or exploit it for their own ends. The majority of the Muslims Jik-
eli interviewed explicitly rejected antisemitic comparisons between the
Holocaust and the Nakba. They showed no hostile feelings vis-à-vis the
Jews, held non-biased views of the Holocaust and had empathy for the
Jewish victims of the Nazis’ extermination policies. Moreover, these re-
spondents accepted educational instruction in their schooling and ac-
22 For overviews of the controversies, see, e.g.: Koldas (2011); Ram (2009); Fierke
(2014). The term »Memoricide« was taken from Rashed, Short, and Docker
(2014), p. 6.
23 Jikeli (2013), p. 106, and Whine (2013), p. 35.
39
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knowledged the specific nature of the Holocaust as a crime against hu-

manity, even if they still demonstrated biased views of Jews. Muslims
who were not emotionally involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict re-
frained from Manichean interpretations of that struggle. They did not re-
sort to self-victimization or even blatant antisemitism.24
Nevertheless, a vocal minority of Muslim and Arabic immigrants has
continued to identify strongly with the narratives of Palestinian expul-
sion following the foundation of Israel in 1948. In their memories, the
Nakba often takes precedence over the Holocaust. According to this
perspective, Jews have been compensated for the Holocaust by the Is-
raeli Declaration of Independence and the unabated support of Israel by
Western nations, in particular the United States. In the memorial cul-
tures of these migrants and their offspring, colonial experiences continue
to overshadow the mass extermination of the Jews. Indeed, the Israelis
have been accused as being perpetrators of a new genocide.25
Interaction between Migrants and the Majority Population:

The Selective Appropriation of Narratives and Limited Integration
However, the conflicts cannot be attributed to the immigrants alone. In
fact, long-standing residents of European countries are partly responsi-
ble for the cleavages that separate distinct memorial cultures. They have
largely excluded migrants and their memories from the memory culture
of the majority population. In Austria and Germany, for instance, new-
comers were represented as temporary »guest workers« and expected to
return to their home countries within a few years. Even when this as-
sumption had proven to be unfounded and the »guest workers« remained
in their new countries, narratives of national histories did not take up the
experiences and memories of these immigrants. Not coincidentally, mi-
grants and their history are rarely represented in West European societ-
ies. Even exhibitions on immigrants have largely ignored their memory
culture.26 Thus, memories of the Holocaust and the Nakba have merely
co-existed in heterogeneous memory cultures up to the 1990s.
By contrast, memories of the flight from Palestine have proven more
compatible with the traumas of Austrians who were forced to leave their
24 Jikeli (2013), p. 118.

25 Spencer and di Palma (2013), pp. 77, 80; Kamil (2012), pp. 9-45, 167-171; Bishara
(2000), pp. 7-33; Whine (2013), p. 29; Quataert (2009), pp. 282-287.
26 Hintermann (2013), pp. 154, 156, 161.
40
homes in Eastern Europe from 1944 to 1948 or in Hungary in 1956. In-

stead of a comprehensive suppression of migrant community memories,
selective representations and appropriations of memory have prevailed in
public discourse.27 Yet it was only in the mid-1980s that such aspects of
the immigration experience were included in the history curricula and
textbooks in European states like Germany and Austria.28 Countries like
Sweden, where textbooks dealt with immigration issues as early as the
1960s, are exceptions to the rule. It took until the first decade of the 21st
century for immigrants and their histories to have been included in mu-
seums and exhibitions. Overall, migration and migrant experiences have
been separated from dominant national narratives; when they are in-
cluded, however, the immigrant experience is more of an addendum than
an integrated aspect of the national narrative.29
Moreover, misguided or even false analogies have tended to de-politi-
cize the integration of Muslim migrants in European states. Representa-
tives and leaders of Arabic and Palestinian immigrants in Germany, for
example, have directly related antisemitism and the mass extermination
of Jews to the widespread hostility to Islam and Muslim migrants.30 In
both cases, many journalists and politicians have portrayed the violence
against the two groups as ultimately irrational and inexplicable. By con-
trast, critics have highlighted the arbitrariness of references to the Holo-
caust and the analogies between hostility to Muslims and the extermi-
nation of the Jews. Equating Islamophobia with antisemitism has raised
even more concern. In voicing their legitimate protest against xenopho-
bia in Germany, Muslim intellectuals have ignored the specific context
of the Holocaust by equating the two phenomena. Nevertheless, »Is-
lamophobia« is a contested term that has frequently been employed as a
vaguely defined tool for the furtherance of vested interests, particularly
by organizations that have sought to shield political Islam from criti-
cism.31 The tendency to ignore crucial differences between the Holocaust
and »Islamophobia« points to the more general danger of a universal nar-
rative of commemorating »genocides.« It may bridge the gap between
migrants and long-standing residents in European countries, but it does
27 Ohlinger (2010), p. 18.

28 Lozic and Hintermann (2010), pp. 36 f.
29 Glynn and Kleist (2012).
30 For this statement and the following remarks, see: Bunzl (2007), pp. 8 f., 13 f., 27,
45; Peter (2012); Meseth (2002), pp. 129-132; Jikeli (2013), pp. 116 f., 122.
31 Kahlweiß and Salzborn (2012).
41
arnd bauerk ämper
so at the expense of de-contextualizing the extermination of the Jews and

other instances of mass atrocities.
In order to counter this tendency and activate specific memories of the
fate of European Jewry in the Third Reich and under Nazi occupation,
Europeans have introduced the Holocaust Memorial Day (January 27).
Yet the intensity and forms of these commemorations have varied among
the diverse nation-states.32 The participation of Muslims and their com-
mitment to publicly commemorate the mass murder of the Jews have
differed as well. In Europe, Muslim organizations have taken part in
these commemorations unevenly and discontinuously. Thus, the Muslim
Council of Britain, which the British government officially recognized as
the largest representation of Muslims in the United Kingdom, boycotted
the Holocaust Memorial Day from 2000 to 2007, as it allegedly impeded
the recognition of other genocides. By contrast, the Muslim Council par-
ticipated in the commemorations of the Holocaust in 2008. As early as
the following year, however, this decision was reversed against the back-
drop of the Gaza War. In Italy, the Muslim Brotherhood-aligned Union
of Italian Islamic Communities (Unione delle Comunità e Organizzazi-
oni Islamiche in Italia) has abstained from the Holocaust Memorial Day,
whereas some other Muslim representatives, such as the leaders of the
Islamic Cultural Center of Italy (Centro Culturale Islamico), have at-
tended national and local commemorations. As in Britain, these Muslim
leaders oscillate between their desire to be integrated into (and accepted
by) the majority population, and their resentment of what they perceived
as Jewish organizations’ claims to a singular status as victims. In France,
influential Muslims participated in the Holocaust Memorial Day only
in 2006. In Germany and the Netherlands, the most important Muslim
organizations have continuously taken part in the commemorations, ap-
parently without reservations.33
Explicit references to the Holocaust by Muslim migrants are generally
ambivalent. Representatives of the organizations of Turkish minorities in
Germany, for example, have compared the victims of the 1992-93 racist
attacks on foreigners that left several migrants dead to the Jews who had
been murdered in the pogrom of November 1938. These references in
memorial ceremonies have led to a rapprochement between migrant as-
sociations. For instance, the Türkische Bund Berlin-Brandenburg and Jew-
ish organizations have unequivocally and continuously condemned rac-
32 Schmid (2008).
33 Whine (2013), pp. 32 ff., and Spencer and di Palma (2013), pp. 74 ff.
42
ism. In this way, linking memories of victims of xenophobia to those of the

Holocaust has established bonds of solidarity between Jewish and Muslim
minorities and lent migrants a stronger voice in united Germany.34
A Plea for Self-Reflexivity, Empathy, and Knowledge

Different and frequently contrasting memories of the mass extermina-
tion of Jews have to be negotiated in European migration societies. This
process is currently at a critical juncture. Living memory of the Holo-
caust, the Second World War, and the Nazi dictatorship is receding as
survivors pass away. In this transitional period, remembrances are being
renegotiated and memory cultures restructured in a particularly funda-
mental way.35 In this process, migrants have to position themselves in re-
lation to the dominant narratives. The native-born populations, for their
part, are confronted with the challenge of taking up and recognizing the
diverse memories of the minority communities. Thus, they are to rem-
edy a major deficiency in the ways most European states relate to migra-
tion societies.36
This double challenge requires openness and necessitates a commit-
ment to pluralism, in teaching as much as in public discourse. Families,
schools, and museums are crucial contact zones that relate various actors
to each other in their efforts to exchange and negotiate their particular
memories. Hitherto, discussions about genocides (for instance the mass
murder of the Armenians in 1915) have frequently tended to universal-
ize the annihilation of the Jews and detach it from its specific historical
context. Yet the universalization and de-contextualization of mass exter-
minations must be avoided. Even more particularly, the specific respon-
sibility of Germans and – to a lesser degree – Austrians and Italians for
war crimes, atrocities, and the Holocaust needs to be emphasized in order
to avoid levelling important differences among European perpetrators in
their participation of the mass murder of the Jews. Not least, emotive ap-
proaches to learning about genocides, which include enactment and stag-
34 Bodeman and Yurdakul (2008).

35 See, e.g.: Taubitz (2016). In conceptual terms, experiences and memories are usu-
ally de-coupled and re-coupled in the transition from »communicative« to »cul-
tural« memory. For theoretical deliberations, see: Assmann (2006), p. 34.
36 See: Georgi (2013), p. 93.
43
arnd bauerk ämper
ing in museums and on memorial sites should be combined with precise

knowledge of the history of the Holocaust.37
In European societies, empathy is as indispensable as concrete histor-
ical knowledge in order to relate the experience of migrants to memo-
ries of the Holocaust. They will always be different and to some extent
contested. A consensus on the content of Holocaust memory is neither
necessary nor desirable. Yet outright Holocaust denial should be penal-
ized, and the plight of the victims recognized. Just as importantly, mi-
grants and long-standing residents should agree on procedures that pro-
mote dialogues between the victims of the Holocaust and other cases of
mass violence. Values like mutual respect, tolerance, and an unreserved
commitment to the peaceful exchange of different views are to be fos-
tered in civil societies that attempt to cope with the haunting legacy of
the mass extermination of the Jews. Far beyond the realms of historical
research and Holocaust education, however, is a need for more contin-
uous interaction between the immigrant minorities and the long-stand-
ing residents; such exchange should be furthered in order to prevent
discrimination against migrants, thus attempting to minimize their feel-
ings of self-victimization and hatred of »the West.«38 Historians can and
should contribute to this interchange, both as scholars and citizens. First
and foremost, they should spread their knowledge about the Holocaust
and genocides in 20th century history. Transnational approaches like his-
torical comparison and the investigation of transfers across national and
cultural borders are particularly appropriate for this task.39 Second, his-
torians can promote self-reflexive attitudes, empathy, and understanding
between the native-born populations and the immigrants.
Memories of the Holocaust will surely remain heterogeneous, both
among and within European states. Moreover, conflicts between the di-
verse official memories of the Holocaust and the multiple experiences of
migrants will persist in Europe. Nevertheless, knowledge and recognition
of these memories and experiences may facilitate mutual understanding.
37 Morsch (2015); Rupnow et al. (2013); Assmann and Brauer (2011); Goodacre and
Baldwin (2002), pp. 7-27, 200-203. On remembrances of the Holocaust and the
mass murder of the Armenians between universalization and claims of unique-
ness, see: Leggewie and Lang (2011), pp. 24 f., 106-125.
38 Ohlinger (2010), p. 26; Georgi (2009), p. 106; Can, Georg, and Hatlapa (2013),
p. 183.
39 Bauerkämper (2013).
44
Holocaust Perceptions
of Immigrants in Austria
The Hidden European Dimension
of Holocaust Memory
Oliver Rathkolb
There are three important national particularities that impact examina-

tions of recent history in Austria – especially with regard to the Shoah,
the destruction of European Jews.1 First and foremost, unlike in the Ger-
man Federal Republic, the Opferdoktrin (»victim doctrine« – the notion
that the Austrians were victims, not perpetrators, of the Holocaust) ini-
tially dominated national political discourse. Critical examination of
Austria’s relationship with Nazism and its role in the Holocaust did not
occur until 1986, when controversy arose concerning the fragmentary
memory of former UN Secretary General and Austrian Presidential can-
didate Kurt Waldheim.2
Put simply, the Holocaust was attributed to »the Germans« – in the
early years after 1945 to »the Prussians« – as well as to a small group of so-
called »illegal« Austrian NSDAP activists, who were members of the party
after the ban of July 19, 1933 up to the Anschluss in 1938 (11,000, who fled
to Germany, were expatriated before 1938). However, 100,000 of the to-
tal 550,000 NSDAP members in Austria received amnesty as early as 1949.
In addition, the VdU (Verband der Unabhängigen – Union of the Inde-
pendents), a party that openly presented itself as a »protector« of former
National Socialists, formed in these early post-war years. In 1955, the
FPÖ (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs), led by former high-ranking Nazi
officials, once and for all assumed control of the VdU, which was subse-
quently absorbed into the FPÖ.
Second, there was a national delay in initiating any self-critical na-
tional political reprocessing of the Holocaust from 1986 to 1991. This de-
lay was accompanied by the politics of an openly revisionist interpreta-
1 Rathkolb (2010), pp. 11-14, 125 f., 256-260.

2 Pick (2000), pp. 159-176. First debates started as early as 1982 concerning art loot
during the Nazi regime and the lack of transparency in the restitution of art ob-
jects after 1945. See: Rathkolb (1999), and http://www.museum-security.org/
ww2/Legacy-of-Shame.html.
45
oliver r athkolb
tion of the history of National Socialism pursued by the Haider-led FPÖ

after 1986. It was not until July 1991 that Chancellor Franz Vranitzky
made use of a parliamentary debate over the war in Yugoslavia to address
the country’s World War II past in a self-critical manner.3 For the first
time in the Second Republic, a Federal Chancellor cautiously, yet un-
mistakably, disowned the Austrian victim doctrine, while also bearing in
mind those who had been in the Resistance or fallen victim to Nazi ter-
ror. Just three years later, the debate resumed, this time as fallout from
the global debate over so-called ownerless bank accounts in Switzerland
and the indemnification plan for forced laborers in Germany.4
Finally, there has been a debate over immigration in Austria, one
which took place simultaneously with Austria’s integration into the Eu-
ropean Union after 1995 and the end of the country’s privileged situation
as a »neutral east-west hub« during the Cold War. From March 1990 on-
ward, there has been a pronounced anti-immigration discourse – initi-
ated by debates at the tabloid level against Romanian asylum seekers –
with the result that Austria to this day does not have a formally titled
immigration law.5 In my opinion, this discourse was tied to the rapid
erosion and transformation, from the mid-1980s onward, of some essen-
tial pillars of the country’s young and stable small-state identity. Among
these pillars were Austria’s military neutrality, despite firm integration
into the West, economic security guaranteed by a strong state-run indus-
try and deepened by tenured career paths, and the Iron Curtain of the
Cold War, which provided a solid barrier against immigration from sur-
rounding neighbor states.
Yet it is often overlooked that the construction of Austrian identity re-
ally only took hold during the 1970s. It was marked by a strong element
of a non-German identity, and was meant to disassociate Austrian na-
tionalism gradually over several decades after 1945 from German cultural
and political nationalism, even though formal »separation« had already
taken place immediately after the end of World War II. The recently at-
tained Austrian national identity, with its positive social and economic
components, competed with three changes in the local socioeconomic
environment: globalization, European integration, and European en-
largement. Therefore, Austrians currently exhibit a strong reaction to
changing circumstances by withdrawing into national, and often even
3 Embacher (2010), p. 29.

4 Rathkolb (2004).
5 Heiss and Rathkolb (1995), and Fassmann and Münz (1994).
46
holocaust perceptions of immigr ants in austria
regional, identity clusters. The second half of 2015 witnessed an intensi-

fication of the debate concerning immigration as the number of war ref-
ugees from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan increased – particularly after ref-
ugees began arriving in Germany and Austria. As a result, H. C. Strache’s
right-wing FPÖ has gained a considerable number of votes in support of
the party’s long-term anti-migration policies.6 Austria, Germany, and Swe-
den were the three EU member countries that took in the highest number
of asylum seekers per capita of the population until early November 2015.7
The first signs of public xenophobia were visible in the early 1970s, as
people reacted against »working migrants.«8 In the 1960s these migrants
were brought to work in Austria from Yugoslavia and Turkey. Yet the
topic of immigration remained confined to the margins of political dis-
course. Even in these cases, however, Austrian politicians wanted to move
asylum-seeking refugees out of the country, as Austrian society’s willing-
ness to integrate was thought to be extremely low.
Issues of immigration and integration were also apparent in the educa-
tional system. The demographic composition of school classes changed
noticeably, particularly in Vienna. The percentage of pupils with a
non-German mother tongue in Austria’s provinces (»Bundesländer«)
ranges between 11  (Carinthia) and 22  (Vorarlberg). Only in the
country’s capital, the percentage of these pupils amounts to 46 .9
During the school year 1999/2000, there was a decline in the percent-
age of students in primary schools whose first language was not German.
However, the reverse of this was the case in Vienna, which saw an increase
in primary school students whose first language was not German.10 Reac-
tions to these changes within the workforce and the school system were
delayed and only emerged as the result of massive political pressure. Poli-
ticians focused on the regulation of immigration and sought to delay
6 Wodak (2015).
7 Alberto Nardelli, How many asylum seekers would other EU countries need
to match Germany?, The Guardian, 20 August 2015, http://www.theguardian.
com/news/datablog/2015/aug/20/asylum-seekers-eu-comparison-germany-dat-
ablog (15 June 2016).
8 For more details see: Hintermann and Johansson (2010).
9 Statistik Austria, Schulbesuch, 18 April 2015, http://www.statistik.at/web_de/
statistiken/menschen_und_gesellschaft/bildung_und_kultur/formales_bildung-
swesen/schulen_schulbesuch/index.html (15 June 2016), p. 1. Schulen als Ort der
sprachlichen Vielfalt, Wiener Zeitung Online, 10 March 2015, http://www.wie-
nerzei tung.at/themen_channel/bildung/schule/739891_Schulen-als-Orte-der-
sprach lichen-Vielfalt.html (15 June 2016).
10 Waldrauch (2001), p. 35.
47
oliver r athkolb
the bestowment of citizenship (as a means to hinder, if not stop, immi-

gration), in an attempt to thwart right-wing populist agitation by Jörg
Haider’s FPÖ from 1986 to 1999. At the same time, talk of immigration
was to be kept to a minimum, with only asylum abuse and economic
refugees being mentioned in the media by politicians.11 The educational
administration, which was influenced by this overarching structure, be-
latedly responded to increased immigration in the school system with a
highly problematic policy initiative that remains troubling even today.
Due in part to the PISA tests (Programme for International Student As-
sessment), experts are increasingly finding that »the Austrian educational
system is ethnically segregationist and, in addition, ethnically hierarchi-
cal.«12 While East Asian students, for example, frequently achieve above
average results, students with a Turkish background or those who have
been socialized in the former Yugoslavia achieve, on average, the lowest
results. Yet the majority of non-German-speaking immigrants living in
Austria are from Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, and Turkey. The
majority of immigrants in Austria are also the immigrant groups testing
at the lowest rates in the Austrian school system.
Nonetheless, it should also be noted that the distribution of immigra-
tion in Austria has been uneven and concentrated in the metropolitan
areas: »Austria-wide, the percentage of elementary school students with
a first language other than German is just under 25 . Looking at the
numbers for the provinces, Vienna has the highest percentage (54 ), fol-
lowed by Vorarlberg (28 ), Salzburg (22 ), Upper Austria (21 ), Tyrol
(17 ), Lower Austria (16 ), Burgenland (15 ), Styria (14 ), and Carin-
thia (12 ).«13 Additionally, Vienna has a noticeably heterogeneous spread
of immigrants throughout its districts: »In the Viennese district of Mar-
gareten, the percentage of children in elementary school with a first lan-
guage other than German is 89  – that is 924 of 1,038 children. The dis-
tricts of Rudolfsheim-Fünfhaus and Ottakring have percentages of 80 
each, Brigittenau has 79 , and Meidling has 70 . In Vienna, the lowest
percentage can be found in Hietzing at 22 .«14
In 2005 I initiated a project with geographer Christiane Hintermann
titled Dissonant Perceptions of History? Empirical Studies on Historical
11 Duncan (2010).
12 Dirim and Furch (2012), p. 157.
13 The above-quoted data is dated from 19 December 2012. The quote can be found
at: Anteil der Migranten in Volksschulen, ORF, 26 November 2013, http://volks-
gruppenv2.orf.at/diversitaet/aktuell/stories/175610.html (15 June 2016).
14 Ibid. [transl. OR].
48
Consciousness and Construction of Identity of Youths with an Immigration

Background in Vienna.15 At the time there was no comparable study that
pertained to the construction of identity of Austrian youths with an im-
migrant background. This study was based on the approach, although
not on the methods, of Viola Georgi’s dissertation in sociology, which
was published in 2003.16 Georgi’s qualitative data stemmed from inter-
views with 32 youths of diverse backgrounds. The interviews focused on
the Holocaust and National Socialism. Eleven of these were chosen as
case studies and subjected to closer analysis. Georgi’s work has received
increasing criticism in recent years due to its over-hierarchization of his-
torical perceptions as indicators of a bipolar society in which immigrants
are on one side and the »host society« is on the other.
Hintermann and her team utilize Georgi’s general concept, but instead
of interviews they use questionnaires and evaluations to detect trends in
the differences in the perceptions of history between youths with an im-
migrant background and those without; this approach is similar to the
work of Bodo von Borries, although in a different context.17 The team
used Karl-Ernst Jeismann’s idea as their guiding motif: perception of his-
tory was defined as a »metaphor for set concepts and interpretations of
the past with a deep temporal horizon, to which a group of people as-
cribes validity.«18 With the influence that they have on the interpretation
of the present and on perspectives for the future, they are »elements of
society’s construction of reality.«19 Moreover, Hintermann also differenti-
ated among the youth groups of various immigrant backgrounds by cate-
gorizing them into those that had one parent holding a citizenship other
than Austrian and those whose parents both held non-Austrian citizen-
ship – thus avoiding the prior pitfalls of creating a hierarchy.
The target group of the research project included youths who had im-
migrated to Austria and those who were born in Austria, but each par-
ticipant had at least one parent who was not originally from Austria.
The survey was limited to individuals between the ages of 15 and 19 in
Viennese schools, namely BHS (vocational high schools), BMS (voca-
tional middle schools) or AHS (grammar schools), as well as their peers
who lacked an immigration background. The researchers contacted 150
15 Quote from: Hintermann et al. (2007). For more information see also: Hinter-
mann (2007).
16 Georgi (2003).
17 Angvik and Borries (1997).
18 Jeismann (2002), p. 13.
19 Ibid.
49
oliver r athkolb
schools about administering the questionnaire between November 2005

and January 2006. They then gathered a sample of 1,332 students from
13 schools. These schools represented a cross-section of districts and ade-
quately depicted the heterogeneity of Viennese schools.20 The following
native languages were represented in the study (listed here as a percentage
of total responses; multiple answers were possible):
German Bosnian Croatian Polish Serbian Czech/ Turkish Hungar- Mult.na-
Slov. ian tive lan-
guages
74.8  3.8  4.0  2.7  6.9  1.5  10.2  3.6  41.8 
Even a seemingly simple set of statistics about language, such as this one,
demonstrates that there is a trend towards Viennese students being poly-
glots. The variety of native languages also suggests there might exist a si-
multaneous trend towards multiple cultural perceptions of history.
At this point, I would like to address a few theses based on the em-
pirical results of the questionnaires of Christiane Hintermann’s project;
the results are, unfortunately, limited to Vienna. The questionnaire re-
sults show that the State Treaty and Austrian neutrality of 1955, two central
pillars of the Austrian historical canon, are barely discussed in households
with two parents who were not born in Austria; this applies to a much
lower degree to National Socialism. The results suggest that a family dis-
course about National Socialism does exist and must be considered, even if
it is more prevalent in families with no immigration background. The op-
posite holds true for the war in Yugoslavia.
The war is an important topic of discussion for 50  of the families
with an immigrant background, while it is much less so for those with-
out such a background. Almost 50  of the group without an immigrant
background in the last two generations are focussing on neutrality and
the Austrian State Treaty. These two pillars of Austrian identity construc-
tion attract around 10  of pupils from families with both parents not
born in Austria. If one of their parents is born in Austria, however, this
percentage increases up to 40 .
20 These schools included: 3rd district BORG 3, Landstraßer Hauptstraße; 14th

District Goethegymnasium; 9th District BG Wasagasse and Lycée Français de
Vienne,; 1st District Vienna Business School, Akademiestraße 12; 10th District
HTBL 10, Ettenreichgasse; 3rd District Schulzentrum Ungargasse, 22nd District,
BRG Polgarstraße; 5th District HAK and HAS BFI, Margaretenstraße; 21th Dis-
trict: Schulschiff 1210; 17th District; Hernalser Gymnasium, Geblergasse; 15th
District: GRG 15, Auf der Schmelz; 12th District: GRG 12, Rosasgasse.
50
Almost 90  of all respondents, regardless of immigration back-

ground, stated that the events that occurred during National Socialism
should not be forgotten. Yet 40  of immigrant respondents also chose
the somewhat contradictory multiple answer option of »let bygones be
bygones,« as did 30  in the group without an immigrant family back-
ground. I believe this contradiction stems from the decreasing feeling of
responsibility for National Socialism amongst youths.
In a follow-up question students were asked to further elucidate their
feelings toward the crimes committed during National Socialism. Nearly
a quarter of respondents of the students from an immigrant background
replied that National Socialist crimes had nothing to do with them.
Where these youths from immigrant backgrounds do readily identify,
however, is with issues related to European Union membership, sug-
gesting that one way forward in creating Holocaust awareness in immi-
grant-youth groups may be through the Europeanization of Holocaust
memorialization.
An additional element of the divide among youth groups and their
engagement with the National Socialist past includes the type of school
the student is attending. Only 30  of students in grammar school sug-
gested »forgetting« the past. This number rose to 37.9  in vocational
high schools and to 38  in professional and business high schools. This
discrepancy stems from the importance of history and political educa-
tion classes in grammar schools. A similar trend emerged in a 2011 study
among university students. Students of »applied« subjects, such as law or
economics, had a higher propensity for proposing an end to discussions
of National Socialism than students in social sciences or humanities: 15 
of respondents agreed that discussions of World War II and the Holo-
caust should be brought to an end, while 71  disagreed. Grouped by
gender, men were more likely (18 ) to agree than women (12 ). By sub-
ject, students of business/economics, law (21 ), and the so-called STEM
subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) (20 ) were
more likely to agree, while only 7  of social science students agreed.21
Yet these insights from Hintermann’s study only represent a snapshot
of the attitudes of youths between the ages of 15 and 20. Therefore, I
would like to address a small qualitative study undertaken in vocational
schools. This study was presented as part of Stefan Schmid’s 2012 master’s
21 Quote from http://www.verein-zeitgeschichte.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_up-

load/p_verein-zeitgeschichte/PK_Presseunterlage_Parlament_6.12.2011.pdf,
page 13 (14 September 2016).
51
oliver r athkolb
thesis titled Empirische Untersuchung zum Geschichtsbewusstsein von Lehr-

lingen in Wien im Zeitraum 2009-2011 (Empirical Examination of His-
torical Awareness of Apprentices in Vienna from 2009 to 2011).22 Gen-
der does not play a significant role in either Hintermann’s or Schmid’s
studies, except as it pertains to the issue of emotional impact of the Na-
tional Socialist past. When it comes to gender, however, there is no dif-
ference between higher and middle schools (Hintermann) and voca-
tional schools (Schmid): grief and dismay at National Socialist crimes
are »more commonly found in female respondents (18.6 ) than in male
youths (6.0 ).«23 In the same vein, female youths feel »more deeply re-
sponsible and guilty for crimes committed during National Socialism
than young men do.«24
The European dimension of this topic offers an important approach
for a forward-looking examination of the Holocaust. The cultural diver-
sity of arenas of historical and political communication, shaped by a va-
riety of immigrant cultures, must also be considered in this context. In
Austria, both Hintermann’s study and Schmid’s case study demonstrate
that European topics offer a potential solution to the complex conflicts
of identity within immigrant families in the Austrian setting. This means
that the European dimension of the Holocaust should be more strongly
reflected in research and in the didactics of memorials.25
A European approach to memorializing the Holocaust has been at-
tempted in Austria. Indeed, there was a recent initiative to honor former
Turkish prisoners at Mauthausen, as documentation indicates approxi-
mately 30 prisoners were Turkish citizens. These Turkish prisoners were
acknowledged with the dedication of a memorial plaque in 2009. The
political symbolism of the memorial plaque is underscored by the partic-
ipation of the Jewish religious community in the memorial ceremony –
the Turkish ambassador to Austria also attended the ceremony. Further-
more, the ceremony included quotes from the Quran and the recital of
Hebrew poems.26
Overall, I believe that such a multi-layered approach to dealing with
the Holocaust in Austria can be successful, in large part due to the in-
ternational composition of the inmates in Mauthausen and its adjacent
22 Schmid (2012).
23 Hintermann (2007), p. 119.
24 Ibid., p. 118 f.
25 Blaive, Gerbel, and Lindenberger (2011).
26 Institut für Islamfragen, http://www.islaminstitut.de/Nachrichtenanzeige.4+M
524127d31d2.0.htm (14 September 2016).
52
camps. For instance, on May 5, 2013, Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dačić
attended the ceremonial opening of the new exhibits at the Mauthausen
Memorial Center, titled Konzentrationslager Mauthausen 1938-1945 and
Der Tatort Mauthausen – eine Spurensuche (Crime Scene Mauthausen –
Search for Traces). Currently, there are 81,000 documented casualties in-
scribed in the »Hall of Names.« Among the 200,000 prisoners from Eu-
rope, half of whom were murdered in Mauthausen, there are the names
of 7,000 Serbs, half of whom did not survive.27 Incidentally, this presence
demonstrates the European dimension of Holocaust remembrance, an
important factor when considering the current Serbian government’s in-
terest in joining the European Union. Furthermore, from a Serbian per-
spective, the remembrance of the victims of World War II evokes strong
negative memories of the Serbian victims of the Ustasha movement. On
the other hand, Serbian perpetrators and Croatian victims dominate the
Croatian discourse, amplified by the Yugoslavian Wars.28
In the Austrian landscape of remembrance, examination of the Ho-
locaust is influenced by the partially overlapping, sometimes offsetting,
thematization of other groups of victims during World War II, partic-
ularly in Styria and Carinthia. In her history of 20th century Yugosla-
via, Marie-Janine Calic briefly addressed the deaths of Ustasha soldiers
and Domobrani, Serbian and Montenegrin Chetniks, Slovenian Home
Guarders, and Serbian Nedic soldiers who were handed over to Tito par-
tisans by British troops at Bleiburg and Viktring in Carinthia – up to
70,000 of whom were immediately shot. Prior to this event, hundreds of
collaborators and Italians were shot and hidden away in the Karst caves
and pits, the Foibe, and in former occupied Italian territories. Therefore,
Calic correctly noted, »the remembrance of the misdeeds at Bleiburg and
the Foibe are developing into historical political time bombs.«29 This ex-
ample alone demonstrates the complex nature of the victim-perpetra-
tor-witness nexus of World War II in former Yugoslavia. In addition, as
Hintermann’s study shows, the comparison becomes more emotionalized
and even more complex through the recent memory of the Yugoslavian
Wars.
The issue of Europeanizing Holocaust memorialization also brings
forth the question of comparing systems of oppression and imprison-
ment. Indeed, the question of comparison between the Holocaust and
27 Quote from https://www.facebook.com/SerbienNachrichten/posts/52013691468
9688 (14 September 2016).
28 See: Radonic (2010).
29 Calic (2010), p. 173 [transl. OR].
53
oliver r athkolb
the Gulag has been a recent topic of much discussion in historiography

and memorial site pedagogy. The latter has elicited reticent (or even de-
fensive) replies in Austria. Still, as Dan Diner stated at a conference in
Vienna in September 2011, »The comparison of the Holocaust with the
crimes of Stalinism is absolutely legitimate and even necessary, provided
it illustrates the fundamental differences between the means of killing in
each regime: systematic, potentially global, and definitely comprehensive
in National Socialism, in Stalinism first, and foremost arbitrary.«30 The
debates over this topic at that conference, as well as on the topic of com-
parative genocide and the term »genocide« itself, have remained highly
controversial.
While it is currently very popular in Austria to speak of a »post-Nazi
society« in the context of the Holocaust, I believe that the above-men-
tioned situation of identity conflict – of a »reluctant immigrant society«
searching for new positions and values between globalization, EU inte-
gration, and a »return of the regional« – more accurately describes con-
temporary Austrian society. Overall, I believe that a comparative Euro-
pean examination of the Holocaust, one that more strongly reflects the
context of the development of racial antisemitism from the 19th century
onward, could strike a chord with immigrant societies, especially as a
»post-national« approach to the Holocaust. As previously mentioned,
the European project is an important point of identification for young
people with an immigrant background in Austria, one that has not been
sufficiently utilized, either by the historical didactics, or by historical re-
search. Even if youths without an immigrant background have a hard
time with European »hyphen identity,« Europe provides a relatively
egalitarian space without special hierarchies. Of course, the danger of
»self-victimization,« as Heidemarie Uhl calls it, must not be discarded.
»The Holocaust,« she writes, »functions much like a sign language that
bestows stand-out significance to one’s own tale of suffering.«31 At this
time, I do not see a concurrent danger of sliding into an »end of discus-
sion« debate nor do I foresee a return to Austria’s victim doctrine.
The connection between Holocaust memory and the current conflict
in the Middle East is usually avoided, not only in the German-speak-
ing world, but also, for example, in France. This applies especially to the
30 Conference report, Von Gegenwartsbezügen und Bruchlinien auf dem »dünnen
Eis« der Gedenkstättenarbeit, https://www.gedenkdienst.at/index.php?id=742
(14 September 2016) [transl. OR].
31 Gedenkdienst N° 4/11, https://www.gedenkdienst.at/fileadmin/zeitung/GD_4_
11_ohne_Photo.pdf, p. 4 [transl. OR].
54
field of memorial site didactics, even though the connection to the sit-
uation in the Middle East is becoming an important subtext for the ex-
amination of Holocaust memory in the public sphere. This latter devel-
opment is a result of the increasingly strong and critical examination by
youths of racism and antisemitism as »human rights work.« This is an
important factor in the Holocaust debate both for young immigrants
and for those without an immigrant background.
Incidentally, it is remarkable that – and this is a result of the »victim
doctrine« regarding the National Socialist past and the active pro-Pal-
estinian Middle East policy of Federal Chancellor Bruno Kreisky as of
1973/74 – on the whole, Austrian society maintains a point of view sim-
ilar to that of the so-called »German Turks.« In 2010 the weekly news
magazine Die Zeit conducted a survey that described the relationship be-
tween the »German Turks,« the Holocaust, and contemporary Middle
Eastern politics as follows: »Partaking in the remembrance of the Holo-
caust, empathy with the victims, but no automatic allegiance to Israel –
in sum, one can describe the attitude of German Turks toward the Holo-
caust in this way, as it is reflected in Die Zeit’s survey.«32
The state of intensive research on conceptions of history among
youths with immigrant backgrounds in Austria – including topics re-
lated to the Holocaust and National Socialism – is only in its nascent
stage. Along with Hintermann’s questionnaire-centered Viennese study,
there is an interesting theory-oriented dissertation by Nora Sternfeld,
Kontaktzonen der Geschichtsvermittlung. Transnationales Lernen über den
Holocaust in der postnazistischen Migrationsgesellschaft (Contact Zones of
History Teachings: Transnational Learning about the Holocaust in Post-
Nazi Immigrant Society).33 However, this dissertation relies on the small
example of an interdisciplinary project, coordinated by Dirk Rupnow,
at a Viennese school on the Karajangasse in the 20th district from 2009
to 2011.34 Only after the creation of an extensive set of data about young
people’s attitudes toward historical events like the Holocaust and World
War II can detailed research gleaned from such studies be deepened and
32 Bernd Ulrich, Özlem Topcu, and Heinrich Wefing, Geteilte Erinnerung:

Deutschtürken und der Holocaust, Zeit Online, 21 January 2010, http://www.
zeit.de/2010/04/Editorial-Umfrage/komplettansicht (22 July 2016). At the mo-
ment, there are no known indicators that significant differences exist based on
immigration background [transl. OR].
33 Sternfeld (2013).
34 See: http://www.trafo-k.at/projekte/undwashatdasmitmirzutun/ (14 September
2016).
55
oliver r athkolb
comparatively assessed. Moreover, the existing scholarship reflects an ex-

tensive focus on Vienna, and future research projects and publications
must complete the picture by looking at other cities and regions.
In the near future, we might expect innovative new material on this
subject from a dissertation on Concepts of History regarding Nazism and
the Shoah in Post-Nazi Immigrant Society and the Meaning of Transna-
tional Conveyance Contexts by Ines Garnitschnig, a psychologist, who, in
2004, produced an expansive master’s thesis on The Approach of Youths to
the Subject of National Socialism in Austria. According to Garnitschnig,
»only when the many historical perspectives that people carry with
them from their various lives and experiences (family, school, media,
friends) are given space and can be dealt with, when ’history stories’ can
be included, can historical learning take place beyond learning ’desired
speech’.«35 This study promises useful conclusions, but will also chal-
lenge Holocaust historiography to develop something similar in research
as well as in textbooks.36
A new phase of historical scholarship can begin only if the historical
perspectives of immigrants and non-immigrants can be comprehensively
documented, addressed, given voice, and integrated into the discourse.
Such scholarship must develop without permitting the artificial separa-
tion of immigrant perspectives from those of non-immigrants (who are
frequently third or fourth generation internal immigrants from the late
stages of the Habsburg monarchy). Nora Sternfeld and Renate Höllwart
have called for the active participation of young people and a flexible di-
dactic approach driven by the respective groups.37 Here family histories
and cultural and political socialization are at the forefront, including ex-
periences with racism.38 This contribution sketches out the conditions
for up-to-date memory work in the context of the ongoing experiences
of migration societies. It also analyses the self-images of migration society
and the construction of an »us,« as well as the phenomenon of secondary
antisemitism. Memory practices in migration societies are understood as
multi-perspectival constructs of history. The author argues from her own
35 Ines Garnitschnig, Nachdenken über Nazismus und Shoah als SchülerIn in der
postnazistischen Mitgrationsgesellschaft, Linksnet für Linke Politik und Wissen-
schaft, 15 March 2011, http://www.linksnet.de/de/artikel/26452 (15 June 2016)
[transl. OR].
36 See also: Garnitschnig (2010).
37 Ecker and Angerer (2012), p. 23.
38 Höllwart et al. (2003).
56
West German context; similarities and differences to the Austrian situa-

tion remain to be discussed.
At the same time, Holocaust education has to face realities that for quite
some time have been neglected in Europe, realities such as responses to the
statement: »Jews cannot be trusted.« In 2008, a total of 64  of Muslims of
Turkish origin in Austria agreed with this antisemitic assertion, in contrast
to 10  of self-identified Christians in Austria.39 Muslims of Turkish origin
in Austria seem to be more fundamentalist than in other European coun-
tries: 69  of Muslims in Austria oppose having homosexuals as friends,
and 66  believe that the West seeks to destroy Islam.40
Conclusion
A number of hitherto neglected aspects of immigration need to be ac-
knowledged in the Austrian school curricula. These include the increas-
ing number of refugees; increased migration from countries with large
Muslim communities; the growing religious awareness in the Turkish
immigrant community; and the growth in the number of immigrants
from former Communist countries of Eastern and South Eastern Eu-
rope. However, studies are still dominated by the efforts of Austrians to
follow the West German example of coming to terms with the Nazi past
of their grandparents and parents. The scholarship of Christiane Hin-
termann has shown that the key dates and events of a traditional, nar-
row national history are more important to students than other chapters
of Austrian history. This includes schoolchildren with migrant back-
grounds, whose views on the issue are framed by their school education,
whereas those with a non-immigrant background rely more intensively
on opinions based on family memories.
Today most studies of migration acknowledge the necessity of in-
cluding migration narratives into history teaching and thus establish-
ing a more neutral background as a counterbalance to the social reality
of a bifurcation between »us« and »the other.« Including the histories
of migrants is important for increasing awareness of, and incorporating
the Holocaust into, »their« historical narratives. Hintermann’s empiri-
cal studies reveal the fact that school children with migrant backgrounds
39 See: Koopmanns (2013).

40 Soeren Kern, Europe: Islamic Fundamentalism is Widespread, Gates Institute,
16 December 2013, http://www.gatesinstitute.org/4092/europe-islamic-funda-
mentalism (15 June 2016).
57
oliver r athkolb
tend to look for European historical narratives in order to strengthen

their hyphenated identity and to find an escape route from the daily
identity struggles between their family and their Austrian mainstream
environment. Yet such inclusion is a challenge for teachers due to the
heterogeneity of immigration in Austria. Furthermore, textbooks and
curricula provide limited and scattered information on immigration
history and immigration groups. This, however, seems to be changing,
largely as a consequence of the arrival of refugees from Syria, Iraq, and
Afghanistan.41 The test material for the historical part of the exam to
become an Austrian citizen, however, still reflects the classical Austrian
mainstream historical approach.42
Teachers still face a difficult challenge in engaging in an open discus-
sion with existing perceptions of the Nazi regime, and in discussing the
Holocaust within a larger framework of empathy and awareness for hu-
man rights, cultural diversity, and religious pluralism.43 Here too, teach-
ers must emphasize the European dimension of the Holocaust44 and the
global impact of Jewish persecution during the Nazi regime and World
War II – including most parts of Europe, the Soviet Union, and North
Africa.45 Instead of only pointing to growing antisemitism in many coun-
tries with a Muslim majority, it is important to include the still existing
antisemitic attitudes present in non-Muslim communities and to address
the issue of Islamophobia of right-wing groups in Austria. »Islamophobia
is used as a method for populist mobilization, but goes further than that.
These associations go hand in hand with an ethnocentric worldview of
closed cultural entities that are biologically determined.«46 Here again,
41 Bundesministerium für Bildung und Frauen, Flüchtlingskinder und -jugend-

liche an österreichischen Schulen, 2015, https://www.bmb.gv.at/ministerium/
rs/2015_ 21_beilage.pdf ?51case (15 June 2016).
42 Bundesministerium für Europa, Integration and Äußeres, Mein Österreich: Lern-
unterlage zur Staatsbürgerschaftsprüfung, 2014, http://wwww.staatsbuergerschaft.
gv.at/fileadmin/user_upload/Broschuere/StaBuBro.pdf (15 June 2016).
43 Rajal (2010), p. 209.
44 Axel Schacht, Holocaust-Vermittlung im Kontext der post-nationalsozialis-
tischen Migrationsgesellschaft, Gedenkstätten Forum, 11 December 2012, http://
www.gedenkstaettenforum.de/nc/aktuelles/einzelansicht/news/holocaust_ver-
mittlung_im_kontext_der_post_nationalsozialistischen_migrationsgesellschaft
(15 June 2016).
45 Jikeli and Allouche-Benayoun (2013), p. 4.
46 Farid Hafez, Islamophobic FPÖ: Islamophobia as a Means of Populism and an
Expression of Ethnopluralism, http://www.oegpw.at/de/fileadmin/pdf/Gefo-
erderte_Konferenzbeitraege/Hafez_Farid.pdf (15 June 2016), p. 11.
58
Muslims – the majority of whom are Sunnites – shape the reality in Aus-
trian schools, but these Muslims have a different background than Mus-
lim immigrants from Bosnia, Kosovo, Turkey, and Chechnya.
For a long time, these groups were neglected by politics or used as
targets for right-wing populist agitation. »The Muslim population in
Austria now exceeds 500,000 (or roughly 6  of the total population),
up from an estimated 150,000 (or 2 ) in 1990. The Muslim population
is expected to reach 800,000 (or 9.5 ) by 2030, according to recent es-
timates. In the current school year, 10,734 Muslim students are enrolled
in Viennese middle and secondary schools, compared to 8,632 Roman
Catholic students, 4,259 Serbian Orthodox students and 3,219 students
with no religious affiliation.«47 Yet it was not until February 2015 that the
Austrian Parliament passed a law acknowledging the country’s Islamic
community (the law overruled an older law of 1912). The University of
Vienna has also established a new masters program in »Islamic educa-
tion« to train Islam teachers for secondary schools.
More effective methods for inclusion and stronger educational ini-
tiatives for addressing diversity within the immigrant community will
help counteract the race-based polemical attacks of the political extreme
right. Ruth Wodak, a retired Austrian Distinguished Professor of Dis-
course Studies at Lancaster University, describes the new diversified aims
of rightwing populist propaganda: »Right-wing populist parties offer
simple and clear-cut answers to people’s fears by constructing scapegoats
and enemies that they blame for society’s problems. The scapegoats can
be Jews, Muslims, Roma, or other minority groups. They can be for-
eigners defined by race, religion, or language. They can be capitalists, so-
cialists, women, non-governmental organizations, the European Union,
the United Nations, the United States, Communists, governing parties,
members of the elite, or the media.«48 This explains why revisionist histo-
ries of National Socialism, antisemitism, and the denial of the Holocaust
play a role in right-wing populist propaganda today. A critical analysis of
National Socialism and the Holocaust in a transnational European and
global perspective, therefore, will strengthen democratic political forces.
47 Soeren Kern, Austria: Muslims Outnumber Catholics in Vienna Schools, Gates

Institute, 26 March 2014, http://www.gatesinstitute.org/4229/austria-muslims-
vienna-schools (15 June 2016).
48 Ruth Wodak, Re-invention Scapegoats: Right Wing Populism Across Europe,
Swiss Info, 1 April 2014, http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/opinion_re-inventing-
scapegoats---rightwing-populism-across-europe/38279304 (15 June 2016). For
additional information also see: Wodak (2015).
59
oliver r athkolb
Research based on public opinion polls has shown a link between a

critical awareness of history and an active and positive democratic con-
sciousness. Anyone who wants more democratic awareness and less au-
thoritarianism and apathy must invest in education and self-critical his-
torical debate. Examining the history of National Socialism and World
War II is an important guide for understanding the current challenges of
modern global society. Polls in the Federal Republic of Germany, with a
sample of 7,500 students in five states, document that many pupils do
not consider the Third Reich and the GDR to have been dictatorships;
similarly, the (old) Federal Republic and unified Germany are often not
classified as democracies.49 Approximately 40  of the pupils see no dif-
ference between these former dictatorships and the current democratic
system of the Federal Republic. In addition, students with at least one
foreign parent have a more positive view of the GDR and Nazism than
those students who have a parent with roots in the Federal Republic of
Germany. Austria must aim to present 20th century history in a way that
creates and strengthens positive attitudes in order to convey an interest in
topics such as freedom, human rights, minorities, and democracy. These
issues must strengthen democratic awareness and the critical examination
of the past and the present.
49 Freie Universität Berlin, Studie: Schüler halten Demokratien und Diktatu-

ren für gleichwertig, 21 January 2012, http://www.fu-berlin.de/presse/informa-
tionen/fup/2012/fup_12_181 (15 June 2016).
60
Between National and Global Memory
Commemoration of the Second World War in the Netherlands
Annemarike Stremmelaar
Each year on the evening of May 4, Remembrance Day, thousands of

people in the Netherlands attend local ceremonies in commemoration of
the victims of World War II. At 8:00 pm, all over the country a two-min-
ute silence is observed. In the minutes leading up to that moment, offi-
cials and citizens address the public with speeches, poems, or music. In
2003, the local committee organizing a commemoration ceremony in
the quarter of Bos en Lommer, a neighborhood in western Amsterdam,
asked Haci Karacaer, a well-known representative of a mosque-based or-
ganization based in the neighborhood, to give a speech. Karacaer told
how, for a long time, May 4 meant nothing to him. Born and raised in
Turkey, but residing in the Netherlands since 1982, he had always felt ex-
cluded. »It did not come naturally,« he said, »I was kept out.« In his per-
ception, the Remembrance of the Dead on May 4 was for the Dutch. For
the last five years he had attended the commemoration ceremony on be-
half of his mosque, but not without reservations: »We lack a shared col-
lective memory and what we remember collectively, we recall from dif-
ferent angles,« he explained. What was needed, he told the audience, was
»to share the stories of our past.«1
Karacaer’s speech was published in a national newspaper the next day,
but it was soon totally overshadowed by an incident that occurred during
another local May 4 ceremony not far away, also in the West of Amster-
dam. Exactly at 8:00 pm, when the two-minute silence was about to be-
gin, a group of boys chanted repeatedly: »We have to kill the Jews.« Not
all of the forty or so attendees heard it, but those who did found it ex-
tremely offensive and hurtful. Witnesses described the boys as teenagers
of Moroccan-Dutch descent. That same evening, the city of Amsterdam
saw a number of disturbances during and after the commemorations.
The events led to much debate and commotion, including a municipal
investigation and parliamentary questioning. Disruptive incidents oc-
1 Haci Karacaer, We moeten de verhalen uit ons verleden delen, NRC Handelsblad,
5 May 2003.
61
annemarike stremmela ar
curred in several locations; in one case youngsters were kicking around

the wreaths after the commemoration.2
The culprits were reportedly mostly youngsters of Moroccan ances-
try. A heated public debate followed regarding their motivation: vandal-
ism, lack of historical awareness, resentment against Jews and against the
memory of the Holocaust, frustration and hostility towards Dutch soci-
ety?3 »Wreath football« became emblematic for the nation-wide public
debate concerning national commemoration in a multicultural society.
At the same time, Karacaer’s call for an inclusive memory of the Second
World War was forgotten.
A focus on migrants’ assumed indifference or opposition to commem-
orative ceremonies marks a significant component of public and schol-
arly discourse on Holocaust memory in Western Europe. This focus has
been to the neglect of migrants’ contributions to war and Holocaust
memory, in particular their participation in commemorative ceremonies.
Recent scholarship on the functioning of Holocaust memory in multi-
cultural societies has revealed the various ways in which minorities may
relate to the history of the Second World War and the mass murder of the
Jews. Critical and hateful attitudes towards the memory of the Holocaust
are among these attitudes, in the Netherlands as well as in the surround-
ing countries. Aversion against Holocaust remembrance may manifest it-
self as antisemitism, denialism, or victimhood competition – especially
in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Middle Eastern pol-
itics more broadly. Ascribing such negative attitudes to minorities or, in
particular, to Muslims, however, obscures the fact that the memory of
the Holocaust is contested in Dutch (or European, for that matter) so-
ciety at large.4
This essay focuses on the ways in which Turkish and Muslim resi-
dents and citizens of the Netherlands have participated in memory prac-
tices related to the Second World War and the Holocaust. After giving
an overview of the historical development and public debate surround-
ing Remembrance Day, the essay will focus on the participation of Turk-
2 Ensel (2014), pp. 295-298.

3 See: Wilma Kieskamp, Antisemitisme Marokkaanse jongens komt van buiten,
Trouw, 19 May 2003.
4 For a recent collection of scholarship dealing with Muslim perceptions of the Ho-
locaust in several Western-European countries see: Jikeli and Allouche-Benayoun
(2013). For an account of challenges to Holocaust Remembrance in Europe see:
Wetzel (2013), pp. 19-28; on the Netherlands see: Gans (2013), pp. 85-103, and Ensel
and Gans (2016).
62
between national and global memory
ish immigrants in commemorative ceremonies. An historical appraisal of

their role shows that their involvement dates back to the 1970s, but came
to be seen in a different light after September 11, 2001. Indeed, Karacaer’s
speech on the occasion of Remembrance Day shows that immigrants in
the Netherlands have found their own connections to the history of the
Second World War. Further, they have done so regardless of official pol-
icies to place migrants within the national memory of the Second World
War, as will be explained below. This essay is also a contribution to the
study of how memories construct or obstruct social cohesion, how mem-
ories can assist in the inclusion or exclusion of migrants, and how mi-
grants themselves use memories as they negotiate with the host society in
their quest to be recognized.5
Sixty Years of Noise over Two Minutes Silence

The collective memory of the Second World War is reflected in the way
in which the dead are remembered and liberation is celebrated. The his-
tory of the national commemoration on Remembrance Day itself reflects
the struggle of various groups for recognition of their wartime experi-
ences.6 Since the end of the Second World War, the Netherlands have
commemorated the war’s victims on May 4 and celebrated liberation
on May 5. Initially Dutch memories of the Second World War centered
around three themes: the occupation by Nazi Germany, the liberation by
the Allied forces, and the role of the Dutch resistance. The Netherlands
saw itself as a victim of German aggression. Ceremonies on Remem-
brance Day focused on the dead who had fallen in the struggle against
the occupier: resistance fighters, Dutch and Allied soldiers, sailors, and
executed innocent civilians. The fact that 70  of the Jewish population
was deported and killed in the Netherlands – the highest percentage in
Europe – played no role in the public commemorations.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the Dutch population was first confronted
with accounts of the destruction of the Jews: the Eichmann Trial began
in 1961; in 1965 historian Jacques Presser published the Ondergang (Per-
dition), a study of the persecution and extermination of Dutch Jewry;
and numerous feature films, documentaries, and television programs
were released. As elsewhere in Europe, this resulted in an awareness of the
5 For this perspective see: Glynn and Kleist (2012), pp. 3-32.
6 The following historical account of Remembrance Day is based on: Vermolen
(1995), pp. 87-122; Reijt (2010); Ginkel (2010), pp. 28-38; Vree (2003), pp. 222-241.
63
Holocaust as a distinct historical event, and a public Holocaust memory

emerged.7 The memory of the Second World War was no longer domi-
nated by the heroes who fell for their country, but by the Nazi persecu-
tion and extermination of the Jews. The commemorative focus gradually
shifted to the groups who suffered heavily under the Nazi occupation, in
addition to the Jewish people in hiding, resistance fighters, and immi-
grants from the former Dutch colony in the East Indies.
Long before multi-ethnic inclusiveness of commemoration became
the object of government policy, immigrants from the former Dutch col-
onies in the East and West Indies demanded that the government recog-
nize the hardship they had suffered during the Second World War. Mi-
grants from the Netherlands East Indies arrived in the Netherlands in
the late 1940s and early 1950s after Indonesian independence; they had
endured Japanese occupation, internment in Japanese camps, forced la-
bor, and their mass departure to the Netherlands after the independence
of Indonesia. In the 1970s the first local monuments and ceremonies in
commemoration of Dutch citizens and soldiers killed as a result of the
Japanese occupation of the East Indies (1941-45) occurred. In 1988 a na-
tional monument for the victims of the war in the East was unveiled and
August 15, the day of Japan’s unconditional surrender, became a national
day of commemoration.8
Postcolonial immigrants from Surinam and the Netherlands Antilles
began their efforts for recognition and compensation in the 1980s and
1990s. These parts of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which were un-
occupied during the war, had supplied volunteers and mariners for the
war effort – many of whom were killed. Additionally, several dozen West
Indians, who were living in the Netherlands at the time, had joined the
resistance. A number of these members of the resistance were shot by the
Germans or died in concentration camps, such as Surinamese Anton de
Kom, Aruban Boy Ecury, and Curaçaoan George Maduro. The efforts of
war veterans to secure compensation led to the payment of a war pension
to veterans in 2003. However, for many West Indian migrants the war in
the West was much less of an issue than it was for those from the East,
as the former were focused on a National Slavery Monument (which was
unveiled in Amsterdam in 2002).9
7 For more information on the Dutch memory of the Second World War and the
Holocaust see: Keizer (2010), pp. 11-25, and Haan (2008), pp. 31-70.
8 Oostindie (2011), pp. 91-97; Raaijmakers and Ooijen (2012), pp. 463-483; Dewulf
(2012), pp. 239-254.
9 Oostindie (2011), pp. 97-100, and Oord (2004), pp. 98 ff.
64
In the course of the 1990s the so-called National Committee for May
4 and 5 (henceforth: the National Committee), which undertook re-
sponsibility for organizing Remembrance Day and Liberation Day, be-
gan including the experiences of migrant workers and their families in its
policies.10 In its 1999 program, the National Committee stated that Re-
membrance Day should address the »new Dutch«, proclaiming: »Almost
every ethnic group has its own specific experience with oppression, war,
and lack of freedom. Experiences and memories can be a bridge for mu-
tual understanding between natives and newcomers.«11 In that same year,
the National Committee invited poet Mustafa Stitou to read a poem
written for the occasion during the National Commemoration on Dam
Square in Amsterdam. The poet liked to think he had been invited be-
cause of his literary skills, not his Moroccan background, but the latter
was clearly one reason for the invitation. A year later, parliamentarian
Judith Belinfante, previously the chairman of the National Committee
for Commemoration and the director of the Jewish Historical Museum,
said that his presence had been a source of pride for many Moroccan res-
idents. She argued that the presence of new citizens in the Netherlands
should be made visible during national commemorations and celebra-
tions.12
Belinfante mentioned Muslim communities in particular, meaning
the Dutch residents and citizens previously known as »ethnic minori-
ties« or simply »Turks and Moroccans.«13 Both migrant groups arrived
as temporary laborers in the Netherlands in the 1960s and 1970s; their
wives and children followed in the 1980s, when further immigration was
restricted. The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a recurring debate on immi-
gration and integration, which, by the turn of the century, focused more
and more on Islam and Muslims – a focus that intensified with the at-
10 Nationaal Comité 4 en 5 mei (1991), p. 22. The National Committee has its own
website with some information also available in English: www.4en5mei.nl.
11 Reijt (2010), p. 126.
12 Het gaat om poëzie, niet om mijn afkomst, Trouw, 5 May 1999; Judith Belin-
fante, Leve de multiculturele kranslegging op de Dam, Trouw, 4 May 2000.
13 Since the 1980s, Moroccans and Turks have been the two largest non-European
migrant groups in the Netherlands, amounting to 350,000 and 385,000 individ-
uals respectively. These numbers include first- and second-generation migrants.
The terminology of »second-generation« and »third-generation« migrants is il-
lustrative of the extent to which these individuals, though Dutch citizens, are
still perceived as immigrants. See: www.vijfeeuwenmigratie.nl.
65
tacks of 9/11 in 2001 and the murder of filmmaker and publicist Theo van
Gogh by an Islamic extremist in 2004.
Politicians and intellectuals considered the presence of Islam and
Muslims in the Netherlands as a pressing social problem, and as a prob-
lem that could be solved in part by conveying knowledge of Dutch his-
tory and culture to newcomers. This history, which was meant to facili-
tate their integration into society, was not an inclusive interpretation of
Dutch history; instead, it was an emphatically national version of Dutch
history.14 In this context the attitude of migrants and Muslims towards
the memory of the Second World War gained a new significance. It was
also within this context that the speech by Haci Karacaer, a prominent
representative of Islam in the Netherlands, and the disturbances of the
May 4 ceremonies, increased in political significance.
Stories of Resistance
The involvement of migrant organizations in ceremonies commemo-
rating the Second World War extends beyond the debate about multi-
cultural memorialization. In the 1980s and 1990s leftist migrant organi-
zations attended commemorative ceremonies together with other leftist
activists as part of an established repertoire of protest.15 A commemora-
tion of the February Strike is just one example of their early involvement
in these memory ceremonies. The February Strike of February 25, 1941
was of factory and municipal workers in Amsterdam organized by the
Communist Party (CPN) in protest against the persecution of the Jews.
After the war, the CPN organized an annual commemoration to honor
their resistance against fascism, connecting the event to various, though
overall leftist, domestic, and global concerns.16 This commemoration
was one of the first opportunities for migrant organizations, such as the
HTIB (Hollanda Türkiyeli İşçiler Birliği – Turkish Workers’ Association
in the Netherlands), to become acquainted with Dutch memorial cul-
ture. When interviewed in 2004, chairman Mustafa Ayranci stated that
the HTIB had been attending the commemoration for three decades.
Even if we take this with a grain of salt, it would mean that the associa-
14 Paul Scheffer, Het multiculturele drama, NRC Handelsblad, 29 January 2000;

Scheffer (2011); Ribbens (2004), pp. 500-521.
15 I owe this point to Ensel (2016), pp. 475-482.
16 For the history of the commemoration see: Mooij (2006).
66
tion became involved in the commemoration within years of its founda-

tion in 1974.17
HTIB was founded by Turkish migrants who sympathized with the
Turkish Communist Party and supported their comrades in their strug-
gle for democratic rights and freedoms in Turkey.18 Turkish politics in
the 1970s was characterized by a stark polarization between left and right,
with extreme-leftist and extreme-rightist groups fighting each other ver-
bally and physically. From 1975, a rightwing, nationalist, and strongly
anti-communist coalition was in government; the rightwing government
was replaced in 1980 by an equally repressive military rule. Leftist activ-
ists understood their political struggle as one against fascism and imperi-
alism, likening the nationalist regime and parties to Nazism and Hitler,
especially in the case of the extreme-nationalist National Action Party
(MHP), whose leader, Alparslan Türkeş, was an admirer of National So-
cialism.19
Thus, Turkish leftist activists in the Netherlands were already ac-
quainted with the vocabulary of the Second World War. They used it for
depicting the ordeal of their comrades in Turkey and in describing their
own fight against their political opponents in the Netherlands (the »Grey
Wolves,« as nationalist Turkish activists were called).20 HTIB found sev-
eral allies in their struggle against their fascist opponents, among them
the Committee of Moroccan Workers in the Netherlands (KMAN).
Remco Ensel has shown how the KMAN similarly brought its own issues
into the February Strike commemoration.21
For HTIB, the commemoration of the February Strike was about sup-
porting the oppressed, the weak, the poor, and the workers in their fight
against fascism and oppression. In 2004 HTIB’s chairman Ayranci ex-
plained that the commemoration appealed to him because »it was about
the struggles of workers of Amsterdam against fascism and oppres-
17 Verzet tegen onrechtvaardigheid, www.amsterdam.nl, 13 January 2004 (16 June
2016).
18 On HTIB and other Turkish leftist organizations in the Netherlands see: Nell
(2008), pp. 121-145, and Mügge (2010).
19 Landau (1974), pp. 210, 216, 266.
20 A leaflet in Dutch published in 1984 on the occasion of the February Strike
Commemoration asked for political repression in Turkey, which was recover-
ing from military rule. Presenting the strike as an example of resistance against
an inhuman regime and a source of inspiration, the HTIB urged readers to sup-
port the democratic opposition in Turkey. Steun de democratische oppositie in
Turkije, HTIB Archive, IISH, number 428.
21 Ensel (2014), pp. 137-143.
67
sion,« and »that strong groups should show their solidarity with weak
groups.«22 HTIB understood National Remembrance Day on May 4 in
similar terms. A 1981 pamphlet, published in Turkish and distributed for
the May 4 and 5 ceremonies, explained that these days were about the re-
sistance against the German occupation and Nazi oppression, as well as
about commemorating the patriotic anti-fascist fighters the Dutch had
lost in their struggle against fascism. Liberation Day was an event to
warn against present-day fascism and racism, which HTIB saw embod-
ied in the extreme-rightist and nationalist Dutch People’s Union (Neder-
landse Volksunie, NVU) and the National Action Party (MHP) in Turkey.
In a combination of older and newer leftist themes, HTIB called for the
international solidarity of all Dutch and foreign laborers against fascism
and racism.23 In the 1980s and 1990s, HTIB continued to couch its activ-
ism against racism, xenophobia, and discrimination in terms of vigilance
against fascism, even though opposition against immigration now came
from mainstream politicians and publicists.
The Global Dimension of the Second World War

In the early 2000s migrant organizations noticed that their participa-
tion in commemorative events had come to be seen in a new light. In
the heated debate about the compatibility of migrant and in particular
Muslim identities with national and universal values, attitudes towards
the memory of the Second World War and the Holocaust had become
an issue of public concern. Fenna Ulichki, the chairwoman of the Mo-
roccan Women’s Association (MVVN), a group which had attended com-
memorative ceremonies for years, remarked that »since 9/11 attendance
seems to be regarded a certificate of good conduct for migrant organiza-
tions,« and that she felt resistance against this.24 A few months after the
incidents of May 4, 2003, newspapers reported that antisemitism was a
problem in schools; teachers in schools dominated by pupils of Moroc-

2016). Funda Müjde, a Turkish-Dutch artist who spoke at the commemoration
in 2014, became acquainted with the commemoration through HTIB. She appre-
ciated the commemoration for not only honoring the strikers in protest against
the persecution of the Jews, but also taking a stance against any form of pres-
ent-day discrimination. See: De herdenkingskrant, February 2014, p. 3.
23 HTIB Archive, IISH, number 413.
2016).
68
can or Turkish background had difficulties talking about the Holocaust.

Taken together with accounts of antisemitism in the sphere of anti-Israel
protest, these reports created a sense of urgency. In the years after 2003,
governmental and semi-governmental organizations launched a number
of initiatives in the field of war and Holocaust memory.25 Two important
and widely disseminated publications appeared which covered the war-
time experiences of the largest migrant groups’ countries of origin. The
booklet New Dutch of Today and the War of the Past gave an account of
the developments in Morocco, the Netherlands Antilles, Surinam, and
Turkey during the Second World War. A second booklet published a few
years later, War on Five Continents, took a similar approach while broad-
ening the geographical scope by including the Netherlands East Indies,
China, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union.26
The publications are informative of how minorities’ attitudes towards
the Second World War were problematized. The idea behind them was
that newcomers in Dutch society had not been acquainted with the Sec-
ond World War through the stories of their parents and grandparents,
and that the educational system failed in transmitting this essential part
of historical knowledge and awareness. As the director of Forum, the
semi-governmental institution for diversity issues which ordered the first
publication, explained, it was important that a shared memory be cre-
ated, »but that is only possible if we know in what way the largest groups
of non-European new Dutch were involved.«27 The author of the book
argued that each minority had its own story about the Second World
War and gave examples such as »Moroccans fighting in the clay of Zee-
land, Antillean students in the Dutch resistance, Surinamese volunteers
to the East.«28
Critics received the publications as »multicultural falsification of his-
tory,« although the publications presented a fairly nuanced interpreta-
tion of events, for example pointing out antisemitism and discrimination
against Jews in the case of Turkey.29 These critics faulted the policy for
25 On the perception of problems in Holocaust education and the resulting initia-

tives see: Ensel and Stremmelaar (2013), pp. 153-171.
26 Oord (2004), and Ribbens, Schenk, and Eickhoff (2008). Both projects were
subsidized by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Sport.
27 Froukje Santing, Marokko en Suriname vochten ook mee in WOII, NRC Han-
delsblad, 23 April 2004.
28 See the backcover of Oord (2004).
29 Oostindie (2011), p. 100. On these aspects of Turkish history, see: Guttstadt
(2008).
69
relying on the idea »that identification with a historical narrative based

on something as abstract as humanity or citizenship is infeasible,« and
can only be effectuated through a »tribal« connection to one’s »own flesh
and blood.« »If grandpa was killed at Monte Casino, well, no, then we do
not need to kill the Jews, of course,« was the cynical remark of one pub-
licist. »As if empathy can only be accomplished through identification,«
wrote another.30
Both books discussed the Moroccan soldiers who fought in the French
army, some of whom were buried in Zeeland, a province in the south-
west of the Netherlands.31 It was less obvious how Turkey’s involvement
in the Second World War could offer a point of reference to citizens who
cherished their ties to Turkey, since the country had remained neutral al-
most until the end of the war. In New Dutch of Today and the War of the
Past van den Oord suggested Turkey’s most important contribution to
the history of the Second World War was the fact that one had to travel
through Turkey to get to Palestine. Both books, however, argued that
Turkey played a bigger role, pointing out that Turkey served as a refuge
for Jewish and other German refugees, that there were Jews with Turk-
ish or Ottoman passports in the occupied parts of Europe (including
the Netherlands), and that Turkish diplomats attempted to save some of
them from deportation.32
»Turkey has made absolutely no contribution to the Allied victory,«
Erik-Jan Zürcher, professor of Turkish history, remarked.33 He did not
see how knowledge of that episode could help Turkish youngsters be-
come involved in May 4 and 5. Spokesmen of Turkish migrants’ organi-
zations have expressed the same opinion. Ahmet Azdural, the director of
the Turkish-Dutch umbrella organization IOT, argued that for the Turk-
ish community May 4 and 5 were important as days to reflect upon the
core values of society, such as freedom and democracy. But he found the
role of the Turks in the war and the nationality of the fallen »totally ir-
relevant« and »of no importance.« »Demonstrating the contributions of
various small ethnic military units to the war, I find rather far-fetched
30 H. M. van den Brink, Iedereen zijn eigen oorlog, Vrij Nederland, 8 May 2004;
Jolande Withuis, Hutspotherdenking, Historisch Nieuwsblad, May 2011, http://
www.historischnieuwsblad.nl/nl/artikel/27422/jolande-withuis.html (16 June 2016).
31 On the increased interest in the cemetery see: Hondius (2010), pp. 179-188.
32 Oord (2004), pp. 45-50, and Ribbens (2008), pp. 274-278.
33 Bas Kromhout, Marokkanen wel, Turken niet betrokken bij WO2, Historisch
Nieuwsblad, 7 October 2008.
70
and not very relevant.«34 Karacaer also thought that it was unhelpful to
»drag immigrant victims into the commemoration.«35 His speech on
May 4, 2003, like the commemorative practices of immigrants from the
1970s onwards, show that these had found their own connections to the
history of the Second World War.
The Stories to be Shared

As a Turkish-born representative of an Islamic organization, Karacaer
could be taken as voicing a Turkish or Muslim stance on Holocaust
memory. Karacaer’s critique of current memory practices may be con-
nected to his Muslim background, and more specifically to his ties with
the organization Milli Görüș (National View). Originating in Turkey in
the 1960s, Milli Görüș was a political organization which aimed at giving
Islam a larger role in Turkish political and public life. It formed the basis
of a number of political parties in Turkey, the most successful of which
has been the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which came to power
in Turkey in 2003. In the Netherlands, Milli Görüș first emerged in the
1960s and 1970s as a network of mosques. In Europe it has advocated sol-
idarity with fellow Muslims suffering from repression, and particularly
with those who live within the former borders of the Ottoman Empire,
in Southeast Europe and in the Middle East (especially Palestine). In re-
cent years, several representatives of Milli Görüș have shifted their atten-
tion towards their home countries in Europe, and are pleading for the
freedom to live freely as devout Muslim citizens there.36
Karacaer arrived from Anatolia to the Netherlands in 1982, when he
was 20 years old, following his father. He soon started working and held
various jobs, including working at the municipality of Amsterdam and at
a large bank. In 1994 he took on his first public position as a spokesman
for a Milli Görüş association in the West of Amsterdam, and in 1999 he
became the director of one of the federations which united Milli Görüş’
34 Maarten Muns, Rol allochtonen in oorlog ’niet relevant’, Historisch Nieuws-

blad, 23 June 2000, http://www.historischnieuwsblad.nl/nl/nieuws/12701/rol-al-
lochtonen-in-oorlog-niet-relevant.html (16 June 2016).
35 See: »Discussie over intercultureel herdenken,« a report of a discussion on how
to commemorate in the province Noord-Holland at: www.bevrijdingintercultu-
reel.nl/bi/illsutraties/discussie.pdf, 4 November 2004 (16 June 2016). See also:
the critical report by Maarten Huygen, Multiculturalisme is nog steeds de doc-
trine van de overhead, NRC Handelsblad, 6 November 2004.
36 The best treatment of Milli Görüș is Schiffauer (2010).
71
associations in the Netherlands. Dressing and speaking Dutch »with

nonchalance typical for Amsterdam,« Karacaer became quite popular
with the media as someone »expressing the Islamic sound Dutch politi-
cians are waiting for.«37
Karacaer became involved in Remembrance Day around 1998, due to
a tiny war monument across from his mosque. As a neighbor lay a bunch
of tulips down at the monument for her brother and her neighbor who
had not returned, men visiting the mosque were talking, hardly aware
of what the memorial meant. Karacaer spoke with the neighbor and of-
fered to use the mosque as a venue space for attendees of the ceremony to
gather before and afterwards commemorations. From then on represen-
tatives of the mosque attended the commemoration; over the years more
and more mosque-goers became acquainted with the events.38
Karacaer’s speech resonates with several issues in relation to the debate
concerning multicultural commemoration. First, his speech illustrated
that a connection between Turkish and Dutch memories of war could be
made through the Ottoman-Turkish experience during the First World
War, rather than through the Second. Since the First World War placed
the Ottoman Empire on the side of Germany against the Allied forces,
Karacaer had to twist history a bit in order to present the Turks as vic-
tims of the Germans instead of allies: »In the baggage of Turkish youth
the battle of Gallipoli in 1915 is deeply engraved in memory. Hundreds
of thousands of Turkish soldiers and civilians were massacred in a battle
that the British and the Germans wanted to fight on Turkish soil. Who
did anything for us then?« Karacaer’s memory of war also invoked an
image of people being defenseless, as he connected the fate of the Turk-
ish people to that of the Armenians. He went on to address the genocide
of the Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman government: »and when
there was no place for Armenians in the genesis of modern Turkey: who
raised his voice for them?«
Karacaer’s speech presented a postcolonial perspective, as he brought
forward a number of episodes from the Second World War which he
wanted to be wider known in the shared collective memory: that of the
Surinamese resistance hero Anton de Kom who was killed in a concen-
tration camp, of the »Moroccan heroes« who fought in World War II
37 On Karacaer and Milli Görüş in the Netherlands see: Stremmelaar (2016). Be-
tween 1998 and 2002 Milli Görüş was the single most quoted Islamic and Turk-
ish organisation in the national paper de Volkskrant, as Karacaer was its spokes-
man.
38 »Discussie over intercultureel herdenken«, Interview with Karacaer (2011).
72
and »gave their lives for the liberation of Europe,« and of the Moroccan
King Mohammed VI who refused to give over Jewish citizens to the Vi-
chy regime. He also criticized the way in which Dutch society dealt with
its heritage of slavery and colonialism. »Have we learned from the past?«
he asked, »are we ready to reflect critically upon our own past?« Argu-
ing that he did not understand »how one can commemorate the soldiers
you yourself have sent to their death in the aftermath of colonialism to-
gether with the countless victims of a criminal plunderer,« he referred to
the inclusion on Remembrance Day of the Dutch soldiers who died in
the West Indies fighting against Indonesian nationalist forces in 1947-
49. Since 1961, when the memorandum for Remembrance Day was
amended, the commemoration has also included Dutch victims of other
conflicts, wars, and peacekeeping missions that have occurred since the
outbreak of the Second World War. This change was made in consider-
ation of Dutch war veterans who wished to commemorate their com-
rades who died in combat against Indonesian nationalist forces in the
Netherlands East Indies between 1947 and 1949 and in the Korean War
of 1950-53. On this point, Karacaer was only one of many critical voices,
as the commemoration on May 4 of Dutch soldiers who died in other
armed conflicts is one of the most criticized aspects of Remembrance
Day in the Netherlands.
There was one reference to a contemporary event in Karacaer’s speech:
May 4 was about »little Ali who lost his arms in a war that was not his.«
Without giving any details, Karacaer here referred to an Iraqi boy who
lost both of his arms and most of his family members in an air raid by
American forces in April 2003.39 Hence Karacaer’s reference to Iraq could
easily be interpreted as a specifically Turkish-Islamic stance on Holocaust
memory. However, as an enquiry showed, at the time the war in Iraq was
at the forefront of many people’s minds when they thought about Re-
membrance and Liberation Day.40 This is only one indication that Kara-
caer’s position could be seen as specifically Muslim, yet it also reflected
perceptions widely shared in Dutch society.41
39 Limbless Iraqi boy offered help, BBC, 9 April 2003, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/

middle_east/2930813.stm (16 June 2016).
40 See Nationaal Vrijheidsonderzoek (2013), p. 12.
41 During the symposium »Ethnic Minorities and Holocaust Memory« held in Jena
on July 11-13, 2013, Philipp Gassert similarly commented that some of the atti-
tudes towards the Holocaust attributed to ethnic minorities are phenomena en-
countered in European societies at large.
73
For Karacaer, the contemporary relevance of World War II was that it

taught people to be vigilant against »discrimination on the basis of race,
religion or sexual orientation« and to protect »the vulnerable and help-
less.« Ultimately, Remembrance Day was »about our Jewish fellow citi-
zens who were deported and who left an empty place in our city and in
our hearts,« about »ordinary citizens who were heroes and had to pay for
it with their lives,« and »high-positioned people who turned out cowards
or hangers-on.«42
Stories of Repression and Persecution

Karacaer gave his speech as a representative of a Muslim organization.
Thus, his speech on the occasion of Remembrance Day signaled the in-
clusion of religious, Islamic organizations in the social fabric and collec-
tive memory of Dutch society. At the turn of the millennium, mosque
associations joined their leftist counterparts in showing their engage-
ment in the remembrance of the war. In response to the signs of aversion
against Jews and Holocaust memory in 2003, Karacaer’s mosque organi-
zation Milli Görüș, together with other Muslim organizations, sent rep-
resentatives to the ceremony in commemoration of Kristallnacht on No-
vember 9, 2003, and the February Strike in early 2004.43
Selami Yüksel, a representative of Karacaer’s Milli Görüș, was proud to
address the attendees on behalf of a newly formed Muslim Council. Yük-
sel saw a parallel between the Nazi period and the growing antagonism
between groups with different faiths or worldviews. Throughout the
speech he constructed a parallel between Muslims and Jews as religious
minorities suffering from discrimination and harassment. »As Muslims,
we feel how it is to live in anxiety. After the events in the U. S. on Sep-
tember 11, 2001, Muslims were placed in the dock worldwide. In several
European countries, including the Netherlands, there have been attacks
on mosques and Muslim women with headscarves have been harassed
and insulted.«44
For Yüksel, the remembrance of the dead meant to be aware of the fate
of the Jews, a fellow-minority, and to show them solidarity, because as
Muslims they had similar experiences. In connecting the Second World
42 Haci Karacaer, We moeten de verhalen uit ons verleden delen, NRC Handels-
blad, 5 May 2003.
43 »Discussie over intercultureel herdenken,« Interview with Karacaer (2011).
44 Text of his speech in Dutch during the Kristallnacht commemoration on 9 No-
vember 2003. See on the Kristallnacht commemoration: Ensel (2014), pp. 191 f.
74
War to present-day concerns, especially racism at home and abroad, the

representatives of Milli Görüș followed an established tradition of com-
memoration. Fascism and Nazism were still the evil powers to be resisted,
but it was no longer the oppressed, the poor, and the workers who were
suffering. The memory of the Second World War as honored now is
about a minority being unable to live in peace and in freedom, to prac-
tice its religion, and to express its identity. This is how representatives of
Milli Görüș relate the memory of the Holocaust to their own experiences
as Muslims in post-9/11 Dutch society.45
Hence, the memory of the war had shifted from the struggle against
the forces of evil to the plight of the victims. This shift was not so much
related to the nature of the organizations involved – leftist versus Is-
lamic – but rather to the increasing centrality of the Holocaust within
the memory of the Second World War in the Netherlands.46 This evolu-
tion occurred parallel to a change in the way Dutch responsibility in the
persecution of the Jews was perceived: Dutch authorities, civil servants,
and bystanders had made the persecution of the Jews possible through
their passivity and compliance. Whereas detailed historical studies of the
persecution of the Jews have added nuances to this image, the popular
image is still that of the Netherlands as a land of deportation.47 Kara-
caer’s speech illustrates that the heroism of resistance fighters had been
abandoned for the unequalled challenge of protecting the vulnerable and
helpless. He emphasized that human failure in the past had left Amster-
dam bereft of most of its Jewish residents.
Gert Oostindie, in his work on postcolonial memory, comes to the
sobering conclusion that it is impossible to translate all identity-based
claims of a memorial culture into a truly shared, national narrative. »So-
ciety is simply too heterogeneous and democratic, and the ethnic and his-
torical identifications too diverse.«48 More optimistically, one could also
45 Also another representative of Milli Görüș in Amsterdam, Ekrem Karadeniz,

when speaking at the occasion of Remembrance Day in 2008 and 2009 in the
West of Amsterdam, pointed at the similarities between the repression and per-
secution suffered by Jews during the Second World War and the blame put on
Muslims in contemporary Dutch society. See his website: www.islamitischeges-
chiedenis.nl.
46 Levy and Sznaider (2001) have pointed out the global nature of this process.
47 Haan (2008), pp. 68 ff.
48 Oostindie (2011), p. 223. On the development whereby the remembrance of the
Second World War has become increasingly democratic and fragmented, result-
ing in a wide-ranging repertoire of memory practices see: Ginkel (2011).
75
argue that, unhampered by official policies, new citizens have connected

to the memory of the war in various ways. In dealing with the past, Turk-
ish-Dutch immigrants have negotiated their place within the host soci-
ety in their quest to be recognized. From the 1970s leftist Turkish im-
migrants in the Netherlands recognized the mobilizing potential of war
remembrance in their political struggle; in the 21st century representa-
tives of Islamic organizations followed as they discovered the present-day
significance of commemorating the Jewish victims of the Nazis. As has
been argued at the beginning of this essay, the process of including new
segments of Dutch society into its memorial culture has not been with-
out friction. Such battles over memory are not characteristic of migrant
or Muslim perceptions of the Holocaust, however, but rather a character-
istic of Holocaust memory globally, especially as it becomes increasingly
democratic and fragmented.49
49 On the competitive and alternatively multidirectional potential of memory see:

Rothberg (2009c), and Rothberg (2011), pp. 523-548.
76
The Murder of Stephen Lawrence
Racism, the Post-Colonial,
and the Holocaust in Britain
Tony Kushner
In October 2006, as part of its Equality and Diversity Week, the Univer-
sity of Northampton planted the Anne Frank/Stephen Lawrence Tree in
»memory of two young people with so much potential whose lives were
cut short because of racism, intolerance, prejudice and discrimination.«
Since then, the space around the tree has been used as a focal point for
interfaith gatherings, anti-racist activities, and Holocaust Memorial Day
events.1 Anne Frank has become the most famous victim of the Holo-
caust, her iconic status making her arguably also the most remembered
figure from the Second World War – certainly within the sphere of the
life stories of ordinary people.2 Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager of
Caribbean origin and from south London, was murdered in 1993 by a
group of young men from the same area; their profound and violent rac-
ism was one of the gang’s strongest bonds. Whilst hundreds of thousands
of black, Asian, and white immigrants have been subject to racial attacks
in post-war Britain, only the murder of Stephen Lawrence has received
any sustained recognition at a social, political, legal, and cultural level.
This recognition was hard fought, especially by the parents of Stephen
Lawrence. It has taken 20 years of sustained effort and campaigning to
achieve its status as, in the acerbic phrase of right wing heritage commen-
tator, Simon Jenkins, »the most interrogated death in history.«3
This essay will explore the ways Anne Frank and Stephen Lawrence
are connected through Holocaust and anti-racist memory work, as ev-
idenced by the actions of the University of Northampton and beyond.
Indeed, linking the two stories of Anne Frank and Stephen Lawrence
appears to be affirmation of Michael Rothberg’s plea for »multidirec-
tional memory.« His concept is designed as the alternative to »competi-
tive memory,« which, for example, has been regularly articulated in rela-
1 See the University of Northampton website from 2006 to the present for the use
of the site, especially with regard to the annual Holocaust Memorial Day.
2 Enzer and Solotaroff-Enzer (2000).
3 Simon Jenkins, Politicians who demand inquiries should be shot, The Guardian,
26 June 2013.
77
tony kushner
tion to discussions of the Holocaust and slavery in America.4 Rothberg

aims for a »genealogy of works that articulate memory of the Holocaust
alongside memory of colonialism and slavery without collapsing one his-
tory into the other or establishing a hierarchy of suffering.«5 His concept
of multidirectional memory draws attention »to the dynamic transfers
that take place between diverse places and times during the act of remem-
brance.« His positive reading concludes: »Ultimately, memory is not a
zero-sum game.«6 The discussion here will initially confirm Rothberg’s
model, but it will also explore the tensions and distortions that enable
»multidirectional memory« to take place. It is necessary, then, to con-
textualize the patterns of memory related to the Holocaust, racism, and
Nazism in Britain.
Britishness and the Memory of the Second World War

As elsewhere, confrontations with the Holocaust have changed in Brit-
ain since the Second World War – yet this confrontation also maintains
its own particular features. Only recently has there been an engagement
with the victims, which accepts both their innocence and their common
humanity. The immediate post-war period in Britain was a time of aus-
terity at home and conflict in Palestine abroad; it was also a time of wide-
spread irritation aimed at Jews, and a tendency to blame Jews for their
own misfortunes. Such attitudes did not disappear as British affluence re-
turned and the Palestine Mandate became an increasingly hazy memory.7
In 1968, the historian Colin Cross interviewed Sir Horace Wilson, one of
Neville Chamberlain’s chief negotiators during the 1938 Munich Agree-
ment. Wilson remembered that »absoutely no mention was made of the
plight of the Jews« – even at this high level of diplomacy. When probed
further by Cross, Wilson said he understood Hitler’s feelings about the
Jews and asked »Have you ever met a Jew you liked?«8 Wilson’s response
is an unusually blunt example, but it reveals a remarkably resilient dis-
course in post-war British culture.
Links did exist between Britain and what, from the later 1960s, would
become known as the Holocaust, but such connections usually con-
cerned the April 1945 liberation of Bergen-Belsen – the only major con-
4 Rothberg (2009c), pp. 1 f.
5 Rothberg (2009b), p. 19.
6 Ibid., p. 11.
7 Kushner (1994).
8 Wilson (2012), pp. 117 f.
78
the murder of stephen lawrence
centration camp liberation by the British army.9 Yet there were few ef-
forts to connect the British war effort to the enormity of Jewish losses
and suffering during the Holocaust. Instead, the liberation was presented
in contemporary footage, the subsequent war crimes trials, and in pop-
ular culture as a more general revelation of the evils of Nazism (or, more
frequently, the German people as a whole). By contrast, Belsen’s libera-
tion revealed the moral underpinnings of Britain’s »finest hour.« In the
process, the victims were faceless and viewed generally through the prism
of »horror.« Mass-Observation, a social anthropological organization cre-
ated to record the experiences and opinions of everyday life in Britain,
highlighted the following testimony: »I saw the atrocity film [in Lon-
don] today [April 30, 1945]. Of course I expected it to be terrible, but it’s
more terrible, not because of the piles of corpses – after all, they’re dead –
but because of the survivors. They just aren’t human any more.«10
Few were willing to query whether Britain could have done more to
help the persecuted Jews of the continent during the war itself. More-
over, later attempts from the 1960s to connect domestic racism linked to
New Commonwealth migrants to Nazi antisemitism were often coun-
terproductive.
In 1970, Tony Benn, a prominent Labour figure, denounced the mav-
erick anti-immigrant Conservative MP Enoch Powell for injecting rac-
ism into the General Election campaign. Benn stated that in Wolver-
hampton, Powell’s constituency, the »flag of racialism [had] been hoisted
[which was] beginning to look like the one that fluttered 25 years ago
over Dachau and Belsen.« Rather than confront the anti-immigrant
stance of both major parties, Benn’s intervention was widely condemned.
Instead, an emphasis was placed on »how Powell was a Christian gen-
tleman and how the last war against Hitler had been a patriotic war.«
Benn’s provocative link between Wolverhampton, Dachau, and Belsen is
often claimed as the cause of the narrow Conservative victory. While the
comparison may have lost Labour some votes, however, it has also been
argued that the link further confirmed and politicized New Common-
wealth migrants – and perhaps countered any electoral gains by Conser-
vatives. Indeed, Benn noted that amongst the third of correspondents in
agreement with his intervention were individuals who said the statement
9 Reilly (1997).
10 »Victory Celebrations,« Mass-Observation Archive (hereafter M-O A), The Keep,
Sussex, Box 1 File A. This is the response of a 21 year old woman. More generally,
see the directives, diaries, and research carried out by Mass-Observation in spring
1945.
79
tony kushner
was overdue; it was, some argued, »the first speech that indicated the
deep feeling of black people against racism.«11
The point here is that at this stage, Holocaust victims were not, as late
as the 1970s, necessarily able to elicit sympathy. Those few survivors al-
lowed into Britain had little or no space to narrate their stories. There
was only a crude knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust and the
powerless state of its victims. On the rare occasions reference was made
to the Holocaust, it tended to be polemical and misinformed. Benn him-
self articulated this confusion and crudity when attacking the lack of
backbone of British journalists in the early 1980s: »Their role could be
likened to the Jews in Dachau who herded other Jews into the gas cham-
ber.«12
Yet it is true that radical black, Jewish, and anti-racist organizations
(most prominently the Anti-Nazi League) were successful in using pho-
tographs from Belsen and other camps during the 1970s and 1980s. These
images were utilized in the fight against the National Front, which briefly
threatened to be a racist fourth party in Britain.
Searchlight, a long-standing anti-fascist magazine initially formed in
the mid-1960s and revived a decade later, clearly revealed these tenden-
cies. A May 1975 editorial aiming to mark the 30th anniversary of the
collapse of the Third Reich highlighted, in a somewhat unstable blending
of particularity and universality, how: »The gates of the concentration
camps were flung open and the world learned for the first time the extent
of the savagery perpetrated by the Nazis. Six million Jews had perished;
four million socialists, trade unionists, communists & gypsies had also
gone into the flames along with the heroes of the Resistance, the millions
of allied servicemen and civilian war dead.«
The editorial concluded that the magazine hoped to play »our small
part in the struggle against racism and extremism and in the defence of
democracy by turning the light of day on those who would dig up the
ghosts of the past and those who would raise up latter day Fuehrers.«13
The slogan »the National Front was a Nazi front« was effective in
helping to undermine the party’s credibility. However, as black sociolo-
gist Paul Gilroy suggested, if discussions of »the far right become dom-
inant in the definition of racism [one] risks the suggestion that racism
is an aberration or an exceptional problem essentially unintegrated into
11 The controversy is covered in Kushner (2004), pp. 250-255.

12 Tony Benn speech quoted in: The Times, 26 February 1982.
13 »Thirty Years On«, in: Searchlight, May 1975.
80
the social and political structure. The National Front and similar groups
become seen not at one end of a continuum of political sentiment but
as an embarrassing excrescence on the otherwise unblemished features of
British democracy.«14
By the 1990s and the new millennium, however, engagement with
the Holocaust in Britain had transformed and developed beyond such
narrow interpretations. Indeed, it became incorporated into the mythi-
cal national »island story« – that is, one of military greatness and moral
superiority to the rest of the world, including Europe – with remark-
able ease. The reasons for the transformation were complex, partly com-
ing through the example of America and pressure from within the EU,
alongside campaigning by British Jewry and longstanding activists. It
also reflected changes in British society as a whole, with a greater socie-
tal emphasis on multiculturalism (although this concept is increasingly
challenged in the light of 9/11 and the London bombings of July 2005)
and anti-racism. That the Holocaust became domesticated cannot be
doubted. It was made manifest at a variety of levels, involving both me-
morialization, legal confrontation with the past, pedagogy, and societal
and cultural engagement.
The 1990s saw a number of landmark decisions in the effort to bolster
Holocaust awareness in Britain. In 1991 the Holocaust became a compul-
sory part of the new National Curriculum, whereas it has previously been
irregularly taught at very few schools. The War Crimes legislation, also
enacted in 1991, enabled the retrospective prosecution of individuals who
entered Britain after 1945 and had participated in the »Final Solution.«
And in 2000 a permanent Holocaust exhibition opened at the Imperial
War Museum in London. The Imperial War Museum, which in many
ways comes the closest to commemorating and celebrating »Britishness,«
previously marginalized the subject (for example, they only belatedly rec-
ognized the British liberation of Belsen). Given their earlier neglect, it is
remarkable that the space devoted to the Holocaust exhibition is twice
that of the Second World War. Further, Holocaust Memorial Day was
inaugurated in 2001, and has subsequently been attended by royalty,
leading politicians, and public figures.15 In 2009-10 Prime Minister Gor-
don Brown instituted the British »Heroes of the Holocaust« scheme for
those who had risked their lives saving Jewish victims of Nazi Europe.
Most recently, and to ensure the Holocaust remains »present« in the fu-
14 Gilroy (1987), p. 148.

15 Pearce (2014).
81
tony kushner
ture, in 2014 David Cameron launched his »Prime Minister’s Holocaust

Commission.« The Commission has pledged 50 million towards Holo-
caust commemoration and education in Britain. Finally, the survivors,
who were for so long marginal figures who were told to keep quiet about
their experiences, became feted and treated with almost sacred reverence.
Perhaps surprisingly, there has been little criticism of these develop-
ments. The most prominent controversy concerning Holocaust Memo-
rial Day has been the willingness, or otherwise, of British Muslims to
take part at a national level. Here, the underlying issue revolves around
politics of the Middle East, especially Israel/Palestine.16 There have also
been concerns expressed in the terms of competitive memory – partic-
ularly within some members of the African Caribbean community in
Britain. These individuals point to the absence of a national slavery com-
memoration day, which they argue is a historical event more closely in-
tertwined with British involvement than the Holocaust. However, this
has not been sustained criticism but rather an expression of resentment
and a desire to reach a similar level of recognition. Indeed, the National
Maritime Museum (Liverpool) only established Britain’s first perma-
nent gallery on slavery in 1994. The exhibit is titled »Transatlantic Slav-
ery: Against Human Dignity,« and it utilizes the phrase »the Black Ho-
locaust.«17
This overview of the changes regarding the place of the Holocaust in
British consciousness is necessary to explain why the Holocaust could,
and could not, be made into a usable past in efforts to combat other
forms of racism and prejudice. Put bluntly, without any basic knowledge
of the Holocaust, it would have been difficult to enact memory work
involving victim groups beyond the Jews. And if reference to the Holo-
caust challenged rather than re-confirmed British self-identity, especially
in relationship to the memory of the Second World War, then it could
be extremely problematic and counterproductive – witness Tony Benn’s
failed intervention in 1970 in contrast to the widely welcomed and cele-
brated »Heroes of the Holocaust« scheme forty years later. When he an-
nounced his »Heroes of the Holocaust« scheme, Gordon Brown stated he
was determined to give »proper recognition for those who made extraor-
16 Simon Rocker, Talks with boycotting Muslims, Jewish Chronicle, 28 January

2005, and Mark Skodie, Muslims to put case for Holocaust day additions, Jewish
Chronicle, 13 February 2004. For an attempt to construct a positive, multidirec-
tional memory of Jewish and Muslim perspectives over these issues, see: David
Cesarani, A way out of this dead end, The Guardian, 15 September 2005.
17 For critiques, see: Wood (2000), pp. 296-300, and Kowaleski Wallace (2006).
82
dinary contributions to protect others during the Holocaust. Their brave

actions form a critical part of our nation’s wartime history.« Making such
connections, which have often arguably been contrived, involve little
risk.18 As will be expanded upon below, Britain has faced complexities
and limitations in winning over »Middle England« (that is, »respectable«
and allegedly mainstream, conservative public opinion) by utilizing the
memory of the Holocaust. This is especially the case in relation to who
is (and who is not) seen as deserving sympathy and support. Drawing at-
tention to the connections made between the Stephen Lawrence murder
and Holocaust discourse is not meant to minimize the various other con-
texts crucial in analyses of the Lawrence’s murder – most of which can-
not be developed here due to space limitations. However, some of these
additional contextual elements will briefly be addressed, including colo-
nialism, post-colonialism, slavery, and a particular Christian narrative.
Belated Justice
In February 2009, shortly after the official Stephen Lawrence Inquiry
closed and just before the publication of Lord MacPherson’s (its chair-
man) inquiry report, veteran investigative journalist Charles Wheeler
broadcasted the BBC documentary Why Stephen? The documentary’s
central question did not ask why the black teenager was singled out for
attack, but instead it asked why this particular black teenager was remem-
bered. »Why wasn’t it Rolan Adams, another black teenager murdered in
a London street? Why not Kuddus Ali, left comatose and brain-dam-
aged? How come all other young victims of racist attacks are largely un-
known to a public which has made an icon of Stephen Lawrence ?«19
Wheeler’s answer, and one that has gained wide currency inside and
outside the academic world, is that Stephen Lawrence’s parents made a
determined attempt to avoid the type of campaigning that occurred with
previous victims of racist murder. Indeed, a racist killing is not an iso-
lated event, especially in that part of south London. Earlier mass protests
were organized by radical black organizations working alongside anti-
racist organizations influenced by groups such as the Trotskyite Socialist
Worker Party and the Anti-Nazi League. Neville and Doreen Lawrence,
Stephen’s parents, and their advisors realized that such campaigns had
18 Simon Rocker, New award for Britain’s Shoah Heroes, Jewish Chronicle, 1 May
2009.
19 Quote from the BBC documentary Why Stephen? (1999).
83
tony kushner
not been successful in gaining public support outside sections of the Brit-
ish black communities and far left organizations. Mass demonstrations,
sometimes involving conflict, had, therefore, not challenged the police
and politicians to take seriously the problem of racial violence and the
growing problem of murder. Instead, the Lawrences decided to appeal to
»Middle England« and its leading voice, the Daily Mail. The family had
a connection to the publication. Neville Lawrence worked as a decora-
tor for Paul Dacre, the newspaper’s editor. It was through Dacre that the
Lawrences were able to gain access to its three million plus readers, the
majority of whom support the Conservative Party.20
There was more than an element of irony in this tactical decision.
The Daily Mail, founded in 1896, was the pioneer of »new journalism«
in Britain, aiming to entertain, pander, and develop the prejudices of its
mass readership. Anti-alien from its origins, it campaigned against East
European Jews at the turn of the century, and then campaigned against
accepting refugees from Nazism, utilizing an antisemitic discourse in
both cases. In the postwar era it was equally virulent as a voice against
the presence of New Commonwealth migrants. The newspaper was also
prominent in linking Britain’s black population to violent street crime,
especially »mugging.« More recently, it has been at the forefront of the
tabloid assault against asylum seekers and East Europeans coming to
Britain in alleged »floods,« or, in the case of recent world migrants, »the
’swarm’ on our streets.«21 Initially, it seemed that coverage of Stephen
Lawrence’s murder was going to take a similar path, as the paper sought
to paint the teenager and his circle as criminals. But the tactics of the
Lawrence family paid off, and the Daily Mail was at the forefront of the
campaign to receive justice for the victim and to prosecute the gang of
five young white men for the murder. Indeed, in 1997 the Daily Mail
took to the front page of J’accuse and named the five white men as guilty
of the murder, and then followed their claim saying the accused murders
could sue the Daily Mail if their accusations were incorrect.22 As Wheeler
concluded: »Stephen, the hard-working student who had wanted to be
an architect, his parents Doreen and Neville, so demonstrably upright,
20 Cathcart (1999), pp. 136 ff.

21 Simpson (2010), and Lawrence (2006), p. 173, comments on the irony of the
campaign being promoted by »a newspaper with a long history of hostility to im-
migrants.« On its recent campaign, see Claire Ellicott and Stephen Wright, The
»Swarm« on our streets, Daily Mail, 31 July 2015.
22 Daily Mail, 14 February 1997.
84
articulate and upwardly mobile, were just the ’right’ kind of black family
to find support from the Daily Mail and Middle England.«23
In June 2013 it emerged that an undercover police officer was em-
ployed to spy on the Lawrence family and their friends; the officer was
ordered to pay particular attention to Duwayne Brooks, a friend who was
with Stephen when he was fatally attacked.24 The Metropolitan Police
hoped they could smear the campaign and link the Lawrence family and
friends to criminal activity. The police aimed to discredit the Lawrence
circle, thereby avoiding a black backlash and the danger of riots similar
to those in Los Angeles that followed the savage beating of Rodney King
by the police in 1991. In Britain itself, major riots occurred in 1980, 1981,
and 1985 following incidents involving the police and Britain’s black pop-
ulation.25 Doreen and Neville Lawrence were astonished and sickened to
find out the extent of the police campaign to »find dirt on them« rather
than focusing more attention on the five white suspects.26 As Doreen
Lawrence commented: »The people in our house were all black. The
people who killed my son were white. Why should the police be so inter-
ested in who was in the house?«27 Rather than viewing the Lawrences as
victims deserving empathy, the police criminalized the family and their
friends, particularly Brooks. As with the treatment of Holocaust survi-
vors in Britain, unless those who suffered were regarded as both indis-
putably without guilt and as fellow humans with whom the public could
readily identify, marginalization and indifference occurred.
Doreen and Neville Lawrence were aware of the danger in their son
not being seen as »one of us.« They fought to win over public opinion
through the Daily Mail, and distance themselves from Duwayne Brooks,
who they believed was not only a bad influence on Stephen but whose
presence was also likely to undermine their campaign. Indeed, their cam-
paign wanted to present a specific image to the media. First and fore-
most, Stephen was presented as an innocent victim of racism. Second,
any particularity relating to his West Indian origins was universalized to
present him as any average teenage son – a son who any parent would
23 Quote from the BBC documentary Why Stephen? (1999).

24 The story was broken by The Guardian; see its coverage on 24-25 June 2013. The
newspaper has moved slowly towards a full investigation of police corruption led
by then Conservative Home Secretary, Teresa May.
25 Evans and Lewis (2013), and Dispatches, Channel 4, 24 June 2013.
26 Rob Evans and Paul Lewis, Their son was killed by racists, The Guardian, 24
June 2013.
27 Ibid.
85
tony kushner
be proud of, and any parent traumatized by his tragic and unnecessary
death. Their success – one bought at enormous cost in terms of time,
emotional exhaustion, and frustration – in communicating this message
called upon, indirectly and occasionally directly, a particular reading of
the Holocaust. Ultimately their strategy of emphasizing respectability
and victimhood brought Stephen’s story national, and indeed interna-
tional attention. In addition, it influenced an ongoing (and partially suc-
cessful) campaign to gain recognition of institutional racism in Britain,
especially within the police.
Somewhat ironically, invoking the vocabulary of the Holocaust in the
context of Lawrence’s brutal murder, which might seem provocative and
historically inappropriate, has proven to be relatively uncontroversial.
Who, apart from neo-Nazis, could object to connecting Anne Frank and
Stephen Lawrence through memory work, such as the aforementioned
project by the University of Northampton? Subscribers to Stormfront.org,
an online forum which promotes »White Pride, World Wide,« can read
of the »Breaking News« that Stephen Lawrence was to marry Anne Frank
»in the world’s first posthumous wedding ceremony« and that »Stephen
[sic!] Spielberg already has the film rights,« – although Stormfront’s mix-
ture of Holocaust denial and gutter racism would sicken most of those
who stumbled on this site.28 Beyond the fringe world of extreme neo-
Nazi racism, a more serious objection might be the accusation of relativ-
ization and questions of uniqueness – an issue that has been addressed by
those promoting linked Lawrence-Frank memory work.
Commemorating Stephen Lawrence and Anne Frank

In January 2012 two of the gang members responsible for Stephen Law-
rence’s death were successfully prosecuted. Gillian Walnes, who co-
founded the Anne Frank Trust UK in 1990 and serves as its executive
director, has long advocated for the use of Frank’s memory and the Ho-
locaust to confront contemporary issues of prejudice. Walnes expressed
this view in connection with the Lawrence murder in a January 2012 edi-
torial published in the liberal Guardian – a newspaper with a long history
of combatting antisemitism and all forms of racism. She related her or-
ganization’s role in the process that led to the January 2012 trial and con-
viction, pointing especially to the launch of the exhibition Anne Frank: A
History for Today at Southwark Cathedral in early 1997. The travelling ex-
28 See: http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t847756/ (26 June 2013).
86
hibition had a panel devoted to Stephen Lawrence, »to show that hatred
could destroy another talented teenager’s life, not in 1940s Holland, but
a few years ago right here on the streets of London.« Walnes was anxious
to provide a parallel, but was careful not to suggest an equivalence in the
scale of the two tragedies: »while not comparing the enormity of the Ho-
locaust with an individual murder, the panels showed the two teenagers
separated by 50 years, one an aspiring writer, and one an aspiring archi-
tect, and powerfully demonstrated the senselessness of lives of promise
having been cut short.«29
Doreen Lawrence attended the launch of the new exhibition. It was
there that Labour leader and soon-to-be Prime Minister Tony Blair first
met Doreen Lawrence and, according to Walnes, vowed that if he came
to power he would commission an »enquiry into the handling of Ste-
phen’s murder« – an enquiry the Conservative government refused to
carry out. Walnes concluded her editorial by stating »Stephen’s adult-
hood will never be lived, and like Anne Frank, we can only speculate as
to what his life choices and experiences would have been. But from […]
working with both his parents, he would have been a terrific and caring
young man. How cruel a thing is racial bigotry.«30
In the case of linking Stephen Lawrence and Anne Frank, it is not only
histories that are intersected but also active campaigning in the public
arena. The Lawrences were provided space to articulate their son’s bru-
tal murder at a time in 1997 when it was a »four-year-old unsolved crime
case, hardly mentioned in the press and long having moved on from dis-
cussions over dinner tables.«31 Later, Holocaust Memorial Day events en-
abled Doreen Lawrence to continue her campaigning against all forms
of racial violence and other forms of bullying. In 2009 she was featured
in a viral advertising campaign and a short animated video, »The Hate
Game.« Starting in the form of a video game, »The Hate Game« cuts
from a virtual reality version of her son’s death to her stark message in
person: »This isn’t a game. This happened to my son Stephen.«32
In turn, incorporating the story of Stephen Lawrence allows Holo-
caust educators to show that stories such as Anne Frank’s are relevant to-
29 Gillian Walnes, Decades apart, lives cut short by hate offer same lessons, Jewish
Chronicle, 6 January 2012. See also: Lawrence (2006).
30 Gillian Walnes, Letter, The Guardian, 4 January 2012.
31 Ibid.
32 The Hate Game (1999), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uE0qY0qXzY (12
June 2014).
87
tony kushner
day and emphasizes the universal need to »Stand up to hatred.«33 Thus,

the viral advertisement on Stephen Lawrence was created alongside three
others devoted to real stories relating to homophobia, Islamophobia, and
antisemitism in the UK.34 As Marcus Wood notes in Blind Memory, his
study on the representation of slavery in Britain and America: »Compar-
isons between the history of Atlantic slavery and the Nazi Holocaust are
precarious and frequently wrong but not always impossible and proper.«
Both human catastrophes, he adds, »must not be encapsulated within a
history believed to be stable, digested and understood; th[ese] histor[ies
are] not over, and [are] evolving.«35
Indeed, the nature of British confrontation with the Holocaust is
evolving. Returning to Wood’s observations, the histories of slavery, colo-
nialism, and genocide are always developing and fluid. In Britain during
the late 1990s, campaigners for racial justice and Holocaust education
found common purpose.36 Doreen Lawrence was initially cautious when
she was first approached by the Anne Frank Trust for permission to in-
clude her son’s murder in the Anne Frank: A History for Today exhibition.
As with the Anne Frank Foundation in Amsterdam and the imagery as-
sociated with the young diarist, Doreen was naturally protective of any
message being presented to the public. Further, the Lawrence family’s
efforts at justice were at a low point: in 1996 the private prosecution of
two of the suspects had failed, a year later the internal police investiga-
tion denied that racism was a cause for their incompetence in handling
the case, and the Conservative government had refused to launch a pub-
lic inquiry.37
However, it was not desperation but a shared commonality of purpose
that led Doreen Lawrence to cooperate fully with the Anne Frank Trust.
She provided a number of personal items for the exhibition, including
Stephen’s architectural sketches drawn during a work experience proj-
ect and previously unseen family photographs. Both the Lawrence fam-
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Wood (2000), p. 11.
36 Ibid. In contrast, Michael Rothberg presents a different approach to history.
While welcoming Rothberg’s important work, Bryan Cheyette rightly notes that
it treats »history« as inflexible and majoritarian. See: Bryan Cheyette, Review of
Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory, in: Times Literary Supplement,
22 January 2010.
37 For an overview of the campaigning from an individual who became a leading
figure in the official inquiry, see: Stone (2013).
88
ily campaigners and the Anne Frank Trust wanted to reach a broad au-
dience and win over a constituency that might be hostile or indifferent
to the unsolved murder and to racism in Britain more generally. The ex-
hibit Anne Frank in the World, the predecessor to Anne Frank: A History
for Today, had travelled to challenging locations: South America, South
Africa, and within a United Kingdom context, Belfast and Jersey (the lat-
ter is the largest Channel Island, all of which had been occupied by the
Nazis during the Second World War, and the former is still undergoing
the traumatic legacy of »The Troubles« of violent Protestant-Catholic sec-
tarianism). These were places of ongoing racial and religious conflict, or
places in denial of their troubled recent pasts. The Anne Frank Trust con-
tinues to issue calls for such societal and political change.
During the 1990s the transformation of knowledge, respect, and ulti-
mately the moment at which the Holocaust became part of everyday cul-
ture in Britain coincided with the Lawrence family attempting to keep
the story of Stephen in the public domain. By agreeing to link her son’s
death to the narrative of exhibitions about Anne Frank and in taking in
part in Holocaust Memorial Day events, some might argue Doreen Law-
rence took a »safe« path toward public awareness. Such efforts avoided
marginalizing the radical anti-fascist/anti-racist route, which ultimately
stymied police hopes to establish a Lawrence family connection to radi-
calism and criminality. Laziness, incompetence, corruption, and racism
were all reasons for this massive police failing. In total contrast to the
image the police wanted to portray, the Lawrences were presented as the
ideal middle class black family, a British version of the Huxtables from
the American The Cosby Show.38 Indeed, the approach largely succeeded
in appealing to »Middle England.« In spring 1999, following the publica-
tion of the official inquiry into Stephen Lawrence’s murder, the revived
Mass-Observation organization, now based at the University of Sussex,
asked its volunteer writers for their responses to MacPherson’s report.
Many (but not all) were sympathetic and »exceptionally sad« for Law-
rence’s parents. A retired medical secretary wrote that »Here was a boy
obviously ambitious for he was studying to be a solicitor [the Lawrence
family believed he aimed to be an architect]. He would have to over-
come all the problems experienced by a black boy, yet he pressed on […].
I think Stephen Lawrence would have made a good friend.«39
38 The show ran on ABC from 1984 to 1992 and starred Bill Cosby. There has been
no British equivalent.
39 M-O A, D666, Spring 1999.
89
tony kushner
Another older female contributor to Mass-Observation found the

murder and the failed investigation »absolutely disgusting« and noted:
»The family of Stephen Lawrence appear to be decent educated people
and […] the Police and all concerned should show some respect, and
treat them as they would do if they were white middle class people.«40 As
a younger contributor, a nursing assistant, argued: »Why did it have to
wait until the victim was ’the acceptable’ black Briton – polite, articulate
family, planning to go to University etc?«41
And yet, on another level, appealing to »Middle Britain« was a risky
strategy; it was an attempt to make mainstream British society and cul-
ture acknowledge the day-to-day racism in everyday life, including
within the forces of law and order. In that respect, few of the volunteer
writers for Mass-Observation, a group loosely representative of Britain as
a whole, were willing to explore the wider implications of the murder, the
prevalence of racial discrimination in Britain, or the deep-rooted nega-
tive attitudes exposed during the case. One Mass-Observer, a retired local
government officer, argued it was »too easy to say racism. When that is-
sue is discussed we immediately equate it with the crimes of Hitler’s Ger-
many.« He continued: »The fact is that Stephen Lawrence’s murder and
race [were] purely coincidental considerations.«42 Racism was, according
to this man, un-British, and thus could not possibly have been a factor in
the tragedy and official responses to the murder.
The Anne Frank Trust works hard to confront such failures in rec-
ognizing the impact of institutionalized and daily racism. It encourages
people to explore their own prejudices, to emphasize individual respon-
sibility, and to highlight the role of choice. They did not demonize the
perpetrators of Lawrence’s murder as fascists (their political hero was
actually the maverick anti-immigrant Conservative MP Enoch Powell,
whom they addressed by saying »you are the greatest. You are the don
of dons«)43 or resort to classist terms and categorizations such as »white
trash« (according to one Mass-Observer, the perpetrators were »obviously
unintelligent and lower down the ladder than Stephen«).44 Instead, the
perpetrators were described as the sons of ordinary people who were in
denial over their son’s behavior. Similarly, rather than being simply a »few
bad apples« in the police barrel, the Macpherson Inquiry confirmed that
40 M-O A, W571, Spring 1999.
41 M-O A, B2832, Spring 1999.
42 M-O A, H1543, Spring 1999.
43 Cathcart (1999), p. 234.
44 M-O A, D666, Spring 1999.
90
there was in fact a powerful culture and practice of dealing with black
people differently than white people.45
In many ways the Lawrence campaign was, indeed still remains, chal-
lenging. There is not space here to consider the perpetrators (as evil and
ultimately »not like us«) or the bystanders (especially the couple who
came across Stephen bleeding to death; the couple, who were leaving a
church meeting, initially ran away from the scene but later returned to
pray over his body),46 terms which at least indirectly referenced Holo-
caust memory and representation, as well as the story of the death of Je-
sus. Similarly, the growing memorial work relating to Stephen Lawrence
(including the naming of buildings, projects, and specific plaques) can be
placed in constructive dialogue with Holocaust memory studies. But the
focus of this essay is on victimhood. For Doreen and Neville Lawrence
their campaign for recognition required a representation of Stephen that,
like the edited version or early filmic representation of Anne Frank, was
sanitized and lacked any ambiguity or human failings.47 Such represen-
tation was necessary to make Stephen more accessible in a culture that
intrinsically views black youth as threatening, even when they are the in-
nocent injured party. Still, there were those willing to criminalize the vic-
tim even after the evidence of the disgraced and biased police investiga-
tion was revealed. Returning to the Mass-Observation directive, a former
Royal Air Force commander in World War II believed that the official
inquiry and its recommendations would do »immense harm to race rela-
tions in this country.« He wondered why Stephen Lawrence was found
to have a balaclava in his bag similar to those used by »burglars and rob-
bers.« He warned that while »English people tend to be fair minded […]
the proposed policy of positive discrimination [sic] against [them] will
eventually result in a white backlash.«48
Nelson Mandela began the huge task of confronting »Britishness« and/
or »Englishness« and its potential for racism. He visited Britain a month
after Stephen’s murder. Mandela met his parents and then made a brief
statement for the media: »The Lawrences’ tragedy is our tragedy. I am
deeply touched by the brutality of the murder – brutality that we are used
45 Macpherson of Cluny (1999).

46 For critical comment on this couple, Mr and Mrs Taaffe, see: Brooks and Hat-
tenstone (2003), pp. 35, 66.; Mr Taafe admitted that his first thought was that
the two boys had been involved with criminal activity. See also: Cathcart (1999),
p. 349.
47 Doneson (1987).
48 M-O A, B1442, Spring 1999.
91
tony kushner
to in South Africa, where black lives are cheap.«49 The moral authority of
Mandela, combined with the very possibility of comparison with apart-
heid in South Africa, made a deep impression and furthered the slow
confrontation with racism »at home.«
Segments of the black cultural elite in Britain took from Mandela’s ex-
ample and made similar international connections, focusing on the co-
lonial and postcolonial worlds and framing the murder within the black
historical experience. Some, including Stephen’s friend Duwayne Brooks,
referenced the American South; Brooks described his friend’s murder as
being »like a lynching from the days of slavery.«50 In his 1999 poem, What
Stephen Lawrence has Taught Us, the poet Benjamin Zephaniah angrily
proclaimed »We know who the killers are:«
It is now an open secret
Black people do not have
Chips on their shoulders,
They just have injustice on their backs
And justice on their minds,
And now we know that the road to liberty
Is as long as the road from slavery.51
For fellow black British poet Linton Kwasi Johnson, the campaign was
part of a long tradition of radical black struggle inside and outside Brit-
ain.52 »No Woman No Cry,« the work of Chris Ofili (a British born
painter of Nigerian parents), which won the Turner Prize in 1998, was a
specific tribute to Doreen Lawrence and an hommage to the resistance
and fortitude of all women of African origin. The work’s title referenced
Bob Marley’s classic Reggae song, which describes the struggle to survive
in downtown Kingston, as well as referencing Ofili’s African-Caribbean
roots.53
These different expressions of protest – British, colonial, European,
postcolonial, radical and mainstream, universalistic and particular – have
some shared common ground, which perhaps explains why the campaign
was at least partially successful, if still ongoing and incomplete (several
of Stephen’s murderers have yet to be brought to justice, and the task of
49 Cathcart (1999), p. 104. See also: Lawrence (2006), p. 91.

50 Brooks and Hattenstone (2003), p. 14.
51 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uE0qY0qXzY (12 June 2014).
52 Maya Jaggi, Why Linton is blowing his top, The Guardian, 26 April 1999.
53 The painting was purchased by the Tate Gallery in 1999. More generally see:
Nesbitt (2010).
92
confronting racism in the police force is still in its early stages). Linton
Kwasi Johnson emphasizes the tradition of black political struggle inside
and outside Britain, while also acknowleding that the Lawrence cam-
paign »forged alliances with white people who 15 years ago wouldn’t have
been sympathetic.«54 Despite the anger of his poem, the death of Ste-
phen Lawrence, implores Benjamin Zephaniah, »has taught us to love
each other.«55
Linking this murder and the Holocaust through memory work, in par-
ticular the connection between Stephen Lawrence and Anne Frank, re-
veals an engagement with the post-colonial. This is an engagement that
has been politically and pedagogically challenging, while at the same time
progressively fruitful, in late 2oth and early 21st century Britain. When
opening the Anne Frank exhibit at Southwark Cathedral, Tony Blair not
only decided upon an inquiry into the death of Stephen Lawrence but
he also announced the introduction of Holocaust Memorial Day.56 And
while the focus within the Lawrence family has been on Doreen, it has
been noted that Neville was raised in Jamaica by his grandmother, a Ger-
man Jewish refugee. Neville, now back in Jamaica, has also stated meet-
ing with Auschwitz survivor Esther Brunstein gave him the will to con-
tinue in the wake of his son’s murder.57
All of this is further grist to the mill of Michael Rothberg’s proposed
multidirectional memory and initiatives to bring together responses to
the Holocaust and other forms of racism, past and present. By focusing
on the lost potential of Anne Frank and Stephen Lawrence, the damage
caused by racism, whether directed against Jews in Nazi Europe or in late
20th century post-colonial Britain, has been addressed without serious
opposition. And yet it is necessary to finish with a note of caution re-
garding the tensions and power relations exposed in creating a workable
»multidirectional memory.«
In this particular case, it is important to consider the marginalization
of Duwayne Brooks ; Brooks could just as easily have been murdered
alongside his friend Stephen, or Steve, as he was to him. Brooks de-
scribed himself as »a lanky black working-class kid [from a single parent
54 Maya Jaggi, Why Linton is blowing his top, The Guardian, 26 April 1999.
55 Benjamin Zephaniah, What Stephen Lawrence Has Taught Us, http://benja-
minzephanian.com/rhymin/talking-turkeys-3/ (16 June 2016).
56 Gillian Walnes, Decades apart, lives cut short by hate offer same lessons, Jewish
Chronicle, 6 January 2012.
57 Simon Hattenstone, The Saturday Interview: Neville Lawrence, The Guardian,
13 February 2012.
93
tony kushner
family and] with lots of attitude,« including a tendency towards radical

anti-racism.58 Suffering from post-traumatic stress, Brooks encountered
the brunt of police persecution and vilification for over a decade, leading
to his eventual false imprisonment.59 Presenting a different perspective
of the victim, and a perspective especially in conflict with that presented
by the Lawrence family, his memoir, Steve and Me (2003), was suppressed
by Doreen. Indeed, both parents have attempted to replace the friend-
ship between their son and Brooks with Elvin Udoro, a church-going
Methodist and an earnest young man. It was the Lawrence family’s desire
to cast Udoro as Stephen’s best friend that was partly responsible for the
publisher’s withdrawal of Steve and Me. Had Stephen been with Elvin,
the family believed, he would not have gotten into trouble that night.60
There was no mention of Brooks, let alone a panel dedicated to him in
Anne Frank: A History for Today. The challenge therefore remains to con-
front victims of racism – then and now – for their ordinariness and hu-
man flaws, rather than expecting them to be, like the righteous bystander
of Steven Spielberg’s imagination, Oskar Schindler, a paper saint.61
58 Brooks and Hattenstone (2003), p. 2.

59 Simon Hattenstone, Justice at Last, The Guardian, 17 March 2006.
60 Brooks and Hattenstone (2003), pp. 1, 67, and Lawrence (2006), pp. 62, 78 f.
61 Loshitzky (1997).
94
The French Humorist Dieudonné
Between Anti-Racism, Antisemitism, and Holocaust Denial
Fabien Jobard
Recent French history has been marked by a wave of deadly attacks,

mostly claimed by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Three years
after a young Frenchman named Mohammed Merah killed three French
soldiers of North African descent and four people in a Jewish school,
among them three children, on January 9, 2015, a young black French-
man, Amedy Coulibaly, launched an attack in a kosher supermarket in
Paris, killing four. Coulibaly was an accomplice of the Kouachi broth-
ers, the two men who two days earlier had killed a dozen people, most of
them journalists of the weekly paper Charlie Hebdo, and two police of-
ficers, as an act of revenge in the enduring controversy over »the proph-
et’s cartoons.« French society was deeply shocked by these events, and
approximately 1.5 million people gathered and marched in Paris on the
Sunday following the shootings.
At the end of the day on January 9, the French black humorist Dieu-
donné M’Bala M’Bala (known as Dieudonné) posted a Facebook mes-
sage stating, »As far as I am concerned, I feel I am Charlie Coulibaly.«
This position was a play on the popular slogan Je suis Charlie used to sup-
port the memory of the journalists killed in the Charlie Hebdo magazine
offices, and a reference to the supermarket’s gunman Amedy Coulibaly.
On March 18, Dieudonné was sentenced to two months on probation
for »incitement of terrorism.« This was a crime based on a law adopted
in November 2014, when appeals for supporting Middle East terrorism
appeared on the Internet. It should be noted that Dieudonné expressed
support for the single gunman among the three who targeted only Jews
in January 2015.
The next day, March 19, Dieudonné was again sentenced by a Paris
court, this time to a €22,500 fine for hate speech. In December 2013,
Dieudonné stated the following in a public performance about Patrick
Cohen, a famous French journalist who had demanded Dieudonné’s ban
from French broadcast: »You see, if the wind ever turns, I am not so sure
he will have time to pack his suitcase. When I hear Patrick Cohen speak,
you see, I think to myself: ’Gas chambers … well, too bad.’« It should be
noted that the show during which he expressed this heinous antisemitic
95
fabien jobard
position, Le Mur (The Wall, 2013), was banned by the government once
the hate-filled comment about Cohen became known. This very rare
decision found the acquiescence of the administrative Supreme Court.1
Some years earlier, at the end of December 2008, Dieudonné had of-
fered the notorious Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson his highest and
(rather unexpected) »moment of fame.«2 On the occasion of a perfor-
mance held in one of the largest theatres of Paris, before a crowd of
around 5,000, with special guests including the French extreme right
leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, Dieudonné let his assistant dress up as a con-
centration camp prisoner and wear a large yellow star (»a lightening
dress« – according to Dieudonné). He then awarded Faurisson the »prize
for being an insolent outcast;« judging from audience reactions on You-
Tube, the show was warmly received.3 Dieudonné was sentenced to a
€10,000 fine for »antisemitic insult committed in public« as a result of
his actions. In June 2008, a few months before he invited Robert Fau-
risson to step on stage with him, Dieudonné had been sentenced to a
€7,000 fine for characterizing Holocaust commemorations as »memorial
pornography,« and in November 2007 for describing Jews as »slavers« (in
French: »négriers«).
Still, this is only an incomplete list of cases against Dieudonné, who
faced prosecution again in 2016 for »incitement to hatred,« receiving
two months on probation and a €10,000 fine. He was sentenced for a
show in which he satirized the Holocaust dressed in a Guantanamo de-
tainee outfit.4 It is tempting to characterize him as one of a tiny number
of extremists amidst a small crowd of radical right-wingers who regu-
larly breach the rules of freedom of speech. However, Dieudonné enjoys
a large popularity in France, and most of the judicial cases filed against
him make for passionate discussions throughout French society. His mix
of antisemitism, Holocaust denial, and conspiracy theories is even more
surprising given that in the early stages of his career Dieudonné was ini-
tially viewed as an anti-racist activist with a strong personal commitment
to fighting the radical-right party Front National. Dieudonné is now at
the center of a curious constellation of people who were once foes but are
now finding common ground through his hate speech. The goal of this
1 Conseil d’Etat, Décision en référé n°374508, ord. 9 January 2014.

2 Igounet (2000), pp. 370 f.
3 Dieudonné invite Robert Faurisson au Zénith de Paris, 26 December 2008,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OyaUaXwpko (4 August 2016).
4 Agence France Presse, Dieudonné condamné à 2 mois avec sursis pour le spectacle
’La Bête immonde,’ Le Figaro, 10 Mai 2016.
96
the french humorist dieudonné
article is to try to understand how such a constellation developed, and to

analyze what role Holocaust denial plays in this set of popular ideas and
representations. In order to do so, it will briefly summarize Dieudonné’s
career, highlight the extent of his social resonance, and finally analyze the
nature and role of the kind of Holocaust denial he promotes.
Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala

Dieudonné has undoubtedly been one of the most talented humor-
ists of the last 20 years in France. He began as a salesman selling cars,
cell phones, and copy machines – an activity that surely influenced the
way he viewed the impact of speaking and rhetoric on the lives of peo-
ple. From the beginning of the 1990s he enjoyed substantial success both
on stage and on TV, performing together with fellow humorist Elie Se-
moun. The duo used the contrast between a thin white Jew (Cohen) and
an average black Frenchman (Bokassa) to exaggerate stereotypes and con-
front casual everyday racism.
Dieudonné turned to a solo career in 1997, making more and more
appearances in French blockbuster movies. At the same time, he devel-
oped a stronger off-screen political commitment. In 1997 he received 8 
of the votes in a legislative election for a municipality in the greater area
of Paris; it was a place where, in 1983, the Front National had attained its
highest electoral support up to that point. That same year, Dieudonné
staged his first one-man show. His act described a murder from the dif-
fering accounts of witnesses and wannabe witnesses, and the show gained
favor with the critics. The act was also welcomed by the press, which un-
derlined the humorist’s power to provocatively deal with controversial is-
sues, often targeting race relations and religious faith.
Dieudonné continued his leftist political involvement. Like Coluche,
one of the most famous stand-up comedians of the 1970s-80s, Dieu-
donné considered running for president in 2002.5 After the 2002 presi-
dential race, Dieudonné ran for Parliament in a precinct that was at the
time a stronghold of the Socialist Dominique Strauss-Kahn. He did not
reach 3  of the local votes, but he did receive repeated attention from
Jewish organizations, which wanted to repress the humorist-turned-poli-
tician’s antisemitic expressions.
5 On the significance of Coluche in French politics, see: Bourdieu (1981) and Bour-
dieu (2008).
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fabien jobard
The months between the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the 2002
elections were Dieudonné’s political turning point. On the national
scene, these months were marked by heightened youth unrest in the de-
prived suburbs of major French cities, mainly among young migrant
males, and the rise of the Front National, which culminated in Jean-Ma-
rie Le Pen reaching the second stage of the presidential race for the first
time. On the cultural scene, controversies surrounded an eminent philos-
opher and publicist, Alain Finkielkraut, who had once authored a widely
discussed book on Holocaust denial and was now lauding Oriana Falla-
ci’s views about the clash of religious groups in Europe.6 On the inter-
national scene, the September 11 attacks had a sudden and major impact
on French public opinion.7 Moreover, the Israeli army’s alleged massacre
at the Jenin refugee camp caused a vivid emotional reaction among the
Arab population in France (a population which totals approximately up
to four million individuals, or nearly 7  of French residents).8
In the time preceding this crystallization of events, Dieudonné’s com-
mitment became more and more linked to the promotion of Black Con-
sciousness. In 2002, the main public funding organization sustaining
cinema in France refused to financially support one of his movie projects
on the Code Noir, the royal edicts codifying slavery in the French colonies
starting at the end of the 17th century. Dieudonné publicly and resolutely
attributed this decision to the »Zionists« who supposedly led the fund-
ing organization and who were allegedly willing to protect the memorial
interests of the Holocaust to the disadvantage of the memory of the slave
trade. He later described Judaism as »a sect, as fraud, which is the worst
of all since it is the first one ever« (an expression for which Dieudonné
later received a sentence confirmed by the highest criminal court, Cour
de cassation)9 and Jews as »a people which cut the price of the Holo-
6 Finkielkraut (1982).
7 Tiberj and Michon (2013).
8 Insee (2012). Aside from the »Arab population« (which is here understood as the
migrants from North Africa and their immediate descendants, so that only two
generations are taken into account), one should quantify the number of Muslims
living in France – which is particularly difficult since there is no central registra-
tion of religious affiliation in France. The largest study on migration in France
(»Trajectories and Origins« Survey, see Beauchemin et al., 2015) gives an estimate
of a bit more than four million people living in France and defining themselves
as »Muslims.«
9 Cour de cassation, n°552, 16 February 2007.
98
caust, which sold suffering and death in order to build up a country and
to make money.«10
In the following years, Dieudonné’s core antisemitic views became di-
versified and amplified. His views were more and more oriented against
the Jews, signaling a clear radicalization of his positions. This radicaliza-
tion caused him to lose more and more of his supporters among fellow
humorists and in the media. Dieudonné then shifted to different alle-
giances, from radical black associations to Iran and Hezbollah’s organiza-
tions (with a welcome in 2009 by President Ahmadinejad in Iran), Holo-
caust deniers, extreme-right publicists, and even Jean-Marie Le Pen, who
is allegedly the godfather of one of Dieudonné’s children.
Dieudonné’s turn to radical antisemitism and support of Holocaust
denial was the result of his failed interactions with certain social and po-
litical institutions, institutions in which he believed Jews played a pre-
dominant role. In this respect, Dieudonné’s situation is original. Devi-
ancy is usually characterized by the growing socialization of the deviant
among groups of peers, and the subsequent isolation from the rest of the
society. Dieudonné, for his part, has certainly lost some of his fans as he
gathered supporters from different extreme-right corners. But he suc-
ceeded, at the same time, in keeping some bonds with his earlier fans,
a group mainly made up of members of ethnic minorities and left-ori-
ented young people who are themselves sometimes targets of Dieudon-
né’s newer supporters from the extreme-right. As such, Dieudonné’s place
in French society can offer a better understanding of the social reception
of these popular forms of antisemitism and Holocaust denial.
Dieudonné’s Place in French Society

What is the place, role, and importance of Dieudonné in French society?
One aspect is the size of Dieudonné’s audience, its social composition,
and the degree of political support by his public. Another dimension of
this problem is the kinds of networks he might be part of, and the proper
characterization of these networks.
Despite the fact that he is practically banned from public broadcast
on account of a sketch perceived as being antisemitic, more than 8,000
spectators come to Dieudonné’s performances in France, and he is per-
haps the most well-known humorist in all French-speaking countries –
10 The interview occurred in October 2002 and was uploaded to www.blackmap.

com; it was later removed.
99
fabien jobard
even if his performances are controversial outside of France. In 2012 po-

lice interrupted one of his shows in Brussels – a decision then rebuked by
the Belgian justice system – and the mayor of Brussels prohibited a show
scheduled for the Belgian capital in 2015. Some months later, Liège’s
criminal court sentenced him to a two-month prison term for incitement
of hatred, antisemitic positions, and Holocaust denial.11 His 2012 shows
in Montreal were also cancelled, and he was even barred from entering
Canada in 2016 when he was about to perform a series of sold-out shows
in Montreal, despite the protesting position of the city’s mayor. However,
his performances are far too politicized to attract the same large masses as
other humorists. In comparison, Dieudonné’s audiences are only a quar-
ter or a third of that of other prominent humorists in France (based on
the estimation of the director of Nantes’ theater in 2014).12
Dieudonné’s shows on YouTube, however, manage to reach hundreds
of thousands of viewers. Some anti-racist sketches without reference to
Jews attracted between one and two million viewers over the last five to
ten years. Other sketches with heinous views on Jews and Holocaust de-
nial stances attract the same number of viewers. Among these is a video
about Dominique Strauss-Kahn (»a Jewish billionaire all the same«), in
which Jews are linked to statements of deception. In this sketch, Dieu-
donné states that there are good and bad conspiracies. His example of »a
good conspiracy« is Dominique Strauss-Kahn actually being innocent of
sexual violence. As for his example of »a bad conspiracy,« he states: »do
not even try to doubt the gas chambers […] in France, beware, there are
laws, there are official versions of historical accounts that shall not be
questioned.« His videos in which he appears together with anti-Zion-
ist Jews, Robert Faurisson, or some second-ranking figures from diverse
extreme-right groups, however, attract fewer viewers (some hundreds of
thousands at the most). As another sign of public success, Dieudonné
may have recently collected up to 1,500 financial contributions in the
11 Dieudonné condamné à 2 mois de prison ferme après son spectacle à Herstal,

La libre Belgique, 25 November 2015, http://www.lalibre.be/actu/belgique/
dieudonne-condamne-a-2-mois-de-prison-ferme-apres-son-spectacle-a-herstal-
565582103570ca6ff92bd513 (4 August 2016).
12 Sibylle Laurent, Pour le directeur du Zénith de Nantes, ’il faut relativiser le
succès de Dieudonné, 7 January 2014, Metronews, http://www.metronews.
fr/nantes/pour-le-directeur-du-zenith-de-nantes-il-faut-relativiser-le-succes-de-
dieudonne/mnag!7LkVXrwI7t2ls (4 August 2016).
100
wake of his various convictions, reaching a total amount of approxi-

mately €500,000.13
So far there has been no systematic study of the audiences at Dieu-
donné’s shows. News reports of recent performances do not differ from
the assessment made by the reporter John Lichfield at a 2014 Dieudonné
gig in Bordeaux: »The audience of at least 5,000, which fills the venue
to capacity, is predominately male. It is mostly a white and working class
audience. There are older people and some students, but the great major-
ity seem to be in its thirties and forties.«14
These smaller groups suggest that Dieudonné also succeeded in gather-
ing a motley political network around him as soon as he took clear posi-
tions about Jews and the Holocaust. The first of these groups were radical
black activists inspired by the Nation of Islam, which places an emphasis
on the allegedly prominent role Jews played in the slave trade.15 Antise-
mitic Islamist groups joined them and helped Dieudonné raise money to
overcome financial obstacles. Like Maurice Bardèche and Roger Garaudy
before him, Dieudonné was welcomed in Libya, Lebanon, and Iran,
even giving interviews on Iranian public broadcasting, and applauding
Moammar Gadhafi and Mahmud Ahmadinejad for their roles in help-
ing the world preserve peace against warlike Zionists and American im-
perialists. In this, Dieudonné joined a certain French tradition inherited
from far-left groups as he tried to merge anti-imperialism, anti-capital-
ism, support of Palestinian movements, Holocaust denial, and system-
atic suspicion of historical accounts long embodied by intellectuals like
Roger Garaudy.16 Dieudonné’s success contributed to the rebirth of a far-
right movement on the sole basis of antisemitism and Holocaust denial.
Since the mid 2000s, Dieudonné has closely collaborated with the es-
sayist Alain Soral, an influential Internet propagandist struggling against
13 Willy Le Devin and Dominique Albertini, Dieudonné mis en examen, un vrai

problème de fonds, Libération, 17 October 2014, http://www.liberation.fr/so-
ciete/2014/10/17/dieudonne-mis-en-examen-un-vrai-probleme-de-fonds_1124303
(18 June 2016).
14 John Lichfield, An act of cruelty: An audience with Dieudonné M’bala M’bala,
the man behind the ’quenelle’ salute, Independent, 27 January 2014, http://
www.independent.co.uk/news/people/dieudonn-mbala-mbala-an-act-of-cru-
elty-9089178.html (18 June 2016). See also: Briganti, Déchot, and Gautier (2011).
15 Friedman (1998), and François, Guillaume, and Kreis (2008).
16 Rousso (2011), and Igounet (2000), pp. 472-483, 576-584.
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fabien jobard
»Judeo-Zionist communitarianism« and a »Judeo-Protestant alliance« (or

»Wall Street-Jerusalem Alliance«) that allegedly rules the world.17
These new alliances are certainly not coincidental. Under the leader-
ship of Marine Le Pen, the Front National has tried to change its profile
to a classical anti-European conservative party and to depart from its rad-
ical positions, especially on Jews and the Holocaust. The Front National’s
Aggiornamento left space empty on the far-right of the political spectrum,
where overt antisemitism and support for overtly anti-American politi-
cal regimes (from Iran and Syria to Russia) are supported. Dieudonné’s
sketches reflect most of these positions. They also insist on the alleged
falsification of news and historical reports by mainstream institutions,
specifically as soon as Jews or Israel’s government are at stake. As a result,
Dieudonné succeeds in attracting a very diverse audience of young men
from ethnic minority groups, extreme-right activists, black supremacists,
anti-gay activists, anti-globalization activists, fans of esotericism, and Is-
lamic and Christian fundamentalists.
Dieudonné and the Holocaust:

Ambiguity and Success of »Doubts«
Dieudonné’s reputation and talent as a humorist have resonated with
positions of Holocaust denial that had never before received such rela-
tively mainstream attention. Interestingly enough, Dieudonné’s position
on the Holocaust is a clear example of the ways contemporary Holocaust
denial is formulated in France. I will develop this point under two main
aspects. The first deals with the culture of skepticism that has emerged in
France over the last decades. The second focuses on the role of Holocaust
denial in the contemporary political atmosphere in France, particularly
regarding its relationship to France’s historically symbolic acceptance of
multiculturalism.
Dieudonné’s position is, strictly speaking, neither a blatant denial of
the Holocaust nor of the existence of gas chambers in Nazi extermination
camps, but rather a doubtful »questioning« of the knowledge collected
on the destruction of European Jewry. As such, Dieudonné continues
in the classical French »revisionist« tradition, which Paul Rassinier first
formulated at the end of the 1940s as he returned from the Buchenwald
camp.18 Contrary to explicit deniers like Robert Faurisson, who point to
17 Soral (2011).
18 Brayard (1996).
102
»the alleged extermination of the Jews,« Dieudonné restricts himself to

expressing »doubts« about the genocide without going into much detail
about what exactly should be questioned. His »doubt« almost plays the
same semiotic role as using the word »Zionist« when naming Jews; such
tricks are used to avoid explicit Holocaust denial, which would expose
him to criminal charges (in France, Holocaust denial has been classified
as a crime since 1990). Expressing doubts, rather than stating that Jews
were never systematically exterminated, helps to maintain ambiguity. In
turn, this ambiguity helps Dieudonné to maintain a diverse audience of
supporters.
Dieudonné’s »doubt« fits a specific kind of Holocaust denial based on
a hypertrophic form of rationality that develops but misinterprets Car-
tesian skepticism, a cornerstone of French academic and intellectual crit-
icism. This criticism’s hypertrophy has been enjoying a long-standing
influence on small circles of left-wing intellectuals and has unwillingly
(sometimes willingly) led to legitimizing Holocaust denial even in left-
ist milieus19. As an example, in his act »Mahmud« (for Ahmadinedjad),
Dieudonné stages an encounter between him and his »old pal« Robert
Faurisson. The aim of his visit is to challenge Faurisson and to make him
drop all these stories about Jews, Auschwitz, and the like. Faurisson pro-
tests and pleads the indispensable defense of the truth. Dieudonné re-
plies: »The truth? Truth is only for dummies. Lies lead the world ! Wake
up! … Truth: Just take it, eat it, and shut your mouth.«20 Dieudonné,
acting as himself, then lists some examples of truths – truths he says he
is forced to utter in order to comply with societal expectations: the gas
chambers, »the 9/11 official version (’true, I did my best’),« the news on
the main French TV channel TF1, and the swine flu epidemic.
As noted earlier, Dieudonné originally comes from the left end of the
political spectrum in France. He mainly locates his political criticisms in
the usual areas of left-wing criticism, such as his doubts about American
foreign policy, his criticism of TF1 (which is owned by a close friend of
former president Nicolas Sarkozy), and his attacks against the pharma-
ceutical industry. But the most important point here is the association he
sketches between undeniable facts (such as the gas chambers or 9/11), his
characterization of the sometimes erratic news industry, and the errone-
ous dramatization of events profiting big industry, such as the swine flu
19 Corcuff (2000).
20 See: Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, Le copain Robert, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=Bgbd4ewP76s (18 June 2016).
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fabien jobard
epidemic. France’s Health Minister had indeed urged mass vaccination

against the swine flu epidemic – a supposed crisis that shortly proved to
have been largely overestimated. By invoking French vaccination poli-
cies, Dieudonné was also cleverly referring to postcolonialism, particu-
larly the role played by vaccination as an issue in postcolonial politics.21
More than denying anything, Dieudonné attempts to erase the line
between what is, what could have been, and what has not been. In the
end, nothing any longer is. If Descartes promoted »hyperbolic doubt« as
a method for accessing the lights of reason, Dieudonné shows himself a
true follower of numerous French Holocaust deniers by subverting Des-
cartes’ claim into a hyperbolic relativism. Where Descartes’ hyperbolic
doubt was thought of as a »methodological doubt,« Dieudonné’s hyper-
bolic relativism abolishes the borders between truth and fable.
This hyperbolic relativism resonates with some radical forms of social
constructivism, an unwitting legacy of Pierre Bourdieu’s overwhelming
success in the French social sciences. Followers of Bourdieu have cer-
tainly played an important role in sustaining the view that social reality
is solely a matter of social classification, with social facts defined as the
mere products of contingent social forces.22 As such, words like »inse-
curity,« »violence,« or »riots« are, for instance, put between quotation
marks in order to signify doubt. But the reader alone has to figure out
what to be doubtful about. It is a common experience in today’s France
for professors and teachers to face a radical skepticism and a hyperbolic
relativism in their classrooms. Many teachers and professors feel unpre-
pared for such a »return to sender« reaction from their students. Further,
personal experiences suggest that students overwhelmingly rely on the
Internet in order to formulate their criticisms but are not skilled at dif-
ferentiating among the various kinds of criticisms and doubts available
on the Web.
Denial and Antisemitism in a Context

of the Holocaust’s Sacralization
Dieudonné and other marginal far-right activists are not solely respon-
sible for fostering radical forms of skepticism and an inclination to
doubt historical facts as they have been presented since the end of World
War II. Dieudonné’s positions are articulated in an overall climate that
21 Keck (2014).
22 Lemieux (2012).
104
emerged at the end of the 1990s, some years before Dieudonné’s first out-
cry about Jews.
First, Dieudonné’s career consists of appropriating and then reformu-
lating academic theses to his specific audience. For example, Dieudonné
borrowed a position first articulated by the political scientist Norman
Finkelstein in his book The Holocaust Industry. Finkelstein opened a pub-
lic discussion about Jews, Israelis, and those who ultimately benefit from
Holocaust memory.23 As we will see later on, Dieudonné translated the
controversies raised in the book into an over-simplified and classically
antisemitic characterization of Jews as obsessed with making money out
of any and all opportunities, the Holocaust being the most profitable.
A second book, the Belgian historian Jean-Michel Chaumont’s La con-
currence des victimes, published in the early 2000s, reignited this discus-
sion by focusing on the »victims’ competition« for recognition and sup-
port.24 The argument of a »victims’ competition« came to be used as a
kind of backlash against the criminalization of Holocaust denial. Dieu-
donné’s positions reflect this wider socio-political context.
In 1990 France passed the Loi Gayssot – a bill criminalizing any de-
nial of the extermination of the Jews during the Second World War. The
legislation came after a number of public proclamations of Holocaust
denial in France, including the aftermath of Faurisson’s public positions
(the end of the 1970s) and Jean-Marie Le Pen’s 1987 proclamation that gas
chambers »are a detail in the Second World war.«25 This move to crimi-
nalize denial not only contributed to a change in the rhetoric of denial,
but it also changed the way Dieudonné used the term »doubt.« More-
over, the bill helped to establish Jewish organizations seen as a model for
successful memory entrepreneurs – efforts that even lead to the creation
of a new category of criminal behavior. In 1995 President Jacques Chirac
admitted French responsibility for the deportation and murder of French
Jews from 1942-44, breaking a 50-year myth that held that France’s gov-
ernment was in London during the time. Both events, the Gayssot bill
and Chirac’s recognition, were seen as clear signs that Jews were success-
ful political entrepreneurs in France.
As a consequence, black activists tried to replicate the successes of Jew-
ish associations in achieving Holocaust commemoration in their own
efforts toward public recognition of slavery as a crime against human-
23 Finkelstein (2000).
24 Chaumont (1997).
25 Rousso (2006).
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fabien jobard
ity. Black French activists used the example of a number of Jewish insti-
tutions in their efforts at group organization. The Sons and Daughters
of African Deportees (Coffad) was founded at the end of the 1990s and
modeled after the Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France
(which itself had been founded in 1979 under the umbrella organization,
the Beate Klarsfeld Foundation); and in 2015 the Representative Council
of Black Institutions (Cran) was founded after the example of the Repre-
sentative Council of French Jewish Institutions (Crif ) and the affiliated
World Jewish Congress.26 Indeed, many of the organizations’ founding
texts clearly reference Jewish efforts. For instance, Coffad’s first statement
in its first article reads: »Jews’ compensation paves the way for Blacks’ ef-
forts.«27 The emergence of Black Consciousness developed in the context
of French history and politics, particularly regarding the development of
Jewish interests in French society.28 On May 23, 1998, a 40,000 partici-
pant demonstration took place in Paris, aiming at the recognition of slav-
ery as a part of France’s history. Finally, a bill was adopted in 2001, stat-
ing »slave trade and slavery […] are crimes against humanity.«29 During
the same period, French Armenian organizations intensified their efforts
to achieve recognition for the 1915 massacres; they succeeded in having a
law passed in 2001 stating in its sole article that »France publicly recog-
nizes the 1915 Armenian genocide.«30
The issue of decolonization emerged alongside these aforementioned
battles for recognition, particularly the war in Algeria (1954-62) and the
atrocities committed by French soldiers. Algerian migration accounted
for the largest segment of extra-European migration in the 40 years fol-
lowing the war. It was not until 1999 that the term »war« was officially
used to describe the Algerian war of independence (the former term was
»events«), and in 2002 the French Parliament passed a law commemo-
rating the cease-fire agreement of 1962. However, the Conservatives were
back in power in 2002, and they bitterly fought against both of these par-
liamentary initiatives. Conservative leader Nicolas Sarkozy raged against
the so-called »cult of repentance.« Accordingly, in 2005 the conservative
MPs passed a bill that stipulated: »The history textbooks should particu-
larly take into consideration the positive contribution of the French pres-
ence overseas, especially in North Africa.« The government’s apologist
26 Camus (2006).
27 Coffad (2000), http://www.coffad.net/francais/reparation.htm.
28 Lapierre (2009), and Lapierre (2011).
29 Act 2001-434, 21 May 2001.
30 Act 2001-70, 29 January 2001.
106
approach to colonialism resonated crudely in the hearts of the Muslim

community in France, even after the constitutional court dismissed the
bill for technical reasons.
Finally, such struggles for recognition occurred in a context where
Israeli politics and the Holocaust are constantly present at all levels of
French politics. Since the Second Intifada of the early 2000s, the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict has played a growing role in the political socialization
of large segments of the French youth, mainly Arab French youths; in the
summer of 2014, for example, they organized large street protests against
the Israel government.31 In response, the French government has offered
more sustained support to Israel, either in forbidding demonstrations
in support of Palestine (as occurred in the summer of 2014)32 or in stat-
ing, as then Minister of the Interior Manuel Valls did in February 2014,
that »assaults on Muslims and Catholics possess not as much value as the
ones suffered by the Jews.«33 Valls further justified this position in the
same interview, including a clear reference to the Holocaust: »I am tell-
ing the people sharing this opinion that the Holocaust [Shoah], the ex-
termination of Jews, the genocide, has to be sacralized and kept sacred.«
As a result of these decisions, sociologist Michel Wieviorka has reached
the following conclusion: »In France today […] a genuine irritation is
perceptible at the realization of a disproportion between the exaggerated
sensitivity of the political class, of opinion or the media to any manifes-
tation of antisemitism and the much greater indifference towards other
racist excesses […]. […] even as victims, the Jews fare better because they
have a term to describe their misfortunes.«34
It is within this context of memory struggles and inclinations to sa-
cralize Holocaust memory that Dieudonné attempts to desacralize the
symbolic force of the Holocaust and to balance Jewish sufferings and
the sufferings of other victim groups, particularly black and Arab suf-
fering, must be seen. His spectacle Le Mur displays Dieudonné’s politi-
cal stances. On different occasions, Dieudonné compares compensation
31 Ariane Chemin and Faïza Zerouala, Une nouvelle génération. Gaza naît dans les
rues de France, Le Monde, 28-29 July 2014, pp. 6 f.
32 On these events and the controversial influence of Dieudonné and Soral, see:
Marine Turchi, Comment la galaxie Dieudonné squatte les manifestations pour
Gaza. Repères Antiracistes, 30 July 2014, http://www.reperes-antiracistes.org/ar-
ticle-comment-la-galaxie-dieudonne-squatte-les-manifs-propalestiniennes-ma-
rine-turchi-124258929.html (18 June 2016).
33 Canal Plus (2014).
34 Wieviorka et al. (2007), p. 67.
107
fabien jobard
to Jews for the Holocaust (»we all spared no expense«) and the failed at-
tempts of »the Negroes« to receive similar compensation for past suffer-
ing. In another scene, while urinating against a wall, it dawns on him
that it is the Western Wall in Jerusalem. He also sings a popular Belgian
song of the 1970s, Cho-Cho-Cacao, a song mocking African kids and
alleged sub-Saharan indolence. However, Dieudonné transforms Cho-
Cho-Cacao into Sho-Sho-Shoananas and inserts a strong reference to the
thesis of The Holocaust Industry: »You have me by the Holocaust, I have
you by the pineapple / one must not forget, always a means to make
money.« As suggested by the reference to a pineapple, here a symbol for
the triangular trade, most of the references to the Holocaust are linked to
Jewish financial claims and to the memory of slavery and the slave trade.
In 2014 Le Mur was banned in many cities (the bans were confirmed
by the highest administrative court),35 and a criminal appeal court
banned the show’s DVD for hate speech and Holocaust denial.36 Dieu-
donné was sentenced to a €20,000 fine for the parody. Despite these fi-
nancial and legal troubles, Dieudonné’s antisemitic enterprise carefully
aims at two different audiences: people with academic degrees and a gen-
eral audience. Indeed, his sketches involve multiple historical references
and address similar points – and open up similar points of debate – as
The Holocaust Industry. To the most popular or uneducated portion of his
audience, Dieudonné devotes some grass-root antisemitism, as embod-
ied in the pineapple parody or in urinating on the Wailing Wall. Dieu-
donné seems to be fully aware of both constituencies. In an earlier show
called 1905 (an allusion to the 1905 Bill on the separation of church and
state) he depicts two young Arabs from deprived suburbs who are fright-
ened by the rather elaborated aspect of the show’s title, as well as a bour-
geois Frenchman who explains what is meant by such a title. This dual
audience is Dieudonné’s core contribution in the long-lasting history of
Holocaust denial and antisemitism in France. He succeeds in resuscitat-
ing a tradition of the pro-Arab extreme right, which was already active in
the 1930s. Indeed, far-right leaders had tried to gain the support of Arab
35 John Lichfield, An act of cruelty: An audience with Dieudonné M’bala M’bala,

the man behind the ’quenelle’ salute, Independent, 27 January 27, 2014, http://
www.independent.co.uk/news/people/dieudonn-mbala-mbala-an-act-of-
cruelty-9089178.html (18 June 2016).
36 La justice interdit la commercialisation du DVD de Dieudonné Le Mur, Le
Monde, 4 March 2015, http://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2015/03/04/la-jus-
tice-interdit-la-commer cialisation-du-dvd-de-dieudonne-le-mur_4587319_3224.
html (18 June 2016).
108
leaders in North Africa and encourage black activists to join the far-right
by refusing the Crémieux decree – an 1870 decree which granted full cit-
izenship to the Jews of North-Africa but not to the Muslims.37
Conclusion
That a stand-up comedian with sub-Saharan origins who is an anti-rac-
ist activist can gather millions of Internet viewers and thousands of live
spectators for his sketches on Holocaust denial is something of an enigma
to observers of French society. For social scientists, his career took a de-
viant path in which the deviant and the society both contribute to make
him an outcast. Originally an anti-racist activist, in the early 2000s Dieu-
donné turned to focus on perceived Jewish and American interests as the
main forces contributing to the despair of French minorities, including
young Blacks and Arabs. His support of the Second Intifada promptly
raised significant criticism from the mainstream media, famous intellec-
tuals, and large portions of the political establishment. Michel Wievorka
described Dieudonné’s skits in the following manner: »They are evidence
of the tremendous capacity of the intelligentsia to react to the slightest
suspicion of antisemitism or, on the contrary, to the slightest attempt to
restrict any criticism of Israeli policy, [leading to] an ideological struggle
where two camps constantly exchange blunders and exaggerations, possi-
bly even degenerating into a form of antisemitism.«38
In such deviant careers, outcasts survive in a hostile society by joining
sub-groups that welcome them and reinforce their deviant orientations.
Dieudonné was indeed welcomed by the most heteroclite grouping of
Holocaust deniers, antisemitic activists, radical Muslims, left-oriented
anti-globalization activists, and extreme-right supporters. Among this
diverse group of supporters is Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was in the audi-
ence when Dieudonné welcomed Faurisson on stage. Yet Dieudonné’s
radicalization and deviancy did not make him lose the majority of his
first followers. Dieudonné is now at the center of a curious constella-
tion, gathering people who were once foes. Dieudonné illustrates how in
today’s France the syncretism of antisemitism is able to unite both some
extreme rightists, to whom Jews are the incarnation of Bolshevism or the
Anti-Christ, and some extreme leftists, for whom Jews are the incarna-
tion of capitalism.
37 Camus (2013), p. 122.

38 Wievorka et al. (2007), p. 34.
109
fabien jobard
There are different reasons for the formation of a publicly organized

culture of Holocaust denial and antisemitism in France. The first is the
reformulation of denial into a rhetoric of hyperbolic skepticism. This has
been largely encouraged by the way social critique has been formulated
in France over the course of the last two or three decades. The second is
the effect of the »sacralization« of the Holocaust in France, a process in
which the 1990 Gayssot Act, prohibiting its denial, plays a central role.
Added to this, the Israel-Palestine conflict has had a large resonance in
France due to the large presence of both Jews and Muslims. These three
aspects of contemporary French culture make Dieudonné’s positions not
that much out of the ordinary.
110
Israeli Ultra-Orthodoxy and the Holocaust
Global, Local, and Domestic Dimensions of Memory
Michal Shaul
Many Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jews (Haredim) do not stand to commem-

orate the dead during the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Day siren.1 Like-
wise, one will not hear them lecture about the compensatory link be-
tween the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel. Most of
them did not visit Poland in high school and certainly not as part of the
Israel Defense Forces officers’ course. Most do not watch television and
have probably not seen the movies and television series that have formed
the mainstream Israeli collective memory of the Holocaust. Some radi-
cal ultra-Orthodox Jews (Neturei Karta) have even visited Mahmoud Ah-
madinejad, the biggest Holocaust denier of recent times, and posed for a
friendly photograph with him. In light of all this, one might ask: Do the
ultra-Orthodox Jews commemorate the Holocaust?
Menachem Friedman was the first to challenge the perception that ul-
tra-Orthodox Jewry pushed the subject of the Holocaust to the margins
due to the many religious and theological problems and challenges it
raises. Friedman claimed that, for ultra-Orthodox Jews, the desire to re-
press the issue, on the one hand, and the intense urge to remember it, on
the other, create a constant tension and an »obsessive occupation« with
the Holocaust.2 My research supports the assertion that ultra-Orthodox
Jews are constantly occupied with the Holocaust, perhaps more than any
other sector in Israel.
In both popular and scholarly discussions in Israel about ultra-Or-
thodox society’s attitude towards the Holocaust, the emphasis is usually
1 While to date the ultra-Orthodox population, with all its varieties, has yet to be
defined in an unequivocal and comprehensive manner, Menachem Friedman lists
its four main attributes: a commitment to Torah study; an absolute commitment
to the tradition of Eastern European Jewry; a commitment to the strict and me-
ticulous application of halakhah (rabbinical law); and a rejection of Zionism – or,
at the very least, a view of Zionism as valueless, even if it is acceptable post factum.
While this definition fails to capture the entire phenomenon and excludes much
of ultra-Orthodox society (e. g., the Sephardi and ultra-nationalist subgroups), it
serves adequately for the purposes of this discussion. See: Friedman (1991), p. 9.
2 Friedman (1990), p. 86.
111
michal shaul
placed on what distinguishes Holocaust memory in ultra-Orthodox so-

ciety from that in Western societies in general, and especially from Is-
raeli Zionist society.3 The ultra-Orthodox memory of the Holocaust is
generally presented as a counter memory – that is, as an alternative sys-
tem of images and values, which, consciously or unconsciously, contend
with the dominant secular Zionist memory of the Holocaust.4 In this
context, it is customary to speak of »competing memories.«5 At times,
the ultra-Orthodox and secular Zionists have even accused each other of
»robbing memory« and »faking history.«6 This chapter examines these is-
sues and considers whether the ultra-Orthodox sector does indeed have
unique patterns of Holocaust memory on the local and global levels.
Holocaust survivors and their confrontation with the Holocaust and
its ramifications have played a key role in the formation of ultra-Ortho-
dox self-identity in Israel in the social, religious, institutional, and literary
spheres, among others.7 Ultra-Orthodox Holocaust survivors in Israel
belong simultaneously to three circles: (1) ultra-Orthodox society in Is-
rael, (2) Holocaust survivors in Israeli society, and (3) Holocaust survivors
around the world. The activities of ultra-Orthodox Holocaust survivors
have been influenced by processes that took place in each of these circles,
separately and simultaneously.
The Ultra-Orthodox Circle

Ultra-Orthodox society in Israel cannot, of course, be treated as a single
unit, since it includes a wide variety of subgroups that are divided ideo-
logically, especially regarding their attitude towards Zionism and the Zi-
onist movement.8 They can also be divided by the basic distinction be-
tween Hasidim and Misnagdim, as well as the distinctions among Eastern
3 Baumel emphasized the differences between ultra-Orthodox Holocaust memory

and that of other religious groups in Israel. See: Tydor Baumel (2001), pp. 5-21.
For examples of Holocaust memory in the popular and mostly polemical ul-
tra-Orthodox discourse, see: Baruch (2002), pp. 271-283, and Nirel (1997).
4 See, e. g.: Goldberg (1998), pp. 155-206, and Caplan (2001), p. 325. On count-
er-memory, see: Hutton (1993), pp. 106-123.
5 Edrei (2007), pp. 37-100.
6 See, e. g.: Pe’er (1959), p. 19, and David Assaf, Shodedei ha-zikkaron, Ha’aretz,
17 February 1995.
7 See: Shaul (2014).
8 I have explored this issue comprehensively elsewhere; see: Shaul (2010), pp. 360-
395.
112
isr aeli ultr a-orthodoxy and the holocaust
European Jews (mainly from Poland, Lithuania, Russia, and Galicia),

Hungarian and Romanian Jews, and Western European Jews. In the fol-
lowing I will focus on the mainstream of Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox so-
ciety in Israel, thus excluding from the discussion other groups such as
the »extremist« ultra-Orthodox Jews, Hasidic dynasties whose center
is not in Israel (such as Szatmar and Chabad), and the ultra-Orthodox
Sephardim.
The destruction of the ultra-Orthodox centers in Poland, Lithuania,
Hungary, and Germany significantly reduced the number of ultra-Or-
thodox Jews and decimated the rabbinic and scholarly leadership, which
seemed irreplaceable. The traditional organizational foundation (com-
munities, yeshivas, various types of Jewish colleges, girls’ schools, teach-
ers’ seminaries, and more) was destroyed. As a result of the Holocaust,
ultra-Orthodox Jews no longer constituted the core demographic unit
anywhere. Moreover, the cultural and linguistic environment in which
this society was rehabilitated was entirely different from what it had
been accustomed to in Europe. That is, the Holocaust destroyed both
ultra-Orthodoxy’s human and geographic world and its ideological and
theological world. Their destruction, however, also led to a commitment
to rebuild the world that was no longer.
Ultra-Orthodox society views itself as the authentic continuation of
the world that was destroyed, and believes that its mere existence and
flourishing are the most worthy and significant form of commemorating
the victims of the Holocaust. The ultra-Orthodox doctrine on the sub-
ject is clear: if the Holocaust was one more historical example of the war
against the Torah and those who observe it, and if the major catastro-
phe was the murder of rabbis and yeshiva students and the destruction
of synagogues and places of Torah study, then the best vengeance against
the Nazis and commemoration of the victims’ »legacy« is to strengthen
the Torah world. Rather than remembering the Holocaust as the darkest
period humanity had ever known, ultra-Orthodox society has preferred
to tell a story of continuity. This »reconstructive« worldview has enabled
ultra-Orthodox society to redefine its identity, set its goals, demarcate its
boundaries and differences from the other sectors of Israeli society, and
see its rebuilt community as a continuation of the pre-Holocaust Jewish
world.9 Hence, the major role of Holocaust memory in ultra-Orthodox
society is to build a rehabilitating narrative of continuity and overcome
the paralyzing and destructive effects of the crisis narrative.
9 See: Edrei (2007), p. 88.
113
michal shaul
Ultra-Orthodox Holocaust survivors wanted to connect the destruction

with the revival and flourishing of Jewish life after the Holocaust. For this
reason, they created their own myth of »from destruction to redemption:«
redemption, as they see it, is not limited to the establishment of the State
of Israel, as the Zionist ethos claims. The significance of this »redemption«
is that a spiritually refined generation emerged from the Holocaust, one
that has the power to rehabilitate the Jewish nation in general and ultra-
Orthodoxy in particular. From the survivors’ perspective, their personal re-
habilitation, together with the national rehabilitation of the Torah world,
is therapeutic and has aspects of vengeance. Shifting the center of gravity
to the education of the next generation was one of ultra-Orthodox soci-
ety’s outstanding characteristics after the Holocaust. Many ultra-Ortho-
dox rabbis and educators galvanized themselves for the mission of saving
the Torah world. These included many Holocaust survivors who wanted
to recruit the entire ultra-Orthodox community to this mission and thus
perpetuate the »victims’ legacy.« Out of a sense of deep commitment to the
world that had been destroyed, many survivors did their utmost to rebuild
the Torah world in the Holy Land. In their writings, many ultra-Orthodox
survivors attempted to portray European Jewry in a nostalgic, idyllic, and
homogeneous light; they sought to publicize the miracle of their survival
and reinforce the validity of Divine Providence. Through the new fami-
lies they built, the survivors rehabilitated ultra-Orthodox society demo-
graphically, socially, and ideologically, and they handed down to their de-
scendants the ancestral tradition in the ultra-Orthodox interpretation. By
establishing and running educational systems whose declared goal was to
preserve and reconstruct the traditions of the Eastern European yeshivas,
they bequeathed the heritage of the past as they perceived it, even if these
systems were innovative and modern.
To some extent, ultra-Orthodox society’s emphasis on the reconstruc-
tion of the Jewish world in Europe between the World Wars constitutes an
alternative to the memory of the Holocaust. Rather than viewing the Ho-
locaust as a period when the world turned upside down and as the dark-
est era of all human history, ultra-Orthodox society prefers to tell a story
of continuity. This is a memory that is sustaining and one that the ultra-
Orthodox can use to educate its youth and rehabilitate its society. Thus the
major role of Holocaust memory in ultra-Orthodox society is to construct
a rehabilitating narrative whose essence is succession and continuity and a
reduction of the destructive and paralytic intensity of the crisis narrative.
From this aspect, it is not a counter-memory, but rather a memory whose
goal is the reconstruction of ultra-Orthodox society.
114
The Israeli Circle

We now turn to the second circle to which ultra-Orthodox survivors be-
long: that of Holocaust survivors in the Israeli society.10 During the early
postwar years, most Holocaust survivors preferred to focus on rehabili-
tating their lives and looking towards the future rather than probing the
wounds of the past. This was also what was expected of them.11 However,
as in non-ultra-Orthodox society in Israel, some of the ultra-Orthodox,
mostly survivors, felt a deep commitment to preserving the memory of
the disaster in order to remember and continuously remind others of the
Holocaust and its lessons (as they understood them). These individuals
launched public campaigns on issues such as legislation regarding Ho-
locaust commemoration and the Reparations Agreement between Israel
and West Germany, and won public support and recognition as the bear-
ers of the memory of the Holocaust, even before the Eichmann Trial.
These survivors included an important group of ultra-Orthodox writers
who saw themselves as the »living monuments« of a world that had been
destroyed and who published extensively about that world as they saw it.
Thus, ultra-Orthodox memory of the Holocaust was not shaped first in
rabbis’ manifestos or in the minutes of sessions of the Council of Torah
Sages, nor was it formed in the study halls or by rabbis’ lectures; rather,
as was the case in other sectors of Jewish society, it was shaped first and
foremost by writers.12 Those survivor-writers shared their personal expe-
riences and stories with the public in order to influence the way in which
the Holocaust was remembered in ultra-Orthodox society.
Many literary works about the Holocaust written in Israel during the
late 1940s and early 1950s, and certainly those written by survivors, ad-
dressed key issues related to Israeli attitudes towards the Holocaust and
survivors: the tendency to pronounce moral judgments about Jewish
behavior during the Holocaust (related to the Zionist attitude towards
»exilic« behavior, even before the Holocaust); the issue of Jewish heroism
(including the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as a symbol), fighters and par-
tisans, active and passive resistance, honorable death versus going »like
lambs to the slaughter;« and other questions that have been analyzed
in previous studies.13 In ultra-Orthodox society it is often claimed that
10 I have explored this issue at length elsewhere. See: Shaul (2013), pp. 219-239.
11 See: Shapira (2007), pp. 535 f.
12 See: Yerushalmi (1996), p. 98
13 Stauber (2007); Shaul (2008), pp. 265-297; Barzel (1998); Cohen (2010), pp. 348-
352.
115
michal shaul
the question of whether the Holocaust victims went like »lambs to the
slaughter« preoccupied Zionists alone and was not a question raised in
their society.14 However, essays published in the ultra-Orthodox press in
Israel, starting in the late 1940s, reveal that questions regarding the nature
of »heroism« and who could be considered a hero in the context of the
Holocaust, which directly or indirectly dealt with the issue of the victims’
behavior, were publicly and prominently discussed during this period by
the ultra-Orthodox in both Israel and the United States.15 Works written
by ultra-Orthodox Holocaust survivors reveal that they too contended
with the tormenting guilt and with the judgmental public atmosphere of
European Jews’ allegedly passive conduct. Many also felt inferior in com-
parison with the heroic stories of the ghetto fighters and the partisans.
Like any immigrants in a new country, ultra-Orthodox immigrants
tried to fit themselves into the local population. Thus, the central and
dominant ultra-Orthodox voice in the late 1940s and early 1950s was pro-
Zionist and expressed a desire to be involved in the life of the new state.
Most of the works by ultra-Orthodox authors of the time were written in
modern Hebrew and, to a large extent, adopted the Zionist agenda both
thematically and ideologically.
As in wider Israeli society, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising shaped the
memory of the Holocaust in the ultra-Orthodox society of the 1950s. At
least until mid-decade, the Israeli public discourse viewed the uprising as
part of the Zionist revolution, not as another case of martyrdom but as
an example of active self-defense.16
Many ultra-Orthodox writers, such as Binyamin Mintz (1903-1961),
Moshe Prager (1909-1985), Shmuel Rotstein (?-1978), Yehuda Nachshoni
(1915-1982), and Hillel Seidman (1914-1995), did not challenge the offi-
cial Zionist narrative of the Holocaust, but instead tried to include them-
selves within its framework. Therefore, they argued against the image of
ultra-Orthodox Jews as passive and feeble (as they were portrayed by Zi-
onist ideology even before the Holocaust), but they also argued against
the opponents of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising who criticized it for reli-
14 See: Lichtenstein (2009), pp. 544 ff., and Goldstein and Schwartz (1990), p. 192.
15 See, for example: Baumel (1995), p. 299. The discussion about resistance and
heroism against the Nazis was conducted during and immediately following the
war by both Jews and non-Jews in the European countries occupied by the Nazis
and the countries to which persecuted Jews had escaped. See: Michman (2003),
pp. 217 f.
16 See: Stauber (2007), p. 35. See also: Gelber (1996), pp. 443-461.
116
gious and ideological reasons.17 Moreover, those writers published their

praise of the resisters not only in ultra-Orthodox newspapers, but also
in the general press.18 Thus, there were ultra-Orthodox Jews who em-
braced part of the Zionist narrative concerning the lessons of the Holo-
caust; further, some of them actually participated in its formation and
consolidation.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Holocaust memory in Israel was
dominated by the voices of the ghetto fighters and partisans.19 In ultra-
Orthodox society, too, the former partisan Yechiel Granatstein (1913-
2008), who over the years became one of the best-known ultra-Orthodox
Holocaust writers, emerged as the most prominent voice. Throughout
the years, Granatstein was active in shaping the memory of the Holo-
caust, not only within ultra-Orthodox society but also on a national
scale. He was a long-time member of the international committee of Yad
Vashem and lectured to various sectors of Israeli society on the Holo-
caust. Ultra-Orthodox historian Moshe Prager was considered a Holo-
caust expert outside of ultra-Orthodox circles as well. He was one of the
consultants to Bureau 06, the special unit in charge of the investigation
and interrogation of Adolf Eichmann by the Israel Police; he also served
as one of the radio commentators on the Eichmann Trial. The ultra-
Orthodox intellectual and educator Yehudah Leib Gerst (1905-1963) was
an active member of the national committee of Bergen-Belsen survivors,
in which capacity he dealt with the national commemoration of the Ho-
locaust and the public struggle over its historical memory and the sur-
vivors’ place within it. In the second half of the 1940s, the ultra-Ortho-
dox educator and writer Persia Sharshevsky (1918-1957) recounted her
Holocaust experiences to diverse Israeli audiences; her most memorable
appearances took place at the Habima Theater in Tel Aviv and on Kib-
butz Deganya.20 These writers and others had personal and social rela-
tionships with non-ultra-Orthodox survivors and participated in their
debates about the lessons of the Holocaust and the ways to commemo-
rate it.
The ultra-Orthodox survivors did not establish an organization of
their own; this fact is significant in light of the relatively large number
of survivors’ organizations in Israel.21 During the 1950s, many of them
17 See: Baumel (1995), pp. 296 f.
18 See: Shalem (2007), p. 209, n. 4.
19 See: Barzel (1998), p. 255; Stauber (2007), p. 16.
20 Shaul (2011), pp. 131-155.
21 Yablonka (2000a), p. 299.
117
michal shaul
joined Israeli Holocaust organizations and participated in memorial cer-

emonies for their communities together with non-ultra-Orthodox orga-
nizations.22 For this reason, it appears that in the early 1950s there was no
separate ultra-Orthodox memory of the Holocaust; rather, it was an in-
tegral part of the collective memory that had begun to emerge in Israeli
society as a whole.
However, alongside the »integrated memory,« a »counter-memory« to
the Zionist version developed. Against the physical bravery lauded by the
Zionists, there were those who praised a different type of bravery, spiri-
tual heroism, usually referring to observance of the precepts and faith in
God despite the difficult conditions. The narrative of the counter mem-
ory presented the behavior of ultra-Orthodox Jews as utterly opposed to
that of other Jews. For example, in his book Min ha-metzar (Out of My
Distress: Memoirs from the Lodz Ghetto), published in 1949, Yehuda
Leib Gerst asserted that the ultra-Orthodox Jews’ exemplary moral and
religious behavior was, in fact, an act of rebellion – not only against the
Nazis, but also against the corrupt norms of all those who had not re-
ceived an ultra-Orthodox education.
Despite the vast differences between them, the secular Israeli and
ultra-Orthodox historiography and memory of the Holocaust shared
certain common characteristics – such as the emphasis on heroic behav-
ior, the effort to repress fears and anxieties, and the attempt to integrate
private memory into collective memory. The tendency to determine an
appropriate pattern of behavior during the Holocaust – that is, the im-
perative to observe the Torah under all conditions and the focus on
spiritual heroism – made survivors unwilling to tell their stories, which
sometimes contained elements that did not accord with such exemplary
conduct. Some survivors were even ashamed to tell their own children
that during certain periods they had not been able to observe all the com-
mandments.23 Thus, both the dominant Israeli public discourse and the
dominant ultra-Orthodox one compelled ultra-Orthodox survivors to
explain, to themselves and others, that not only had they survived as de-
cent people who had not abandoned their perished loved ones and had
not violated their values in order to save their life,24 but they had also
not abandoned, even for a moment, the Torah and its commandments.25
22 Cf. Baumel (1992), p. 77.

23 Shaul-Zemer (2003), pp. 27-34.
24 See: Frankl (1963); Levi (1959); Weiss Halivni (1996), pp. 157 f.
25 See: Shaul (2008), pp. 265-297.
118
In the 1960s, a decade characterized by an increasing interest in the

Holocaust and its survivors, Holocaust memory became a central compo-
nent of Israeli-Jewish identity.26 It has been argued that Eichmann’s cap-
ture and the fact that the State of Israel claimed to represent the victims
of the Holocaust made the ultra-Orthodox feel that they were being dis-
criminated against, because kiddush ha-shem (the sanctification of God’s
name), the Jewish people’s religious uniqueness, and the ultra-Orthodox
rescue operations – the cornerstones of ultra-Orthodox memory of the
Holocaust – were not mentioned during the trial.27 Instead, emphasis
was placed on the Zionist values of armed resistance and the State of Isra-
el’s claim to be both the legitimate successor of the victims and the only
solution to the Jewish »problem.« After the trial, ultra-Orthodox society
began to examine the role played by ultra-Orthodox Jews in rescue ef-
forts and the manifestations of ultra-Orthodox heroism.28 The memory
of the Holocaust in ultra-Orthodox society, which began to be based on
stories of kiddush ha-shem, proved the victory of ultra-Orthodoxy and in-
tensified the separatism that differentiates ultra-Orthodox society both
from other peoples and from secular and national-religious Jews. How-
ever, this event should not be viewed as a watershed but rather as a stage
in the process that had already begun during the Holocaust itself and had
since become increasingly complex.29
As a result of the increasing segregation of ultra-Orthodox society, on
the one hand, and of the stabilization of the secular State of Israel, on
the other, the ultra-Orthodox community felt sufficiently confident to
openly criticize the Zionist movement during the Gruenwald-Kasztner
trial, in which the Zionist movement and its leadership were attacked for
their actions during the Holocaust. This trend led to the publication of
radical anti-Zionist essays in the early 1960s. A book by Rabbi Michael
Dov Weissmandl (1903-1957), Min ha-metzar (Out of My Distress), pub-
lished posthumously in the United States in 1960, claimed that the Zi-
onists wanted to save only their own people and abandoned all others.30
Subsequently, in a series of articles published in Diglenu in 1961-63 (in
26 See, for example: Almog (2000); Weitz (1996); Keren (1987), pp. 193-202; La-
queur and Breitman (1986).
27 Goldberg (1998), pp. 183 f.
28 Prager (1965), pp. 4-8.
29 See: Shaul (2013), pp. 227-230.
30 Jelinek (1994), pp. 83-92; on the influence of the book see: Caplan (2001), p. 340.
119
michal shaul
Hebrew), entitled »J’accuse: Out of my distress,« Moshe Schoenfeld ad-

opted Weissmandl’s claims enthusiastically.31
The Eichmann Trial was thus a significant catalyst in a gradual pro-
cess of change. In many respects, the early 1960s marked the beginning
of a new era for Holocaust memory in ultra-Orthodox society. If, in
the previous two decades, the heroism of faith and adherence to Jewish
tradition had been placed alongside the heroism of fighting and resis-
tance, the attitude prevailing among National-Religious Jews from the
1960s on these two aspects were presented as conflicting poles.32 Whereas
the ultra-Orthodox heroes had also been presented as partisans and re-
sistance fighters, during the 1960s ultra-Orthodox society emphasized
spiritual heroism as true Jewish heroism. A number of motifs became
dominant in ultra-Orthodox Holocaust memory: the claim that the Ho-
locaust reaffirmed the existence of the nations’ eternal hatred for the eter-
nal people; the depiction of antisemitism as a religious and metaphysi-
cal phenomenon, rather than a social and political one; and the absolute
distinction between ultra-Orthodox Jews, »those who had withstood
the difficulties« and become martyrs, and the assimilating non-religious
Jews. Moreover, after the Eichmann Trial, an attempt was made to es-
tablish the memory of the martyrs, the »sanctifiers of God,« as equal in
importance to that of the ghetto fighters. Throughout the 1960s, the ul-
tra-Orthodox memory and discourse about martyrdom and Torah ob-
servance during the Holocaust intensified until it was claimed that these
forms of heroism were not only equal in their importance to active rebel-
lion, but even superior to them.
Nonetheless, it could be argued that even after the Eichmann Trial,
the paths of Zionist society and ultra-Orthodox society did not en-
tirely diverge. Even if the isolationist trend served the internal purpose
of strengthening the ultra-Orthodox community, it should be viewed in
the wider Israeli context. The attacks of several ultra-Orthodox authors
on the Zionist movement during the 1950s were made in a period of bit-
ter controversy when the ruling Mapai party was engaged in self-exam-
ination of its own activities during the Holocaust. Thus, these attacks
31 In 1975, these articles were gathered in a booklet called Serufei ha-kivshanim

ma’ashimim (Those burnt in the crematoria accuse). Two years later it was pub-
lished in the United States as The Holocaust Victims Accuse: Documents and Testi-
mony on Jewish War Criminals.
32 Michman (1996), p. 704.
120
can be seen as part of the Zionist-Israeli discourse of those years.33 The

increasing preoccupation of the ultra-Orthodox community with spiri-
tual heroism corresponded with the recognition, which gained currency
in Israel after the Eichmann Trial, that Jewish resistance had taken many
forms.34 In both sectors, there were changes in the moral definitions of
various kinds of heroism and survival during the Holocaust, which be-
came increasingly complex over the years. In the scholarly discourse,
the concept of »heroism« was replaced by the concept of »steadfastness«
(amidah), which included moral steadfastness, preservation of one’s hu-
manity, the struggle for economic existence, Torah observance and study,
the preservation of Jewish educational and cultural systems, and »any
form of behavior and action of the Jews whose aim was to do the oppo-
site of the Nazis’ intentions and intrigues.«35 The establishment of the
Kiddush Hashem Archives (1963) should be seen in the context of the
many research and commemorative institutions that were established in
Israel after the Eichmann Trial.36 In both sectors, the Holocaust gradu-
ally became a significant component of the definition of one’s Jewish-Is-
raeli identity.37
The Global Circle

We move now to the global circle. The historian Pierre Nora describes
our times as the »end of the era of memory.«38 Memory, as he defines it, is
natural; each and every individual in a society carries it within himself or
herself. When the national memory vanishes, Pierre Nora says, it is sup-
planted by history. This is unnatural, because it penetrates a society by
means of a small number of professional agents who are responsible for
reviving the past. Pure or »unviolated« memory, Nora says, exists only in
archaic societies in which history has not yet defeated memory and soci-
ety’s relationship with its memory has not yet disintegrated.
33 As Judith Baumel asserts, Schoenfeld’s publication was a reaction to the accusa-

tions made in Israeli Zionist society about rabbis who had allegedly saved them-
selves and abandoned their communities. See: Baumel (1995), p. 15, and Fried-
man (1991), p. 88.
34 See: Cohen (2010), pp. 341-370, and Michman (2003), pp. 217-248.
35 Dvorzetsky, cited in Michman (2003), p. 218.
36 See: Cohen (2010), pp. 312 f.
37 See: Auron (1993), p. 25.
38 Nora (1989), pp. 7-24.
121
michal shaul
Although ultra-Orthodox society believes that it goes about its affairs

in a manner that spurns the principles of the modern era, it does not
seem to be totally immune to modern influences. Ultra-Orthodox soci-
ety is an essential part of modern society, it is susceptible to its influences,
and it is affected by its agenda.39 Due to modernization, ultra-Orthodox
society feels that its living and natural memory of the bygone world, in-
cluding the Holocaust, is gradually losing its focus.
The survivors’ generation, the milieu de mémoire, is dwindling, and
the traditional vehicles that ultra-Orthodoxy uses to inculcate memory
(prayers, lamentations, the yearly cycle, etc.) have become degenerated,
conservative, fewer, and inadequate to preserve the memory of an event
as meaningful as the Holocaust. The lack of traditional tools for memo-
rialization of the Holocaust clashes with the tremendous public pressure
to remember it. Thus, ironically, the need to defend the traditional ul-
tra-Orthodox stance seems to have left ultra-Orthodox society with no
choice but to accept patterns of organization and remembrance that are
conventional in Western society, including in Israel. Fearing that the
memory would die, ultra-Orthodox society began to allow »agents of his-
tory« to operate in its midst. Thus, textbooks are being written, museums
and archives (lieux de mémoire) are being established, and professional
mediators (e. g., academic scholars, investigators, and authors), some not
from ultra-Orthodox society, are imparting the past to the generation of
the future.
The appeal to posterity and the task of revitalizing and strengthening
ultra-Orthodox society and the Torah world are perceived as the princi-
pal tasks of the present time; these are the tasks that dictate how to en-
gage with the past. Thus ultra-Orthodox society has elevated documen-
tation of the personal memories of Holocaust survivors to the status of a
religious imperative: witnesses are asked to recount for posterity the story
of the generation that survived the most difficult of ordeals and emerged
with its faith unscathed. On the personal level, it is the survivors’ reli-
gious and didactic duty to retell the story of their survival and, thereby,
to sanctify the name of God.40
The transition-to-history process is usually accompanied by the estab-
lishment of some distance that allows for self-criticism and a »privatiza-
tion« of the voices from which society is composed.41 Anita Shapira de-
39 See, for example: Heilman and Friedman (1991), pp. 197-265, and Bartal (1994),
pp. 178-192.
40 See: Shaul (2007), pp. 143-185.
41 See: Wistrich and Ohana (1995), p. vii.
122
scribes the process of writing testimonial books and giving testimony,

which gathered momentum in the 1980s, as a maturation process for Is-
raeli society and a liberation from the few dominant voices that had been
accepted in Israeli society for years. The disclosure of the survivors’ pri-
vate memories, foremost through the publication of testimonial books,
reflected the survivors’ confidence that society was now sufficiently ma-
ture to accept their hitherto concealed pain.42 Shapira’s statement, how-
ever, does not seem to apply to ultra-Orthodox society. In Israeli society
at large, the publication of memorial books and the transmission of per-
sonal testimony established vehicles for the articulation of pain and diffi-
cult feelings. In ultra-Orthodox society, by contrast, the expressive tools
of private memory serve as yet another vehicle to reinforce the values of
the dominant educational voice that shapes this sector’s public memory.
Ultra-Orthodox society, following its standard practice at all times, ad-
opted modern tools. Concurrently, however, amidst its rapprochement
with the majority society, it uses these elements to segregate itself from
the surrounding society and to stress the singular components of its own
culture.
Over the past two decades, ultra-Orthodox society has been adopting
several modern memorial mechanisms: we have seen Holocaust histo-
riography that employs academic tools (notably Esther Farbstein’s books
Hidden in Thunder, published in 2002, and Be-seter ha-madrega, pub-
lished in Hebrew in 2013). Many survivors have published their memoirs
and autobiographies. In Bene Beraq, an attempt is being made (again) to
establish a Kiddush Hashem museum. The testimonies of survivors are
being preserved on video, and teachers’ seminaries and colleges are de-
veloping curricula about the Holocaust for the ultra-Orthodox school
system.
Ultra-Orthodox society in Israel today (and, in fact, since the Holo-
caust itself ) is using the crisis of the Holocaust to rehabilitate itself and
to reaffirm the values upon which it is based. It employs many types of
resources for this task, including historical documentation, which it per-
ceives not as a value in and of itself but rather as a means to a specific
end; that is, the transmission of educational messages.43
Ultra-Orthodox society’s interest in the Holocaust can be explained in
several ways. All over the world there is a growing pre-occupation with
the Holocaust. The ultra-Orthodox public fears that if it fails to employ
42 Shapira (1998), p. 12.

43 Shaul (2007).
123
michal shaul
the modern memorial tools used to shape the collective memory, this
large population of ultra-Orthodox Holocaust victims and survivors will
disappear from world history.
The traditional means of commemoration (prayers, lamentations, and
the religious calendar) are conservative and paralyzing. They are insuffi-
cient for preserving the memory of a significant event such as the Holo-
caust. In contrast to the lack of traditional tools and means for commem-
orating the Holocaust, there is tremendous pressure from the public to
remember it. Consequently, it seems that ultra-Orthodox society is be-
ginning to adopt modern patterns of commemoration.
Conclusion
In the end, ultra-Orthodox society finds it easier to cope with the Ho-
locaust as a historical event than as a theological one. Unsatisfactory
theological answers might challenge the religious paradigm, which is
this society’s greatest fear. The product of this pre-occupation is a typ-
ical »counter memory.« Ultra-Orthodox society continuously responds
to what is happening in the world outside it. In this sense, regarding the
Holocaust ultra-Orthodox society is undoubtedly engaged in an ongo-
ing process of globalization. The revolution is mutual: modern and aca-
demic tools have penetrated ultra-Orthodox society. Ultra-Orthodox so-
ciety, on the other hand, has »penetrated« modern tools and academia. In
other words, the academic world no longer ignores this sector as it did in
the past; instead, it is being studied and is affecting the academic agenda.
The scholarly interest in the study of Holocaust awareness in ultra-Or-
thodox society can be explained by the maturation process and the search
for the voice of the »Other« in history. It derives from a conviction that
the religious and ultra-Orthodox indeed constituted a large and signifi-
cant sector with unique responses to the events that had taken place, re-
sponses that merit study.
124
Our Holocaust
Reclaiming Shoah Memory in the Works
of Second-Generation Mizrahi Authors in Israel
Batya Shimony
Jewish society in Israel is divided into two dominant groups, Ashkenazi

and Mizrahi Jews. Each of these categories contains a diversity of cultures
and origin-based communities; however, the relationship between the
two major groups is pivoted on the tension that separates the East and
the West. Ashkenazi Jews originally came from Europe, particularly from
Eastern Europe. They arrived in the Land of Israel in the period of early
Zionism (beginning in 1881) and became the generation that established
the state of Israel. Mizrahi Jews, who came from countries in Asia and
North Africa, arrived in Israel primarily in the early years after the estab-
lishment of the state of Israel, and they became the first generation of im-
migrants to be absorbed into Israeli society. This relationship between the
Ashkenazi and the Mizrahi, East and West, veteran citizens and new im-
migrants, formed Israeli society and created a basic tension between the
privileged and the underprivileged in Israel. The Israeli establishment de-
scribed its perceptions of the new immigrants and their culture using the
varied and numerous expressions that characterize Orientalist discourse:
»primitives«, »inferior«, and »overly emotional.« This attitude led to so-
cial, economic, and political differences that affected all realms of life.1
One of the dominant components of identity in Israeli society is un-
doubtedly the experience of the Holocaust.2 Beginning in the 1960s, this
experience became a symbolic and powerful source of social capital. Ba-
ruch Kimmerling explained it thusly: »Being a Holocaust survivor, or a
relative of a Holocaust survivor, or ’second generation’ of Holocaust sur-
vivors […] – this has become a source of prestige and power in Israeli
society.«3 From the very start, Mizrahi Jews were perceived as extraneous
to the story of the Holocaust. A clear example of this can be seen in the
nation’s preparations for the Eichmann Trial. The individuals appointed
1 Shohat (1988), pp. 1-35; Swirski (1989); Hever, Motzafi-Haller, and Shenhav (2002);
Chetrit (2009).
2 Auron (2006), pp. 114-134.
3 Yablonka (2000b), and Kimmerling (2004), p. 299.
125
batya shimony
as Eichmann’s guards, as well as the executioner, were of Mizrahi descent,

because »their families did not experience the horrors of the Nazi Holo-
caust, and therefore they are not likely to lose control and take matters into
their own hands.«4 The establishment’s perception of Mizrahi Jews as alien
was also made evident by the fact that none of the Holocaust survivors of
Mizrahi descent (i. e. survivors from Greece, Bulgaria, Tunisia, and Libya)
were asked to testify at the trial.5 The amount of interest that the trial gen-
erated and its extensive coverage in the media increased Mizrahi Jews’ sense
of alienation. This feeling came on top of the harsh socioeconomic condi-
tions faced by Mizrahi Jews, who arrived in Israel in the 1950s and watched
from the sidelines as Holocaust survivors used reparations from Germany
to escape the severe economic conditions of the times.6
The official designation of the Holocaust, as it has been engraved in
the Israeli consciousness, is »the Holocaust of European Jewry,« referring
to descendants from Eastern and Western Europe. This type of discourse
consistently excludes any Jewish community that was not of European
Ashkenazi origin.7 The most extreme manifestation of this exclusion was
the establishment’s attitude towards the fate of the Jews of Greece. The
majority of the Jews of Thessaloniki, a population that numbered ap-
proximately 50,000 in 1941, was sent to Auschwitz and exterminated. De-
spite the fact that the fate of this community was similar to that of many
other Jewish communities during the Holocaust, until the 1980s the story
of the Greek community had been practically expunged from official and
public memory. Much of Israel’s population had no idea that Greek Jews
were in fact sent to the death camps. Greek survivors repeatedly men-
tioned the twofold nature of their suffering: first due to the Nazi perse-
cution and then due to their exclusion from the collective memory of the
Holocaust. In her chapter on Greek prisoners in the Holocaust, Hanna
Yablonka mentions that this group even faced alienation in the concen-
tration camps. She provides testimonies that emphasize the way other
European Jewish prisoners perceived Greek Jews: they had a strange ap-
pearance – a tan complexion, curly black hair, and they spoke a strange
language; they did not know Yiddish; and some of the Ashkenazi Jews
suspected that they were not Jewish at all.8 Greek Jews were not alone in
4 Yablonka (2006), p. 94.

5 Ibid., pp. 94-97.
6 Ibid., pp. 247 ff.
7 Abramson (2005), pp. 285-299.
8 Yablonka (2006), pp. 215-227. See also: Refael (1994), pp. 140-147, and Shimony
(2011b), pp. 115-140.
126
our holocaust
having their story suppressed – so too were the stories of other Mizrahi
Jews, specifically those from Libya and Tunisia, who were also persecuted
and sent to concentration camps by the Nazis.
As Holocaust discourse became increasingly central to Israeli society,
the alienation between the two major parts of Israeli society, the Ashke-
nazi and the Mizrahi Jews, intensified. According to Yablonka, a new un-
derstanding began to take shape in the 1980s, one that recognized that
the gap between the two parts of Israeli society could be addressed pre-
cisely by harnessing the Holocaust discourse.9 The Israeli system of edu-
cation wanted to »ensure that all parts of society would consider them-
selves as having an equal share in the Holocaust memory. Underlying this
demand was a sense that this partnership was the key to gaining ’official
admission’ into the central and communal experience that characterized
Israeli society since the 1970s, an experience that affected and shaped
the patterns of Israeli communal memory.«10 Thus, the terminology was
altered and the discourse was re-focused onto the common Jewish fate
and onto the fact that the goal of the Nazi enemy was to destroy any and
every Jew. This attempt to include the Mizrahi Jews in the larger Ho-
locaust narrative was only partially successful. In terms of public con-
sciousness, the Holocaust became a central component of daily life in
Israel for Mizrahi Jews and Ashkenazi Jews alike. This led to increased
identification with the Holocaust narrative and the lessons learned. Nev-
ertheless, the discourse regarding the Mizrahi Jews remained duplicitous:
on the one hand it invited them to join in and partake of the common
Jewish fate, while on the other hand, it continued to regard the Mizrahi
Jews as »foreign brethren,« thereby maintaining their status as outsiders
and excluding them from the story of the Holocaust.
The complex position of Mizrahi Jews in Israeli society became more
conspicuous among the second generation. This generation was born in
Israel to parents who had immigrated to Israel in the 1950s from coun-
tries in Asia and North Africa. Many lived on the margins of Israeli soci-
ety, in disadvantaged neighborhoods or in development towns on the pe-
riphery. They experienced their ethnic Mizrahi identity as being marginal
and inferior within Israeli society. At school, they absorbed the values of
the West; they learned the history and literature of Ashkenazi Jewry and
stood at attention at the annual Holocaust Memorial ceremony, listening
to the atrocities that befell »them,« the European Jewish victims and sur-
9 Mishani (2006), pp. 11-37.

10 Yablonka (2006), p. 168.
127
batya shimony
vivors.11 At home, they absorbed the Mizrahi cultural identity, a process

that was often accompanied by denial, or resentment towards the parents
who represented the »Other,« the alien in Israeli society. In the 1990s, the
symptomatology of this syndrome erupted in the form of second-gener-
ation literature.12
The Holocaust as a Literary Theme

Since 1995, and with increasing frequency in the early 2000s, several of
the works published by Mizrahi authors focused on the Holocaust as a
major theme. The Holocaust, which was a frequent topic in the writings
of the Ashkenazi second-generation authors, was presented in a different
and unique manner in the writings of the Mizrahi authors. Their works,
which approached the topic from the perspective of contemporary Israeli
society, expressed the authors’ struggle with the topic of the Holocaust,
occasionally in a grotesque fashion.
The need to struggle with this issue was grounded in the previously
described identity crisis, resulting from the dual experience of inclusion
and exclusion. Given that the experience of the Holocaust was still an es-
sential component of Israeli identity, the Mizrahi Jews sensed an imma-
nent void in their identity – i. e. the absence of the Holocaust experience.
The author Shimon Adaf, who grew up in a small peripheral town in the
south of Israel, expressed it thusly: »and what about the parts of society
that after years of struggling with their identity were expelled beyond the
safe haven of the myth? What about the segments of society that were
not included because they lacked the proper genealogy?«13
Mizrahi literature fills the gap created by the absence of this required
genetic component in ways that are occasionally grotesque. The charac-
ters are immigrants and children of Mizrahi immigrants who are part of
the Israeli reality of the 1990s and the 2000s; these characters undergo a
transformative experience that bestows upon them the halo of the sur-
vivor. Thus, for example, Pere Atzil (Noble Savage) describes a character
named Yitzhak Yom-Tov, an artist of Iraqi descent who lives in an un-
derprivileged neighborhood and becomes »addicted« to the Holocaust.
Obsessively, he paints graphically realistic scenes of »naked victims in the
11 Hakak (1981).
12 Chetrit (1999), pp. 121-131, 152 ff.
13 Shimon Adaf, The Holocaust as Reflected in Mizrahi Literature, Yedioth Achro-
not, 19 April 2004 [my emphasis]. Adaf is of Moroccan descent.
128
our holocaust
gas chambers, Jewish prisoners laboring in concentration camps […] and

mountains of human skeletons.«14 The more he paints, the greater his
ability to identify with the survivors. He then begins to dream about the
Holocaust. In his dreams, the image of himself in a former life appears
to him – a tailor from Warsaw who was murdered by the Nazis. His son
explains: »This Iraqi guy has assumed the character of this Polish Yom-
Tov Yitzhakovsy in every sense. When he was working on his Holocaust
paintings, he went on a radical diet in order to feel the terrible hunger
that Yom-Tov Yitzhakovsy experienced in the Warsaw ghetto […]. The
man lost 15 kg […]. He would start his workday by lighting six memo-
rial candles […] and then he’d work hours upon hours, accompanied by
the sorrowful Yiddish tunes that emanated from his portable tape. Some-
times, immersed in his work, he’d suddenly burst into tears over the hor-
rible fate of his murdered virtual family.«15 Later on, the son describes
the striped pajamas and the yellow Star of David that his father wore,
with his head shaven to look like the concentration camp inmates. To-
wards the end of the story, the father tries to inhale gas in order to feel
as the victims felt in their final moments. The novel ends with the son’s
sarcastic words: »Unless some kind of miracle happens, I’m pretty sure
this Holocaust is one he won’t survive. Those damn Nazis can take credit
for the death of yet another Jewish victim, sixty years later – their very
first Iraqi victim.«16
The novel Avaryan Tza’atzua (Petty Hoodlum) is a carnival of im-
ages; its central theme is transformation.17 Morris Betitto, an elderly
man who immigrated to Israel from Northern Africa, begins to have
strange dreams in which he is a young boy in Buchenwald. One morn-
ing he wakes up and finds a blue number tattooed on his arm. His trans-
formation is paralleled with that of Henriette. Henriette, a wealthy, re-
tired judge who survived the Holocaust, willingly transforms herself into
a street person after she experiences a shocking incident. When Morris
arrives to bring her food, he finds out that the experiences he had in his
dreams and the number on his arm belong to Henriette’s deceased hus-
band. In contrast, there is the character of Morris’s grandson, Nir, who
repeatedly challenges the conventional remembrance of the Holocaust as
dictated by the establishment. Thus, in an act of protest, he draws a swas-
tika and writes »Nazi« in excrement on Henriette’s gold-colored, fancy
14 Bossi (2003), p. 42.
15 Ibid., p. 43.
16 Ibid., p. 270.
17 Oz (2002).
129
batya shimony
car. Henriette, the retired Ashkenazi judge, represents the privileged sta-
tus bestowed on Holocaust survivors in Israel. It is this event that insti-
gates Henriette’s transformation into a street person, where she experi-
ences the life of the underprivileged.18
It is important to note that these authors do not focus on the historic
memory of the Holocaust or the story of the victim, but rather on the
construction of their own cultural identity. The Holocaust here serves as
cultural and political capital. The Mizrahi authors appropriate the Ho-
locaust for two conflicting purposes: on the one hand, they wish to par-
ticipate in a legitimate discourse taking place both in Israeli society and
in the global arena on the issue of identity, while on the other hand, they
aim to voice their fervent protest against a society that demands that they
become victims in order to belong.19
What About the Mizrahi Jews Who Actually Were There?

The term »Holocaust envy,« which I have used to refer to the attitude de-
scribed above, expresses the covert (and paradoxical) aspiration to be an
insider in Israeli society.20 However, this desire is cast in an ironic light
when we examine the condition of other groups of Mizrahi Jews in Is-
raeli society, namely those who did actually experience the Nazi terror, as
is the case of the Mizrahi Jews from Greece and Libya. The majority of
Jews from Thessaloniki were murdered in Auschwitz, and a group of the
Jews living in Libya were expelled and transported to the Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp; nevertheless, their stories were not admitted into
the official Holocaust commemoration narrative. Even when their story
finally did penetrate Israeli consciousness, it was depicted – both in the
research and in official documentation – as a different type of story. Fur-
thermore, the events were described using a terminology that in effect
marginalized their experience. Only in recent years have second- and
third-generation authors begun to publish literary works that shed light
on their parents’ and their own experiences.
Lea Aini, a major author of Hebrew literature, was able to begin ad-
dressing this loaded issue only after publishing several works of prose
that dealt with a variety of other subjects. Her 2009 autobiographical
18 For a more comprehensive review, see: Shimony (2011), pp. 239-273.

19 See also: Shimony (2013); Oppenheimer (2010), pp. 303-328; Alon (2011), pp. 95-
111; Steir-Livny (2014), pp. 113-147.
20 Shimony (2011).
130
our holocaust
work Vered ha-Levanon (Rose of Lebanon) is a powerful description of

not only her own life story as the second-generation child of a Holocaust
survivor, but also that of her father, a Jew from Thessaloniki who sur-
vived Auschwitz.21 Although it appears to be a typical second-generation
story, it is told from a completely different perspective than that used in
the works of Ashkenazi second-generation authors. The researcher Iris
Milner noted that the Holocaust appears in the works of the latter as a
trauma that has a long-term and definitive effect on the lives of literary
and biographical characters. These authors are motivated by the desire
to reveal all that was concealed under the blanket of silence cast by their
parents, who refused to tell their stories. As pointed out by the researcher,
these authors write from the perspective of normative, mainstream »Is-
raeliness« (the Tzabar image), in an attempt to challenge the typical Is-
raeli narrative that rejects the diaspora experience.22
Aini, in contrast, writes from the perspective of the geographic and
socioeconomic margins of Israeli society. Her Holocaust protagonists are
faded images that appear as blots on the sidelines of Israeli reality. The
underprivileged, poor, and miserable neighborhood functions in her
novel both as background and protagonist. In the center of this marginal
existence is the character of her father, a Holocaust survivor who cease-
lessly tells Holocaust stories to his young and impressionable daughter.
His main objective was to supply her with as many stories as he could, so
that she would convey them to the following generations. The father is
hostage to his twofold agony: he relives the horrors of the past in night-
mares and memories, while at the same time he feels that his grief has
no place in the world that surrounds him. »He sits there on the eve of
the Holocaust Memorial Day, scrunched under his robe, already perched
across from the TV that repeatedly broadcasts the appropriate programs
and films, which offer no mention of the Jews of Greece – thus, father
continued sacrificing himself, and us, on the altar of Survival, as if none
of it had ever ended.«23 The father yearns for visibility, an acknowledg-
ment on the part of the state of Israel that his people too were there,
»more annihilated than all the rest.«24 This lack of validation is likened to
an additional annihilation of his family members and himself. Driven by
21 Aini (2009).
22 Milner (2003). For the author’s opinion on this issue, and a more comprehensive
discussion, see: Shimony (2012), pp. 89-114.
23 Aini (2009), p. 228.
24 Ibid., p. 116.
131
batya shimony
the need to survive, he chooses his young daughter to be the one to tell
his story and the story of a community that is no longer.
The father’s struggle for visibility reflects the struggle of an entire
community that longs for public validation, a community immersed in
anguish and insult. The father, unable to infiltrate into the centers of
power, lacking the necessary skills – verbal, political, and economic – to
enter the arena of Israeli public discourse, enslaves his daughter with his
stories. He demands that she write his stories down, in order to substanti-
ate his existence and his Holocaust memory. Enveloped in his own pain,
he fails to understand that the task he assigns his daughter can have only
one outcome: the annihilation of her own identity.
My article Struggling for Recognition addresses the situation of
second-generation Greek Jews.25 The manner in which this community
looks upon the events of the past differs from the approach that is famil-
iar in documentation research. In contrast to the silence that surrounded
the homes of survivors in general, second-generation Greek Jews expe-
rienced the opposite: a constant flow of talking. Many reported that
their parents had an almost obsessive need to talk, yet their stories were
directed inward, towards members of the family and friends from the
community, perhaps as a form of resisting the establishment’s silencing.
Thus, for example, Shmuel Rafael, a researcher who is second-genera-
tion to Holocaust survivors, noted the following: »The tragic story of the
Greek Jews in the period of the Holocaust is tucked deep in the folds of
memory of the survivors. The only framework in which they could begin
to open up and describe their life stories […] was among their own, in an
intra-social, intra-community framework. Paradoxically, in a café among
family and friends, or in private gatherings, they would reveal their per-
sonal stories. It appears that for many years the stories of the Jews of
Greece were – in effect– kept on a personal level, shared only with their
own, those familiar with the experience.«26
Telling their stories to the next generation was looked upon as a final
request in the parents’ last will and testament: to continue their strug-
gle to gain official recognition of their Holocaust experience from the
public and from the establishment. The second-generation responded
to this and agreed to be the conveyors of the story; however, in doing
this there was an element of self-sacrifice. The 1980s, when members of
the second-generation gave voice to their own trauma of living under
25 Shimony (2011b).
26 Rafael (1999), pp. 31-40.
132
our holocaust
the shadow of their parents’ agony were also the years when the second
generation of Greek Jews began working incessantly to spread the sto-
ries of their parents. They volunteered to tell them to students in schools
throughout the country, they held lectures and memorial ceremonies
and, in addition, they published an annual journal in which the memo-
ries of the community members could be both recorded and communi-
cated to others. This exerted effort left no time or space for the younger
generation of Greek Jews to address the issue of their own identity or to
cope with their grief.
The experience of the second generation of Greek Jews, marked by ex-
clusion and lack of recognition, was thus more complex than that of the
Mizrahi authors described earlier. The former were authors whose fam-
ilies did not experience the Holocaust, and they wrote their narratives
from the ambivalent perspective of envy and defiance. First and fore-
most, their work addressed the issue of their marginalization in Israeli
society, and the »amendment« implied in the image of a contemporary
transformation into a present-day survivor is both grotesque and fantas-
tic. The style of these stories is sarcastic; they are told tongue in cheek,
with a sardonic laugh. This is especially noticeable in the work of the au-
thor Koby Oz, whose book Avaryan Tza’atzua is a perfect carnival that
mixes the sacred with the profane, the glorious with the mundane, and
creates hybrid identities that challenge the monolithic and conventional.
In his narrative world, anyone can be both a survivor and a Mizrahi street
person, a religious Moroccan Jew and a survivor of the Holocaust, an un-
ruly and rebellious youth and a child with a heart of gold, a boy and a
girl. All of the identities are mixed and dissolve into one another, leading
to the final carnivalesque scene in which everyone celebrates the mar-
riage of Morris Betitto, the Moroccan (who has become a survivor) and
Henrietta, the privileged Ashkenazi woman (the survivor who chooses
to become homeless). The carnivalesque tone, uninhibited by social and
moral constraints, creates an amusing atmosphere, which occasionally
serves to mitigate the effect of the strong and scathing criticism directed
towards a society that rejects whoever is not part of the hegemony.
The Greek Jewish survivors had been clamoring for recognition and
acceptance ever since the state began documenting survivors’ testimo-
nies. Hanna Yablonka presented an extensive review of their activities.
According to her, »The history of the Greek Jewish community’s con-
nections with the Yad Vashem project from its very inception was – to
a great extent – the story of a self-initiated and feverish drive. Immedi-
ately after their release, Greek Jews engaged in an extensive campaign to
133
batya shimony
be included in every commemorative event, in every data collecting pro-

ject, and at any occasion when information was being documented.«27
However, despite their strong desire to participate in these activities, they
were »forgotten, overlooked, and uninvited.« The worst of this was »their
exclusion from a gathering, which its organizers called a ’Global Com-
mittee for Holocaust Research in the Current Day and Age.’« This con-
vention was held in Jerusalem in July 1947, and every historical commit-
tee was invited to attend. Yablonka summarizes this event, which ended
with a letter of apology issued by Mordecai Shenhavi (the manager of
Yad Vashem), as follows: »There is no doubt that there was a great deal
of information about the fate of Greek Jewry in general and the Jews of
Thessaloniki in particular; however, at that time, this information had
not yet infiltrated our consciousness, nor had it been processed as gen-
eral knowledge. The Greek Jews were outside the span of consciousness
of their fellow citizens.«28 Only in the 1980s did any significant activity
begin for commemorating Greek Jewry, in order to establish this mem-
ory as part of the heritage of the Israeli people.
A »Dubious« Holocaust
Unlike Greek Jewry, Jews from North Africa, among them the Jews from
Libya, were not sure whether they were worthy of being included among
the »legitimate« Holocaust survivors. Yablonka noted that until the
1970s, it was thought that the Holocaust passed the Jews of North Africa
by without affecting them. In the general public during those years, there
was no knowledge about the concentration camps in Libya, or about the
fact that some Libyan Jews had been deported to concentration camps
in Europe. Nava Barzani analyzed the terminology used by Holocaust re-
searchers, some of whom were themselves of North African descent, as
they wrote about the history of the Jewish communities of Northern Af-
rica during the Holocaust. According to Barzani, the terminology used
was almost always cautious, diminishing the effects of these events on
the population through the use of alternative expressions. Phrases such as
»on the verge of a Holocaust« and »persecution« were used in an effort to
avoid using the word Holocaust when referring to these communities. In
this manner, researchers persistently claimed that these communities had
not been subjected to the tragedy that impacted European Jewry. Thus,
27 Yablonka (2006), p. 220.

28 Ibid., p. 221.
134
our holocaust
the experience of North African Jews is presented as a »dubious« Holo-

caust, and their secondary – if not questionable – importance in the un-
folding of the events of the Holocaust is emphasized.29
Yossi Sucary’s 2002 novella, Emilia U’melach Ha’aretz: Vidui (Emilia: A
Confession), is a refined expression of the anger felt in response to the re-
pressed story of Libyan Jewry during the Holocaust, a community whose
voices had been marginalized in the established public memory.30 The
book is part of an upsurge of literary works created by second-generation
Mizrahi authors who introduce the complex issue of the relationship
between Mizrahi Jews and the Holocaust into the public discourse. In
addition to Petty Hoodlum and Noble Savage, mentioned earlier, other
works by Mizrahi authors include Auntie Farhuma Wasn’t a Whore After
All and Anus Mundi.31 The fact that all of these were published within
a single year reflects the degree of distress experienced by a generation
that felt deprived of any social standing in Israeli society, a generation
whose members sought to express their protest by directing their wrath
at the charged topic of the Holocaust. Yet Sucary differs from the other
authors in that he has a »legitimate« connection to the Holocaust. His
grandmother Emilia, who was born in Benghazi, Libya, was interned in
Bergen-Belsen during the war. Interestingly, the book does not describe
what happened to her during the Holocaust, but rather it describes her
life in Israel – more specifically, her stifling effect on her grandson, the
author. Emilia experiences her life in Israel as if she lives in exile, as she
feels excluded from her own identity. She is constantly observed through
the perspective of the Ashkenazi community as it views the Mizrahi Jews,
and she lives in defiance of the stereotypes attributed to her.
Thus, for example, Sucary says, referring to his grandmother: »I sud-
denly realized that she fears with her entire being that […] she might be
tempted to adopt the image they had created of her as a Jew of Mizrahi
descent. I suddenly realized that actually she herself yearns to adopt this
image they’d created of her, just once in a while, to enjoy the easing of
tension that it would afford her, because she knows – that way she will
get rid, once and for all, of the exhausting task of constantly shielding her
self-identity from their structured design.«32 The grandmother insists that
she shares a kinship with the Arabs and mocks the founding of the State
29 Barzani (2014).
30 Sucary (2002).
31 Avni (2002); Alvin (2002).
32 Sucary (2002), p. 78.
135
batya shimony
of Israel and the importance of living there. She convinces her grandson
to emigrate from Israel and to live anywhere except in the State of Israel.
The book presents the profound identity-related distress experienced
by the grandson, who has been influenced by the charismatic grand-
mother. Her past and her experiences define him. On one occasion, soon
after the Six-Day War, when he hears racist opinions about the Arabs
voiced at school, he asks his grandmother to come to school and present
her views. In a conversation with the school principal, Emilia describes
the amicable relationships she had with the Arab neighbors in Beng-
hazi and how one of them risked her own safety to hide her (the grand-
mother’s) children in the basement while the Germans were searching for
them. The principal asks, with a tone of derision, where the grandmother
was while her children were hiding with the neighbors. Emilia »rolled up
her sleeve and revealed the tattooed number, and added in a nonchalant
tone of voice: ’I was with the Ashkenazi Jews in Bergen-Belsen. Even
back then you wanted to turn me into dust.’«33
This is the only moment in the book when Emilia’s experience of the
Holocaust is mentioned, a moment that creates a sense of the uncanny,
as defined by Freud, when the familiar becomes strange. All at once this
Mizrahi woman, who according to Israeli consciousness has nothing to
do with the Holocaust, becomes a Holocaust survivor. This unfamiliar
juxtaposition of identities arouses anxiety, as all at once this woman is
severed from the identity prepared for her. Moreover, the phrase she adds
intensifies the anxiety, because her words, »even then you wanted to turn
me into dust,« do not refer to the Nazi Germans but rather to the Ash-
kenazi Jews. Even in the concentration camps, she says, the Ashkenazi
looked down upon the dark skinned Jews, rejected them, and refused to
treat them as fellow Jews and members of their own community.
A similar experience is depicted in the work of Lea Aini, when her father
remembers his days in Auschwitz. Here too, the Greek Jews were treated
as alien: »They spat on us and referred to us as ’those Grecos’; the Yiddish
speaking Jews from Poland said these things and we were frightened, be-
cause we thought they were speaking German […]. We weren’t able to un-
derstand a single word that the SS soldiers shouted at us, and just for that
we were beaten and kicked – first from the German and then from the Yid-
dish, yes, just like that […] in the stomach, the leg, from the side […]. And
then they called us goyim, the Ashkenazi prisoners did, ’chayes, schwarze
33 Ibid., p. 11.
136
our holocaust
chayes’ [animals, black animals] they said.«34 The father draws two analo-
gies between the Nazi Germans and the Ashkenazi prisoners: by referring
to the similar sounds of Yiddish and German, and, more significantly, by
showing the similar treatment they received from both of these hostile ele-
ments. Thus their alienation was redoubled: the Germans deported them
to concentration camps and murdered them for being Jews, while the Pol-
ish Jews beat and cursed them for being dark skinned and different.
Sucary absorbed his grandmother’s deeply rooted feeling of estrange-
ment in the State of Israel, an estrangement that began back in the con-
centration camps and intensified with the move to Israel. At that time,
descendants from Asia and North Africa were not welcomed into the bo-
som of legitimate Israeliness. Throughout the narrative, the author de-
scribes a constant sense of existential subversion, which he experienced
since early childhood, throughout his youth, and into adulthood. He
tells of his attempts to realize Emilia’s dream of emigrating to another
country, although he understands that there is no place where he can feel
at home. Only in his fourth book, Benghazi – Bergen-Belsen (2013) does
he venture to touch upon the still-open-wound left by the issue of the
Libyan Jews’ Holocaust.35
Sucary’s book is the first one in Hebrew to deal with this repressed
story. The book opens with a description of the pleasant and routine way
of life in Benghazi, which was all at once disrupted by the Nazi occupi-
ers. In the second part of the book, he describes the deportation of Jews
who were British citizens to a concentration camp in Italy. And in the last
part, he describes the horrors experienced in Bergen-Belsen. The numer-
ous critiques written about this work emphasized its historical signifi-
cance and praised Sucary’s courage to penetrate »the heart of darkness« in
order to reveal the story to the public at large.36 However, Sucary did not
wish to merely show that the fate of Libyan Jews was similar to that of
European Jews. His objective was to refine a point that was only hinted
at in his previous book, namely, the »homebred« Holocaust: the Euro-
pean Jews’ abuse of their brethren, the Libyan Jews.
The climax of the narrative comes towards the end of the book, in the
chapter that focuses on the ordeals of the Jews in the Bergen-Belsen con-
34 Aini (2009), p. 66.

35 Sucary (2013).
36 The book generated a great deal of interest, and was critiqued in every literary
magazine and blog. For example, Haviva Pedaya, Lost Moments in the Time of
the Oppressed, HaOketz, 24 November 2013, and Yiftah Ashkenazi, Sucary’s Ap-
proach Is Important — His Literature Less So, Ha’aretz, 4 December 2013.
137
batya shimony
centration camp. This is the first time that the Libyan Jews meet the Eu-
ropean Jews. Yet right away, the very first encounter in the camp marks
the differences between them, differences based on skin color. »’Wel-
come to hell, black woman’ [English in source] were the very first words
that Silvana (the protagonist) heard at Bergen-Belsen, spoken by an el-
derly man with a long face. ’We are all Jews here [English in source].’
[…] Unlike her and the other Libyan Jews that had emerged from the
cattle cars, the rest of the prisoners at Bergen-Belsen were all of fair com-
plexion.«37
Instead of feeling united by their shared fate as Jewish victims of per-
secution, there was a sense of strangeness and alienation. This tension be-
tween black and white, which is the pivotal point of the chapter, mani-
fests in the brutal violence that the Ashkenazi prisoners directed towards
the Jewish prisoners who arrived from Libya. Silvana, the main protago-
nist, is a young and beautiful girl; it is through her perspective that the
story is told, as she experiences firsthand the Ashkenazi hatred of the
North African Jews, the »Blacks.« Thus, for example, as she was singing
to herself in Arabic, trying to comfort herself, one of the prisoners came
up to her and angrily shoved her while calling her »Schwarze.« Later, she
becomes the victim of two separate and horrifying rape incidents. One of
the prisoners in the camp would harass her and follow her around. One
evening, he entered the shack and gave her a threatening look »in which
she could see the reflection of her own strangeness. Then he extended his
hand and caressed her leg that was poking out from under the blanket.
She pushed his hand away, ’du bist nicht von unserer’ [you are not one
of ours], he said.«38 Silvana managed to send him away, but he returned
the next day and sexually abused her. Sucary does not hold back, but de-
scribes the scene in graphic and gruesome detail. In addition to revealing
what is considered taboo – the sexual abuse of a helpless young girl in a
concentration camp by a man of her own people, the main issue here is
the disclosure of persecution based on ethnicity. The man’s sense of su-
periority is based on his Ashkenazi origin and the light color of his skin.
There is an ironic twist as this incident of racial discrimination is set in
the context of a Holocaust story.
In the final days before being released, the same man sets a trap for Sil-
vana and lures her with a piece of bread to follow him to a distant loca-
tion. There, three Dutch Kapos waited, who cruelly raped her. Here too,
37 Sucary (2013), p. 224.

38 Ibid., p. 277.
138
our holocaust
Sucary provides almost pornographic descriptions of the event, which ends

with the three standing over Silvana and urinating on her. It is interest-
ing to note that the acts of cruelty exercised by the European Jews towards
Silvana surpass those practiced by the Germans. However, it is against
the Germans that Silvana manages to become resourceful and find a way
out, whereas in her encounters with the Ashkenazi Jews she is humiliated
in the most extreme and brutal ways. As she is being raped she thinks to
herself »who could save her? Her own white Jewish brethren, who treated
her as though she were a human animal that weaseled her way into their
group?«39 These descriptions clearly manifest the underlying agenda of the
literary work, which aims not only to describe the experiences of Libyan
Jews in the Holocaust, but also – and perhaps especially – to protest the in-
sulting way they were treated by Jews, their so-called brethren, who even in
the most denigrating of circumstances could not resist demonstrating their
sense of superiority by humiliating the Libyan Jews.
Sucary’s work is yet another link in the ongoing process in which
Mizrahi authors attempt to undo the Gordian knot that ties together the
Holocaust and European Jewry. The powerful presence of the Holocaust
in Israeli memory has transformed it from a shocking historical event
that everyone has a moral obligation to remember into an iconic resource
that helps strengthen the already superior social status of the Ashkenazi
Jews in Israel. The absence of this resource among Mizrahi Jews marks
them as outsiders. Authors who had no biographical connection to these
historical events sought to create a transformative process intended to
provide the component that was missing from their identity, a transfor-
mation that is nothing short of a critical and grotesque mimicry. For the
Mizrahi Jews whose families did experience the Holocaust, the situation
was even more unbearable: although they had been there, the burden of
that experience went unrecognized. It was their children who brought
to light their demands for recognition. They sought to tell their parents’
story so as to redress the injustice, for their own sake, as well as for their
parents’. Sucary aims to tell the story of Libyan Jews in order to voice
their grievances, much like Lea Aini’s father demanded that she continue
telling his story to the following generations, and like the Greek Jews in
Shmuel Rafael’s family. The more encompassing Holocaust memory cul-
ture becomes, both in the local Israeli scene and in the global arena, the
greater the number of groups that seek to be included in the memory cul-
ture and to use it as a foundation for their identity.
39 Ibid., p. 299.
139
Holocaust Memory among
Palestinian Arab Citizens in Israel
Personal Sympathy and National Antagonism
Sarah Ozacky-Lazar
On International Holocaust Memorial Day in 2010, Ahmad Tibi, an

Arab member of the Israeli Parliament (Knesset), gave a speech that left
the audience excited to the extent that the speaker, Reuven Rivlin, de-
clared it »the best speech on the Holocaust ever heard in the Knesset.«1
What was so unique about Tibi’s speech? Was it the mere fact that it was
an Arab Member of the Knesset (MK) who spoke about the Holocaust?
Or was it the relief felt by the predominantly Jewish members of the au-
dience that a Palestinian patriot had finally recognized the Jewish tragedy
in full, and did not try to compare, minimize, or, God forbid, deny it?
Tibi opened his speech by expressing his full empathy with the sur-
vivors, claiming that »this is the moment when every person should let
go his national or religious affiliations and differences, and wear only his
human gown, look inside and around and remain just a human being.«2
He spoke fiercely against Holocaust denial and acknowledged that the
Holocaust was the worst crime against humanity in modern times. In the
following days the press reported on hundreds of calls from Holocaust
survivors to Tibi and on an unprecedented compliment from Prime Min-
ister Benjamin Netanyahu. But most of all, Tibi was moved by the Arab
students who called him and said: »Finally you were able to show the hu-
man aspects of the Arabs, now the Jews understand that we are empathic
toward their suffering during that period.«3
At the same time, another Arab MK, Muhammad Barakeh, the head
of Hadash party, visited Auschwitz. His visit caused debate and criticism
within the Arab public and media in Israel. Barakeh, like Tibi, stood firm
and claimed that the majority of Arabs and Jews alike supported his ges-
* This essay is dedicated to the memory of Salem Jubran (1941-2011), a writer and a
poet, a colleague and friend, who was one of the first Arab educators on the Shoah.
1 Jonathan Liss, Is Ahmad Tibi’s Speech the Best Ever Heard in the Knesset?,
Ha’aretz, 28 January 2010.
2 Ibid.
3 Nir Yahav, Ahmad Tibi you have not known, http://news.walla.co.il/
item/1644689, 12 February 2010.
140
holocaust memory among palestinian ar ab citizens in isr ael
ture, and that as an Israeli MK educated by the Communist Party he feels

»a moral right to express the cry of these innocent victims.«4 He too de-
nounced Holocaust denial, saying that those who deny the fact of this
horrible crime against humanity »send a poisonous arrow to the heart of
the Palestinians’ rightful desire for an independent state beside Israel.«
But Barakeh also strongly criticized those Israelis who »manipulate the
Holocaust for their political interests and for justifying their policy in
the occupied territories.«5
Seven years before this, an MK from the Islamic Movement had joined
the Knesset’s mission to Poland. Tawfiq Khatib had to ask the permission
of his party to accept the invitation to participate in the March of the Liv-
ing with his fellow Jewish MKs. He explained that he wanted to see with
his own eyes the places he had read about in order to better understand
the horrors that took place during World War II. When he came back he
encountered criticism in some Arab papers, including the Hadash organ
al-Ittihad. Yet he also received the support of many visitors who came to
his home to greet him upon his return, as is customary in Arab society. He
said that everyone was anxious to hear as much as he could tell them about
this unique trip. His only comment was that the world, and Israel, should
commemorate all 20 million victims of this war, among them Poles, Gyp-
sies, and civilians of European countries, and not just Jews.6
In December 2011, Tibi participated in a Palestinian medical con-
ference in Berlin, during which he asked his hosts to take him to Villa
Wannsee. They not only agreed but some of them accompanied him.
Signing the visitors’ book, Tibi repeated what he had said in the Knes-
set, adding that »we should all learn from history in order for such hor-
rors not to happen again« and that »all peoples have an absolute right to
freedom, dignity and life in their homeland.«7 Here he approached the
common Israeli-Arab discourse on the Holocaust, one that tries to draw
lessons from the past for the present, using these lessons in the current
political debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to defend
and advance the Palestinian cause.
It is important to separate the discourse on the Holocaust among the
Palestinian-Arab citizens in Israel from that of other Arabs and the Pales-
tinians who live under Israeli occupation or who are dispersed in the Arab
4 Muhammad Barakeh, I have changed in Auschwitz, NRG, 28 January 2010.
5 Ibid.
6 Ha’aretz, 18 May 2000. Quoted in: Yousef Al-Gazi, Arabs in Holocaust Memorial
Days, www.defeatist-diary.com.
7 Yossi Verter, Solidarity, Ha’aretz, 9 December 2011.
141
sar ah ozacky-lazar
world. This sub-group of Palestinians, which remained under Israeli rule

after 1949, is unique in various respects and consequently in regard to their
attitude towards the Holocaust. As Israeli citizens, they have mastery of the
Hebrew language and consume Israeli media; most of them are personally
acquainted with (and sometimes friends of ) Holocaust survivors and their
families; they are exposed to ceremonies, museums, and the general Israeli
public expressions of the Shoah, including in the public sphere and in the
media; they learn about the Holocaust from an early age, as it is part of the
curriculum at public schools; they can easily find Arabic translations of rel-
evant books, such as the diary of Anne Frank and the work of K. Zetnik;
and they can read Hebrew-language works of Holocaust literature.
Salman Natour, a writer and publicist, who died in 2016, said that
his own position as an Arab living among Jewish survivors undoubt-
edly shaped his attitude toward Holocaust memory and made him much
more sensitive to the issue than others in the Arab world: »On the one
hand, I refrain from hurting their feelings for the sake of our coexistence
in the country, but on the other hand, I resist the idea that as a Palestin-
ian I am asked to pay the price of a history for which I am not responsi-
ble.«8 This is the kind of deliberation that justifies careful consideration
of how Arabs in Israel see the Holocaust.
Comparisons
The first Arab references to the Holocaust were heard immediately af-
ter the establishment of the state of Israel in May 1948 and the Armi-
stice agreements in 1949, after which approximately 160,000 Arabs were
placed under Israeli control. Some Arab speakers used to compare their
life under the Military Government to the life of Jews in the ghettos,
claiming that they suffered from curfews and closures like those imposed
on the Jews by the Nazis. The fate of 49 civilians who were murdered by
Israeli policeman in Kufur Qaessem in October 1956 because they had
unknowingly violated a curfew was compared to the atrocities in the
camps. Prominent Arab citizens – Knesset members, writers, and jour-
nalists – would ask again and again: how are the Jews, who had suffered
so much, capable of doing the same thing to the Palestinians?
Maki, the Israeli Communist party, spearheaded the national struggle
of Arab citizens in Israel during those years, and its members constantly
demonstrated and protested against the Military Government. As com-
8 Natour (2015), p. 135.
142
munists under direct influence of the Soviet Union, they interpreted

World War II as a victory over fascism, in which the Red Army played
the major role. They did not deny the Holocaust and felt empathy to-
wards its victims – Jews and others alike – but they constantly made the
connection between what happened in Europe and the contemporary sit-
uation facing Palestinians.
In the 1980s the prominent author and former Maki MK Emil Habibi
wrote a seminal text on the subject titled Your Holocaust – Our Catastro-
phe.9 Habibi was asked by an Israeli magazine to write an article on the
»Arab understanding of the Holocaust« and saw it as both a challenge
and an opportunity to express his opinion on this sensitive issue. The
article was short but contained the main points of Holocaust discourse
within the Arab community in Israel. It claimed that there was a direct
connection between the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of
Israel; it asserted that Europeans cleansed their conscience by recogniz-
ing Israel as a state for the Jews at the expense of the Palestinians. It char-
acterized antisemitism as a European phenomenon, arguing that Arabs
are not antisemites, and that Arabs have also suffered from antisemitism.
Moreover, according to this argument, the Jews were not the only victims
of World War II, as the Nazis murdered other ethnic groups as well. Fol-
lowing the common communist discourse, Habibi wrote that overcom-
ing Nazism was a triumph for all of humanity and not just for the Jews;
the victory should be considered a universal issue. With regard to the
State of Israel, Habibi contended, the Holocaust provides excuses to em-
ploy force and oppress the Palestinians, and Holocaust memory makes
Israeli society fearful and therefore racist.
Habibi concluded with a statement that has become a commonly held
belief among the majority of the Arabs in Israel and the rest of the Pal-
estinians: »If not for your – and all of humanity’s – Holocaust in World
War Two, the catastrophe that is still the lot of my people would not have
been possible.« And finally he wrote: »In the eyes of the Arabs the Holo-
caust is seen as the original sin which enabled the Zionist movement to
convince millions of Jews of the rightness of its cause.«10
This is, of course, not an accurate historical analysis, as Zionism dates
back almost a century before the Holocaust. However, it implies that the
Zionist movement used the Holocaust to manipulate its own people – a
9 Habibi (1988), pp. 332-336.

10 Ibid., p. 335.
143
sar ah ozacky-lazar
thesis that is not exclusive to Arabs and appears in several Jewish and Is-
raeli texts as well.11
Like Habibi, most Arab intellectuals in Israel today are convinced
that this interpretation is correct. Most refrain from directly comparing
the Holocaust to the Nakba, the flight and expulsion of Palestinians af-
ter May 14 , 1948, but they do make additional points that follow Habi-
bi’s way of thinking. As tragic as it was, the oft-heard argument goes, the
Holocaust was an event that happened and ended, whereas the Nakba
continues into the present. After the Holocaust the Jews were able to es-
tablish an independent state that is now strong and prosperous. How-
ever, after the Nakba the Palestinians remained stateless and dispersed
throughout the Middle East and the world. A more general observation
is also often heard, namely that personal suffering is a subjective feeling
and that one cannot argue that one’s own suffering is less painful than
that of others, as it is in the case of national disasters.
Indirect Victims
In 1995 Azmi Bishara, a leading intellectual and later Knesset member
who is currently a fugitive, wrote an article for a Hebrew history journal
that aroused emotions and deepened the gap between Arab and Jewish
perceptions of and attitudes towards Holocaust memory.12 Bishara re-
peated the argument that the Palestinians are the indirect victims of the
Holocaust, whereas the Israeli Jews, despite currently being the occupi-
ers, have remained its direct victims. He agreed that any political com-
promise between the two peoples must take into account their collective
memories about their past. Yet he also criticized the Israelis for »appro-
priating« the Holocaust and using it for their own interests, thereby di-
minishing its universal lessons. This point has been raised by others as
well – complaining that Israel »stole« the Holocaust and has not allowed
Arabs and others a free and universal discussion about it. Bishara con-
nected the Palestinian acknowledgement of the Holocaust to Israeli-
Jewish recognition of the Palestinian catastrophe and dispossession start-
ing in 1948. He argued that »in order for the victim to forgive, he must be
recognized as a victim. This is the difference between a historic compro-
mise and a cease-fire.«13 Bishara was one of the first to point out that Ho-
11 In the works of Tom Segev, Moshe Zimmermann, and Idit Zertal, for example.
12 Bishara (1995), pp. 54-71.
13 Bishara (1996), pp. 102-107.
144
locaust memory had become a central motive in crystallizing the modern

Israeli-Jewish identity, mainly the secular one. Yair Oron later developed
this thesis in his book Israeli Identities, in which he claimed that the Ho-
locaust had become a kind of »secular religion« for many Israelis, mainly
those who are not Orthodox.14
Following the tragic events of the 2000 Al-Aksa Intifada, during which
13 Arab demonstrators were shot dead by Israeli police, a deep split oc-
curred between Jews and Arabs. The feeling spread that many years of
joint efforts to build trust had been in vain. Interestingly enough, the
Arab side implemented some new initiatives to overcome this trauma by
taking from the example of Holocaust commemorative practice. Thus,
in 2003 Father Emil Shofani, a religious leader and educator from Naz-
areth, led hundreds of Arabs and Jews from all walks of life on a joint
journey to Auschwitz; the journey was called »From Memory to Peace.«
They were joined by 250 Jews, Muslims, and Christians from France. The
journey received extensive coverage in the local and international media.
Shofani said that one of his goals was to enable Arabs to »penetrate« into
Jewish minds and hearts in order for them to be able to understand their
neighbors. »I realized that there is no chance for true dialogue and rec-
onciliation unless we have in-depth understanding of this matter of the
Holocaust; unless we touch the suffering, the memory, the terminology.
It may not be sufficient to get us out of the mud we’re stuck in, but it’s
definitely necessary,«15 he said.
Salem Jubran, who took part in the journey, said to a Jewish partici-
pant that the Jews cannot bear the burden of this trauma on their own,
that the horror is too heavy and it affects all of humanity. He explained:
»Visiting Auschwitz made me understand the abnormal situation of Is-
rael – on one hand it is a mighty country with a strong army, and yet you
are so afraid, feel threatened: you are like a chronic patient.«16 In an at-
tempt to be optimistic he concluded, »Maybe a joint journey to the past
would help create a common future.«
Yad Vashem has a documentary film in Arabic about this journey on
its website, which contains interviews with several Arab participants.
One of the most moving images is that of a Muslim imam praying in Ar-
abic in Auschwitz while the entire group surrounds him, with solemn ex-
14 Auron (2010).
15 »We are There,« the documentary on the »From Memory to Peace« journey, is
accessible via www.yadvashem.org.il.
16 Conversation with Hava Pinchas Cohen: http://sites.google.com/site/havap-
inhasco/articles/article7.
145
sar ah ozacky-lazar
pressions and tears on their faces. Nazier Majali, an Arab journalist from
Nazareth and one of the organizers of the journey, explained that he and
a group of friends wanted to change the atmosphere between the two
communities after the events of 2000. He said they desired to create a
new discourse between them through understanding the Holocaust and
its influence on the Jewish people.17
The journey to Auschwitz apparently made a great impact on most of
its participants. A survey of them, conducted four years later, showed that
the personal experience caused a real transformation in the participants’
lives in many different ways.18 The interviews of the Arab participants
showed a variety of motives for joining the group, with several common
denominators: previous contacts with Jews; belonging to a family with
a communist background; previous actions of »swimming against the
stream« in their own society; and anger and bitterness towards Jews due
to previous confrontations and/or a family history of being uprooted.19
Visiting Auschwitz »brought the participants to the edge of emotional
experience that goes beyond any political and personal concepts,« wrote
the researchers, as they described the different points of »no return« that
caused a transformation among the Arab visitors. A young female par-
ticipant said »we were all there as human beings, nothing separated us
since we were all in the same status of human. The pain of that Jew [who
went through the Holocaust] is the pain of the entirety of humanity. The
Holocaust was a universal catastrophe. This was our feeling standing
there.«20 Some of the Arabs who took part in the journey were criticized
upon their return home, and were asked why they do not take Jews on a
parallel journey to sites of Palestinian pain in Israel. This oft-heard com-
parison was, in this case, set aside, probably because the initiative, leader-
ship, and organization was all Arab and it had clear goals.
Another initiative by an Arab in Israel was the opening of a modest
Holocaust museum in Nazareth in 2005. Attorney Khaled Mahamid
published a book titled The Palestinians and the Holocaust State in which
he repeated the argument that the Palestinian people had paid the price
of the Shoah in 1948 when the Europeans, as a result of their bad con-
science, had granted the Palestinian homeland to Jews as a basis upon
which they could build their state. And yet, he wrote, the Palestinians
had never investigated the Holocaust seriously, despite the fact that it af-
17 Nazier Majali, interview with the author, December 2011.
18 Shechter, Farhat, and Bar-On (2008), p. 84.
19 Ibid, pp. 56 ff.
20 Ibid, pp. 64 f.
146
fected their history, so he wanted to help them do so through the mu-

seum.21 Mahamid encountered different reactions from Arabs, from
claims that he was a »Zionist« to expressions of deep appreciation. He,
too, believed that the road toward true peace between the peoples passes
through learning and understanding the traumatic influence of the Ho-
locaust on the Jewish psyche.
Several initiatives by Arab activists developed as a result of the 2000
Intifada. These groups issued documents in which they presented their
future vision of their relations with Israel and of their own civil status in
that state. One of these documents, published by the Mada al-Carmel
Research Center in Haifa in 2007, and known as »The Haifa Declara-
tion,« contained a special paragraph dealing with Holocaust memory.22
It started with the intention to »reach historic reconciliation between the
Jewish Israeli people and the Arab Palestinian people,« and continued
with a demand for the state to recognize its responsibility for the injus-
tice it committed against the Palestinians during the Nakba in 1948, to
approve the right of return, and to acknowledge Israel’s »war crimes« in
the Palestinian territories. The writers then stated the following: »This
historic reconciliation also requires us, Palestinians and Arabs, to recog-
nize the right of the Israeli Jewish people to self-determination and to life
in peace, dignity, and security with the Palestinians and the other peo-
ples of the region. We are aware of the tragic history of the Jews in Eu-
rope, which reached its peak in one of the most horrific human crimes
in the Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis against the Jews, and we are
fully cognizant of the tragedies that the survivors have lived through. We
sympathize with the victims of the Holocaust, those who perished and
those who survived. We believe that exploiting this tragedy and its conse-
quences in order to legitimize the right of the Jews to establish a state at
the expense of the Palestinian people serves to belittle universal, human,
and moral lessons to be learned from this catastrophic event, which con-
cerns the whole of humanity.«23
This is a mixture of, on the one hand, sensitive and sincere personal
sympathy towards the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and, on the other
hand, a sophisticated repetition of the argument that the justification of
establishing a Jewish state at the expense of the Palestinians was deeply
21 Itamar Inbari, The Arab public is invited to learn about the Holocaust in Naza-
reth, Ma’ariv, 16 March 2005.
22 The full text of the Haifa Declaration can be found at http://www.mada-re-
search.org.
23 Ibid.
147
sar ah ozacky-lazar
connected to the Holocaust. But above all, this document reflected a pro-
found understanding of the role of the Holocaust as a deeply rooted issue
in Jewish-Arab relations, one that needs to be addressed by both sides,
despite the fact that the Arabs had nothing to do with it. Such an attitude
is possible only among Palestinians who live inside Israel and are deeply
familiar with their Jewish neighbors. Only they – in contrast to others in
the Arab World – can appreciate the impact of the Holocaust on Israeli
Jews as individuals and as a collective.
Collective Pains: Shoah and Nakba

In 2008, on the 60th anniversary of the Nakba and the establishment of
the State of Israel, the Islamic Movement in Umm al-Fahm published
a document bluntly intertwining the Shoah and the Nakba. It printed
identity cards of »returnees« and underneath mentioned the number six
million, suggesting that the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust
parallel the number of Palestinian refugees who had been uprooted and
exiled – a number that is obviously much exaggerated. This is an excep-
tional example of how the two national tragedies have been connected.24
Arab students in Israel are introduced to the story of the Holocaust for
the first time in the official education system in the ninth grade, when
they study general history and discuss World War II. The second time the
Holocaust enters the official curriculum is in the 12th grade, but it is only
for those few students who take history as a major. So the average Arab
high school graduate has a limited knowledge of the Holocaust, accord-
ing to a retired history teacher.25 Teachers try to stick to the textbooks,
which are mostly translated from Hebrew and are not adapted to the
Arab schools; as such, the books emphasize the Jewish point of view and
not universal lessons. Usually the students feel alienated from the subject,
and many of those young people make comparisons to the contemporary
situation of Palestinians in the occupied territories.
The absence of appropriate texts is partly filled by independent NGOs
and private initiatives. The first anthology about the Holocaust in the Ar-
abic language was published in 1988 by the Jewish-Arab Center for Peace
at Givat Haviva.26 The book had been supported and recommended by
the Ministry of Education, and a total of 10,000 copies were distributed
24 Umm al-Fahm/The Islamic Movement (2008).

25 Said Barghuth, Interview with the author, December 2011.
26 Orkin (1988).
148
to all Arab schools and libraries in Israel. Dozens of Arab teachers at-
tended special training sessions and workshops held by the Center, where
they met with Holocaust survivors and discussed ways of teaching this
sensitive topic in their schools. A similar program was started years later
at the Ghetto Fighters Center for Humanistic Education in northern Is-
rael. The center trained young Arabs to be guides in the local museum,
and thousands of Arab students visit it annually for tours and workshops.
Yad Vashem launched an Arabic website in 2008. The then Minister
of Culture and Science, Ghaleb Majadla (the first and only Muslim-Arab
minister in any Israeli government) spoke at the ceremony marking the
website’s launch. He began by saying that, as an Arab who lives among
survivors, he applauded the initiative not only as a commemoration of
the past, but also as a way of dealing with contemporary problems and
of supporting the struggle against racism, antisemitism, and neo-Nazism
everywhere in the world.27 Since the Internet is open and free to all, it
cannot be blocked by walls of hatred and censorship, he said, and he then
expressed his hope that thousands of Arabic reading people from around
the world would use the website to learn the truth about the Holocaust.
Prince Hassan of Jordan sent his own remarks for the occasion, the video
of which was later uploaded to the site.28 Indeed, Yad Vashem reported
168,000 visits to its Arabic website during its first year. However, this
number dropped dramatically to 94,000 in 2012. As a result, the institute
hired an expert to advise on outreach to »tough audiences« and was able
to almost triple the number to 242,000 visits-per-year using a targeted
online ad campaign.29 One of Yad Vashem’s highlights in recent years was
a photo exhibit on Muslim Bosnians who saved Jews during World War
Two and who were recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.30 Yad
Vashem continues to make serious efforts to bring groups of Arab teach-
ers and students to the museum, and holds special seminars for them.
More modest private individual initiatives also emerged after 2000.
History teacher Othman Khatib from Kalanswa, for example, created
a history program called »Taking Responsibility for the Other Among
27 The Arabic website can be found at www1.yadvashem.org/yv/he/about/events/

2008/arabic_site.asp.
28 Ibid.
29 Ofer Aderet, How Yad Vashem Markets the Holocaust in Arabic, Haaretz, 11 Feb-
ruary 2014.
30 Here it is worth mentioning Robert Satloff’s book Among the Righteous: Lost Sto-
ries from the Holocaust’s Long Reach into Arab Lands (2006), which contributes to
this case.
149
sar ah ozacky-lazar
Us – Young Arabs and Jews Study the Holocaust Together.« Khatib,

who won a prize from the teachers association for his program, did not
conceal his motives for the initiative. The program was designed to ex-
pose racism, stereotyping, and hatred of the »other.« It was meant, he ex-
plained, to show how the phenomena which had made possible the awful
events of the Holocaust still exist, and to teach the youth of both societies
about how dangerous these phenomena are.31
It is likely, however, that such initiatives only touch a small part of so-
ciety and cannot make a real impact. In 2008 Professor Sammy Smooha
from Haifa University conducted his annual Coexistence Index, a sur-
vey of mutual attitudes between Arabs and Jews in Israel. He included
a direct question about the Holocaust, and the survey delivered shock-
ing results: 40  of the Arab interviewees answered that they do not be-
lieve the Holocaust actually occurred and that so many millions of Jews
had actually been murdered – an increase from 28  two years earlier.
Smooha himself tried to »comfort« the public, attempting to explain
these results not as Holocaust denial but rather as a protest against the
Israeli-Jewish instrumentalization of the Holocaust and its memory as a
justification for Israel’s use of force towards the Palestinians.32 I tend to
agree with him and do not think Holocaust denial as such is widespread
among Arabs in Israel. Nazier Majali claims that Holocaust denial does,
in fact, exist on the margins of society, but he also explains that it is di-
rectly connected to the political situation in Israel and the humiliation
felt by Palestinians.33
A Knesset research paper about teaching the Holocaust in Arab schools
was published in the wake of Smooha’s survey results. It specified in de-
tail the very small number of Arab students and teachers who took part
in special programs on the Holocaust, recommending a significant in-
crease in participation. The paper included the results of yet another sur-
vey, one conducted by Yad Vashem, which showed that 58  of the Arabs
in Israel believed that studying the Holocaust in schools was needed; the
sentiment was particularly strong among youth, with 64  of people aged
24 and below advocating for more education on the Holocaust. Indeed,
in 2012, 1,500 Arab students went to Poland as part of their curriculum,
and the Ministry of Education declared that Holocaust Studies will soon
be obligatory in all Arab schools.
31 Arye Kizel, Taking the Responsibility on the other among us, www.e-mago.co.il/
Editor/edu-1904.htm (4 October 2007).
32 Smooha (2010).
33 Interview with the author.
150
Avihu Ronen, who has been teaching the Holocaust to Arabs for many
years in Givat Haviva and in Lohamei Ha’getaot (Ghetto Fighters Cen-
ter), published an analytical article about his experience.34 As an educa-
tor, he wrote, he believes that studying the suffering of the »Other« in
the context of Jewish-Arab relations is possible only by relinquishing the
feeling of being the »absolute victim.« The attitude towards the subject
matter (Holocaust and/or Nakba) must not be comparative, but rather
one of sharing and empathizing with different narratives. He suggested
that teaching methods should be based on mutuality, employing, for ex-
ample, team-teaching by Arab and Jewish instructors, and that the syllabi
should include subjects relevant to both Arabs and Jews. Teachers must
be ready to discuss any controversial subject. Ronen also recommended
that dealing with these issues should be an ongoing process and not a
one-time experience.
Studying the suffering of the »Other« can lead to a better understand-
ing, Ronen claimed, and it is most effective in establishing a genuine di-
alogue in a multicultural society. Unfortunately, in the current political
atmosphere in Israel, only few schools are engaged in such long-term and
sensitive educational initiatives.
War of Narratives
In 2010 the Lebanese-Christian-born author Gilbert Achcar, who now
lives in London, published a book titled The Arabs and the Holocaust: The
Arab Israeli War of Narratives, an English translation of the French origi-
nal.35 Achcar addressed the heart of the issue, »the war of narratives.« As
is the case concerning the events of 1948, there is a deep gap between the
narratives of the two peoples about almost everything – and the Holo-
caust as a major trauma in modern Jewish history is no exception. It is
natural for Arabs to interpret this tragic event from their own point of
view and according to their understanding of its implications for their
own history, Achcar claims.
Indeed, leading Palestinian intellectuals had already referred to this
»war of narratives.« Some stressed its universal lessons, such as Mahmud
Darwish, the Palestinian national poet who can also be considered »Arab
Israeli« since he had been born in Birweh in Western Galilee and had
lived as a citizen in Israel until 1970; Darwish speaks Hebrew and pub-
34 Ronen (2009), pp. 226-242.

35 Achcar (2009).
151
sar ah ozacky-lazar
lished his first works in Israeli journals. He was among 14 Arab intellec-
tuals who signed a petition calling for the cancelation of a conference on
Holocaust denial that was about to be held in Beirut in 2001.36 In several
of his poetic works he referred to the Holocaust and its survivors with
compassion, and said that however intense the hostility between Israelis
and Arabs might be, no Arab has the right to feel that his enemy’s enemy
is his friend, for Nazism is the enemy of all peoples around the world.
More recently, Marzuk Halabi, an Arab-Israeli poet and writer, wrote:
»I do not think a Palestinian can lose anything by understanding the Ho-
locaust deeply, beyond its influence on the Arab-Israel conflict.« He pre-
sented a question that does not yet have an answer: »Will the Palestin-
ians be able to remember the Holocaust as a distinctive event without the
shadow of their Nakba?«37
This »war of narratives« and the misunderstanding of the other side’s
interpretation of the past is indeed one of the main obstacles for recon-
ciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. Control over collective mem-
ory is an important means for politicians on both sides for strengthening
national identity and patriotism among their peoples, and the feeling of
victimhood is a strong tool for national mobilization. The Holocaust as
a global memory became one of the political instruments in this »war of
narratives.« The more hopeless the political situation seems, the greater
the use of the Holocaust by all sides becomes. If the two peoples cannot
find a way out of this reciprocal trap, we can expect further generations
of mutual suspicion and hatred, as it will not be possible to look toward
a peaceful future until accounts have been settled with the past. In this
regard the Palestinian citizens of Israel can play a major role in mediating
between the two sides because of their unique historical perspective and
ability to understand both sides.
36 Tom Segev, Arabs against Anti-Semites, Ha’aretz, 21 March 2001.

37 The Arabs and the Jewish Holocaust: Advanced understanding of Zionism, al-
Hayyat, 24 April 2010.
152
The Logic of Antisemitism
A Moroccan Immigrant Narrative about Jews in Sweden
Aomar Boum
In his work European Muslim Antisemitism, historian and sociologist

Günther Jikeli highlights the political and intellectual challenges schol-
ars face in dealing with the rise of anti-Jewish discourse among Euro-
pean Muslims. Jikeli notes that scholars fear that »naming the problem
contributes to further stigmatization of Muslim minorities« in Western
countries.1 Instead of avoiding the topic, Jikeli contends that »scholarly
discussions about antisemitism among Muslims in Europe are necessary
for detailed understanding of the phenomenon and its sources.«2 He en-
courages scholars to address the gap in research about the level of antise-
mitic and anti-Jewish discourse among European Muslims. By looking at
young Muslims’ views of Jews in Berlin, Paris, and London, Jikeli focuses
on »their experiences of discrimination, views on international conflict
and opinions of Jews.«3
This article examines Muslim views of Jews and their relations to Jews
through a political and historical discussion of the biographical experi-
ence of Ahmed Rami, a North African Berber living in Sweden. Through
this example I call for a nuanced understanding of the controversial phe-
nomenon of »Muslim antisemitism« and Holocaust denial. My reading
of Rami allows us to disaggregate »antisemitism« and »Muslim antisem-
itism« such that we see »antisemitism« not as an undifferentiated mono-
lith but consisting of many strands including »Muslim antisemitism,«
each with its shades of sociocultural colors and historical meanings. Un-
like many anti-Jewish voices in Europe that focus on Holocaust denial,
Rami gives little attention to World War II and the history of the Holo-
caust. Instead, he highlights classic antisemitic tropes, which encourage
his readers to create a perception of the Holocaust as being the byproduct
* This paper benefited from the insightful comments and suggestions of Sarah A.
Stein, David N. Myers, Thomas K. Park, Alan Steinweis, Philipp Gassert, and Ja-
cob S. Eder. I alone am responsible for any remaining inacurracies.
1 Jikeli (2015), p. 3.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid., p. 4.
153
aomar boum
of a »Jewish conspiracy.« Silencing the discourse about the Holocaust is

part of Rami’s script of its denial.
Born in Tafraoute, southeastern Morocco, in 1946, Ahmed Rami, a
former army officer, fled to Sweden following his central role in the sec-
ond coup attempt against King Hassan II in the early 1970s.4 After be-
ing granted political asylum and citizenship, Rami became a vocal public
figure of Islam in Sweden. In 1987, he established and began broadcast-
ing Radio Islam as a public program, ideologically oriented to the in-
creasing population of Muslims in Sweden, particularly in Stockholm.
Radio Islam was broadcast in Swedish for 35 hours per week. After a few
legal cases against Radio Islam between 1991 and 1996, Rami launched
the Radio Islam website (www.radioislam.org); it is currently based in the
United States and produces broadcasts in many languages. Rami success-
fully relied on the legal and operational flexiblity of the Internet to cir-
culate his political views about Palestine, Islam, and Jews while avoiding
further charges of indictment in Sweden and Europe.
Throughout his radio programs, online forums, reports, and inter-
views, Rami conducted a vehement anti-Israel campaign filled with
anti-Jewish political discourse. Many members of the Swedish govern-
ment objected to his negative focus on Jews and Judaism and declared
his criticism of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinian population during
the first Intifada as antisemitic. In 1990, his broadcasting permit was re-
voked, after which Rami was sentenced to six months in prison for in-
citing hate speech against Jews.5 Rami’s legal case was based on a Swed-
ish law passed in the 1950s prohibiting hate incitement against ethnic
groups. The law was invoked mostly as a reaction to the anti-Jewish Ac-
tion League of Sweden and the antisemitic propaganda of its founder,
Einar Åberg. Despite the fact that Åberg died in 1970, his racial ideol-
ogy and Nazi-style socialist-oriented antisemitism influenced students in
Swedish and other Scandinavian universities.6 Rami was exposed to these
antisemitic ideas during his studies at the University of Stockholm.
Many articles and reviews of Rami’s publications as well as media and
virtual platforms focus on the antisemitic and Holocaust denial aspects
of his work and opinions.7 The Anti-Defamation League commented
on Rami’s online hate speech thusly: »Rami has rationalized his bigotry
as support for Palestinian causes. While he has become a source of em-
4 Boum and Park (2016).
5 Tossavainen (2005), and Titelman, Enckell, and Bachner (2004), pp. 52-57.
6 Kaplan and Weinberg (1998), pp. 111-114.
7 Arvidsson (1994), and Bachner (1999).
154
the logic of antisemitism
barrassment for serious Palestinian activists, Holocaust deniers have un-

abashedly and enthuisiastically associated with him.«8
Although I hear many classic European antisemitic echoes and tropes
in Rami’s discourse about Jews and Judaism, I would argue that Rami’s
personal translation of antisemitism is framed through his experience
as a Moroccan immigrant and political refugee in Sweden. Despite its
European foundational script, Rami’s antisemitism is therefore slightly
different from many traditional antisemitic scripts. I contend that his
anti-Jewish views should be understood as part of a post-colonial Mo-
roccan political and Islamic idealism worldview.9 This idealism was built
around his understanding of the political and Islamic ideology of the
Moroccan state.
In this essay I turn my attention to Radio Islam’s focus on a central com-
ponent of Rami’s negative discourse on Jews and Judaism: the Moroccan
monarchy’s relationship to Moroccan Jews, as well as its attitude to Jew-
ish issues (including the Holocaust). I argue that linking the history of
the ruling Alaouite dynasty to Jewish roots is part of a politically-driven
ideological syncretism; such a connection mixes Islamic (Moroccan) and
Christian (Swedish) discourses in order to construct a new European Is-
lamic ideology about Jews and Judaism.10 At the core of Rami’s political
view of the monarchy is the asumption that it is »Jewish.« As such, the
post-colonial kings of Morocco, Rami contends, cannot represent the
Arab and Islamic identity of the nation.11 I claim that even as Rami oper-
ates within the traditional ideological framework of Europe-centered an-
tisemitic discourse, he offers a new brand of antisemitism characterized
by a fragmented and contradictory discourse on Jews.12
Unlike readings of Rami’s anti-Jewish discourse that focus on his neg-
ative views of Jews, I attempt to offer here a historically-grounded inter-
pretation that rests on larger ideological and political views, as well as the
social, religious, and economic realities faced by Muslims in Sweden.13
Despite his Swedish citizenship, Rami has never abandoned his ideal po-
8 Anti-Defamation League, Holocaust Denial: Ahmed Rami, ADL Archive,

http://www.archive.adl.org/poisoning_web/rami.html (12 June 2016).
9 Valentin Prussakov, Ahmed Rami’s Idealism, Radio Islam, 15 July 1997, https://
www.radio islam.org/islam/english/toread/pravda.htm (12 June 2016).
10 Radio Islam, La dynastie alaouite au Maroc: Une monarchie colonial juive,
https://www.radioislam.org/alaouites/hafid/franc-macon.htm (12 June 2016).
11 Ibid.
12 Bronner (2000), and Jikeli (2015), p. 6.
13 Lööv (2000), pp. 109-120.
155
aomar boum
litical dream of establishing an Islamic government in Morocco. During

the 1970s, Moroccan Jews were never seen as a political threat to Rami’s
Islamic and military revolution in Morocco, even though the Jewish pop-
ulation was far greater than it is today. Today there are fewer than 4,000
Jews in Morocco. Nevertheless, despite the near political and social in-
visibility of Jews, Rami sees the Moroccan monarchy as a feudal and co-
lonial institution controlled by »magical Jewish power.« He posits that
the monarchy’s ability to outlast its political enemies, including Ahmed
Rami, is the result of a Jewish conspiracy against revolutionary forces.
Rami’s antisemitic ideas of Moroccan Jews were primarly shaped by his
political and military background, as well as his failure to overthrow the
monarchy in the 1970s.
Using personal interviews, writings, and autobiographical accounts of
Ahmed Rami,14 I argue that his antisemitic philosophy is a muddled lay-
ering of culturally-influenced Islamic views about Jews and Europe that is
placed on top of Christian interpretations of Judaism among Muslims in
modern European society. The expressed purpose of this view is, I argue,
to undermine the legitimacy of the monarchy and the central role of the
king as Commander of the Faithful.15 Rami portrays Jews as »evil« and
links them to the Alaouite Moroccan dynastic sultans and post-indepen-
dence kings through a certain logic of rumor and defamation. Deploying
the radio and later the Internet, he describes the Moroccan monarchy as
»un-Islamic,« »Jewish,« and a »Zionist agent« of Israel that undermines
Palestinian human rights and the Islamic identity of Jerusalem.
Numerous works have been written about the (re)production, circula-
tion, and consumption of European anti-Jewish and antisemitic tropes,
concepts, and ideas. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion remains the most
widely disseminated antisemitic text among European youth who came
to know Jews as an »enemy« and »evil« entity responsible for the »ills of
modernity.«16 However, few works have focused on the influence of Eu-
ropean ideas about Jews on the belief systems of Muslim immigrants,
14 Rami lists on the Radio Islam website a number of his books, including his au-
tobiography. They are primarily written in Swedish. Although most of them are
accessible online, few are translated into English. These English translations in-
clude his biography A Life for Freedom (Ett liv för frihet) (1989); What is Israel
(Vad är Israel?) (1988); Israel’s Power in Sweden (Israels makt i Sverige) (1989);
Jewish Witch Hunt in Sweden (Judisk häxprocess i Sverige) (1990); Tabooed
Thoughts (Tabubelagda tankar) (2005).
15 Waterbury (1970).
16 Bronner (2000), p. 114.
156
in particular on young immigrants.17 In this essay I analyze Sweden as a

space where new North African and European discourses about Jewish-
ness are taking shape among a generation of young Muslim immigrants,
especially in the context of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict since the late
1980s. Before I discuss the case of Rami as an example of an emerging
post-Holocaust European Muslim discource on Jews, however, it is im-
portant to provide a short description of the relationship and interactions
between Jewish and Muslim communities in Sweden.
Jewish settlement in Sweden goes back to the 18th century, when
Jewish merchants began operating their businesses in Gothenburg and
Stockholm.18 In 1838, Swedish authorities started the removal of many
prohibitions placed on Jews who later benefited from legal protection,
were given civil rights, and were even allowed to hold political office.
Despite this early history, Jews were restricted from living in certain areas
until their full emancipation in 1870.19 The first Jewish community was
founded under the permission of King Gustav III. Later, other Jews from
Germany and the Netherlands established new communities that grew
with the arrival of East European Jews in the late 19th century. In 1920,
the Jewish population was over 6,000. After the Holocaust many survi-
vors of Nazi Germany sought refuge and a permanent home in Swedish
cities, mainly Gothenburg, Malmö, and Stockholm. Today the Jewish
population in Sweden is estimated at approximately 18,000 individuals.
Muslims in Sweden: Historical and Sociological Background

The first significant wave of Muslim immigrants came to Sweden in
the 1960s. In the 1930s there were 15 individual Muslims in Sweden.20
Despite the absence of official statistics on Muslims in Sweden, it is es-
timated that over 350,000 Muslims live in Sweden today out of a pop-
ulation of nine million.21 In the 1960s, Muslims came to Sweden from
Turkey and Yugoslavia, and they found work mostly as labor migrants
in manufacturing industries. By 1968, stricter immigration laws began to
be introduced, making it difficult to obtain a work permit in Sweden.22
In the early 1970s, at a time marked by the oil crisis and its negative con-
17 Jikeli (2010), pp. 1-13.
18 Zitomersky (1990), pp. 31-40.
19 Alwall (2000), pp. 147-171.
20 Sander (2004).
21 Otterbeck (2010), pp. 103-120.
22 Bevelander (2004).
157
aomar boum
sequences for European economies, new arrivals of immigrants were

limited to instances of family reunification and refugees from Iran and
Uganda. By the 1980s, Muslim immigration to Sweden was largely dom-
inated by refugees »from Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herze-
govina, Kosovo and Albania.«23
It could be argued that Muslim immigration to Sweden coincided
with three periods of recession: the 1970s, the 1990s, and the most recent
global recession in 2008. The last wave of Muslim immigrants arrived as
asylum-seekers and refugees from Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, and
recently Syria. The first generation of Muslim refugees who came to Swe-
den arrived after the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and during the Iran-Iraq
war. In addition to Iranian and Iraqi refugees, approximately 40,000 So-
malis arrived in 2011. The third largest group of Muslim immigrants in-
cludes refugees of Yugoslavian descent. Sweden’s Muslim populations
tend to live in segregated housing and neighborhoods on the outskirts of
Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. Jonas Otterbeck summarizes the
social situation of Muslim immigrants in Sweden as follows: »They have
had difficulties finding jobs and have settled in areas offering the cheap-
est possible housing. Because of segregation, many have a hard time mak-
ing social contacts that might help them get a better chance at succeed-
ing in the labor market. Furthermore, language skills are more difficult
to acquire, both for children and adults, due to the lack of contact with
native Swedish speakers. Because of the swift changes in the population
of such neighborhoods, which draw many incoming migrants and are
abandoned by others when their finance improve, the schools have huge
difficulties holding a good standard and are frequently given bad reviews
for having a large number of failing pupils. Instead families all too often
end up being dependent on the welfare system in areas which are socially
segregated […]. [T]he majority of people with a Muslim family history
seem to be in an unusually disadvantageous position.«24
Living mostly in Stockholm, Uppsalla, and Malmö, Swedish Mus-
lims are ethnically, linguistically, and religiously diverse. The population
represents communities of Turkish, Kurdish, North African, Albanian,
Iraqi, Iranian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Bosnian, Somali, Berber, Shi’a,
Sunni, Ahmadian, and Sufi identities.
23 Otterbeck (2010), pp. 103-120.

24 Ibid., p. 110.
158
Jewish-Muslim Relations in Sweden

Sweden hosts the largest and most diverse number of Muslim asy-
lum-seekers per capita in Europe. Swedish Muslim communities and
groups have different views of the role of Islam in Swedish politics and
society, as well as the importance of building social and religious rela-
tions with the Jews of Sweden. Radio Islam presents one example through
which we can study not only an anti-Jewish and antisemitic Euro-
pean view in the context of Sweden, but also the realities of recent Jew-
ish-Muslim relations in Sweden. As a North African Berber immigrant,
Ahmed Rami arrived in Sweden as an asylum-seeker and refugee. Unlike
structured and organized labor-based immigration, the nature of asylum
immigration did not prepare many Muslims from North Africa, Iran,
Iraq, and Afghanistan for a quick adjustment to life in Sweden at a mo-
ment when its economy was shrinking because of the 1973 oil embargo.
Jonas Otterbeck lucidly notes: »Lack of language skills and little knowl-
edge of the country have led to long adjustment periods […]. Added
to this, there are prevalent gender stereotypes about Muslim men and
women (the former are considered uncivilized and the latter suppressed)
which further restrict their ability to penetrate Swedish society […]. In a
labor market requiring high level of communication skills, these stereo-
types tend to set the odds against Muslims, or encourage social and eco-
nomic discrimination against them in the work environment.«25
Like many other Swedish cities, Muslims outnumber Jews largely be-
cause of the high birth rates among Muslims and high rates of intermar-
riage within the Jewish community. The city of Malmö in southern Swe-
den exemplifies the social and religious rift that undermines Sweden’s
official and international image of tolerance, co-existence, and human
rights. This divide is usually explained by economic inequalities and dif-
ferences in access to quality education between Jews and Muslims. For
example, in Malmö, the Rosengard neighborhood is usually regarded as
a breeding ground for Muslim anti-Jewish discourse. It is believed that
Muslims conflate Swedish Jews with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank
and its military policies towards the Palestinians. In addition to resurgent
Christian anti-Jewish perceptions in Swedish, the Arab-Israeli conflict
has been one of the driving factors in negative Jewish-Muslim relations in
Sweden. On October 30, 2014, Sweden officially recognized the Palestin-
ian State and opened the Palestinian Embassy in Stockhom, arguing that
this political act would help Israel and Palestine achieve durable peace
25 Otterbeck (2010), pp. 445-468, and Carlsson and Dan-Olof (2007), pp. 716-729.
159
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negotiations. Nevertheless, despite the negative implications of the Mid-

dle Eastern conflict on Swedish Muslim-Jewish relations, religious lead-
ership has attempted over the years to build a close rapport between both
communities through local associations and youth engagement. Official
religious Jewish and Muslim organizations became the dominant public
domain where Muslims and Jews debated and challenged their respective
stereotypes, as well as their political and cultural disagreements.
In 1949, the Turk-Islamic Association in Sweden for the Promotion of
Religion and Culture was formed in Stockholm by immigrants from the
Baltic region, becoming the first Islamic organization in Sweden. Immi-
grants from the Ahmadiyya movement in Pakistan and Swedish converts
established the first mosque in Gothenburg in 1976. As the number of
Muslims grew, their religious, social, and cultural associations increased
throughout Sweden, reflecting the heterogeneous nature of the group.
Today, there are three major Muslim organizations that have dominated
Muslim debates in Sweden. They include the United Islamic Congrega-
tion in Sweden, the Muslim Council of Sweden, and the Union of Is-
lamic Culture Centers in Sweden. These Islamic organizations tend to
work independently and advocate separate social and political platforms.
In 2000, the Swedish government severed its ties with the Church of
Sweden to assure equality between the different religious groups inside
the country. The Commision for State Grants to Religious Communi-
ties was set up to enforce these reforms and work on interfaith dialogue
and youth education. Jewish and Muslim leaders meet during the annual
gathering of the Commision for State Grants to Religious Communi-
ties without seriously engaging questions of xenophobia and hate within
youth. The Children of Abraham is one of the few organizations which
uses education to combat hate among youth. Given its focus on intro-
ducing youth to different cultures and religions in Sweden, the Jewish
community of Sweden has collaborated with its officers and introduced
educational seminars through Lund University to introduce students to
different and conflicting Israeli-Palestinian narratives. The objective is
to teach them ways to reject Islamophobia and antisemitism while they
struggle with accepting the other’s narrative. In 2004, the Church of
Sweden sponsored an initiative for a just peace in the Middle East, rec-
ommending the boycott of Israeli goods from the Palestinian occupied
territories and leading many Jewish organizations to boycott many sub-
sequent meetings of interfaith dialogue.
The critical stance of the Church of Sweden and other Muslim assoc-
itons vis-à-vis Israeli policies in the West Bank is one of the factors that
160
has influenced young Muslim Swedes to participate in anti-Jewish acts

targeting Jewish property and sometimes individuals in many urban cen-
ters. Youths have also been reluctant to engage the Holocaust as a subject
of national education. It should be acknowledged that Sweden is a trail-
brazer in Holocaust teaching and education. The Living History proj-
ect is an educational initiative introduced in 1997 throughout the Swed-
ish educational system to educate the public about antisemitism and the
Holocaust. Books on the Holocaust in different languages were distrib-
uted to every household. An international conference on Holocaust and
genocide studies was hosted by Uppsala University. In January 2000,
Stockholm’s International Forum on the Holocaust was attended by po-
litical figures and heads of state. Yet despite these governmental efforts to
prevent racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and xenophonia, Swedish
Muslim and non-Muslim youth have not approached the subject of the
Holocaust in the manner government policy-makers envisioned. Judith
Popinski, an Auschwitz survivor, commented in an interview with the
Sunday Telegraph: »Muslim schoolchildren often ignore me now when I
talk about my experiences in the camps […] because of what their par-
ents tell them about Jews. The hatreds of the Middle East have come to
Malmö. Schools in Muslim areas in the city simply won’t invite Holo-
caust survivors to speak any more.«26
Members of the younger generation argue that Swedish educational
and political authorities apply a double standard in national educational
programming by focusing on the Holocaust and ignoring other geno-
cides and human rights violations.27 A few Muslim Swedes of Palestinian
origin decline to commemorate the Holocaust, arguing that their own
families were driven out of their homes by Israel or that they suffered
the loss of relatives in Gaza. Despite these negative reactions to Holo-
caust education among certain circles of the Muslim community, largely
in Malmö, Young Muslims Against Antisemitism (which later became
Young People Against Antisemitism and Xenophobia) has become one
of the leading Swedish youth organizations in the area of youth educa-
tion about the dangers of antisemitism. Founded by Siavosh Derakhti,
the son of an Iranian family, the organization received little support from
members of the local Muslim leadership in Malmö. Derakhti focuses on
running educational programs bringing Muslim and Jewish youths to-
27 Short (2013), pp. 121-132.
161
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gether from different parts of Malmö. It is in this general and complex

context that we should understand Ahmed Rami’s personal narrative as
well as his cultural translation and rewriting of antisemitic Swedish his-
tory and memory.
Radio Islam and the Logic of an »Antisemitic Migrant« Narrative

In his writings about Morocco, Ahmed Rami implements a selective ap-
proach that uses antisemitic tropes and images as an instrument to dele-
gitimize the monarchy and the political system in Morocco. He uses ru-
mor to motivate supporters, and thus relies on Moroccan society to think
poorly of the monarchy and therefore plan its downfall. Defamation,
Lauren Derby argues, »can be outed as a means of vengeance.«28 On his
website, Rami uses slander against many historical sultans and post-in-
dependence kings of Morocco’s ruling Alawite dynasty as a means of re-
ligious and political delegitimization. Through defamation and rumor,
Rami deploys antisemitic imagery – the image of the deceitful, shrewd,
and all-powerful Jew – to mar the legitimacy of the monarchy by charac-
terizing it as a product of a »world Jewish conspiracy« against a free Mo-
roccan Islamic society.
In his 1989 autobiography Une vie pour la liberté, Rami clearly voices
his opposition to the political system in Morocco, and to the monar-
chy in particular. He provides a historical narrative explaining why he
left teaching to join the military in the 1960s. Rami was an active mem-
ber of the national student union known as the Union Nationale des
Etudiants du Maroc (UNEM) during his years as a teacher. Created by
Mehdi Ben Barka and other members of the Istiqlal Party, UNEM was
established after independence to bring together all the various student
associations active in the fight against the colonial system.29 A leftist na-
tionalist, Ben Barka, broke with the Istiqlal Party in 1959, thus playing a
primary role in establishing the rival political party Union Nationale des
Forces Populaires (UNFP). Ben Barka was key to »promoting the cause of
leftist groups around the world […]. This apparently put him on the list
of undesirables kept by most conservative security forces. It seems fairly
clear that Ben Barka’s role in arranging training for Moroccan leftist rev-
olutionaries in Syrian camps for the Palestinian resistance was known to
28 Derby (2014), p. 125.

29 Boum and Park (2016), p. 474.
162
the Mossad and hence to the Moroccan government and the Central In-
telligence Agency.«30
As a leftist political activist, and a companion of Ben Barka, Rami be-
gan his political career as a member of the Union Nationale des Forces
Populaires in 1961. Rami was also influenced by the pan-Arab and pan-
Islamic ideology of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Chakib Arsalan, and Khalid Ab-
dul Muhammad. At the same time, he was a regular listener to the pan-
Arab news of the Arab Voice broadcast from Cairo. Built on a socialist
agenda, the UNFP had a critical view of the monarchy. Between 1963 and
1966, Rami taught at four different high schools in Casablanca. During
this period he lived in the neighborhood of Derb Ghalaf, one of the most
disenfranchized areas of the city. It was here that his Islamic political
ideas developed. On March 22, 1965, student protests errupted in Casa-
blanca and other cities leading to many deaths among student protes-
tors. As a member of the UNFP, Rami was affected by the event and lost
many of his friends in the UNEM. It was at this moment, he argues, that
he decided to leave teaching and join the military. He wanted to achieve
an »effective revolution« to end what he called the feudal regime of Has-
san II. Rami states: »I decided to enter the army and to become an offi-
cer. As a leader of a division of soldiers I would be more dangerous and
more useful than simply campaigning with empty-handed students. The
normal pathway to a military career of an officer goes through the Royal
Militray Academy in Meknès. I enrolled there in the autumn of 1965, and
a few days later Ben Barka was arrested in central Paris. The disappear-
ance of Morocco’s leading freedom fighter confirmed [why] […] I en-
tered the system in order to destroy it.«31
After he graduated from the military academy, Rami found himself in
the middle of a failed coup attempt against Hassan II; the attempt oc-
curred on July 1971 and was led by Lieutenant Colonel M’Hamed Aba-
bou and General Muhammad Madbouh. Rami did not take part in the
1971 coup even though he was a commander of an armored tank division.
However, he did play a central role in the second coup attempt of August
10, 1972. In fact, Rami, along with the Minister of Defense, General Mu-
hammad Oufkir, was key in planning the coup. As Oufkir’s confidant,
Rami narrates in his biography how he had many conversations with the
30 Ibid., p. 92.
31 Ahmed Rami’s Revelations. Concerning the Coup d’état attempts in Morocco,
Rami.TV, http://www.rami.tv/eng/biog.htm (12 June 2016).
163
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Minister of Defense about dethroning Hassan II.32 Rami explains the

success of the monarchy in surviving numerous attempts to overthrow it
and establish an Islamic state as a result of its alliance with what he iden-
tifies as »all-powerful Jews.« In his writing, blogs, and interviews, Rami
displays photos of Moroccan kings with headlines connecting them to
Jews, Israel, and Zionism.
Rami made conscious editorial decisions to bolster his claims of a joint
monarchical and »Jewish« alliance. Indeed, a headline on the Radio Is-
lam website read: »Mohammed VI Blessed by a Rabbi.« He also posted a
picture of King Mohammed VI meeting Rabbi Shlomo Moshe Amar in
Tanger with the same headline. At the same time, he underlined the his-
torical antisemitic trope of what he sees as excessive Jewish political and
economic influence as well as a »global Jewish plot« to undermine both
Moroccan and Swedish sovereignty. Rami clearly makes a transition from
Morocco to Sweden when he talks about his claim of a Jewish conspir-
acy meant to undermine the world politically, socially, and economically.
Throughout his writings as a self-exiled Moroccan, Rami argues that his
historical fight against the monarchy is a form of combat with unequal
weapons. Therefore, he uses rumors as »improvised news« built on dis-
tortion and falsehood; these then become the weapons meant to weaken
the monarchy by linking it to Israel.
Historically, relations between sultans, and later kings, of Morocco
and leaders of the Jewish communities were built on the customary tradi-
tion of protection of Jews as their dhimmi subjects.33 Rami’s online writ-
ings about the monarchy’s relationship to Jews and Jewish political, re-
ligious, and economic leadership assumes secret and illegal partnerships
that sultans/kings avoided in public talks. This central ploy also points
to the assertion that the constitutional Moroccan monarchy is in »real-
ity a judaeocracy.«34 Rami strips the monarchy of its own political agency
by using ahistorical information. In 1997, Rami gave an interview to the
Russian newspaper Pravda where he argued that the monarchy is con-
trolled by hidden agents. Rami claims the monarchy has made sure that
the role of Jews in Moroccan national politics »must not be named at
all.« Therefore, Radio Islam’s main objective is to turn these »secret facts«
into public news.
32 Maroc Hebdo International, Interview with Ahmed Rami, Rami.TV, http://
www.rami.tv/eng/bio.htm (12 June 2016).
33 Kenbib (1994).
164
Despite the fact that Rami’s publications are in Swedish, his targeted
community is outside of Europe’s national boundaries, and this is why
his material is translated into 23 languages. On his Facebook profile,
Ahmed Rami describes himself as a »watchman, consciousness-raiser, and
rouser.« Against the background picture of a Moroccan flag that bears the
phrase »Allah Akbar« in green instead of the official green star, Rami ar-
gues for an Islamic Republic of Morocco as a substitute for the »Judaized
monarchy.« His stand against the official Moroccan flag is justified by
the claims that it symbolizes what he calls the »diabolic Freemasonry and
anti-Islamic Jewish origin of the Alaouite dynasty« in Morocco.35
The scapegoating of Jews has been used historically to mediate political
agendas and facilitate their achievements. In his work Conversos, Inqui-
sition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Norman Roth notes that
the fires of the Inquisition were primarily lit by a campaign not against
Jews but against conversos. Roth argues that »the motives of the [Inquisi-
tion] were chiefly, if not entirely, jealousy of the wealth and power of the
conversos.«36 Despite the fact that both Marranos and Moriscos were tar-
geted as secret Jews or Muslims, Marranos were subjected to more suspi-
scion and hostility. Swedish Muslim youth perceptions of Jews are largely
influenced by local debates about Israel. Many Muslim Swedes perceive
Swedish Jews as conspirators working with Israel against the interests of
Palestinians. I contend that Rami’s antisemitic translations are motivated
not only by negative religious interpretations of Judaism and the ques-
tion of Israel but also by Moroccan political aspirations. For Rami, the
scheming of Danish Jews against Palestinian independence is equal to the
collaborations of Israelis’ of Moroccan descent in maintaining Israel’s au-
thority over Palestinian lands.
Political jealousy is central to Rami’s whole edifice of Jewish influence
in Morocco. His ideology is built upon a key belief in the foundation of
an Islamic government. In the context of Morocco, the monarchy claims
its descent from the Prophet Muhammad, which gives it the political and
moral power and rights to govern. As commander of the faithful (amir
al-mu’minin), the king is not only a symbol of the nation but also a con-
stitutional guarantor of its political stability. This constitutional principle
provides an immunization against future political challenges to its power.
35 Ahmed Rami, Le drapeau »alaouite« n’est pas marocain !, http://abbc.net/

alaouites/drapeau/drapeau.htm (12 June 2016).
36 Roth (2002), p. 115.
165
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Rami takes advantage of the state’s limited control over public and pri-
vate information systems from the late 1980s, and the circulation of in-
formation online by blurring the distinction between rumor and news.
He uses widely circulated conspiracy theories about the monarchy as
a strategy to undermine the religious authority of the king. Rami has
succeeded in influencing many followers in the Muslim community of
Sweden and Europe because of his ability to describe his antisemitic dis-
course as »unofficial information.«37 He is not explicitly concerned with
the objective nature of the circulated information. On the contrary, his
discourse about the monarchy »thrives [because] the facts are uncertain,
neither publicly known nor easily discovered.«38 Rami’s appropriation of
classic antisemitism and his reproduction of traditional Moroccan anti-
Jewish tropes is an example for the larger debate about global antisemi-
tism today, which highlights how reference to Jews can be used for po-
litical purposes. It also illustrates the transformation of anti-Jewish and
antisemitic tropes when they are circulated across geographic, religious,
and linguistic borders.
The Holocaust: Two North African Narratives

In the last decade, debates about the Holocaust have increased, especially
in the context of controversies around the representation of the Prophet
Muhammad in Danish, French, and other Western newspapers and me-
dia outlets. On February 6, 2006, an International Holocaust Cartoon
Contest was organized by Farid Mortazavi, the graphic editor of the Ira-
nian newspaper Hamshahri, as a reaction to Western views of Islam,
which many Muslims have interpreted as expressions of Islamophobia.
On November 1, 2006, Abdellah Darkaoui, a Moroccan political car-
toonist, was named the contest’s winner. Darkaoui’s cartoon is not a de-
nial of the Holocaust; however, it represents the opinion of many in the
Middle East and North Africa, who see similarities between Israeli pol-
icies towards the Palestinians and the Nazi genocidal program against
Jews.
Unlike Darkaoui’s perspective, Rami advocates the view that the Ho-
locaust is a hoax and a Zionist fabrication used to justify the occupation
of Palestinian lands. Using the writings of Holocaust revisionists such as
37 Derby (2014), pp. 123-140.

38 Engle Merry (1984), p. 275. For a literature on gossip, see Gluckman (1963),
pp. 307-316; Ghosh (1996), pp. 251-256; White (1994), pp. 75-92.
166
Paul Rassinier and Robert Faurisson, Rami also downplays the number
of dead among European Jewry and the existence of gas chambers. Be-
coming one of the leading critics of the Moroccan monarchy and Israel
in the mid-1980s, Rami was largely supported by leaders of the Swed-
ish neo-Nazi movement, especially David Janzon. While Palestinian in-
tellectuals and Middle Eastern scholars of the Arab-Israeli conflict con-
stantly distanced themselves from his views about Jews and Judaism, the
revisionist American Institute for Historical Review saw in Rami’s at-
titudes towards the Holocaust an opportunity to disseminate pro-Nazi
propaganda to a non-traditional audience of the younger generation in
the Middle East. In March 2001, the widely circulated English-language
daily Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star cautioned against these types of
alliances in an opinion titled »Don’t Tolerate Hate.« It read: »The very
real challenges posed to the Arab world by the Jewish state demand far
too much attention to let a cabal of hate-mongers distract the authorities
in Lebanon or elsewhere in the region with their rantings about a fact
of history […]. Those who deny that the Holocaust took place at all are
worthy of nothing but universal scorn.«39
Unfortunately, it has long been fashionable in certain Arab circles to
deny or downplay the horrific crimes committed against Jews during
World War II. This misguided tendency serves only to undermine the le-
gitimate grievances that Arabs and their governments have against Israel
by eroding Arab credibility.40 The Daily Star’s statement was a response
to a Holocaust revisionism conference organized by Truth and Justice,
a Swiss group working in collaboration with the Institute for Historical
Review. The conference was planned to take place in Beirut. The Leb-
anese government opted to ban it. Rami was one of the leading figures
behind what would have been the first revisionist historical conference
on the Holocaust in an Arab country. Led by Jürgen Graf, Ahmed Rami,
and Mark Weber, this banned event had been intended to strenghten the
ties among independent »revisionist scholars of the Holocaust« in Eu-
rope, the United States, and the Middle East. The cancellation was seen
by Mark Weber, the director of the Institute for Historical Review, as
39 Don’t Tolerate Hate, Daily Star, 24 March 2001, http://www.ihr.org/conference/

beirutconf/010323dailystared.html (21 September 2016).
40 See: Institute for Historical Review, World Revisionist Conference Banned in
Lebanon Under Jewish Pressure, http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v20/v20n2p-3_Weber.
167
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part of the Zionist effort to stifle any debate around what they label as
the cult and industry of the Holocaust.41
Contrary to Rami’s ideas about the Holocaust, the Moroccan mon-
archy, namely Sultan Mohammed V, has always been discussed in the
context of World War II as a »savior« of Moroccan Jews.42 This »posi-
tive« image led members of the Moroccan Jewish community to launch
a campaign to recognize Mohammed V as a Righteous Among the Na-
tions. Rami’s entire ideological project is based on intertwining the Mo-
roccan Jewish community with the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the context of
a rising political Islam, remembering the Holocaust as a human tragedy
remains a risky project given its direct association with the State of Israel
in the minds of Middle Eastern and North African societies.
Despite the decreasing numbers of Jews in Morocco today, Judaism is
still seen as an integral part of Moroccan society by the general Moroc-
can population. Unlike many other Middle Eastern societies, and despite
the popular support by Moroccans for the Palestinians, the overall posi-
tive attitude of the monarchy and Moroccans towards Jews undermines
Rami’s antisemitic plan to destablize the monarchy – even as he attempts
to link the monarchy to a Jewish conspiracy against Palestine. It is this
organic perception of Jewishness as one of the multiple dimensions of
Moroccan society that allowed King Mohammed VI to call for the re-
memberance of the Holocaust. In a speech given at a ceremony launch-
ing the Aladdin Project, an initiative of a Paris-based foundation for re-
membrance the Holocaust, King Mohammed VI stated: »Amnesia has
no effect on my understanding of the Holocaust, or that of my people. In
fact, we perceive it as a wound to the collective memory, which we know
is engraved in one of the most painful chapters in the collective history
of mankind. People other than myself can rightly point out, in this re-
spect, that when it comes to the Kingdom of Morocco, this assertion is
not new, nor is it merely spoken words. The reason I say this today is to
make sure that Aladdin, your Reflection Group, sets for itself the prior-
ity objective of finally telling the rest of the world how Arab and Islamic
countries, such as mine, resisted Nazism and said ’No’ to the barbarity of
the Nazis and to the villainous laws of the Vichy government. The Com-
munity of Nations has for a long time accommodated itself with a selec-
tive reading of the history of this dark and regressive era. A reading that
allowed all fantasies to flourish by default. In what history or civic edu-
41 Ibid.
42 Wagenhofer (2012).
168
cation textbooks used in the West is it taught that Morocco had opened
its doors, as early as the 1930s, to European Jewish communities who had
seen the peril looming on the horizon?«43
This statement contrasts with Rami’s view of Jews in the Moroccan
context that he tries to disseminate through his website and writings. The
inability of Rami’s ideas about the Holocaust to penetrate the Moroccan
public is linked to the increasing interest in academic circles not only in
Jewish issues but also in the Holocaust itself. This interest is reflected
both in high school and university circles. For example, in November
2009, a group of Moroccan teachers attended the International School
for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem as part of a seminar on Holocaust
education funded by the Adelson Family Foundation. Even though the
Holocaust is not a subject studied in Morocco’s educational system, the
Moroccan participants expressed their desire to teach the history of the
Holocaust to their students. In September 2011, another group of univer-
sity students at Al-Akhawayn University, the Mimouna Club, organized
the first conference on the Holocaust ever held in Morocco. Although
the meeting was intended to »celebrate« the memory of »Mohammed V
as a Righteous Among the Nations,« students also invited Elizabeth Cit-
rom, a Holocaust survivor, who gave personal testimony about her expe-
rience as a survivor in front of a large audience of university students. De-
spite these official and private attempts to break the silence about World
War II in Morocco, a few voices continue to see these discussions as an
extension of the Zionist lobby within Morocco.
To conclude, Rami’s political project comes from and contributes to a
global circulation of antisemitic ideas facilitated by virtual networks. His
views about the monarchy and its »ties to Israel« take the form of per-
sonal accusations and turn into public rumor.44 During a widely-circu-
lated interview with al-Manar television, Rami argued, despite his host’s
objection, that Islam’s »battle is with the Jews« and that »the Jew is more
dangerous than the Zionist. […] Judaism is not a religion. Judaism is a
criminial and dangerous mafia.«45 In the absence of intimate social rela-
tions between Jews and Muslims in the Arab world today, many Swedish
43 Mohammed VI, quoted in Brad Greenberg, Arab King Calls Holocaust »Wound
to the Collective Memory of Mankind«, Jewishjournal.com, 9 June 2009, http://
www.jewishjournal.com/thegodblog/item/arab_king_calls_holocaust_wound_
to_the_collective_memory_of_mankind_2009060/ (12 June 2016).
44 Derby (2014), p. 126.
45 Rami Ahmed Speaks 2/4, YouTube, 15 October 2011, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=uo8-hDNKsCE (12 June 2016).
169
aomar boum
Muslims lack knowledge of the long history of Jewish-Muslim encoun-

ters in contexts such as Morocco. Rami arrived in Sweden after a failure
to change a political system in North Africa. In Stockholm, the polit-
ical and economic environment was already ripe for his increased so-
cial and religious radicalization, largely because of an existing culture of
Holocaust denial. Despite his influence on many youths in Sweden and
Europe who dream of his political Islamic project, his ideas about Jews
and Judaism have yet to find much support among different factions of
Moroccan society, including its youth. The memories of relatively posi-
tive Jewish-Muslim relations, despite the increasing physical absence of
Jews today, continue to be a counter-influence against the widespread
circulation of anti-Jewish ideas in Morocco’s public sphere. Yet, if edu-
cational programs that emphasize social co-existence remain absent from
the schools, Rami’s ideas will continue to be a regular topic of discussion
in cafés and in the idle talk of urban neighborhoods, especially if Moroc-
can Jewish communities continue to decrease over the coming decades.
170
Contested Visions
African American Memories of the Holocaust
Clarence Taylor
There are numerous books on Holocaust memory in the United States.

This literature examines what people know and think they know about
this horrific event, provides details on Holocaust memorials and mu-
seums, and gives insight on collective memory. Despite a number of
books that have focused on black and Jewish relationships in the United
States, few works explore African Americans and Holocaust memory.
The best work to date on the subject is Eric Sundquist’s Strangers in the
Land: Blacks, Jews, and Post Holocaust Memory. The book is a cultural
history and provides analysis of the relationship between African Amer-
icans and Jews. Sundquist spends some time examining African Ameri-
can responses to the Holocaust by looking at a number of literary works
by African American writers. However, Sundquist also ignores how Afri-
can Americans affiliated with the Christian Right have appropriated the
term Holocaust.1
Despite the dearth of scholarly works on African-American mem-
ory of the Holocaust, since the 1930s African American scholars, civil
rights activists, religious figures, and others have expressed their views
on Nazi anti-Jewish measures. These views range from those who ar-
gue that Blacks and Jews are the targets of racism, making them part-
ners in the battle to eradicate such social evil, to accusations that Jews
have never been allies of Blacks. Instead, they have played a major role in
what some call the »Black Holocaust.« This essay takes a look at some of
the ways African Americans have appropriated Nazi terror and the Ho-
locaust. I argue that since the 1930s there have been at least three notions
of African American Holocaust memory. The earliest expression of Afri-
can American Holocaust memory focuses on the shared suffering thesis.
Those who embrace this view argue that because both groups have had
horrific experiences with racial terror they were able to understand each
other’s plight. Indeed, this shared suffering made them allies in the battle
1 Sundquist (2005). Some other works that examine black attitudes to the Holo-
caust are: Thomas (1993); Mitchell (2009); Novick (1999), pp. 172-177; Höhn and
Klimke (2010), pp. 13-62.
171
clarence taylor
to eliminate racial discrimination. Scholars, religious figures, civil rights

activists, and even sports figures have expressed this view.
Greatly influenced by the growing tension between African Americans
and Jews, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, a group of scholars, writ-
ers, and black-nationalist activists compared the Jewish and black expe-
riences. But instead of pointing out the commonality, they stressed the
vast differences when it came to suffering. This group of black scholars
and activists assert that Jews falsely claim the mantle of the group that
has experienced the worse suffering of mankind. They even assert that
too much attention has been paid to the »Jewish Holocaust« and not
enough attention to the »Black Holocaust.« Many in this group declare
that the Black Holocaust was far worse than the Jewish Holocaust. Ac-
cording to proponents of the concept of a Black Holocaust, black suf-
fering has lasted much longer than Jewish suffering and has claimed the
lives of millions more black people than Jews during the Holocaust. The
most recent view of the Holocaust in this context is pushed by those as-
sociated with the Christian Right. These advocates claim that abortion is
tantamount to a policy of extermination and that Blacks in particular are
the targets of white elites and policy makers.
African Americans have found it useful to appropriate the Holocaust
notion for a number of reasons. Scholars, journalists, and others have
maintained that the Holocaust is the greatest crime in history. Historian
Peter Novick pointed out that the Holocaust has become the »benchmark
for oppression and atrocity.«2 Recognizing it as a benchmark for oppres-
sion, a number of African Americans have used it to emphasize their his-
torical suffering. Whether identifying historical injustices to black peo-
ple as similar to or worse than injustices to Jews, African Americans who
employ the Holocaust notion have attempted to gain recognition of their
suffering. Such recognition has political advantages. Supporters of repa-
rations for African Americans, for example, argue that slavery and other
injustices inflicted on them has placed them in a moral position to re-
ceive reparations.3 I maintain that all three of these views distort our un-
derstanding of history. While the shared suffering and interwoven des-
tiny is politically useful, all three are ahistorical and misleading.
2 Novick (1999), p. 14.

3 Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case for Reparations, The Atlantic, June 2014; Cooper
(2011), pp. 114-122; Brophy (2008).
172
contested visions
Shared Suffering and Interwoven Destiny

The earliest references to the suffering of the Jews under the Third Reich
were expressed by African Americans in the 1930s, when black-owned
newspapers reported on Nazi anti-Jewish policies. Felecia G. Jones Ross
and Sakile Kai Camara point out that between 1933 and 1945 two of the
leading black newspapers, the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago De-
fender, published a number of editorials and cartoons addressing Ger-
man terror against Jews. Some of the earliest editorials in the Courier and
Defender focused on the Nuremberg Laws and criticized Germany for
the treatment of Jews.4 But like most of the black press, both the Courier
and Defender opposed the campaign to boycott the 1936 Olympics held
in Berlin. Black athletes’ victories over German athletes would dispel no-
tions of Nordic superiority. The Courier portrayed the 1936 Olympics as
a war of ideologies and maintained that the key to defeating the »Aryan«
notion of racial superiority was the black athlete. The Courier promoted
what would later become a key narrative in the American story of the
1936 Olympics, a showdown between the famed track and field athlete
Jesse Owens and Hitler.5
At times, the black press equated American racism to German Nazism.
The Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., pastor of the largest black church in
New York, Abyssinian Baptist Church, and owner of the Harlem Peo-
ple’s Voice, wrote in that paper that »whenever the crackpots of human-
ity have looked for some victim upon which to vent their inhuman and
unjustifiable wrath, they have inevitably chosen the Jew and the Negro.
This has been true whether the Hitlers were of the old continent or of
this continent.« The black press also used illustrations to draw compar-
isons between southern segregationists and Nazism. One such illustra-
tion showed a United States Representative from Texas, Martin Dies, in
bed with Hitler. The caption reads »Persecution of Minorities and Hy-
pocrisy.«6 The People’s Voice even ran a series entitled »This is Our Com-
mon Destiny,« focusing on Blacks and Jews. The writer of the series,
Ben Richardson, asserted in a July 24 edition of the Voice that it was the
purpose of »this and successive articles to show the inseparable destiny
of the Jew and the Negro who are the common targets for home-bred
4 For the 1936 Olympic Boycott Movement see: Schaap (2008), pp. 63-82; Large
(2007), pp. 69-109; Barbara Burstin, The Next Page/The Nazi Olympics: The
Failure of a Boycott, Pittsburgh Gazette, 16 December 2012.
5 Jones Ross and Kai Camara (2005), pp. 36 f.
6 Ibid, pp. 39 f., Adam Clayton Powell, Soap Box, People’s Voice, 24 June 1944.
173
clarence taylor
and foreign fascists.«7 By associating American racism with Nazism, the

black press was trying to persuade its readers that like Jews in Hitler’s
Germany, African Americans were experiencing racial horrors that were
crimes against humanity.
A number of writers highlighted how black athletes embraced shared
suffering and challenged Nazi racism. The most noted figure in this liter-
ature was Jesse Owens. Indeed, Owens challenging Nazi ideology would
become a major theme in American popular culture. A number of chil-
dren’s biographies of Owens, for example, portray his accomplishments
at the 1936 Olympics as a triumph over Nazism.8
Even serious biographical works on Owens highlight the narrative of
Owens’ defeat of the Nazis’ attempt to prove their notion of Aryan racial
superiority. In his Jesse Owens: An American Life, William Baker writes
that Hitler anticipated showing off Aryan superiority. But black Ameri-
can Olympians »stole the show from their Aryan opponents during the
first week of the track and field competition.« Baker contends that »Jesse
Owens led the coup, smashing records, and claiming four gold medals
in the premier events.«9 Baker’s use of the term »coup« when writing on
Owens’ accomplishments illustrates how the author went so far as to por-
tray the 1936 Olympics not just as an athletic triumph but as a political
victory by the United States and its embrace of racial tolerance over the
racist Nazi regime.
No one promoted the view that Jesse Owens threw down the gaunt-
let before Hitler more than Owens himself. In his 1978 autobiography,
Jesse: The Man who Outran Hitler, the famed track and field star did not
just portray his accomplishments at the 1936 Olympics as a triumph in
the world of sports. Instead, it became a triumph in global politics. In
chapter five, Owens declared that in »August 1936, I boarded a boat to
go back across the Atlantic Ocean to do battle with Adolph [sic !] Hitler,
a man who thought all other men should be slaves to him and his Aryan
armies.«10
Even though he claimed in his autobiography that in 1936 he recog-
nized that millions of Jews would be dead by the end of World War II,
Owens contended that African Americans, particularly himself, were also
7 Ben Richardson, This Is Our Common Destiny: Negro, Jew United Thru His-
tory by Persecution, The People’s Voice, 24 July 1943.
8 Time for Kids, Jesse Owens: Running into History (2008), pp. 1-3, and Buckley
(2015), pp. 48-75.
9 Baker (1986), p. 2. For another good biographical work also see: McRae (2003).
10 Owens (1978), p. 63.
174
contested visions
major targets of Hitler. He maintained that in 1936 »Hitler had an even

better target than the Jews – the United States Olympic team.« Accord-
ing to Owens, Hitler specifically targeted the United States’ track and
field team because it was made up of a significant number of African
Americans. »We were everything Hitler hated.«11 Owens declared that Af-
rican Americans were the major group on Hitler’s radar in 1936 because
unlike Jews, Poles, and other white ethnic groups the Nazi leader wanted
»kneeling at his feet,« they did not have to have »their beliefs written
on their very skins.« Owens even separated himself from his black col-
leagues. »But in particular, Hitler hated my skin. For I happened to have
been the one who had set world records in the 100- and 200-yard dashes
less than a year before, and I had been dubbed the ’world’s fastest hu-
man.’«12
Even though Owens overplayed the victimization of African Amer-
icans when compared to Jews, his major effort was to depict African
Americans, along with Jews, as targets of Nazism. The dominant narra-
tive of Jesse Owens challenging Hitler’s racist notions of Blacks, Jews, and
others has become a central theme of Holocaust memory. The narrative
is even promoted by America’s national Holocaust Museum. Under the
category »Nazi Olympics, Berlin 1936« on its website, the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum has a wealth of information, including
photos of black athletes and captions detailing their success at the games.
The themes of shared suffering and interwoven destiny were also ma-
jor ones for the noted African American scholar W. E.B. Du Bois. In his
1952 essay entitled The Negro and the Warsaw Ghetto, Du Bois focused
on his three trips to Eastern Europe. The first one was made when he
was studying in Wilhelmine Germany in 1893. Recalling a conversation
he had with his schoolmate Stanislaus Ritter von Estreicher concerning
race, Du Bois informed him of what he thought was the only race prob-
lem in the world, the plight of African Americans in the United States.
Von Estreicher, however, told Du Bois about the persecution of Poles and
how they faced racial discrimination in education and employment, and
how they were denied the right to speak their own language under Ger-
man control. Du Bois expressed astonishment at his classmate’s observa-
tions because he had always associated racism with color, slavery, and Jim
Crow. But as he traveled to other parts of Europe and especially to Gali-
cia, Hungary, and Poland, Du Bois confessed that he »realized another
11 Ibid., pp. 71 f.
12 Ibid.
175
clarence taylor
problem of race and religion.« He »gradually became aware of the Jewish

problem of the modern world and something of its history.« This lesson
was made clearer when he and von Estreicher were in a small German
village where they faced hostility from the locals. Du Bois’ friend assured
him that the hostility had nothing to do with Du Bois, but rather it was
because the villagers thought von Estreicher was Jewish. Du Bois wrote:
»I was astonished. It had never occurred to me until then that any exhibi-
tion of race prejudice could be anything but color prejudice.«13
Du Bois’ second trip to Poland came in 1936 while Hitler was in power.
In Berlin he »sensed something of the Jewish problem and its growth in
the generation since my student days.« When he visited a Jewish quarter,
Du Bois admitted feeling uneasy. He described that at a teacher’s home
where there were some Americans and Germans, the teacher defended
the Nazi program. The Nuremberg Laws had been adopted in 1935, mak-
ing Jews non-citizens of Germany and denying them a number of rights,
including marrying anyone who was »Aryan« and the right to engage
in civic life. When he entered Poland one day after midnight, Du Bois
wrote that it was »dark – dark not only in the smoke, but in the souls
of its people, who whispered in the night as we rode slowly through the
murk of the railway yards.«14
Du Bois’ final visit to Poland was in 1949, just a few years after the de-
feat of Nazism. He confessed that although he had witnessed a number
of racial horrors, including a race riot in Atlanta, »nothing in my wildest
imagination was equal to what I saw in Warsaw in 1949.«15 He claimed
that the devastation was unimaginable to him because he could not con-
ceive that Germany, a country with »outstanding religious institutions
and literature and art« would deliberately carry out a program that would
lead to the »complete and utter destruction« of Poland.
Du Bois’ three visits, particularly to the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto,
resulted in »not so much [a] clearer understanding of the Jewish problem,
as it was a real and more complex understanding of the Negro problem.«
According to Du Bois, the »problem of race was not even solely a matter
of color and physical and racial characteristics, which was particularly a
hard thing for me to learn, since for a lifetime the color line had been a
real and efficient cause of misery.« The lesson for Du Bois was that the
race problem »cut across lines of color and physique and beliefs and sta-
13 Du Bois (1970), pp. 250 ff.

14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., p. 252.
176
contested visions
tus and was a matter of cultural patterns, perverted teaching and human
hate and prejudice, which reached all sorts of people and caused endless
evil to all men.« His visit to the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto helped move
him away from what he tagged as a »certain provincialism to a broader
conception of what the fight against race segregation, religious discrim-
ination, and the oppression by wealth had to become if civilization was
going to triumph and broaden in the world.« Noting Stanislaus Ritter
von Estreicher, who was killed because he refused »to be a stoolpigeon for
the Nazis in conquered Poland,« Du Bois credited his former classmate
with realizing that »behind the Polish problem lay the Jewish problem
and that all were one crime against civilization.«16
Invoking the theme of interwoven destiny, Du Bois contended that
Blacks and Jews also faced growing class divisions in their communi-
ties that lead to further political divisions. Such a division, he claimed,
should lead Blacks and Jews as well as other groups to »reassess and refor-
mulate the problems of our day, whose solution belongs to no one group;
the stopping of war; increased expenditure for schools better than we
have or are likely to have in our present neglect and suppression of educa-
tion; the curbing of the freedom of industry for the public welfare; and
amid all this, the right to think, talk, study, without fear of starvation or
jail. This is a present problem of all Americans and becomes a pressing
problem of the civilized world.«17
The black religious community also championed the theme that suf-
fering leads to an interwoven destiny between Blacks and Jews. Martin
Luther King Jr. was the best-known black ministerial figure who argued
that suffering drew Blacks and Jews together. King spoke on the ways
racism affected both Blacks and Jews on several occasions. One such ex-
ample is his speech at the National Biennial Convention of the Ameri-
can Jewish Congress in May 1958. On this occasion, King said: »One of
the history’s most despicable tyrants, Adolph Hitler, sought to redefine
morality as a god exclusively for the Aryan race. He bathed mankind in
oceans of blood, murdering millions of Jews, old and young, and even
the unborn.« According to King, although African Americans did not ex-
perience the viciousness of Nazism, they were aware that proponents of
Aryan racist doctrine would »encompass them.« Thus, that is why Afri-
can Americans supported defeating Hitler.18
16 Ibid., p. 254.
17 Ibid., pp. 254 f.
18 Speech by Martin Luther King Jr. at the National Biennial Convention of the
American Jewish Congress (May 1958), http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/
177
clarence taylor
Equating American racism with Nazism, King told his audience that
Blacks and Jews faced a common enemy. He declared that there were
»Hitlers« in America »both in high and low places. As the tensions and
bewilderment of economic problems become more severe, history’s
scapegoats, the Jews, will be joined by new scapegoats, the Negroes. The
Hitlers will seek to divert people’s minds and turn their frustrations and
anger to the helpless, to the outnumbered. Then whether the Negro and
Jew shall live in peace will depend upon how firmly they resist, how ef-
fectively they reach the minds of the decent Americans to halt this deadly
diversion.«19
Black Holocaust
While the argument that a common form of suffering leads to an inter-
woven destiny between Blacks and Jews is still used by some today when
examining Nazi persecution, others have rejected this view. Instead, they
argue that people of African origins have experienced a far greater crime
against humanity than the Holocaust. They assert that black people have
experienced a »Black Holocaust.«
There are scholarly works that detail the history of black victims of Na-
zism. These works on Nazi persecution of people of African origins, how-
ever, should not be confused with those who argue that Blacks have faced
a far worse plight than Jews.20 The idea of a Black Holocaust has its or-
igins, in part, in the late 20th century when tension between Blacks and
Jews increased. This tension was due to a number of high-profile events,
including the 1968 New York City Teachers Strike and the 1971 Newark,
New Jersey, Teachers Strike that pitted predominantly black communi-
ties against teachers’ unions that consisted of a predominantly Jewish
membership. A number of urban riots where businesses, many owned by
Jews, were targeted for looting helped increase tensions between Blacks
and Jews. In addition, black separatists in the Student Nonviolent Coor-
dinating Committee (SNCC) and the Congress of Racial Equality man-
aged to win resolutions expelling white members.21
primarydocuments/Vol4/14-May-1958_AddreddBiennialConv.pdf (15 Septem-

ber 2016).
19 Ibid.
20 Lusane (2002), and Carr (2012).
21 Carson (1995), pp. 236-240; Kaufman (1995); Pritchett (2003), pp. 191-220; Go-
lan (2002), pp. 108-139.
178
contested visions
Growing tensions between Blacks and Jews can also be attributed to

Black Power advocates who identified the race struggle in the United
States as a national liberation struggle, similar to the ones in Africa, Asia,
and the Middle East. These struggles involved people of color fighting
whites who attempted to take their land and subjugate them. Many Black
Power advocates placed the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in
this context. They publicly voiced their support for the Palestinian strug-
gle, labeling Israel as an imperialist aggressor that took land from the Pal-
estinians. For example, in an article in SNCC’s 1967 newsletter, Ethel Mi-
nor argued that the Israel Palestine conflict was an attempt by Zionists to
gain land and by doing so they committed atrocities against Arabs. This
position led Jewish organizations to criticize Black Power advocates and
to paint them as antisemitic.22 The growing tensions led some to ques-
tion the role that Jews played in the black freedom struggle.
By the 1980s, some black-nationalist scholars, leaders, and activists
pushed a narrative that the relationship between Blacks and Jews was an
adversarial one. They appropriated the term »Holocaust,« arguing that
people of African origins experienced a Black Holocaust. Although there
are differences in their definition, its proponents argue that the Black
Holocaust began much earlier than the Jewish Holocaust and was far
more devastating. Some advocates of the Black Holocaust maintain that
Jews played a major role in the event, profiting off of black suffering.
Moreover, these proponents assert that the history of the Black Holo-
caust has been purposely eliminated from the historical record by whites
in an attempt to keep Blacks ignorant of the objective of whites, particu-
larly to maintain domination.
One of the most noted champions of the Black Holocaust thesis was
the late John Henrik Clarke, Professor and Chair of the Black and Puerto
Rican Studies Department at Hunter College, City University of New
York. Clarke wrote extensively and gave a number of speeches on the
Black Holocaust. In one of his most noted works, Christopher Columbus
and the African Holocaust: Slavery and the Rise of European Capitalism,
Clarke argued that Columbus’ voyages marked the start of global capital-
ism and of European colonial domination of the world. A major reason
for European economic dominance was African slavery.23 But the start
of the African Slave trade was also the start of the Black Holocaust. Be-
fore European domination of the continent, according to Clarke, Africa
22 Carson (1995), pp. 267 f.

23 Clarke (1993), p. 15.
179
clarence taylor
consisted of the most advanced civilizations in the world. He maintained

that Africa experienced a »Golden Age,« when empires such as Mali,
Ghana, and Egypt smelted iron, built irrigation systems for farming,
and made advancements in architecture. Europe, on the other hand, was
backward. But because Europeans were able to make advances in warfare,
they were able to overthrow the great African powers and reduce Africans
to slaves in order to make profits.24
For Clarke, Europeans were responsible for the worst crime in human
history. The Middle Passage was »our holocaust.« »It is our holocaust
that started 500 years ago and it is not over. We do not start our count
at 6 million, we start counting at 60 million and we have just begun to
count.«25 Clarke distinguished himself from other advocates of the Black
Holocaust by not denying the Jewish Holocaust took place. According to
Clarke, it was a horrible event. But he denied its severity by claiming that
there was »no comparison between this tragedy and our tragedy, which
was the greatest single crime in the history of the world.«26
The Jewish role in the slave trade has been a major focus of Black
Holocaust advocates. Clarke proclaimed he placed no special emphasis
on Jewish involvement in the African slave trade. However, in a written
response to Henry Louis Gates’ New York Times op-ed piece accusing
black nationalists of distorting the history of the Jewish role in the Af-
rican slave trade, Clarke defended the Nation of Islam’s The Secret Rela-
tionship Between Blacks and Jews, a text that accuses Jews of creating the
Black Holocaust. He claimed that it was a competent piece of research.
The »documentation is good. Instead of complaining about the foot-
notes, Professor Gates should read some of the footnotes and the books
they refer to […].« He went on to claim »Jews who lived in slave trading
countries participated in the slave trade as citizens of the respective coun-
try. He claimed that he placed no »special blame on Jewish people who
are white Europeans. I offer no special vindication either. Their behav-
ior in relationship to non-Europeans is basically the same as other Euro-
peans.«27
While Clarke claimed that he did not place a special emphasis on the
role of Jews in the African Slave trade, the Nation of Islam (NOI) accuses
Jews of being the major perpetrators of the Black Holocaust. The NOI,
the most significant black-nationalist group in the history of the United
24 Ibid., pp. 15, 37-46.
25 Ibid., p. 93.
26 Ibid., pp. 93 f.
27 John Henrik Clarke, A Dissenting View, Liberator Magazine, 29 June 2008.
180
contested visions
States, is an African American nationalist Islamic organization created

in 1930. The group contends that the natural religion of black people is
Islam and that they are God’s chosen people. Whites, according to NOI
doctrine, are devils who dethroned black men from their natural posi-
tions as rulers of earth. But after 6,000 years of white rule, Allah will
soon destroy the white devils and restore black people to their rightful
position as rulers.28
Louis Farrakhan, who became leader of the Nation of Islam in the late
1970s, was fixated on what he claimed was the wickedness of Jews. Since
becoming leader of the NOI, Farrakhan has appropriated classic antisem-
itism that dates back to the European Middle Ages. Those who embraced
classic antisemitism have portrayed Jews as outsiders who have been ma-
nipulative, and have sought political dominance and power. Farrakhan
has exploited the myth of the omnipotent political power of Jews in the
United States. In a speech he asserted that since they have not been able
to defeat him, Jews »use the stranglehold that they have over the gov-
ernment.«29 In its Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews, the NOI
claims that Jews have been accused throughout history of economic ex-
ploitation and have been thrown out of countries for their actions. »But
this is not the only charge made against Jews. Jews have been conclusively
linked to the greatest criminal endeavor ever undertaken against an en-
tire race of people – a crime against humanity – The Black Holocaust.
They were participants [in] the entrapment and forcible exportation of
millions of black African citizens into the wretched and inhuman life of
bondage for the financial benefit of Jews. The effects of this unspeak-
able tragedy is still being felt among the peoples of the world at this very
hour.«
Distorting the historical record on slavery, the NOI insists that there
was »irrefutable evidence that the most prominent of Jewish pilgrim fa-
thers kidnapped black Africans disproportionately more than any other
ethnic or religious group in New World history and participated in every
aspect in the international slave trade.« The Nation of Islam proclaims
that the enormous wealth of Jews »was acquired by brutal subjugation«
simply based on race.30
According to the Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Jews
played a major role in financing Columbus’ voyage. The NOI even sug-
28 Muhammad (1973), pp. 36-102.

29 Taylor (2002), p. 158.
30 Historical Research Department of the Nation of Islam (1991), p. vii.
181
clarence taylor
gests that Columbus was a »secret Jew« who brutalized and enslaved the
indigenous population.31 Not only were Jews dominant in the African
slave trade, but they were also slaveholders. Jews owned, bought, and sold
slaves. »The dominance of trade by the Jewish community made them
the most prominently poised of any group to exploit the slave markets.«32
The Christian Right and Holocaust Memory

The Black Holocaust notion has not only been advocated by black na-
tionalists; in the early 1980s, with the rise of Jerry Falwell and his po-
litically active Christian organization Moral Majority, members of the
Christian right pushed their own appropriation of the Holocaust con-
cept. They argued that millions of innocent unborn children were vic-
tims of abortion, which they referred to as »Holocaust.«33 By the 1990s
some on the Christian Right even argued that unborn African-American
children were being slaughtered by abortion. Since proportionately black
women outnumber white women undergoing abortions, some on the
Christian Right maintain that there is a hidden racist agenda meant to
exterminate Blacks by killing babies. As such, they consider this hidden
agenda a form of genocide carried out by the white elite who, according
to the Christian Right, are running the country.
One vocal advocate who considers abortion as part of the Black Ho-
locaust is Mark Crutcher, a white pro-life activist who is president of
Life Dynamics Incorporated. Life Dynamics is a pro-life advocacy group
that trains activists and conducts seminars. Life Dynamics also uses a
legal strategy to end abortion by encouraging women to take legal ac-
tion against doctors who performed abortions on them. Members of the
group have also used a mailing campaign and wrote letters to doctors to
discourage them from performing abortions.34 In 1996 Crutcher pub-
lished Lime 5: Exploited by Choice, a book that claims there were count-
less numbers of deaths due to abortions. Life Dynamics has also pro-
duced the film Maafa 21: Black Genocide in 21st Century America. The
film maintains that an American elite profited financially from slavery.
Slaves were assets but as free men and women they became a »liability.«
31 Ibid. pp. 13 ff.
32 Ibid. pp. 15-18.
33 There are a number of books on abortion as a form of the Holocaust, including:
Powell (1981); Kelly (1981); Crutcher (1996); Wohlberg (2015).
34 Life Dynamics Incorporated, About Us: https://lifedynamics.com/about-us/
(15 September 2016).
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contested visions
The elite felt that the freedom of four million people would bankrupt
the economy due to a greater tax burden. Moreover, because of their sup-
posed criminal nature, Blacks’ violent crime would increase. Their free-
dom would also lead to overcrowding communities. In addition, many
feared a mass migration of Blacks from the South to the North, leading
to competition for jobs with white workers. Crutcher also accuses the
elite of being scared to death over the prospect of miscegenation because
it would result in the mongrelization of the white race.
The filmmaker argues that among the strategies used by the wealthy to
address the »Negro dilemma« is negative eugenics, or restricting the birth
of »inferior beings.« Instead of using overt racist language, the advocates
of negative eugenics used coded language, arguing their objective was to
get rid of the feeble minded, unfit, imbecile, immoral, and criminal el-
ements in a society. This movement spread among industrialists and the
same corporations that made millions from slavery were willing to spend
millions to get rid of people of African origins.
The industrialists who supported the eugenics movement were not
willing to come out in the open. Instead, they hired crusaders to speak
for them. According to Crutcher, Margaret Sanger became their pri-
mary spokesperson. The film notes she was the president of the Amer-
ican Birth Control League, which would later become Planned Parent-
hood. Crutcher argues that the American Birth Control League became
the driving force behind the eugenics movement. The film claims that
the same coded language of imbecile, feeble minded, and the unfit was
used to push their agenda of birth control. But her objective was the
same as the eugenics movement, eliminating black people. To accom-
plish this objective Sanger tried to get black people to practice birth con-
trol. Crutcher’s objective is clear. He attempts to link the American Birth
Control League, headed by Margaret Sanger, to the Nazis and member
of the eugenics movement. All had allegedly the same objective, to elim-
inate black people.
The film distorts Sanger’s views by arguing that she called for the poor
to be placed in camps until they develop better moral conduct, thus im-
plying she was a supporter of concentration camps. But it completely ig-
nores Sanger calling for social and moral uplift training among the poor.
The film even claims that by the 1930s the public was becoming aware
of the association between the Nazis and the American Birth Control
League. Key words like »control« were a problem. So, in 1942 the Ameri-
can Birth Control League changed its name to Planned Parenthood. But
the name change did not change the group’s agenda. Maafa 21 declares
183
clarence taylor
that Planned Parenthood wants to eliminate the black race by killing its
babies.
Although many of the proponents of this form of the Black Holo-
caust are white evangelicals, some African Americans associated with the
Christian Right have also equated abortion to the Holocaust. A number
of African Americans appear in Maafa 21, including the Rev. Clenard
H. Childress, founder of BlackGenocide.org and New Calvary Baptist
Church in Montclair, New Jersey. Childress argues that Planned Parent-
hood pushes the eugenics agenda and is committing a genocide of Afri-
can Americans. On his website Childress writes that »pro-abortion ad-
vocates attempt to justify abortion by stating that there are inadequate
resources to care for all unwanted babies if they are not killed by abor-
tion.« The page has three sections of photos, those of the »Final Solu-
tion,« slavery in the United States, and aborted babies. The film ends
with Rev. Johnny Hunter of the Life Education and Resource Networks
arguing that abortion clinics are located in black neighborhoods to kill
African Americans. Hunter’s Life Education and Resource Networks is
the largest African-American anti-abortion group in the United States,
operating in 27 states. He claims that abortions have killed more black
people than lynching.
Conclusion
This essay has looked at the various ways African Americans have in-
voked Holocaust memory. But does the use of the Holocaust in the
ways described in this essay give us a better understanding of the African
American experience, as so many of is proponents claim? Equating the
Holocaust with the black experience and especially with slavery, as advo-
cated by some who embrace the shared suffering thesis, gives us little un-
derstanding of the histories of Blacks and Jews. Claiming that the Middle
Passage and slavery are the same as the Holocaust robs us of fully under-
standing the uniqueness of these experiences.
Contrary to its proponents’ claim of providing an accurate account
of the African-American experience, the Black Holocaust notion dis-
torts the historical record. To use it in similar ways as proponents of the
Black Holocaust throws little light on the history of slavery over three
and a half centuries. As historians note, the experience of slavery was nei-
ther one-dimensional nor was it a static experience. Instead, one has to
consider both time and space to understand the slave experience. Thus,
northern slavery differed from southern slavery, and the slave experience
184
contested visions
in the 17th century differed from slavery in the 18th century. In addition,
the advocates of a Black Holocaust pay a great deal of attention to vic-
timization and ignore slaves as active agents. There is no discussion of
how they developed slave cultures and tried to build viable lives despite
their hardships.
The Holocaust refers to a certain event in history that Jews experi-
enced. Key to the Holocaust was the so-called »Final Solution.« As Eric
Sundquist notes when discussing the Black Holocaust, there was no fi-
nal solution. Africans were reduced to property to exploit their labor. No
doubt in the Caribbean slave owners worked Africans to death and re-
placed them with new Africans, while in the U. S. mainland, owners had
slaves reproduce so as to assure an adequate supply of slave labor. None-
theless, this method’s objective was to use their labor for profit, not to
eliminate them. One may ask what about the numerous race riots, such
as Springfield, Illinois, in 1908, Washington, D. C., Chicago in 1919, and
Tulsa in 1921? These racial attacks aimed at eliminating black people from
these cities. However, one cannot take these events and conclude that
this was a national agenda. Moreover, neglect, deprivation, inadequate
housing, high rates of incarceration, and the drug trade in black neigh-
borhoods does not add up to a national government campaign to elimi-
nate African Americans or a final solution. As Sundquist notes about the
Holocaust, the »ultimate ideological goal of annihilation was never su-
perseded, there was tension but never a breach between exploitation and
extermination.«35
To argue that there was no Black Holocaust does not dismiss the hor-
rendous experience of African Americans. Nor does it mean that one was
worse than the other. Philosopher Laurence Mordekhai Thomas argues
that the »evil of the Holocaust and the evil of American slavery stand
clear, each in their own right.«36 These evils are »non-comparative« and
in »order to grasp the horrendous suffering of an individual it is not nec-
essary to have a comparison class at hand.«37 Thomas believes we should
examine both events, »not however, with the aim of asserting any domi-
nance over the other, but with the hope of nourishing our moral charac-
ter and shoring up over foibles.«38
Those who make no claim that the experiences of racial oppression
is the same or worse than other groups, but instead provide us with an
35 Sundquist (2005), pp. 441 f.
36 Thomas (2002), p. 15.
37 Ibid., p. 26.
38 Ibid., pp. 13-26.
185
clarence taylor
understanding of the origins and the impact of distinct forms of racial

oppression in a society at a given time, contribute to our grasp of how
systems of racial oppression function. W. E.B. Du Bois’ realization that
racial oppression is not limited to one group and that racial discrimina-
tion and terror aimed at one group provides insight to the racial repres-
sion of other groups is the most useful approach when comparing experi-
ences of racial and ethnic groups. By recognizing that many groups have
experienced systematic means of dehumanization without attempting to
claim the throne of victimization, we not only provide a clearer under-
standing of the operation of these systems, but we may also greatly help
build a viable movement to eliminate all forms of racial inequality.
186
Anti-Jewish Genocide
Jewish Discourses about the Crimes
of the Argentinian Military Junta
Daniel Stahl
Juan Thanhauser was a member of the communist resistance in Argen-

tina. He belonged to the Vanguardia Comunista, a party committed to
class struggle that was banned when the military junta rose to power in
1976. Together with other like-minded people, Thanhauser worked un-
derground to »unmask« the military government as a »fascist dictator-
ship« and spread information about government actions against opposi-
tion members. However, on July 18, 1978, he had something completely
different on his mind – Thanhauser had promised his parents he would
come for dinner. When he failed to show that evening or to contact them
the following day, they started investigating. They found out that their
son had been detained along with two of his friends. The police refused
to give any information about his whereabouts, and all attempts to find
out more about the fate of their son remained unsuccessful. Later, re-
ports from former inmates at the torture camp El Vesubio would con-
firm that Thanhauser had been incarcerated there until August. He be-
longed to the so-called »disappeared persons,« a term for victims of the
military dictatorship who were secretly detained and murdered. This was
not the first time Thanhauser’s parents suffered under the politics of a
right-wing dictatorship – as Jews, both had fled Germany in the 1930s.1
The Argentinian military dictatorship held power from 1976 until
1983 and murdered tens of thousands of people. Among the victims were
many Jews who, like Thanhauser, were persecuted based on their po-
litical beliefs and actions. Today, however, they are remembered as the
»disappeared Jews.« At commemoration ceremonies and in historical ac-
counts, representatives of the Jewish community in Argentina frequently
highlight the exceptional manner in which Jews were persecuted. Con-
sequently, there have been calls for an independent tribute dedicated to
this history. Thanhauser’s case is an example of this. When in 2010 some
members of the military regime were charged with torture, Jewish orga-
1 Américo Soto, Vidas y luchas de Vanguardia Comunista, http://www.elortiba.org/

pdf/Vidas_y_luchas_de_VC.pdf (23 June 2016), and Kaleck (2010), pp. 67-70.
187
daniel stahl
nizations sought to emphasize that Thanhauser had been tortured in a

particularly cruel manner because of his Jewish background.2 The reason
behind the persecution of Jewish political dissidents – in most cases their
active involvement with specific political groups – do not play a role in
their remembrance.
This article examines the creation of the category of »disappeared
Jews.« It will demonstrate that comparisons to the Jewish Holocaust in
Europe played a central role in this process. Argentinian-Jewish organiza-
tions and victims’ associations pursued two goals with this comparison.
First of all, it served to draw public attention to Jews as a special victim
group by illustrating that Jewish victims had been exposed to a »special
treatment.« Second, this comparison has been used to establish the Jew-
ish victims of the junta as a group worthy of remembrance in a similar
way as the victims of the Holocaust.
Consequently, Jewish discourse about persecution in Argentina is not
only another example that proves the key role the Holocaust plays in
dealing with other state crimes. It also shows that references to the mur-
der of European Jews serve as instruments used to create collective iden-
tities and to highlight the experiences of particular groups. Lastly, it il-
lustrates how this comparison tends to overlook the particularities of
experiences under non-European dictatorships and to obscure the politi-
cal motives behind the conflict. In this way it depoliticizes remembrance.
Jews and the Other Victims of the Military Junta

20th century Argentinian history was marked by a rapid succession of vi-
olent upheavals, particularly during the 1970s. Economic problems, ac-
companied by social unrest and violence perpetrated by both right- and
left-wing groups led up to the 1976 military coup that ushered in seven
years of military junta rule. This dictatorship was one of the bloodiest
on Latin American soil and left approximately 30,000 government op-
ponents murdered. In most cases, family members of these victims never
received any information about their whereabouts.
At the time of the military coup, Argentina had a large and well-or-
ganized Jewish community. For centuries, Jews from different parts of
the world had settled there, coming from Spain in the 1600s, from Rus-
sia in the 1800s, and from all parts of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. At
2 Dictamen de la Cámara Federal de Buenos Aires, 16 July 2010, http://www.

bc-consultores.com.ar/articulos/fallos/1279530192.pdf (23 June 2016), p. 408.
188
anti-jewish genocide
the same time, antisemitism was deeply rooted in Argentinian society,

particularly in the conservative Catholic environment. Antisemitic cam-
paigns emerged regularly, for example in 1960 following the Eichmann
kidnapping.
The military had only been in power for a few months when an inter-
national discussion surrounding the antisemitism of the new Argentin-
ian government began. Triggering this discussion was the story of David
Graiver, an Argentinian Jew and major investor who suffered consider-
able losses on business deals shortly before his death in 1976. In addi-
tion to official allegations of mismanagement, the public prosecutor’s of-
fice accused Graiver’s former confidants of financially supporting leftist
guerrilla groups. This led to the arrest of several members of the Jewish
community in Graiver’s social circle and to antisemitic riots. The unrest
took on disturbing proportions, and in July 1977 the American Jewish
Committee closed its Argentinian branch in protest. The branch’s direc-
tor returned to the United States. Furthermore, Jewish organizations in
the US began to process immigration applications for Argentinian Jews.3
Argentina’s government rejected all allegations of antisemitism coming
from the US and Europe. Meanwhile, more and more politically active
Jews began noticing that their Jewish identity could constitute a risk for
them. If government forces discovered Jewish texts while making arrests,
those texts were destroyed, often accompanied by racist remarks and
hateful antisemitic comments. Walls in the detention centers displayed
swastikas and portraits of Adolf Hitler, and during interrogations it of-
ten became evident that antisemitic conspiracy theories were an inherent
part of the military’s worldview. When the first estimates of the numbers
of victims were revealed at the end of the military dictatorship, 13  were
Jews, yet Jews only represented 1  of the total population.4
This was also Jacobo Timerman’s fate, a journalist and publisher of
the well-respected daily newspaper La Opinión. He was arrested by the
military in 1977 because of his close friendship with Graiver and was
imprisoned. Timerman had little in common with Jewish inmates like
Thanhauser. He was a typical liberal and saw danger in the left-wing rev-
olutionary groups like Vanguardia Comunista, in which Thanhauser was
active. For this reason, he had welcomed the military coming into power
only a few months before his arrest.5 While in custody, he quickly real-
3 Uki Goñi, Jews targeted in Argentina’s dirty war, The Guardian, 24 March 1999,
and Gutman (2015), pp. 171-175.
4 DAIA/CES (1999), COSOFAM (1999).
5 Ocampo (1999), p. 673.
189
daniel stahl
ized the extent of the criminal nature of the new regime, as well as its an-
tisemitism. While his torturers applied electric shocks to his body, they
berated him as a Jew. On other occasions they interrogated him, quite
obviously to prove his involvement in an alleged Jewish conspiracy.6
In contrast to the Jewish left-wing revolutionaries held in the Argen-
tinian prisons, Timerman, who was an important liberal media repre-
sentative, had numerous contacts to influential people abroad. The pro-
test following his arrest was enormous, with even the US Department of
State urging for his release. In 1979 the military finally released him and
expelled him from the country.7 Timerman went to Israel; in the fol-
lowing years he traveled to the United States and Europe and became
a sought-after expert on the Argentinian military dictatorship, working
closely with Western human rights organizations. This provided him
with the opportunity to publish his version of events. In his lectures he
tirelessly pointed out similarities between the Argentinian military dic-
tatorship and the Nazi regime. He argued that Jews suffered extensively
under Argentinian oppression.8
In 1980 Timerman was part of a group of Argentinian exiles in Is-
rael that founded the Commission of Dependents of Disappeared Israe-
lis. The organization’s goal was to gather information about the destiny
of the Jewish victims. Highlighting their distinguished role and the an-
tisemitism of the junta, the dependents managed to win the support of
the Anti-Defamation League. Together they initiated a study group un-
der the leadership of Edy Kaufman, director of the Harry S. Truman Re-
search Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem. Kaufman had been born in Argentina.9
The findings of this study group became relevant in December 1983
when, after the return to democracy, the newly elected Argentinian presi-
dent Raúl Alfonsín decreed the creation of the National Commission on
6 Timerman (1981).
7 Gutman (2015), pp. 216 ff., 226, 244 f.
8 See: Robert Cox, Timerman shows that authoritarian generals are keepers of
captives, New York Times, 9 June 1981. On his connections to the human rights
lobby, see: Neier (2003), pp. 176-185.
9 On the genesis of the report handed over to the CONADEP see: Schenquer
(2007), pp. 413-420. The report of the study group El trato recibido por detenidos
y desaparecidos durante la dictadura militar argentina, 1976-1983 can be viewed in
the archive of the DAIA (Archivo Histórico sobre el rol de la DAIA, Caja CRD4:
CES). On the issue of antisemitism of the Junta in the report Nunca Más see:
CONADEP (1984), pp. 69-75.
190
the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) to investigate the crimes com-

mitted by the junta. The results of Kaufman’s study group were handed
over to the CONADEP and found their way into its final report, the fa-
mous Nunca Más – Never Again. Thus, Timerman’s network had man-
aged to introduce the categorization of Jewish victims as a distinct group
into an official document. During the following years, this report would
become the central document used in debates about the junta’s crimes.
Up to this point in time, the relatives of disappeared Jews only occa-
sionally compared the junta with the Third Reich. However, when vic-
tims’ associations started to initiate trials against the represores abroad,
this comparison became their standard narrative. In the early 1990s, the
prosecution of the junta’s crimes in Argentina came to an end. Under the
pressure of the military, the first democratically elected president, Raúl
Alfonsín, and his successor, Carlos Menem, had promoted the adoption
of amnesty laws. Since criminal prosecution of the represores was no lon-
ger possible in Argentina, victims’ associations started to push for legal
proceedings in foreign countries. In 1990 a French court convicted an
Argentinian member of the military for the sequestration of two French
nuns, both of whom had died in prison. In 1997, an Italian court opened
a case on the murder of 100 Italian citizens during the military dictator-
ship. The legal basis of all these trials was the victims’ European citizen-
ship.10
An opportunity to prosecute perpetrators who were not involved in
the murder of foreigners arose in Spain. Judge Baltasar Garzón based
his arrest warrants against some of the South American represores upon
a certain article of the Spanish penal code that allows the prosecution of
offenses against international treaties signed by Spain, even if the deeds
have been committed by foreigners in other countries. Garzón argued
that the repression of the junta matched the characteristics of torture,
genocide, and terrorism.11
In 1998, the Argentinian-Israeli Association of Jewish Victims – now
under the name Association of Dependents of Disappeared Jews – de-
cided to join the trial in Spain. Its aim was to show that »Jews had re-
ceived a different treatment under the junta than other victims« and
therefore had a »specific need for truth and justice.« Together with a
Spanish human rights organization involved in the proceedings and led
by Judge Garzón, it handed over a report on the treatment received by
10 Roht-Arriaza (2005), pp. 122-134, and Kaleck (2010), pp. 31-38.

11 Roht-Arriaza (2005), pp. 2-25, and Kaleck (2010), pp. 39-44.
191
daniel stahl
Jewish victims. It argued that the junta had committed an »anti-Jew-

ish genocide« – not only a genocide against a certain political group, as
Garzón had sustained in his previous arrest warrants regarding the perse-
cution of Argentinians in general. In order to prove this argument, anal-
ogies with the Holocaust were highlighted: »Certain forms of repression
had their forerunner in the Third Reich. It is well known that the tactics
of forced disappearance are modeled after the Night and Fog operations
conceived by Julius Strasser.« According to the Association of Depen-
dents of Disappeared Jews, these similarities were not coincidental. Many
witnesses testified to the use of swastikas and other Nazi symbols by the
represores. This was considered evidence for a strong influence of Nazism
in Argentina. Therefore, Jews had been »automatically suspicious« to the
junta and received »special treatment.«12
The Jewish umbrella organization in Argentina (DAIA) supported the
attempt of the victims’ association and added its own report and evidence
to the lawsuit.13 However, the DAIA did not go so so far as to talk about
an »anti-Jewish genocide.« Rather, its aim was to show that the junta had
committed a genocide against all Argentinians, which had affected the
Jews in a special way. In order to classify the whole repression as geno-
cide, the DAIA had to refrain from established definitions. The group
of victims was too heterogeneous to be defined according to ethnic, na-
tional, or religious criteria. Therefore, the authors of the report took up a
definition that had been discussed by some lawyers during the trial led by
Garzón. The main criteria to define a certain act as genocide were not to
be derived from characteristics of the victim’s group, but rather from the
methods and criteria of exclusion applied by the perpetrators. Accord-
ing to this definition, an act constituted a genocide if the perpetrators
had applied certain methods.14 Leaving the established definition aside,
the DAIA had to legitimize its application of the new definition. It con-
strued analogies between the crimes of the junta and those of the Nazis:
»It is astonishing to contrast the methods of genocide applied by the Na-
zis with those adopted in Argentina: The attempt to hide the bodies, the
denial to use the names of victims, the depersonalization during the time
of detention, the intent to dehumanize and to humiliate the victims, to
12 COSOFAM (1999).
13 DAIA/CES (1999).
14 In 1997 a conference on the criminal prosecution of the Junta’s crimes took place
in Barcelona. The contributions and discuccions are published in: Plataforma
Argentina contra la Impunidad (1998).
192
break their last physical, psychological and moral resistance in order to

destroy them.«15
The DAIA report was handed over to Garzón in early 1999. By now,
two official documents from the main Jewish organizations dealing with
the dictatorial past in Argentina emphasized the similarities between the
Holocaust and the junta’s crimes. These documents attempted to define
the Junta as a criminal entity that could be tried under international law
and to show the uniqueness of Jewish suffering under its rule. The trial
in Spain took years. In 2005 the Third Chamber of the Audiencia Na-
cional pronounced the sentence and rejected the genocide argument.16
Nonetheless, the interpretation developed in the two reports would play
a central role in the Jewish debate about the dictatorship over the next
ten years.
The relatives of disappeared Jews did not confine themselves to a trial
in Spain. They also planned to file a case in Israel. Immediately after
handing over the reports to Judge Garzón, they started a campaign for
a trial before an Israeli tribunal. The trial in Spain served as an instru-
ment to exert pressure on Israeli authorities. If a Spanish court could en-
gage with crimes committed against Jews, how could the justice system
in Israel refrain from doing the same? The report handed over to Garzón
was now distributed in the Israeli media. The argument developed in this
document was adapted to the strategy pursued towards the government
in Jerusalem. While there was no precedent regarding the application of
the genocide convention in Israel, the victim’s organization argued that if
the junta had persecuted Jews for being Jews, thus using methods similar
to those of the Nazis, it was possible to apply the »Nazis and Nazis Col-
laborators Punishment Law.« This law had been applied in several trials,
such as the ones against Adolf Eichmann and John Demjanjuk.17
The relatives of disappeared Jews did not succeed in their attempt to
initiate a trial in Israel, but in 2000 the government of Ehud Barak agreed
to install an inter-ministerial commission to investigate the crimes com-
mitted against Jews in Argentina and to collect information from survi-
vors living in Israel. The commission was composed of survivors, state of-
ficials, and historians – among them Edy Kaufman. In his contribution
15 DAIA/CES (1999), p. 21.

16 Sentencia por crímenes contra la humanidad en el caso Adolfo Scilingo, SAN
16/2005, de 19 de abril de 2005, sala 3ª de lo penal de la Audiencia Nacional.
Available via: www.derechos.org/nizkor/espana/juicioral/doc/sentencia.html.
17 Analizan en Israel un pedido para juzgar a represores argentinos, Clarín, 21 Feb-
ruary 2000.
193
daniel stahl
to the final report he tried to demonstrate the responsibility and duty of

the Israeli authorities to investigate the crimes of the military junta in
Argentina. He referenced the main points of the report handed over to
Garzón, stressing the uniqueness of Jewish suffering under the junta, ar-
guing it was caused by the use of Nazi ideology and methods.18
Disappeared Jews and Other Jewish Victim Groups

Shortly after the publication of the commission’s report, Néstor Kirch-
ner’s newly elected government in Argentina fulfilled its promises and
forced the annulment of amnesty laws for the represores. Since the path
was then free for the prosecution of the junta’s crimes in Argentina, the
victims’ organizations no longer needed to push for proceedings in for-
eign countries. The focus of their initiative changed, and the main pur-
pose now became the commemoration of disappeared Jews as an estab-
lished element of Jewish memory and culture in Argentina.
However, the issue of the Jewish victims of the junta was a problematic
one. During the military dictatorship, the DAIA had tried to avoid any
trouble with the authorities. Therefore, it had been cautious in criticizing
the government for human rights violations. While the DAIA leadership
defended its strategy as the only viable possibility, the victims’ relatives
denounced the DAIA for cooperating with the junta. They expected the
DAIA to take a more self-critical view of its own position during the dic-
tatorship and to admit its own failure in protecting Jewish interests and
lives. As a consequence of this struggle concerning the correct interpreta-
tion of the past, no compromise regarding commemoration was in sight
by the beginning of the new millennium.
While the commemoration of Jewish victims of the junta was prob-
lematic, there were other victim groups whose memory was already
deeply rooted in Jewish-Argentinian commemorative culture since the
1990s. First, there were the 1994 victims of a bomb attack on the office of
the Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Society (AMIA) in Buenos Aires. In this
attack, many details of which remain unclear to this day, 85 people were
killed and hundreds more injured.
Furthermore, it was as if the Jewish victims of the military junta were
being placed in competition with the victims of the Holocaust. Like
other Latin American countries, Argentina had become home to a large
number of Holocaust survivors and their descendants. Yet while the
18 Kaufman, Edy (2009), pp. 15 ff.
194
slaughter of European Jews played an increasingly important role in col-

lective memory in the United States and in Europe starting in the 1970s,
it largely remained a subject of private commemoration in Latin Amer-
ica. Beyond that, the Holocaust had happened relatively far away and
had only directly affected a small portion of the population. Therefore, it
failed to gain political importance in Latin American countries.19
Argentina, however, was the exception. During the 1990s, the Holo-
caust moved to the center of political debates. The reason lay in the coun-
try’s history. In 1989 Carlos Menem, who was a Peronist, was elected pres-
ident. He represented the party whose founder, Juan Domingo Perón,
had faciliated the escape of Nazi criminals and collaborators from Europe
to South America in the late 1940s. This was an oft-discussed topic in
Western societies during the early 1990s because of extradition proceed-
ings involving several Nazi criminals living in Argentina. Menem reacted
promptly to demands for access to Argentinian files on Nazi criminals’
escapes, particularly in connection with the extradition of former ghetto
commander Josef Schwammberger. In 1991, he passed a decree in accor-
dance with the request and granted support to one of the study groups
formed by the DAIA.20
His gesture proved insufficient against the backdrop of the Nazi gold
debate. At first, this debate dealt with the fortunes of Jewish victims of
the Nazi regime; the money remained in Swiss bank accounts after the
war without notification to relatives and descendants about its existence.
However, during their research, journalists and U. S. congressional staff
came upon documents in American archives that seemed to substantiate
large transfers of assets to Argentina by the Nazis. In reality, these docu-
ments were based on the unproven, speculative reports of the Secret Ser-
vice. But nobody wanted to accept this in the mid-1990s. Instead, the
American public and the Argentinian opposition cited these discoveries
as proof that Menem was still holding back information on the past con-
nections of his party with the Nazis.
In reaction to these accusations, the Menem Administration an-
nounced the foundation of an international commission to investigate
the relationship between Argentina and National Socialism. Supported
by the officials of the DAIA, it also established a way to integrate the Ho-
locaust into official Argentinian memory culture. In close cooperation
with the DAIA, the government established a Holocaust museum and
19 For the following, see: Stahl (2012), pp. 83-93.

20 Stahl (2015), pp. 319-333.
195
daniel stahl
monuments, fostered publications on the Holocaust and escaped Nazis,

and introduced the subject into the school curriculums and textbooks.
In the meantime, the Jewish victims’ organization kept emphasizing
the necessity of an official commemoration for the Jewish victims of the
junta. After years of debate, in December 2004 a monument was finally
inaugurated in front of the Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires. The
relatives of the victims only agreed to participate after the officials of the
DAIA had given their word not to speak officially in the name of the or-
ganization. During the inauguration Rabbi Daniel Goldman, one of the
leading figures of the victim’s organization, stated: »It is proper to point
out that during the last military government, there was antisemitic vio-
lence comparable to Nazi times.«21 Analogies to the Holocaust had be-
come a source of legitimacy for the commemoration of the Jewish vic-
tims of the Junta. Discussions followed about the inclusion of the junta’s
treatment of Jews into the school curriculum and the perceived lack of
public interest in this issue, and the similarities between the junta and
the Nazi regime were emphasized again and again. Marcos Weinstein,
for instance, whose son had been killed by the junta, criticized the lack
of interest in the Jewish community: »The Jewish community is not in-
terested in the disappeared Jews. This is not a problem of quality but of
quantity. It is hard to suppress the memory of the six million victims of
the Holocaust. If they had been only sixty thousand, this would be differ-
ent.« But, Weinstein added, one should not forget that the »methods of
repression of the dictatorship were adapted from the Nazi theory.«22 The
reports prepared during the trial in Spain served as authoritative docu-
ments that proved the validity of this comparison. They were reprinted
and spread through the Internet.
The pervasive references to the Holocaust made by Jewish victims’ or-
ganizations were taken up by several other actors and became a topos in
the discourse about the junta’s crimes. The president of the Argentinian
section of the Sherith Hapleitah, José Moskovits, stated during a com-
memoration in honor of the victims of the dictatorship that the junta
had committed crimes very similar to those of the »Nazi beast.« After
his speech the soundtrack of Steven Spielberg’s movie Schindler’s List was
21 Argentina remembers the disappeared, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 9 December

2004.
22 Día de la Memoria, Familiares de Desaparecidos Judíos en la Argentina, Agencia
Judia da Noticias, 24 March 2009.
196
played.23 Many high-ranking politicians shared the interpretation of the

Jewish victim’s organization. Eduardo Duhalde, in his role as Secretary of
Human Rights, stated during a 2007 commemoration that the similari-
ties between the suffering of the victims of Nazism and the junta made
them relatives of each other.24 During a journey to Paris in 2007, Chris-
tina Kirchner, then First Lady, declared that after 1945 Argentina had
served as the second laboratory for state terrorism.25 And the Argentin-
ian Minister of Education, Estela de Carlotta, opined that the disappear-
ance of persons in Argentina was »a genocide, a holocaust.«26 The elec-
tion campaign of 2007 prompted the government of Néstor Kirchner to
announce the creation of a commission to »investigate the Nazi roots of
the Argentinian dictatorship and the consequences of this reception.« By
the middle of the last decade, the comparison between the Holocaust and
the junta’s crimes was perceived as being so obvious that only its affirma-
tion and explanation by a commission of experts were seen as necessary.27
Conclusion
The comparison with the Holocaust has become a key element in the
commemoration of the Jewish junta victims. Its emphasis rests on those
forms of violence that the Jewish-Argentinian activists believe coincide
with the actions of the Nazis: mainly the deprivation of rights, torture,
and harassment, which clearly exhibited antisemitic tendencies. If we
narrow our attention to this part of the narrative, we find many paral-
lels between the recollections of Jacobo Timerman and the accounts of
prison sentences for Jewish Communists like Juan Thanhauser. In doing
so, we lose sight of the fact that Timerman and Thanhauser belonged to
completely different socio-political groups in this conflict. They repre-
sented opposing political positions and pursued conflicting socio-politi-
cal goals. However, this part of the story does not play a role in the prac-
tice of commemoration.
23 Sherit Hapleitá, Homenaje a los desaparecidos argentinos, Nueva Sión Online,

8 December 2005, www.nuevasion.com.ar/articulo.php?id=2386 (23 June 2016).
24 Homenaje a las víctimas judías de la dictadura, La Nación, 2 December 2007.
25 Cristina Kirchner comparó la represión con el Holocausto, La Nación, 7 Febru-
ary 2007.
26 Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, conmovidas por la perseverancia en la promoción del
recuerdo del Holocausto, Agencia Judia da Noticias, 30 June 2006.
27 Crímenes del Terrorismo de Estado contra la Comunidad Judía, Agencia Judia
da Noticias, 15 September 2007.
197
daniel stahl
In this respect, the application of the Holocaust analogy served to

depoliticize the commemoration of persecuted Jews. They are no lon-
ger recognized as political activists, pursuing a distinct political agenda
and risking their lives for these ends. Instead, they appear as victims of
a timeless evil. Even the repression of the military junta loses its specific
contours when one concentrates on their similarities with Nazi methods.
Thus, the Holocaust analogy’s discursive impact can be compared to
the impact of the discourse about human rights violations established by
human rights organizations since the 1970s. In their reports and appeals,
those whose rights were violated were represented as victims. The polit-
ically motivated type of resistance fighters disappeared more and more
from the discourse on state crimes. Thanhauser was a communist resis-
tance fighter nonetheless.
198
Remembering the Racial State
Holocaust Memory in Post-Apartheid South Africa
Shirli Gilbert
As South Africa negotiated its transition to democracy in the early 1990s,

one of the historical analogies most frequently invoked was between the
»twin atrocities« of apartheid and the Holocaust. The genocide of Euro-
pean Jewry, and particularly the Nazi regime that perpetrated it, was per-
ceived as an obvious and potent historical benchmark for understanding
what had happened in South Africa, for envisioning justice and reconcil-
iation, and for thinking about how apartheid might be historicized and
commemorated.1
Although scholars of Holocaust memory have focused largely on
Western countries directly affected by Nazism and its legacy,2 the im-
pact of the Holocaust has reverberated far beyond. Since 1945, it has
shaped non-Western political and intellectual discourse in manifold
ways, and has powerfully affected the ways in which the post-colonial
world has understood itself and promoted its causes in the international
arena.3 Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider argue that the rights culture
that has governed international relations since the end of the Cold War
is shaped implicitly by the Holocaust.4 The links between the Holocaust
and human rights are not straightforward to draw: there have been con-
siderable shifts since the 1940s in legal and intellectual conceptions of
human rights, and the ways in which they were informed (or not) by the
Nazi genocide.5 Whether justifiably or not, however, in contemporary
popular discourse the Holocaust has become intimately linked with the
idea of human rights, and serves as a key benchmark for talking about
human rights abuses from slavery and colonialism to genocide, particu-
larly in the developing world. For Levy and Sznaider, »It is the univer-
sal nature of evil associated with the Holocaust that fuels its metaphori-
1 See: Coombes (2003), pp. 83-95.

2 See, for example: Herf (1997); Zertal (2005); Huener (2003); Novick (1999); Wolf
(2004).
3 Miles (2001), and Rothberg (2009c).
4 Levy and Sznaider (2004), p. 150. See also: Levy and Sznaider (2006).
5 See for example: Moyn (2010).
199
shirli gilbert
cal power and allows it to be appropriated in referring to human-rights

abuses that bear little resemblance to the original event.«6
Against this background, the rapid growth of Holocaust memory since
the end of apartheid (1948-94) is unsurprising. The case of South Africa
is, however, still largely absent from the voluminous scholarship on Ho-
locaust memory.7 What makes this case especially interesting is the wide-
spread invocation of the Nazi past not only after but also during apart-
heid, by Jews and non-Jews across the national spectrum. Where some
saw obvious parallels between the two systems, others drew starkly differ-
ent conclusions. Some sought to downplay the connections, though for
disparate reasons; others overstated them, challenging the apartheid state
with the most morally potent language they could muster. Both main-
stream and leftist Jewish responses were nourished by Holocaust mem-
ory, but in each case that memory had widely divergent implications and
forms. This article, which presents some preliminary findings from an
ongoing research project, thus works towards addressing a significant gap
in scholarship in examining how the Holocaust has informed public dis-
course in the post-war world’s quintessential racial state.
This chapter focuses on the period from the early 1990s through to the
early 2000s, a critical transition during which the »new« South Africa be-
gan to take shape following the collapse of apartheid. The Holocaust was
integral to the conceptualization of the Truth and Reconciliation Com-
mission, and has become the cornerstone of human rights education in
school and museum settings throughout the country. It has also paradox-
ically become one of the key conduits for the Jewish community’s re-in-
tegration into the new South Africa, despite the community’s emphasis
during the apartheid period on the Holocaust’s uniqueness.
The importance of confronting the past has been a recurring trope
in the new South Africa, but there has been little attempt to explain the
particular significance of the Holocaust in the process of understanding
apartheid. This is a complex issue that requires more extensive research.
Below I suggest that during the transition, the Holocaust was central to
a wider process of creating consensual memory cultures with the aim of
reconciliation and nation-building. The implicit analogy with apartheid
was seldom interrogated, and the positive »lessons« of the Holocaust were
conveyed without any demand on audiences to confront the deeper chal-
6 Levy and Sznaider (2004), pp. 5 f.

7 For existing scholarship on this topic see: Braude (2001); Shain (1996), pp. 670-
689; Shain and Lamprecht (2001), pp. 858-869; Gilbert (2010), pp. 32-64.
200
remembering the r acial state
lenges of their past. Anne Frank was a particularly important vehicle for
this link, providing an accessible medium through which South Africans
could be encouraged to build a common future in a spirit of hope and
tolerance. The Holocaust was also a means for the newly-elected govern-
ment to stake out the moral high ground in the new political order, es-
tablishing its commitment to human rights and restoring the country’s
image on the international stage.
The Background
South Africa has little direct connection with the Holocaust. For the most
part, it housed neither perpetrators nor bystanders, was not involved in
liberation, collaboration, or resistance, and welcomed few survivors after
the war.8 The Holocaust has nonetheless been a consistent, if somewhat
paradoxical, presence in the country. Anti-racist activists in South Africa
drew on the Nazi analogy from as early as the 1940s to explain the nature
of the system they were opposing and to mobilize international support.
In its »Declaration to the Nations of the World« drafted in July 1945, for
example, the Non-European Unity Movement stated: »The peoples of
the world who were horrified by the inhuman record of Nazism may be
unaware of the fact that the Non-Europeans of South Africa live and suf-
fer under a tyranny very little different from Nazidom. […] The life of
a Non-European is very cheap in South Africa. As cheap as the life of a
Jew in Nazi Germany.«9 Nelson Mandela made repeated references to the
»Hitlerite« Nationalist government, concern about a »future Gestapo,«
and apartheid’s »Herrenvolk policies,« warning in 1955 that »the spectre of
Belsen and Buchenwald is haunting South Africa.«10
During apartheid, references to the Nazi past were made repeatedly
by activists in South Africa and in exile, as well as by solidarity move-
ments.11 They invoked the analogy in deliberately polemical ways: if
the anti-apartheid struggle was to be understood as »the most import-
ant moral battle in the world since the defeat of Nazism«, as Mark
8 Though it should be noted that South African soldiers did contribute to the Al-
lied war effort, primarily in North Africa.
9 Karis and Gerhart (1997), p. 358.
10 Nelson Mandela, People are Destroyed, Liberation, October 1955, and Nelson
Mandela, Bantu Education Goes to University, Liberation, June 1957.
11 For more examples see: Are Nats Nazis?,The Black Sash 1, no. 7, July 1956, p. 1;
Judgment on Herrenvolk, Fighting Talk 16, no. 2, March 1962, p. 11; Johns and
Davis (1991), pp. 248, 265 f., 311; Bunting (1964); Mzimela (1983).
201
shirli gilbert
Gevisser has put it, international audiences in particular would need to

be presented with a clear historical parallel between Nazi ideology and
its echoes in the present.12 Activists frequently compared discriminatory
legislation in South Africa and Nazi Germany, and the genocide was in-
voked as a warning of what apartheid might become if left unchallenged.
Among the ranks of anti-racist activists were numerous Jews, some of
whom echoed these comparisons. In his memoir Into Exile (1963), Ron-
ald Segal, editor of the influential journal Africa South, referred to apart-
heid’s »spiritual predecessor, the Germany of the Nazis,« and drew nu-
merous parallels between the two systems. Although the South African
government had not yet shown itself to be as brutal as Nazism, Segal
warned that if seriously threatened it would be unlikely to »reveal more
pressing moral qualms than the Nazism which South Africa’s present
Prime Minister and Minister of Justice both so passionately admired.«13
The educator Franz Auerbach, himself a refugee from Nazi Germany,
repeatedly pointed to the »similarities between some present features of
life in South Africa and life under Hitler.« Like other Jewish activists, he
pointedly invoked the comparison in urging his co-religionists to protest
apartheid’s injustices: »To be silent is to betray our history, our religion
and our duty to the land that gave us refuge.«14
For the most part, however, the mainstream Jewish community
quickly conformed to the established social system and did not identify
such explicit connections.15 Public memorialization under apartheid was
largely limited to Jews, and by 1960 the South African Jewish Board of
Deputies could proudly report that »in South Africa the occasion is bet-
ter observed than in many other countries.«16 The discourse of formal
commemoration tended to emphasize several inwardly-focused themes,
centering on the notion of Jewish self-reliance. The young fighters of the
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising were the overwhelming focus, unambiguously
12 Gevisser (2007), p. 397.
13 Segal (1963), pp. 34, 308. See also: Segal and Jacobson (1957), pp. 424-431.
14 Auerbach (1960), pp. 33-37, here p. 34. Auerbach’s lifelong opposition to apart-
heid, which he frequently linked to Nazism in his many writings and public ad-
dresses, is a subject for another article. See: Dr. Franz Auerbach collection, 1950-
2006, University of the Witwatersrand Historical Papers, Collection number
A3267. Also see: Auerbach (2002).
15 By »mainstream« I refer broadly to institutions and individuals identified with
the Jewish community, including the South African Jewish Board of Deputies,
religious leaders, and the Jewish press.
16 Report of the Executive Council of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies,
April 1958 to August 1960, p. 33.
202
connected with the reborn »new Jew« of Israel who relied on his own
strength and defences in preserving the Jewish future. The Holocaust
and Zionism were closely connected throughout the apartheid years,
coming to constitute the two »central pillar[s] of South African Jewry’s
civil religion.«17 Jewish community leaders warned repeatedly of the an-
tisemitic dangers that Jews faced in the post-Nazi era, and emphasized
that the obvious lesson to be learned from the Holocaust was that only
defiant self-reliance, particularly in the form of Israel, could ensure Jew-
ish existence.18 Little, if any, reference was made to the local context.
For its part, the Afrikaner National Party government consistently de-
nied any Nazi connections, despite its considerable association during
the 1930s and 1940s with pro-Nazi groups and the presence of several rad-
ical right-wing figures in the cabinet. The impact of Nazism in South Af-
rica during the period 1933-45 has been the subject of much scholarly and
(perhaps more so) political debate.19 Although apartheid South Africa
was always distinct from Hitler’s Germany, Afrikaner nationalist politics
were undoubtedly influenced by Nazi ideas. In particular, while antisem-
itism had not been absent from South African life before this period, the
1930s saw increasing manifestations of explicitly political anti-Jewish be-
havior in a Nazi mold.20 The regime’s defenders nonetheless consistently
downplayed the Nazi influence as a passing flirtation with foreign ideol-
ogies, and in the post-apartheid period some commentators continued to
minimize the historical links21 and gently disparage the »hyperbole« em-
ployed by activists during the apartheid era.22
Holocaust Memory After Apartheid

While the divisive political context of apartheid South Africa gave rise to
several distinct, conflicting narratives relating to the Nazi past, during the
transition period in the 1990s efforts began and grew to construct more
17 Mendelsohn and Shain (2008), pp. 190 f.

18 For similar examples see: South African Jewish Board of Deputies Rochlin Ar-
chives in Johannesburg (hereafter Rochlin Archives) 211-2, Files 1 and 2. Johan-
nesburg Remembers Warsaw Ghetto Heroes, S. A. Jewish Times, 28 April 1950,
Impressive Day of Mourning Demonstration in Johannesburg, S. A. Jewish
Times, 17 April 1953.
19 See for example: Asmal, Asmal, and Roberts (1996), and Giliomee (2003a).
20 Shain (2015), and Gilbert (2010).
21 Giliomee (2003b), pp. 373-392, and Adam (2000), pp. 244-259.
22 Abrahams (1996).
203
shirli gilbert
consensual memory cultures as part of the shift towards democracy.23

Scholarship on memory in post-apartheid South Africa has emphasized the
conscious centrality of history to the new government’s project of recon-
ciliation and nation-building.24 Indeed, the first aim of the new Constitu-
tion, signed into effect by President Mandela on December 10, 1996, was
to »heal the divisions of the past.«25 The historian Sabine Marschall argues
that while memory narratives foregrounded resistance to apartheid, they
were also »carefully considered to avoid giving offense,« and the struggle
was portrayed as a process that ultimately benefited all South Africans.26
A crucial background to the government’s aim to promote inclusive-
ness was the extreme violence and instability that accompanied the tran-
sition.27 In this precarious period, the government favored narratives of
the past that would not exacerbate existing tensions. These aims were
epitomised in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which
was similarly shaped by the negotiated settlement and the »politics of
compromise« that engendered the new democracy.28 Critics charge that
the TRC was more a political performance than a sophisticated mecha-
nism for uncovering and dealing with the past; many aspects of apart-
heid were silenced or diluted in the quest for »national reconciliation.«29
Memory in post-apartheid South Africa is thus seen as an implicitly or
explicitly political undertaking that aimed to promote unity and to avoid
jeopardizing the fragile political situation.
The Holocaust featured regularly in the public sphere as part of these
broader narratives. Its prominence can be attributed somewhat to Jewish
support and also to worldwide trends, but these are only partial expla-
nations. The country’s transition provided particularly fertile soil for the
growth of distinct memory narratives; indeed, the Holocaust was consid-
ered one of the most obvious yardsticks for thinking about South Afri-
ca’s recent past.
On the one hand, anti-apartheid rhetoric persisted well into the
1990s, particularly in the controversial book Reconciliation Through Truth
23 On divisive memory cultures in South Africa before 1994 and the shift to con-
sensual memory cultures after apartheid, see: Harries (2010), pp. 121-143.
24 See: Marschall (2010); Posel and Simpson (2002); Fagan (1998), pp. 249-262. On
education see: Weldon (2005), and Petersen (2010).
25 Fagan (1998), p. 251.
26 Marschall (2010), pp. 180 f.
27 Ibid, pp. 72 f.
28 Posel and Simpson (2002), p. 2.
29 See Grunebaum (2011), and Posel and Simpson (2002).
204
(1996), written before the TRC itself began its work. In the book, Af-
rican National Congress (ANC) cabinet minister Kader Asmal and his
co-authors characterized apartheid as a crime against humanity through
a comparison with Nazism.30 The parallel was sustained throughout the
book, and the authors emphasized both the links between Afrikaner Na-
tionalism and Nazi ideology, as well as the connections between apart-
heid policies and restrictions imposed on German Jews before 1939. The
Nazi past was invoked in order to explain the decision to pursue a truth
commission rather than war crimes trials, to make clear the distinction
between crimes committed by the forces of apartheid and by the resis-
tance, and in raising the question of the complicity of ordinary people
in apartheid. Several critics took issue with the perceived political inten-
tions behind the authors’ invocation of the apartheid-Nazism parallel.31
On the other hand, alongside this trend was an increasing tendency to
highlight the differences as well as the similarities between Nazism and
apartheid, and to emphasize how memory not only of the Nazi regime
but specifically of the genocide could inform the process of nation-build-
ing. The Holocaust featured substantially in discussions about memorial-
izing apartheid, particularly in the vigorous debate about plans for Rob-
ben Island, the location of the infamous prison for black male political
opponents of the regime. The most frequent comparisons in the national
press at the high point of the debate about the island’s future were with
the Nazi death camps and the transatlantic slave trade. For example, ex-
plaining why the island deserved the status of a world heritage site, direc-
tor of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre Bernd von Droste observed
that »Robben Island has international symbolic value for human rights
similar to sites like Hiroshima and Auschwitz.«32
The Holocaust was also at the center of discussions around the TRC,
which began its work in April 1996. The TRC was tasked with establish-
ing »as complete a picture as possible« of the gross human rights viola-
tions committed between 1960 and 1994, and its wide-ranging activities
included staging public hearings around the country where victims re-
lated their experiences, facilitating »the rehabilitation and the restoration
of the human and civil dignity« of those victims, and considering am-
30 Asmal, Asmal, and Roberts (1996). For responses to the book, see for example:
Mamdani (1996), and Grunebaum and Stier (1999), pp. 142-152.
31 See, for example: Mamdani (1996), and Adam (1997).
32 Coombes (2003), pp. 69, 84.
205
shirli gilbert
nesty applications from people who agreed to »make full disclosure of all
the relevant facts« relating to »political« acts committed.33
Memory of Nazism and the Holocaust substantially informed several
aspects of the TRC process. In the first place, the decision to pursue the
path of a truth commission rather than criminal trials was justified ex-
plicitly with reference to the Nuremberg Trials in post-World War II Ger-
many.34 The Commission’s investigation of the antecedents and causes of
gross human rights violations, and the »motives and perspectives« of the
perpetrators, also drew substantially on research related to the Holocaust,
including Christopher Browning’s well-known study Ordinary Men, and
work by Robert J. Lifton and Zygmunt Bauman.35 The Holocaust was a
pervasive presence in discussions around reconciliation and rehabilita-
tion, and was frequently invoked by individuals as they recounted their
experiences at TRC hearings.36 Representatives of South African faith
communities also repeatedly invoked the comparison, largely in relation
to their communities’ support for or resistance to apartheid.37
Another key moment in the development of Holocaust memory nar-
ratives in post-apartheid South Africa was the high-profile exhibition
Anne Frank in the World, which opened on the eve of the first democratic
elections in March 1994. Although proposed by the Jewish community,
the exhibition received extensive government support and publicity. The
keynote address at the Johannesburg opening was given by Nelson Man-
dela, one of his first public acts as president. The exhibition firmly estab-
lished the connection between apartheid and the Holocaust in the cru-
cial period when memory narratives were beginning to be formed, and was
the first of several prominent representations of Anne Frank in the pub-
lic sphere. In post-apartheid South Africa, Anne functioned as the iconic
universalized victim, a foundational bridge with a global culture of human
33 NO. 34 OF 1995: Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, http://
www.doj.gov.za/trc/legal/act9534.htm, 26 July 1995 (2 September 2008; available
at http://www.saflii.org/za/legis/num_act/ponuara1995477/ on 20 June 2016).
34 Villiers (1998), pp. 5 f., 97 f., 122.
35 Ibid., pp. 271, 284, 294.
36 See: Reparation and Rehabilitation Committee transcripts at: http://www.jus-
tice.gov.za/Trc/reparations/index.htm (26 June 2014); Villiers (1998), pp. 5 f.,
97 f., 122; Karis and Gerhart (1997), pp. 271, 284, 294. See also: Levy and
Sznaider (2004), p. 154.
37 Department of Justice, http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/special/faith/faith_a.htm (20
June 2008); transcript of Truth and Reconciliation Commission Faith Commu-
nities Hearing, 17-19 November 1997, Department of Justice, http://www.doj.
gov.za/trc/special/faith/faith_a.htm (20 June 2008).
206
rights. Her story resonated with the nascent memorial culture of the early
1990s and was a powerful vehicle for promoting the aims of national unity,
not least because it allowed for a generalized focus on human rights with-
out requiring audiences to confront the complexities of their past.38
Created by the Anne Frank Centre in Amsterdam, Anne Frank in the
World was an international exhibition intended »to promote tolerance
and understanding.«39 While expected to have broad relevance to the
many countries it visited, its message was considered particularly relevant
in South Africa. Commentators frequently stressed the parallels between
Nazism and apartheid and their implications,40 and the exhibition be-
came one of the first public platforms for making this connection. Moti-
vations for the exhibition centered on the shared legacy of the Holocaust
and apartheid: the importance of recognizing »the destructive conse-
quences of racism, discrimination and prejudice« and protecting human
rights.41 In his opening address, Mandela asserted that the exhibition »ex-
plores the past in order to heal, to reconcile and to build the future. In
this sense, it is particularly relevant for the South Africa of today, as we
emerge from the treacherous era of apartheid injustice. […] By honour-
ing [Anne’s] memory as we do today, we are saying with one voice: Never
and Never Again!« Mandela also used the opportunity to affirm the im-
portance of the TRC, which he argued would fulfil the critical legacy of
learning from the past.42
38 Gilbert (2012).
39 Anne Frank Stichting (1985).
40 See for example: Michael O’Grady, Business Day, 19 August 1994; Paula Slier,
Prejudice Parallels, Tachlis, 1 October 1994; Anne Frank: A Lesson in Humanity,
special supplement to the Weekly Mail and Guardian (published in association
with the SA Jewish Board of Deputies and the Netherlands Embassy to accom-
pany the Anne Frank exhibition), April 1994. See especially: Stephen Laufer,
»Anne Frank in Today’s World,« »The Womb of Racism Remains Fruitful,« and
also the advertisement on back cover.
41 Leaflet titled »Anne Frank in the World: Volunteers Needed,« Rochlin Archives,
ARCH 143, Anne Frank Exhibition 1994-1996. See also: address by Hans Westra,
director of the Anne Frank House, at the Cape Town opening, Rochlin archives,
ARCH 143, Anne Frank Exhibition 1994-1996.
42 Address by President Nelson Mandela at the Johannesburg opening of the Anne
Frank in the World exhibition, 15 August 1994. Rochlin Archives, ARCH 143,
Anne Frank Exhibition 1994-1996, Box 3. See also: interview with Hans Westra
(1994).
207
shirli gilbert
Press coverage of the exhibition frequently made links between Anne

and the heroes of the South African liberation struggle.43 In addition to
Mandela, ANC leaders including Govan Mbeki and Ahmed Kathrada
spoke about the significance of the diary during their imprisonment on
Robben Island. Eschewing the overtly polemical narratives that had ear-
lier characterized anti-apartheid discourse – and avoiding mention of the
far more radical texts they studied on the Island – they recounted the
diarist’s resistance to the injustices of a system predicated on racial su-
periority. In contemporary terms, Anne Frank was a »fighter for human
rights.«44 While not shying away entirely from earlier comparisons, they
focused on Anne’s courage and ability to maintain her optimism despite
the difficulties she faced. We may speculate as to why activists identified
with the diarist on Robben Island itself: perhaps because she was a victim
of Nazism specifically, or because of the claustrophobia and passivity of
life in prison. During the transition, however, it is clear that the figure of
Anne Frank (or, more precisely, particular readings of her) allowed activ-
ists to re-frame their struggle in generalized terms, eschewing more radi-
cal narratives and embracing those of reconciliation. The figure of Anne
Frank also allowed them to invoke the moral gravity of the Holocaust
while avoiding mention of specific opponents or political ideologies.
The discourse surrounding the exhibition focused less on the Holo-
caust than on its implications for the present, particularly the dangers
of indifference and complicity. The key question, declared the official
program, was this: »Had Anne Frank – an ordinary young Jewish girl –
lived next door, could she have counted on us for help during the Nazi
occupation?«45 The fact that Anne was white fit in neatly with the em-
phasis on inclusivity and cross-communal support for the new democ-
racy.46 Significantly, the exhibition’s focus was on personal responsibility
for preventing racism rather than that of the state or its institutions. By
stressing individual victimhood and tolerance, it fed into a national dis-
course that similarly avoided confrontation with the moral complexities
and implications of apartheid. The »lessons« represented were so broad
that they could resonate with a wide audience without offending or mak-
ing specific accusations. Anne was invoked as a future-oriented symbol
43 PE Remembers the Tragedy of the Holocaust, Evening Post, n.d, filed at Rochlin
Archives, FRANK, Anne 199.
44 Het Achterhuis op Robbeneiland (1995), closing comment by Nelson Mandela.
45 Exhibition programme, Rochlin Archives, ARCH 143.
46 Marschall (2010), pp. 180 f.
208
of hope and forgiveness, a medium for encouraging South Africans to

put an end to racism and move towards peaceful co-existence.
Elsewhere, in contexts like the TRC and Robben Island, the Holocaust
was similarly invoked in generalized terms as a symbolic benchmark
rather than a precise historical comparison. Why, it might be asked, was
it specifically the Holocaust that featured so prominently in attempts
to understand the apartheid past? Numerous other historical parallels
might have been drawn, including violent colonial pasts or racism in
the American South.47 In his seminal article Consigning the Twentieth
Century to History, Charles Maier suggests that the Holocaust and co-
lonialism compete as »dominant narratives of moral atrocity« that have
defined historiography of the 20th century, representing the divergent
focuses of Western observers as opposed to those outside the Atlantic
world.48 Along these lines, the embrace of the »Western« Holocaust nar-
rative in a country with a long colonial legacy requires fuller exploration.
The Holocaust has become the archetypal benchmark for issues of hu-
man rights, and it is a powerful form of moral capital that has been ap-
propriated for diametrically opposed political causes. The South African
connections also extend further: as we have seen, Nazism and Afrikaner
nationalism had a troubled relationship going back to the 1930s, and
anti-racist discourse had invoked the Nazi past from the 1940s; there is
thus the »residue« of past narratives in the present.49 After 1994, the Ho-
locaust was a means for the new government to establish its commitment
to human rights and thereby restore South Africa’s international image.
Comparisons were perhaps also a way for the government to establish its
own legitimacy and to foreground a certain moral superiority in its pro-
cess of dealing with the past, as for instance in its decision to pursue re-
storative rather than punitive justice.50
The tension between uniqueness and universality is also evident in
Jewish community discourse, and is an interesting marker of shifting
memory narratives. As I have suggested, the community’s historical vic-
timhood, rooted partly in an understanding of the Holocaust’s unique-
ness, was a central aspect of its identity under apartheid. For some critics,
47 On the latter, see: Giliomee (2003a), pp. 9 f.

48 Maier (2000), p. 826.
49 On the importance of the »residue of earlier commemorations« to present mem-
ory, see: Olick (1999), pp. 381-402, here p. 382.
50 See: Cochrane, de Gruchy, and Martin (1999), pp. 2 f.
209
shirli gilbert
it also served to explain its inability (or unwillingness, or both) to speak

out against apartheid.51
The community’s submissions to the TRC echoed these trends. A doc-
ument presented in June 1997 emphasized Jews’ »insecurity as a vulner-
able minority group« caused in particular by »the trauma of the Holo-
caust and by the threat of antisemitism on the part of the ruling National
Party.« The document claimed that Jews represented such a small pro-
portion of the white population »that they could not have made any no-
table difference to the situation.« In addition, »there was always the fear
of resurgence of state sponsored anti-Semitism.«52 Speaking at the Faith
Communities Hearings in East London in November 1997, Chief Rabbi
Cyril Harris echoed these justifications in accounting for the mainstream
Jewish community’s response to apartheid: »We must explain to you,
and this is our obligation, the silence of the general Jewish community
as distinct from individuals and specific groups during the apartheid era.
What does silence denote? It denotes acquiescence and accommodation.
One of the great evils of apartheid […] was that it desensitised decent
people to the suffering of millions. They just got used to apartheid. […]
this was a very small community and of course, it may be a very high
profile community, but it’s a very small community in numbers, it’s a
post-Holocaust generation. Do you know what the Nazis did to the Jew-
ish people? So therefore, Jewish people all over the world have a sensitiv-
ity, one would say a hyper-sensitivity towards survival. At all costs they
want to survive. I am not condoning the silence of the Jewish commu-
nity in the apartheid era, I am attempting to explain it and I am asking
for your understanding.«53
By contrast, a document submitted to the TRC in January 1997 by
the progressive Jewish Gesher (Bridge) movement adopted a more uni-
versalized discourse, echoing the motivations of Jewish activists under
apartheid and resonating with the post-apartheid emphasis on personal
moral responsibility. The group rejected the view that only active perpe-
trators were responsible for apartheid: »Being part of a society in which
atrocities are committed means you cannot claim the status of an inno-
cent bystander. We accept that we all should have striven to prevent such
51 Braude (2001), p. 1.
52 University of Cape Town: http://sabctrc.saha.org.za/reports/volume4/chapter3/
subsection1.htm (15 September 2016).
53 Department of Justice: http://www.religion.uct.ac.za/sites/default/files/image_
tool/images/113/Institutes/Archives/submissions/OFFICE_OF_THE_CHIEF_
RABBI.pdf (15 September 2016).
210
atrocities from occurring. This includes the members of the Jewish com-
munity as well as other communities. Jewish history is rife with examples
of persecution, most recently in the Nazi Holocaust, in which surround-
ing populations stood by and did nothing while Jews were being tortured
and killed, then later claimed that they didn’t know what was happen-
ing, that they were merely innocent bystanders. In the South African sit-
uation, people who have thought of themselves as bystanders must ask
themselves how they ought to have acted, or in what ways they implicitly
supported the apartheid system or failed to carry out their moral duty.«54
Paradoxically, the Holocaust became one of the key conduits for the
community’s re-integration into the new South Africa, and particularly
as a way of asserting its identification with, and commitment to, the new
democracy. This entailed a corresponding modification of memory nar-
ratives. The 1994 Anne Frank exhibition was, according to the organiz-
ers, »the single most ambitious educational project with which the Jew-
ish community had ever been associated,« largely because it targeted not
only Jews but »all South Africans« with its universal message.55 The rad-
ical expansion of the audience for Holocaust memory in the early 1990s
stimulated even more ambitious community projects in the years that
followed. Increasingly, the focus on particularist concerns that had char-
acterized community memorialization under apartheid expanded to en-
compass a universalized language that by that time had also begun to
dominate globally. The unparalleled public response to Anne Frank in the
World convinced organizer Myra Osrin that »a [permanent] Holocaust
centre could play a significant role in the process of transformation that
was about to unfold in the New South Africa. The lessons of the Holo-
caust could be applied to the nation’s evolving post-apartheid society as
there was still a desperate need to unite divided communities by combat-
ing stereotyping, prejudice and racism, and building bridges of mutual
understanding and respect.«56
This defining period in Jewish history, which for much of the apart-
heid era had been represented as a »unique« event with implications
primarily for Jews, was now seen to have timely and significant lessons
54 Formed in Johannesburg in 1996, the Gesher Movement aimed »to serve as a

Jewish lobby speaking with one independent voice, ’to enlighten’ the Jewish
community in the new South Africa, and to combat Jewish racism.« The Gesher
submission is available at: http://sabctrc.saha.org.za/reports/volume4/chapter3/
subsection1.htm (15 September 2016).
55 Pollak (1994), p. 8.
56 Ibid., p. 9.
211
shirli gilbert
for the emergent democracy. The focus on issues like »mutual under-
standing« and »respect« clearly echoed official narratives, emphasizing
the central role that Holocaust memory could play in the process of
nation-building. In 1999, Osrin became the Founding Director of the
Cape Town Holocaust Centre, the first of its kind in Africa. The first
gallery of the permanent exhibition explicitly highlighted issues of rac-
ism and antisemitism in South Africa, and suggested parallels with Nazi
Germany before 1939. The comparison was not developed in the exhi-
bition, but seems to have been intended to establish the relevance of the
Holocaust for the local context.57 In 2007, an expanded organization,
the South African Holocaust and Genocide Foundation, was established
in response to the Department of Education’s introduction of the Holo-
caust into the national curriculum as part of a module entitled »Human
Rights Issues During and After World War II.« The Foundation describes
its mission as »creating a more caring and just society in which human
rights and diversity are respected and valued.«58 In 2008, a second center
began work in Johannesburg (a permanent building was formally opened
in 2016), and a third museum was opened in Durban.
There are many more instances in which the Holocaust has been in-
voked post-apartheid. A number of Holocaust-related exhibitions have
been mounted since 1994, there have been several popular theatrical pro-
ductions dealing with the Holocaust, and a range of academic and intel-
lectual discussions have engaged the question of how the Nazi past might
inform the process of facing the apartheid past. Anne Frank continues to
occupy a prominent place among these representations. She is the only
individual singled out in the South African Holocaust and Genocide
Foundation’s extensive and widely-used educators’ and learners’ pack The
Holocaust: Lessons for Humanity.59 In official textbooks, Anne is often the
only individual Holocaust victim about whom learners are encouraged to
read.60 The Durban Holocaust Centre has a special section dedicated to
Anne Frank, including the world’s first replica of her room in the annex.61
57 For further discussion see: Stier (2004), pp. 123-142.

58 The SAHGF is one of the principal players in human rights education in South
Africa. See: South African Holocaust & Genocide Foundation, About Us,
Vision/Mission, http://www.ctholocaust.co.za/pages/about-the-foundation-vi-
sion_mission.htm (21 June 2011).
59 Silbert and Petersen (2007).
60 See for example: Ranby, Johannesson, and Friedman, p. 127.
61 Author interview with Mary Kluk, director of the Durban Holocaust and Geno-
cide Centre, 27 August 2010; Anne Frank room opens at Holocaust Centre,
212
An Afrikaans translation of the diary was published in 2007,62 and a sec-

ond exhibition produced by the Anne Frank Centre, Anne Frank: A History
for Today, began a South African tour in 2009.63 Exploring the distinct nu-
ances of these diverse representations is beyond the scope of this essay, but
in broad terms, they reinforce the picture I have presented of a post-apart-
heid memory culture focused on tolerance, reconciliation, and human
rights. These are of course themes with widespread global echoes, but in
the South African context they assume an added resonance.
Conclusion
In the contemporary world, the relevance of the Holocaust is seemingly
obvious. From the widely adopted Holocaust Memorial Day on Janu-
ary 27 to the museums, exhibitions, and educational programs that have
proliferated across the Western world, the consistent theme that emerges
is the importance of tolerance and protecting human rights.
Since 1994, Holocaust memory in South Africa has been intimately
linked with the end of apartheid in ways that echo these global trends.
As I have suggested in this essay, one of the most powerful ways in which
the country justified its re-entry into the international community was
by establishing its commitment to human rights, rooted explicitly in the
memory of the Holocaust. I have also pointed to the particular impor-
tance of Anne Frank as a vehicle for promoting universal ideals of tol-
erance and personal responsibility, and for invoking the powerful meta-
phor of the Holocaust without demanding a sustained engagement with
its implications for local history.
Of course, the narratives of tolerance that characterize contemporary
Holocaust memorialization, in South Africa as elsewhere, are not simply
the obvious legacy of the Nazi past but very much the products of histor-
ical context. During and after the transition to democracy in South Af-
rica, as we have seen, history was conceived as an integral tool in the pro-
cess of nation building. In general, the move towards consensual memory
entailed an avoidance of the more challenging aspects of apartheid that
might have jeopardized political stability.
Berea News, 14 November 2008, and Zohra Mohamed, Reality checkpoint,

Financial Mail, 20 November 2008.
62 Frank (2007).
63 Anne Frank Haus (1996).
213
shirli gilbert
But while memory of the Holocaust was inescapably linked with these
political processes, it cannot simply be explained as a product of politi-
cal contrivance. The literary critic Michael Rothberg draws attention to
the »inevitable dialogical exchange between memory traditions,«64 insist-
ing that the history of Holocaust memory is »not only a history of the
afterlife of the Holocaust« but also »a history of the Nazi genocide’s in-
teraction with decolonization, racism, and the legacies of slavery, among
other things.«65 Memory of the Holocaust, in other words, does not in-
evitably act as a screen memory that silences or displaces other closer or
more painful memories, but can function as a means through which to
process and articulate those memories. Tali Nates, director of the Johan-
nesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre, maintains that the Holocaust
has served as an »excellent entry point« for tolerance education because
it is »removed from the local experience« and is thus »less emotionally
charged.« Educators raised under apartheid find it difficult to teach
about their own history; by contrast, the Holocaust allows for a safer and
more open discussion of local racism because it is less painful and im-
mediate.66 In the context of a country attempting to recreate itself after
apartheid, meaningful attempts to come to terms with the past – pain-
ful, messy, and drawn out as they are likely to be – are perhaps less ur-
gent than creating a stable, functioning society that can integrate both
victims and perpetrators. One generation on, it is unclear whether it is
yet possible for South Africans to deal fully with the apartheid past and
also maintain a stable political and social existence.
At the same time, the consensual memory cultures that supported the
process of reconciliation in the immediate aftermath of apartheid are not
a sufficient foundation for a serious process of coming to terms with the
past. This will require a far more thorough, searching, and nuanced his-
toriographical process that will tolerate a greater diversity of voices, be
prepared to confront morally complex issues such as complicity and col-
laboration, and be open to grappling with the most difficult aspects of
recent South African history. In the current political landscape, it is un-
likely that such an endeavour will be undertaken soon.
64 Rothberg (2009c), p. 21.

65 Rothberg (2009b), p. 132.
66 Nates (2010), pp. 19 f. These ideas have been echoed in other contexts; see for
example Chyrikins and Vieyra (2010), pp. S7-S15.
214
Memory of the Holocaust in India
A Case Study for Holocaust Education
Yulia Egorova
Robert Eaglestone observes that »however fully or poorly understood,

the event of the Holocaust is already a horizon which orients our time,
certainly in the West, even now, three or four generations afterwards.«1
In this essay, I will address the central question of this volume by turning
to the case study of India. In doing so, I will attempt both to present an
outline of practices and rhetoric associated with Holocaust memory on
the subcontinent, and to examine how the context of postcolonial South
Asia might cast light on a number of important theoretical concerns in
Holocaust Studies. Such theoretical issues include the debate about the
place of the Holocaust in the broader history of genocides, the relation-
ship between the Holocaust and the history of colonialism, and global
expressions of Holocaust memory.
Michael Rothberg notes in Multidirectional Memory that »far from
blocking other historical memories from view in a competitive struggle
from recognition, the emergence of Holocaust memory on a global scale
has contributed to the articulation of other histories.«2 References to the
Holocaust have been made in debates about slavery, the United Nations
war-crimes tribunal for Rwanda, and documentation on human rights
abuses in Argentina, to name just a few.3 India offers examples of Holo-
caust memories being referenced in relation to experiences of the victims
of colonial and communal violence, and demonstrates the importance
of promoting Holocaust education in a country that was not one of the
main sites where the tragedy of the Holocaust took place.
In considering the importance of Holocaust memory on the subcon-
tinent, I will first turn to a discussion of the way Nazi policies were the-
matized in the Indian nationalist discourse of the 1930s and 1940s, and
of Indian public responses to the idea of India becoming a haven for Eu-
ropean Jewish refugees in the 1930s and 1940s. As will be demonstrated
below, the majority of Indian nationalists and the Indian public were
1 Eaglestone (2004), p. 12.

2 Rothberg (2009c).
3 Levy and Sznaider (2006), p. 5.
215
yulia egorova
highly critical of Nazism in general and of Hitler’s antisemitic policies in

particular. However, extreme Hindu nationalist groups, which supported
persecution of non-Hindus and particularly of Indian Muslims, viewed
the violence directed at the Jews of Germany in a positive light. This es-
say will discuss how the Hindu right continued to utilize similar motives
in its rhetoric as late as the 1990s and 2000s. It will then show how these
extreme views map on to the lack of Holocaust education in contempo-
rary India. Finally, I will argue that the Indian case study offers a partic-
ularly illustrative example to support the view that Holocaust education,
which would be expressed in specially dedicated courses at schools, uni-
versities, and wider cultural events, is important both within and outside
the context of antisemitism.
India, Jewish Refugees, and Nazi Germany

Leading Indian nationalists expressed complex and varied attitudes re-
garding their relationship towards Hitler’s Germany. Milan Hauner ob-
serves that they reflected »the broader division between those who were
ready to support Britain if she were to find herself fighting Germany,
and those […] who stated that no support would be forthcoming from
India.«4 The stance of the Indian National Congress on the Nazi perse-
cution of the Jews was highly critical. After Kristallnacht, the Congress
made a declaration against Hitler’s Germany, and Indian nationalists
expressed their indignation at Hitler’s attacks on the Jews.5 Mahatma
Gandhi’s attitude towards Hitler’s antisemitic policies was sharply neg-
ative, but he held an unusual position on the question of methods of
struggle against the Nazis. He underestimated the gravity of the situation
in which German Jews found themselves in the 1930s. In the issue of the
Harijan newspaper of November 26, 1938, he published an article under
the title »If I Were A German Jew,« in which he compared the position
of the Jews in Germany to that of the Indians in South Africa at the be-
ginning of the 20th century. He recommended that the Jews of Germany
observe organized satyagraha (non-violent resistance) in response to the
Nazi persecution and not to leave Germany.6 This position was severely
4 Hauner (1981), p. 66. See also: Sharma (1994).

5 Jewish Tribune, January 1939, p. 9.
6 Jewish Advocate, 2 December 1938, p. 3.
216
memory of the holocaust in india
criticized by a wide range of commentators,7 including the Indian Bene

Israel community.8
Subhas Chandra Bose, one of the prominent figures in the Indian Na-
tional Congress, espoused a similarly complex attitude toward Nazism.
He represented the party’s radical wing and attempted to seek help from
Germany in liberating India from the British. Unlike Nehru and other
members of the Congress who denounced Nazism in no uncertain terms,
Bose was cautious in his assessment of Hitler’s Germany and advocated
for the development of German-Indian relations.9
The Hindu nationalist party Hindu Mahasabha (The Great Hindu
Association), established in 1915, not only advocated maintaining good
relations with Hitler’s Germany for practical purposes, but it also sup-
ported Nazi ideology.10 Its discussion of Nazi policies towards the Jews
was mediated by its general position concerning India’s religious minori-
ties, particularly the Muslim community. Thus, Vinayak Damodar Sa-
varkar, a prominent figure in the Hindu Mahasabha, in a speech given
in 1939, expressed doubts about the loyalty of Indian Muslims and com-
pared them to the Jews of Germany: »Today we the Hindus from Kash-
mere to Madras and Sindh to Assam will be a Nation by ourselves – while
the Indian Moslems are on the whole more inclined to identify them-
selves and their interests with Moslems outside India than Hindus who
live next door, like the Jews in Germany.«11 Another Hindu nationalist,
Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, once the leader of Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh (National Volunteer Organisation), a militant Hindu group estab-
lished in 1925, applied racist ideology to the definition of the Hindu and
suggested that Nazi policies could be used on the subcontinent: »To keep
up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by
her purging the country of the Semitic Race – the Jews. […] Germany
has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, hav-
ing differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole,
a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by.«12
In India, both the English and the Indian nationalist press denounced
Nazism. The Times of India condemned Hitler’s antisemitic statements
7 Roland (1999), pp. 186-189.

8 Guttman (2013), pp. 129 f.
9 Sareen (1996).
10 For a discussion of Hindu nationalism see: Jaffrelot (1996).
11 Savarkar (1949), pp. 101 f.
12 Golwalkar (1939), p. 35.
217
yulia egorova
as early as 1932.13 At the same time, however, the Indian press also noted
the spread of Nazi propaganda on the subcontinent. On July 6, 1938, The
Bombay Sentinel observed that Nazi propaganda was aimed at both the
Hindus and the Muslims of India. At Aligarh University, Nazis spon-
sored a German Society, which produced publications pointing out the
similarities between Hitler’s National Socialism and Islam. Hindus, in
turn, were told that they were pure Aryans and thus had a lot in common
with the Germans.
Indians also had to address the issue of European Jewish refugees flee-
ing to the subcontinent in order to escape persecution during the 1930s
and 1940s.14 Jewish families began to arrive from Germany in 1933, im-
mediately after Hitler came to power. These early refugees were mainly
doctors who went to India at the invitation of their colleagues, settling in
Bombay and Calcutta. By mid-decade, more refugees had arrived from
Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. According to the Indian periodical
Jewish Advocate, the total number of European Jewish refugees in India
in 1943 amounted to some 1,200 people.15
Upon arrival, most of the refugees had to find jobs, and the problem
of providing employment was a topic of discussion amongst a number
of Indian nationalists. Jawaharlal Nehru advocated the idea of engaging
Jewish specialists from Europe in Indian industry. As reported in the Oc-
tober 27, 1939 edition of the Statesman, he suggested to Syed Mahmud,
the Minister for Education and Development, for Bihar to use the ser-
vices of European Jewish refugees. Sareen notes that individual Euro-
peans turned to Nehru for help with settling Jewish refugees in India.16
It appears that representatives of European Jewry also approached
R. Shanmukham Chetty, the Diwan (Chief Minister) of Cochin, asking
whether there was any chance of obtaining local governmental permis-
sion to settle Jews in the state. According to an interview with the Indian
periodical Jewish Tribune, Neville Laski, acting on behalf of the Board of
Deputies of British Jews and Paul Goodman, contacted Chetty during a
stay in Europe; Chetty and Laski discussed the possibilities for German
and Austrian Jews to immigrate to Cochin. The Diwan expressed his
sympathy for European Jews, but replied that before giving a definitive
13 Jewish Advocate, July 1932, p. 436.

14 The fate of some of these people in India has been described in detail in Roland
(1999), and in Bhatti and Voigt (1999).
15 Jewish Advocate, July 1943, p. 9.
16 Sareen (1996), pp. 56 f.
218
answer he had to consider the possibility of their employment.17 Savarkar

held a negative view of the Diwan’s statement and Nehru’s proposal to
invite Jewish specialists. He labeled these efforts as »the suicidal generos-
ity [Indian] forefathers had been guilty of in other cases of inviting col-
onies of non-Hindus to India.«18 It is noteworthy that these statements
appear in the context of Savarkar’s discussion of Indian Jews, whom he
describes as harmless due to their small numbers and absence of prosely-
tizing tendencies; it appears that, as was the case with his comments on
Nazi atrocities in Europe, his polemical stance was mediated by his ex-
tremist anti-Muslim views.
The opinion of the wider Indian public on the issue of Jewish refugees,
as reflected in the Indian press, was mixed. Indian Jewish newspapers re-
ported that many Indians sympathized with the Jews of Europe and were
ready to offer help. The response of some Indian professionals to the pos-
sible influx of Jewish refugees was less enthusiastic. Physicians in Bom-
bay expressed concern about the prospect of competing with their Jewish
colleagues from Europe. Some reactions in the press were openly antise-
mitic, echoing anti-Jewish propaganda in Europe.19 They reflected both
Nazi propaganda and the extremist views of British antisemites, views
that had also found their way into Indian mass media.20
As I have argued elsewhere, on the whole, when references to Jews and
Judaism were made in Indian nationalist and religious discourse, both in
the late British period and after Independence, it was more often than
not done in the context of a wider discussion about other social, reli-
gious, and political groups of the subcontinent.21 This phenomenon is
not by any means restricted to India alone. As Sander Gilman observes,
»It has been widely noted in the course of the 20th century, from fin-de-
siècle Vienna to Poland in the winter of 1990, that the label ’Jew’ could
be applied to virtually anyone one wished to stigmatize whatever their
religious, ethnic, or political identity or background.«22 Similarly, Xun
Zhou notes in her study of Chinese perceptions of Jewishness and Juda-
ism that in modern China the word Jewish was often used as a label and
could be applied to anyone.23 As we can see from the examples of Hindu
17 Jewish Tribune, December 1938, p. 11, Jewish Advocate, 2 December 1938, p. 14.
18 Savarkar (1949), pp. 69 f.
19 Roland (1999), pp. 177-186, and Egorova (2006), pp. 47 ff.
20 Egorova (2006), pp. 31-37.
21 Ibid.
22 Gilman (1991), p. 6.
23 Xun (2001), p. 3 f.
219
yulia egorova
right-wing propaganda of the 1930s and 1940s, its ideologues were not
necessarily concerned about the actual Jewish communities of India. In-
stead, they were drawing parallels between European Jews and the larger
»minority« communities of India, specifically Muslims, and making dis-
turbing suggestions that Nazi anti-Jewish policies could be implemented
at home to target non-Hindu groups. As we will see in the following sec-
tion, this rhetoric has survived in the discourse of some leaders of the
Hindu right until today, and, in the absence of systematic Holocaust ed-
ucation, continues to go unchallenged.
Nazism, Antisemitism, and the Hindu Right

In November 2012 the city of Mumbai came to a standstill as a large num-
ber of people gathered to watch the funeral of Bal Thackerey, the founder
of India’s extremist right wing party Shiv Sena. Over the years the party,
formed in 1966 in the state of Maharashtra, became notorious for inciting
hatred against Muslims and other minorities; it was implicated in the 1992
Mumbai riots and in attacks on Muslims in 2002.24 Thackeray continued
the earlier tradition of pro-Hindu extremists, and he also adopted their pos-
itive attitude towards Hitler and Nazi policies.25 Though later in his life he
rescinded this position,26 in 1992, before the Mumbai riots, he was quoted
in an interview as saying, »If you take Mein Kampf and if you remove the
word Jew and put in the word Muslim, that is what I believe in.«27
It has been suggested that Thackeray’s views are partly to blame for
Hitler’s rising popularity as a figure in India.28 As Navras Aafreedi, a pio-
neer of Holocaust education in India, observes, films are made in various
Indian languages with protagonists named Hitler, there is a growing de-
mand for Hitler memorabilia, and Mein Kampf, which the Nazis trans-
24 Anup Kaphle, Who was Bal Thackeray and why did Mumbai come to a stand-
still this week-end?, Washington Post, 19 November 2012.
25 Aafreedi (2014), pp. 14 ff.
26 http://maharashtrainformation.com/page.php?id=232 (27 June 2014).
27 Saira Kurup, It’s hardly a struggle selling Hitler’s story in India, Times of India, 1 Feb-
ruary 2009, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Sunday_TOI/Its_hardly_a_strug-
gle_selling_Hitlers_story_in_India/rssarticleshow/4058227.cms (27 June 2014).
28 Dilip D’Souza, Hitler’s Strange Afterlife in India, 30 November 2011, http://
www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/30/hitler-s-strange-afterlife-in-india.
220
lated into all major Indian languages, is still readily available throughout
the country.29
Holocaust education and education in Jewish Studies, on the other
hand, have been extremely limited. Indian Jewish communities account
for a tiny minority of the Indian population, and many people on the
subcontinent are ignorant about Jews and Judaism. Aafreedi reports that
the only existing Hindi-language book on the topic of the Holocaust is a
collection published by Yad Vashem.30 In addition, with the exception of
a few scholars, including Aafreedi, outside actors are generally responsi-
ble for advancing Holocaust education in the country. Thus, in January
2013, the Foreign Ministry of Israel invited a group of Indian educators
to take part in a program on the Holocaust at Yad Vashem.31 An offi-
cial from the Foreign Ministry commented on the program and stated:
»Many people in Asia are not aware of what happened in Europe. Un-
fortunately, many think that Hitler was a hero rather than a monster,
and that’s why it is important for us to reinforce Holocaust education.«32
Indeed, India offers a particularly illustrative example of the impor-
tance of developing Holocaust education in a country that has had only
a limited exposure to Hitler’s Nazism. It also calls attention to the im-
portance and relevance of Holocaust Studies both within and outside the
context of antisemitism. In India, the explicit pro-Nazi sympathies of the
Hindu right have not been directed specifically at Jewish communities.
As several of my Indian Jewish respondents noted, in the past five years
their community had never been the target of Shiv Sena’s extremism. On
the contrary, as one of my informants observed, to the best of his knowl-
edge, the Shiv Sena leaders took it upon themselves to rhetorically pro-
tect Indian Jews from the perceived threat of Muslim communal violence
and suggested they were ready to use any potential attack on local Jews
committed by Muslims as a pretext for anti-Muslim propaganda.
The complexity regarding the relationship between Jews, Muslims,
and the Hindu right is compounded by the fact that, as Anna Guttman
observes, some Hindu thinkers have construed India and Israel as hav-
ing a »shared« Muslim enemy.33 In the BJP-dominated India of the turn
of the 21st century, Jewish topics often appeared in publications directed
29 Aafreedi (2014), pp. 14 ff.

30 Ibid., p. 15
31 Itamar Eichner, India exposed to Holocaust Studies, Y Net, 24 January 2013,
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4336480,00.html (27 June 2014).
32 Ibid.
33 Guttman (2013), p. 10.
221
yulia egorova
against Muslims and other minorities.34 Such a stance could be found

even in the mainstream press. For instance, a contributor to the Business
Standard observed in 1998 that »[n]either Jews nor Hindus try to con-
vert other people to their religion. In fact a non-Hindu cannot become
a true Hindu just as a non-Jew cannot become a Jew. Therefore, neither
religion has practiced or encouraged atrocities related to forcible conver-
sions – like Islam or Christianity.«35 The author went further in his »Hin-
du-Jewish« comparison, maintaining that »both countries suffered from
the pillage and plundering by Islamic conquerors« and »face the animos-
ity of the Muslim world.«36 In 2002, Priyadarsi Dutta from the Pioneer
argued that India should develop cordial relations with Israel, as many
Israelis were interested in India and the two countries faced »the threat
of Islamic terrorism.« The article further developed the juxtaposition be-
tween Jews and Muslims by characterizing the Jews as »talented« and »in-
dustrious« people who »never wanted to conquer continents in the name
of the Prophet«, but were never »allowed to live in peace despite their
best intentions.«37
Even though the seemingly Nazi-inspired rhetoric of some leaders
from the Hindu right has not directly affected Indian Jews or India’s re-
lationship with the Jewish state, this is not to say it has been harmless.
As demonstrated above, Hindu nationalist leaders such as Golwalkar and
Thackeray freely used Nazi discourse to promote the discrimination of
Indian Muslims and other minorities. It can be suggested that one of the
reasons these rhetorical practices often go unchallenged is the lack of Ho-
locaust education on the subcontinent.
At the same time, it should be noted that the general lack of Holocaust
Studies and Jewish Studies education means that the country has not had
sufficient resources to draw upon in combatting negative and stereotyp-
ical imageries of Jewishness that found their way to India. India is of-
ten represented as a country that has never seen antisemitism. Indeed, it
can be argued that local Jewish communities were never subjected to the
same levels of discrimination and persecution as their European co-reli-
gionists. However, an analysis of references to local Jewish groups made
in the political discourse of independent India suggests that Indian lead-
34 BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party, Indian People’s Party) is a major party in India
which is ideologically connected to the Hindu right.
35 T. Thomas, India and Israel – the Strategic Fit, The Business Standard, 14 Febru-
ary 1998.
36 Ibid.
37 Priyadarsi Dutta, Jews and the India Link, The Pioneer, 15 February 2002.
222
ers draw upon the perceived absence of antisemitism to further an image

of India as a tolerant country. Moreover, the image of Indian Jews is in-
voked to implicitly suggest that they »set a good example« for other mi-
nority communities by appearing to be satisfied with their place in soci-
ety.38 Guttman points out cases when »the ostensible tolerance India has
shown toward Jews is invoked to rebuff current claims of discrimination
by other Indian minority groups.«39 More specifically, she points to an
example from the March 2001 special edition of the-south-asian.com on-
line magazine dedicated to Indian Jews. An ultranationalist Hindu group
used the magazine story in an attempt to discredit Muslim critiques of
the religious intolerance promoted by Hindu fundamentalists.40
It is noteworthy in this respect that India has not been immune to an-
tisemitic propaganda, even if it did not directly affect Indian Jewish com-
munities. Various European mythologies about an »international Jewish
conspiracy« found their way into Indian post-independence discourse,
where they appeared in new permutations and were used by representa-
tives of different religious and socio-political groups to suit their respec-
tive agendas.
For instance, extreme antisemitic imagery was used in the anti-Hindu
discourse of the radical periodical Dalit Voice.41 The magazine criticized
Indian Brahmans and other upper-caste Hindus, and its editor, V. T. Raj-
shekar, and other contributors posited a dichotomy between the »white
West« allied with the »Hindu rulers« of India and the peoples of Asia
and Africa, whom they associate with Indian Dalits. The discussion of
Jewishness, as it appears in Dalit Voice, is full of antisemitic stereotypes
borrowed from the West.42 As this example suggests, anti-Jewish mythol-
ogies, which first emerged in Europe, became part of a shared code of
knowledge within some segments of the Indian reading public.
Images of the Holocaust in Independent India

Communalist motives, which are used to discuss various episodes in In-
dian history, also found their way into some Indian representations of the
Holocaust. As mentioned in the introduction with reference to the work
of Michael Rothberg, the emergence of Holocaust memories on a global
38 Egorova (2006), p. 108.
39 Guttman (2013), p. 127.
40 Ibid.
41 Dalit is one of the names used to describe former untouchables.
42 Egorova (2006), pp. 73-80.
223
yulia egorova
scale contributed to the articulation of other histories of persecution and

genocide. In academic discourse, placing Nazi ideology and practices in
direct comparison with earlier European colonization practices has be-
come routine for postcolonial theorists.43 As Dan Stone observes, »An
analysis of the developing interrelationship between Holocaust historio-
graphy and genocide studies reveals that the comparative study of geno-
cide no longer requires participants to be pitted against one another […].
Instead, the insights gained in both fields are helping to illuminate each
other.«44
Guttman discusses in detail how the Holocaust became a reference
point of South Asian literature for reflecting on events in Indian history.
For instance, in writing about Anita Desai’s Baumgartner’s Bombay, Gutt-
man points to the attention that the key character of the novel, a Ho-
locaust survivor, pays to the sufferings of the victims of the Partition in
1947.45 Similarly, Aafreedi observes that some in India believe that the
partition of India has been as tragic an episode in Indian history as the
Shoah has been in Jewish history. Aafreedi argues that Indian Partition
Studies can exist as an academic discipline in India, the way Holocaust
Studies exist as an academic discipline in the West.46 Such a position
echoes the academic stance on comparative genocide studies referenced
by the scholars mentioned above.
At the same time, other commentators in India have referred to the
Shoah in a competitive way. References to the Holocaust of the Jewish
people have appeared in discussions of Indian Muslim history from the
perspectives of both the Indian Hindu right and the European nation-
alist right; and both use images of the Shoah as a trope in anti-Muslim
critique. The Indian press has published articles by François Gautier,
a French journalist living in India, who is a staunch supporter of the
extreme Hindu right. Like some previously discussed commentators,
Gautier constructs Hinduism as a tolerant religion in opposition to Is-
lam. In an article published in the early 2000s, Gautier criticizes those
who see the events in Ayodhya, which involved the destruction of the
Babri Masjid, as the end of tolerant India.47 He »reminds« the reader
43 Stone (2010), p. 242.

44 Ibid.
45 Guttman (2013), p. 687.
46 Aafreedi (2014), pp. 14 f.
47 The Babri Masjid (the mosque of Babur, Urdu) was constructed in Ayodhya in
the 16th century at the site which many Hindus believe was the birthplace of
Rama, one of the incarnations of the god Vishnu. The mosque was destroyed
224
that »during its long history, Hinduism has been one of the most peace-
ful creeds in the world […] never trying to convert […] and submit-
ting itself […] to numerous invasions.« The latter he describes as »Mus-
lim atrocities« and argues that their memory, which has allegedly been
suppressed in India, should be revived, and that Muslims should be
reminded of their invasions – just as the Germans were constantly re-
minded of Nazi atrocities, thus generating the sense of guilt necessary to
avoid similar destruction in the future.48 In a more recent article, Gautier
opines that »the massacre of 6 million Jews by Hitler and the persecution
that Jews suffered all over the world in the last 15 centuries has been me-
ticulously recorded by Jews themselves after 1945 and has been enshrined
not only in history books, but also in Holocaust museums […]. Hindus,
Sikhs and Buddhists have suffered also a terrible Holocaust, probably
without parallel in human history.«49
The topic of the Shoah has also been widely used by openly militant
Hindu groups. One of these groups, the Nation of Hindutva, criticizes
»Hindu society« for being »disorganized and lacking any real sense of di-
rection.« It calls for this »Hindu society« to follow the example of the
Jews who are »considerably more focused and consolidated.«50 Apart
from that, like Gautier, the author of the site attacks what he calls the
»negationist policy« of India and recommends Hindus to follow the ex-
ample of the Jews, who keep the memory of the Holocaust alive. In this
respect he cites Koenraad Elst, a Belgian author who, much in the vein of
Gautier, speaks about »the millennium-long attack of Islam on Hindu-
ism.« Elst claims that its denial, unlike the denial of Nazi crimes against
the Jews or Turkish negationism with respect to the Armenian genocide,
did not receive adequate attention.51 Similarly, Hinduwebsite.com calls
»the Muslim invasion« of India »the biggest Holocaust in world history«
and argues that just like »no films are made showing Hitler as a romantic
on 6 December 1992 by the crowd brought in by the Hindu communalist party

Vishva Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) and associated groups. The de-
struction of Babri Masjid sparked one of the worst outbreakes of sectarian vio-
lence in contemporary Indian history.
48 François Gautier, A Lesson From the Jews, The Indian Express, 15 January 2001.
49 François Gautier, Where’s India’s Holocaust Museum?, 21 October 2003, http://
www.rediff.com/news/2003/oct/21franc.htm (12 August 2016).
50 Where Is the Hindu Holocaust Museum? (1998)
51 Nation of Hindutva (1998).
225
yulia egorova
hero,« Indian cinematographers should stop making films romanticizing

Mughal rulers.52
The trope of the »Muslim invasion« of India being »the biggest Ho-
locaust in world history« has crossed the geographical and ideological
boundaries of the Hindu right. It also appeared in the discourse of the
British National Party, which in 2012 stated on its website that »the geno-
cide suffered by the Hindus of India at the hands of Arab, Turkish, Mu-
ghals and Afghan occupying forces for a period of 800 years is as yet for-
mally unrecognized by the World.«53
It is therefore apparent that the theme of the Shoah has been refer-
enced in Islamophobic right-wing propaganda pertaining to Indian his-
tory. Moreover, the above-mentioned statements are not only ideological
attacks on Islam in general and Indian Muslims in particular, but they
also contain exaggerated claims about the recording of Jewish history and
they trivialize existing practices of Holocaust memorialization. Though
commentators try to appear critical of antisemitism and supportive of
Holocaust education, their statements about Jewish people »meticu-
lously« recording incidents of persecution while being »more focused and
consolidated« reveal uncritical reliance on antisemitic tropes and a lack of
adequate engagement with Holocaust Studies.
Conclusion
In India the actual commemoration of Holocaust victims is left to indi-
vidual volunteers. The most prominent figure among these volunteers
is Navras Jaat Aafreedi, a Jewish Studies scholar and an activist for Ho-
locaust education and Jewish-Muslim relations in India. In 2009, when
based in Lucknow, an important historical center of Indian Muslim cul-
ture, he organized the first ever Holocaust cinema retrospective in South
Asia, during which 46 films were shown at five venues over a period of
two months. None of the films had ever been screened in India previ-
ously.54 Aafreedi states that he organized the retrospective because he was
52 Jayaram V, The Biggest Holocaust in World History, http://www.hinduwebsite.

com/history/holocaust.asp (21 September 2016).
53 British National Party, The Biggest Holocaust in the World – Whitewashed
from History, 16 April 2012, http://www.bnp.org.uk/news/national/biggest-
holocaust-world-history-whitewashed-history (20 June 2016).
54 Navras Jaat Aafreedi, The First Ever Holocaust Films Retrospective in South
Asia, https://sites.google.com/site/aafreedi/thefirsteverholocaustfilmsretrospec-
tivei (27 June 2014).
226
conscious of the lack of Holocaust education in the country and of the

spread of Holocaust denial among a segment of Indian Muslims.55
The topic of Jewish-Muslim relations in South Asia requires a separate
discussion elsewhere. In the first half of the 20th century, Indian Mus-
lim attitudes towards Jews were affected by the Palestine issue, and edu-
cated Muslims by and large adopted a negative attitude towards Zionism.
After the First World War, M. A. Ansari and the Ali brothers launched
the Khilafat movement, which argued that Palestine must remain under
Muslim rule.56 The movement disintegrated in 1924, but the tradition of
anti-Zionist sentiment among Indian Muslims survived. In addition, the
Palestine issue may have also generated anti-Jewish feelings among In-
dian Muslims more generally.57
Instances of Holocaust denial in Indian Muslim periodicals are quite
frequent. They are often based on arguments made by Holocaust deniers
in the West, and represent one of numerous examples of antisemitic rhet-
oric that emerged in Western discourse used elsewhere.58 In this respect,
Holocaust denial among Indian Muslims also mirrors Holocaust denial
in the Middle East, where it is an expression of anti-Jewish sentiments
and a critique of Zionism and Israel.59
India offers a vivid example of the relevance and importance of Ho-
locaust education in a country that is not known for its history of anti-
semitism. As shown above, the lack of Holocaust education and research
was a contributing factor to a host of highly problematic phenomena in
India, such as the rise in popularity of the image of Hitler, the trivializa-
tion of Holocaust memory, competitive use of references to the Holo-
caust in postcolonial critique and communalist discourse, and Holocaust
denial. What one would hope to see instead is a non-competitive, and
therefore more productive, application of insights from Holocaust re-
search. This will enhance understanding of some of the tragic events in
India’s (not so distant) past, such as communal violence following the
Partition, the Ayodhya events, and the Gujarat riots of 2002. In doing so,
one could fruitfully employ theoretical insights from Holocaust Studies,
which argue against a logic of competitive memory.60
55 Ibid.
56 Roland (1999), p. 84.
57 Sareen (1999), p. 61.
58 Aafreedi (2010).
59 Litvak and Webman (2009).
60 See: Rothberg (2009c), and Rothberg (2011).
227
Holocaust and Jewish Studies in Modern China
Functions of a Political Agenda
Jonathan Goldstein
Since the Communist Party (CCP) takeover of China in 1949, the study
of Holocaust, Jewish, and Israel Studies (HJIS) has been orchestrated by a
totalitarian regime. A political agenda determines the nature of academic
study of these subjects at the secondary and collegiate levels, as well as
such popular memorializations as the Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum
and Beijing’s Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance Against
Japanese Aggression, which takes note of the Holocaust. These activities
are closely regulated by the state and lack the robust diversity of interpre-
tation that exists in the West.
Within these confines, the Chinese understanding of the Holocaust
and other Jewish-related subjects has evolved substantially over time.
Since 1949, China has switched from what historian Pan Guang calls
the »frozen period« of non-recognition of the State of Israel to an era of
extensive military, diplomatic, and commercial interaction. Simultane-
ously, China’s official HJIS narrative has shifted from an early interpreta-
tion which was largely of Soviet Communist origin and which could also
be found in other Soviet-affiliated states and Soviet-oriented Commu-
nist parties. According to that interpretation, which emerged when the
People’s Republic was still closely allied with the USSR, Jews were undif-
ferentiated victims of Fascism and Israel was a tool of Western imperial-
ism. Today China recognizes Israel as a legitimate state, a vital technolog-
ical ally, and, with significance for this chapter, an appropriate haven for
Holocaust refugees, as China itself was in the 1940s.
* A note on alphabetization, romanization (use of the Latin alphabet), and spell-

ing: Unlike our Western custom, Chinese and Japanese cultures place the last
name first, with no comma between the first and last name, e. g. Deng Xiaoping,
Mao Qin, Maruyama Naoki, Pan Guang, or Xu Xin. That convention is followed
in this chapter. I have chosen to retain certain spellings which persist in China
despite the official introduction of the pinyin system of romanization, e. g. Pe-
king University. I would like to thank Matthew Potvin of the University of Maine
Faculty IT Support Services for his assistance with the online research for this
chapter.
228
holocaust and jewish studies in modern china
This reconceptualization includes some notions that would be read-

ily acceptable to scholars in the West, such as recognition that the Na-
zis mass-murdered Jews because of their religion, which they often con-
flated with other distasteful features. It also includes conclusions which
require scholarly elaboration, such as the proposition that China suffered
a form of Fascist (Japanese) aggression comparable to European Jewish
misfortune at the hands of the Nazis; that, within China, the occupying
Japanese forces brutalized both Jews and Chinese; and that China as a
country, rather than individual Chinese righteous gentiles, assisted Jews
fleeing Hitler in ways that few other nations did.1
These conclusions have been widely circulated in China to the exclu-
sion of more nuanced interpretations in part because 20th-century China
has had precious little experience with, or input from, indigenous Jews. A
tiny community of Jews of Levantine origin has lived in the central Chi-
nese city of Kaifeng since the Middle Ages. Today the self-identified de-
scendants of that community number no more than 1,000. In the 18th
through early 20th centuries, other enclaves of Levantine, European, and
American Jews populated China’s coastal and inland trading emporia.
Approximately 18,000 Central and Eastern European Jewish refugees
from the Third Reich briefly resided in wartime Shanghai, Harbin, Tian-
jin, Dalian [Dairen], and elsewhere in China. With the exception of the
long-lasting Kaifeng community, these Jewish settlements were ephem-
eral, and minute by Chinese standards. They do not compare in influ-
ence with China’s much larger and officially recognized Christian and
Muslim minorities, whose populations have long traditions of indige-
nous scholarship.
1 This chapter excludes the status of HJIS in the Republic of China, which ruled
the Chinese mainland from the overthrow of the Manchu Dynasty in 1910 until
1949, when it was overthrown by the CCP and fled to the Chinese offshore island
of Taiwan, or Formosa. Taiwan has evolved into a full-fledged democracy exempt
from many of the ideological constraints of the mainland. It has a Holocaust re-
search center and extensive cultural ties with Israel. Goldstein (2005), pp. 177-
202; Goldstein (1999), updated Chinese edition 2006, updated Hebrew edition
2016. This chapter will also exclude any examination of HJIS in the former Eu-
ropean colonies of Hong Kong and Macau. As administrative districts of China,
these territories enjoy special academic and cultural privilege. As but one exam-
ple, Hong Kong and Macau have hosted Jewish Film Festivals with a wide variety
of artistic interpretations, some of which might have been unacceptable within
the People’s Republic proper. Ouyang (2004), pp. 141-149; Golkhman (2006),
pp. 117-139; Yenni Kwok, Raising awareness among Asians of the Holocaust, In-
ternational New York Times, 27 January 2014, p. 7; Timmermans (2011), pp. 3 f.
229
jonathan goldstein
Another factor affecting the study and teaching of HJIS in China is

that the Chinese see these topics as ones to be treated with great deli-
cacy. Holocaust history has been inextricably linked with a larger study of
Jews, antisemitism, Zionism, and genocide. Such discussions have special
resonance in China due to painful memories of Japanese wartime atroci-
ties. Such sensitivity would apply equally to any discussion of mass-mur-
der of Roma or homosexuals.
Thus, while China has opened up economically since 1979, and in that
sense has become a far more mobile society, both ordinary people and
scholars are still reluctant to express opinions on HJIS independently of
the state, its academic apparatus, and official narratives. Elite viewpoints
shape public »opinion« from the top down. Although a frivolous pop lit-
erature occasionally deals with Jewish subjects, all serious teaching, re-
search, and publication is regulated by China’s principal instruments of
information management: its Ministry of Education, the Chinese Acad-
emy of Social Sciences (CASS), and CASS’s regional affiliate, the Shang-
hai Academy of Social Sciences. How have these institutions permitted
expression of, and also confined, the study of the Holocaust? What are
the possibilities for change in the future?
HJIS and Holocaust Memory in China, 1949-79

There was no serious scholarship on the Holocaust in China until 1979.
Prior to 1949 HJIS was essentially the province of Christian theological
institutions. In particular, the interdenominational Protestant Theologi-
cal Seminary in Nanjing taught Biblical subjects, but excluded an exam-
ination of modern Jewish history, Israel, and the Holocaust. Of the ap-
proximately 20 articles that Chinese scholars published about Jews before
1949, all of the authors were associated with, and got much of their infor-
mation from, Christian missionaries. Their emphasis was almost entirely
on theology rather than modern history.2
As already suggested, from the establishment of the People’s Republic
of China (PRC) in October 1949 until approximately 1979, a Soviet-ori-
ented, Communist political agenda replaced a Christological one for
the study and teaching of HJIS. Academic research was repressed during
China’s »Anti-Rightist Campaign« of 1957 and »Great Proletarian Cul-
tural Revolution,« which was actually a counter-revolution lasting from
1966 to 1976. Throughout these years the CCP stifled Protestant and Ro-
2 Golkhman (2006), pp. 118 f., and Pollak (1993), passim.
230
man Catholic institutions. Nanjing’s seminary was kept alive as a ghost

of its former self – a Potemkin Village of tolerance which could be shown
to foreigners who inquired about the status of Christianity in China. The
seminary was burned during the Cultural Revolution, along with much
of its Biblical studies library.
In China’s public education system, from kindergarten through gradu-
ate school, mention of Jewish-related subjects was governed by the afore-
mentioned, Soviet-inspired educational agenda. This discourse defined
Jews murdered in the Holocaust as but one unspecified group among
numerous other victims of Fascism, the most prominent being non-Jew-
ish members of European Communist Parties. An ironic factor, which
also served to stifle HJIS in China, was that between 1949 and 1967 the
USSR and most other Socialist countries maintained full diplomatic re-
lations with Israel. By contrast, the PRC, in an attempt to ingratiate itself
with the pro-Arab »Third World,« refused to reciprocate Israel’s 1950 of-
fer of recognition and hewed closely to an anti-Israel discourse which in-
cluded minimal mention of Jews or Jewish history. In the PRC Israel was
referred to at best as the »Zionist entity« and at worst as a »running dog
of American imperialism.« I observed this phenomenon during a 1978
visit to Shanghai. A mural over the entryway to the city’s railroad station
depicted numerous warlike Arabs in distinctive keffiyyah headdresses be-
neath the slogan »We have friends all over the world.« It was clear who
the enemies were.3
From 1949 through 1979, a grand total of one work about Jews by
a Western-trained scholar appeared in the PRC. Pan Guangdan’s Some
Historical Questions on Jews in China, written and privately circulated
in 1953, was not granted official recognition and publicly published un-
til 1980. It referred exclusively to the indigenous Chinese community of
Kaifeng and made no reference at all to modern Jewish history or the
Holocaust.4
The Legitimization of HJIS in China since 1978-79

After the June 1967 Arab-Israeli war, a warming of Sino-Israeli military,
diplomatic, and commercial ties ultimately led to a cultural rapproche-
ment which included the legitimization of HJIS within China. This
broader reconciliation prompted a reinterpretation of the Holocaust
3 Goldstein (2004), pp. 223-253.

4 Pan (1980), pp. 171-186.
231
jonathan goldstein
which deviated from the aforementioned Soviet model. The develop-

ments within the Sino-Israeli military and diplomatic relationship that
led to this cultural rapprochement can only be summarized here, but
are essential for an understanding of the political context for ideologi-
cal change.
Sino-Israeli ties evolved as a result of China’s 1978-79 border war with
Vietnam, in which a Soviet-equipped Vietnamese Army devastated Chi-
na’s People’s Liberation Army. China’s military leadership began scouring
the world for a vendor who could upgrade China’s own Soviet-designed
armament in an economical fashion.5 Serendipitously, two mutually
sympathetic leaders came to power at opposite sides of Asia. In 1977 Me-
nachem Begin won the Israeli election. In 1978 Deng Xiaoping became
China’s Supreme Leader. Both shared a visceral hatred of the USSR. Chi-
nese leaders noted specific Israeli military capabilities which could equal,
if not excel, those of the USSR and its allies.6 Israel’s United Development
Company concluded a covert deal for the upgrading of China’s fleet of
antiquated Soviet-built T-59 tanks. In October 1984 China paraded its
Israeli-retrofitted T-59 tanks in Tiananmen Square on its National Day.7
The arms deal paved the way for commercial and ultimately diplo-
matic ties between Beijing and Jerusalem. In January 1992, as part of
the conciliatory momentum generated by the December 1991 Madrid
Arab-Israeli peace conference, informal Sino-Israeli ties upgraded into
full diplomatic relations. »Officially unofficial« liaison offices in Beijing
and Tel Aviv transformed into full-fledged embassies.8
5 China was anxious to locate a vendor who was not encumbered by human rights
considerations. Israel met that qualification over and beyond its technical expertise.
A vast literature on Sino-Israeli military relations exists in Arabic, Chinese, English,
and Hebrew, including the extensive publications of Hebrew University Professor
Yitzhak Shichor. On the Sino-Vietnamese war, see: Li (2007), pp. 25-44.
6 Israel’s battlefield successes included its 1967 defeat of Soviet armament in Egypt
and Syria, a September 1969 seaborne invasion of Egypt conducted almost en-
tirely in upgraded Soviet vehicles, and 1969-70 assaults against Soviet-manned ra-
dar stations in Egypt. The seizure of those facilities was a significant blow to So-
viet regional influence. Oren (2002); Schiff (1974), pp. 247-250; Gawrych (2000),
p. 115; Thomas Brady, Egyptians Say They Avoided a »Trap«, New York Times,
11 September 1969, p. 10; see also: James Feron’s numerous articles in the New
York Times, September 1969 and February 1970.
7 The intermediary for covert help was Israeli arms dealer Shoul Eisenberg. Berton
(2011), pp. 1, 5, and Goldstein (2005), pp. 177-202.
8 Shalhevet (2009), passim; Goldstein (2005), pp. 177-202; Goldstein (1999), pas-
sim.
232
Diplomatic ties were accompanied by China’s wholly new approach to

the study of Jewish history. According to Deng Xiaoping, China needed
to »reposition« in order to »face the world.« It would encourage aca-
demic cooperation with foreigners, international conferences, and the
exchange of personnel in educational fields that were non-threatening to
CCP rule. In conformance with this new orientation, in 1993 China and
Israel signed formal treaties governing academic exchange. Cultural af-
fairs personnel were stationed in Beijing and, subsequently, in five Israeli
consulates across China. Much academic interaction involved technical
fields, such as medical research and the establishment of a Sino-Israeli
Dry Lands Research Station in China’s western desert. But China’s new
openness also filtered down to the much smaller field of HJIS. While still
highly regulated by the State’s educational apparatus, Jewish topics were
upgraded from the neibu, or illegitimate, category to one of academic
respectability. In key projects that have evolved since 1978-79, the mori-
bund communist model of understanding Jews and the Holocaust as un-
differentiated victims of Fascism was discarded and gradually replaced
with a more nuanced one. What are the characteristics, strengths, and
shortcomings of the replacement model?9
Secondary School and Undergraduate College Curricula

The process of transformation of HJIS in China proceeded slowly be-
cause of the need to train professionals in fields where none previously
existed. To staff this new and officially approved profession, some schol-
ars with little expertise retooled and switched to HJIS. Others were edu-
cated overseas. Using both foreign and domestic resources, HJIS profes-
sional staffing, libraries, and curricula developed within China.
9 Golkhman (2006), p. 121; Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) (2006),

http ://bic.cass.cn/english/Inf o/Show/Article_Show_Cass.asp ?BigClas-
sID=1&Title=CASS. Since this URL was accessed by Jonathan Goldstein on 4
April 2014 and Izabella Golkhman on 13 June 2006 CASS has changed its do-
main name and the URL is no longer valid. Ministry of Education of the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China (MOE), http://www.moe.edu.cn/english/international_1.
htm. This article was accessed by Jonathan Goldstein on 4 April 2014 and Iza-
bella Golkhman on 29 May 2006. Since then the PRC Ministry of Education
has apparently restructured its website. The article accessed in 2006 and 2014 is
no longer in its prior location. The management of internet and other informa-
tion sources in China is not uncommon and has been suggested elsewhere in this
chapter.
233
jonathan goldstein
It was easiest to transform curricula on the secondary school and un-

dergraduate college levels, where no complex knowledge base was re-
quired. A revised version of history gradually replaced the Soviet model.
The textbook World History (2008), used by all ninth grade high school
students, now describes Hitler’s Jewish victims with great specificity, not-
ing the scapegoating of Jews as the cause of all German ills, the gradual
exclusion of Jews from German society, Kristallnacht, the emigration of
notable Jews like Einstein, and the fact that millions of Jews were mur-
dered expressly because of their Jewish religion or antecedents. The
most widely used history book in Chinese universities, World History
(2006), retains some Soviet emphasis, noting that 20 million people were
mass-murdered and that half of them were Soviet civilians and prison-
ers of war. But the narrative then adds that Hitler intentionally carried
out genocidal policies against Jews, six million of whom were murdered.
Such specificity would not have existed in an undifferentiated profile of
victims of Fascism.10
University Curricula, Public Memorialization,

and American Financial Assistance
The establishment HJIS on the upper university level and in public me-
morialization was accompanied by an effort to attract foreign financial
investment on the municipal, provincial, and national levels. After a re-
turn visit to China, former Harbin resident and University of Southern
California international relations professor Peter Berton wrote that the
Chinese authorities encouraged him and other former Jewish residents
»to help in the economic development of China through investment and
joint ventures.« Plans were underway to restore synagogues in Tianjin,
Harbin, and Shanghai to museum status. Berton wrote that »the Chinese
municipal authorities hope that this restoration will increase tourist traf-
fic [especially] to Tianjin, one of the largest cities in northeastern China,
and help in the development of economic relations between China and
Israel.«11 Several programs are noteworthy in their success at achieving
both intellectual and financial, i. e. foreign investment, objectives.
10 Some pupils at elite schools in Beijing and Shanghai with large foreign enroll-
ments are exposed to a range of Holocaust materials developed by the American
NGO Facing History and Ourselves. Timmermans (2011), p. 5.
11 Berton (2011), p. 7; Berton (1999), p. 5; Kaufman (2009), p. 4.
234
At the highest academic level, a cohort of about 20 full time and 200
part time professionals now promote revised orientations to Holocaust
and Jewish history. They operate out of 29 universities and 35 research
centers and academic institutes. Initially they were drawn from En-
glish-language and Middle Eastern studies faculties, which handled Jew-
ish materials in translation. Today the cohort includes scholars trained in
Jewish languages overseas. They mentor approximately 30 to 40 graduate
students (M. A.s and Ph.D.s). Three universities grant degrees in Jew-
ish history and culture (Shanghai, Nanjing, and Kaifeng) and another
(Shandong) in Jewish philosophy. Although there are no specialized de-
grees in Holocaust Studies, all of these programs, in compliance with
Deng’s directive, have internationalized to the point of cooperation with
foreign Holocaust experts. All search for external funding.12
Preeminent in China’s cohort of HJIS scholars who have tapped into
foreign funds is English language Professor Xu Xin of Nanjing Univer-
sity. He is very much a product of Deng’s overtures to the West. Among
his teachers at Nanjing was a Chicagoan who was the first Jew Xu had
ever met. In 1986 Xu traveled to America, where he stayed with his Chi-
cago mentor and started attending Shabbat dinners and other Jewish
celebrations. With Jewish studies legitimized in China, Xu seized the
opportunity to establish at Nanjing the American-funded Diane and
Guilford Glazer Institute of Jewish and Israel Studies.13
Xu’s strategy was to ask the Nanjing Communist Party »only for per-
mission and not for funding.«14 All of his activities are subsidized by
money raised abroad. Those include a Holocaust course, which is among
his most popular offerings. His »Jewish Culture and World Civilization«
survey contains a Holocaust mini-unit and attracts roughly 200 under-
graduates per term. On an annual basis since 2005 Nanjing has held
three-week-long institutes on the Holocaust for college faculty and grad-
uate students. In 1993 Xu used overseas funds to produce a Chinese-lan-
12 The SIGNAL (= Sino-Israel Global Network & Academic Leadership) Guide to

China’s Leading Academic Institutions in International Relations, History, Mid-
dle East, Arab & Israel Studies, First Edition, 2015, available from guide@sino-is-
rael.org; Wald (2004), p. 52.
13 Interview: Xu Xin, Shanghai, 7 July 2015; Diane and Guilford Glazer Institute
for Jewish and Israel Studies Nanjing University (brochure, 2015); Xu (2001),
pp. 28-32; Xu (1999), pp. 15-26.
14 Xu Xin interview, 7 July 2015; Xu (2011).
235
jonathan goldstein
guage version of the Encyclopedia Judaica, with extensive Holocaust cov-

erage.15
Xu emphasizes a Holocaust interpretation that avoids an in-depth ex-
amination of subjects that could potentially point toward controversial
issues in Chinese history, such as the role of the Japanese in their occu-
pation of China. Instead, Xu stresses broad themes of international rec-
onciliation. He seeks to establish a Chinese scholarly tradition to re-
place exaggerated claims which reinforce unrealistic stereotypes, such
as »the world’s wealth is in Americans’ pockets« and »Americans are in
[the] Jews’ pockets.« Xu notes that in China, Jews are widely perceived
as clever and accomplished. Chinese tycoon Chen Guangbiao made in-
ternational headlines by announcing his ambition to buy the New York
Times and Wall Street Journal. He explained to a TV interviewer that he
would be an ideal newspaper magnate because »I am very good at work-
ing with Jews« who, he said, control the media.16 Popular bookstores in
China contain best-selling self-help books based on »Jewish knowledge.«
Most of these books focus on how to get rich quickly. Titles range from
101 Money Earning Secrets From Jews’ Notebooks to How to be a Jewish Mil-
lionaire. Xu sees claims of »Jewish power« so exaggerated as to provide a
basis for antisemitism. Xu and his former students now staff about half
a dozen Holocaust education programs across China that aim to refute
outlandish claims of both historical and contemporary Jewish power.17
Unlike Xu, Pan Guang focuses on the specifics of Holocaust history,
some of which are controversial. In 1988, as a Middle Eastern studies ex-
pert, Pan retooled and established a Center for Israel and Jewish Studies
within Shanghai’s Academy of Social Sciences, a branch of CASS. Like
Xu, he vigorously seeks international support, holding the Walter and
Seena Fair Chair for Jewish Studies, endowed by an American benefac-
tor. Pan also taps into Chinese government funds, especially those of
the Shanghai municipality, and promotes his interpretation of Shang-
hai’s »special role« during the Holocaust. As of 2015, Pan has five gov-
ernment-supported Ph.D. and ten M. A. candidates. In 2009 he and two
15 Xu, email to the author, 5 June 2011 and interview, 7 July 2015; Xu and Ling
(1993), passim.
16 Stephanie Butnick, »I am very good at working with Jews,« Tablet, 9 Janu-
ary 2014, http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/158914/i-am-very-good-at-working-
with-jews (21 September 2016).
17 Xu Xin interview, 7 July 2015; Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore, The Chinese Believe
That the Jews Control America. Is That a Good Thing?, Tablet, 27 March 2014;
Xu Xin, email to the author, 5 June 2011.
236
colleagues published a Chinese-language textbook on The Political and

Cultural Impact of the Holocaust. He has taught a course on »The History
of the Jewish People« with a mini-unit on »Holocaust Victims« and spe-
cial lectures on Shanghai’s Jewish refugee community. He works closely
with the European Union on Holocaust-related projects and sponsors
Austrian volunteers at his center. They work for him for one year in or-
der to fulfil their national service requirements. In 2006 Pan received
Austria’s Holocaust Memorial Award.18
Pan stresses what he sees as Shanghai’s (and China’s) prominence in
»sheltering« Jewish refugees during World War II. Along with the late
Wang Faliang, a Shanghailander who lived side-by-side with the city’s
wartime Jewish refugee population, Pan helped establish a Shanghai Jew-
ish Refugees Memorial in the building which once housed Ohel Moshe
Synagogue. A political and economic rationale underlies the refurbish-
ing of this once-dilapidated structure. The memorial museum is mainly
funded by the Shanghai municipality, with subsidy from gift shop rev-
enues and substantial admission charges paid mainly by foreigners. The
museum’s gentrified neighborhood is not only an architectural expres-
sion of Shanghai’s internationalism but also a showcase of the city’s »shel-
tering« of Jewish refugees. Shanghai’s CCP hopes to lure foreigners to
this renovated Jewish tourist site, which now includes a Starbucks. As an
indication of the importance with which the CCP regards the upgrading
of this tourist mecca, the museum director, Mr. Chen, is also a Deputy
Director for Foreign Affairs of the Shanghai Municipality. Pan is also in
the forefront of elevating to near-saintly status Republic of China Consul
Ho Fengshan, who was stationed in Vienna at the time of the Anschluss
and granted Chinese visas that helped to liberate many Jews incarcerated
in Austria/Germany.
Pan’s government-affiliated institute provides the academic rationale
for the memorial museum, gentrified ghetto, Ho’s celebration, and ex-
hibitions Pan has sponsored in Austria, Canada, Poland, Germany, the
U S, and many Chinese cities. His interpretation of the Holocaust hews
closely to the Chinese nationalistic theme that »the Chinese people,« and
18 Pan Guang is able to procure domestic Chinese financing because of high-level

CCP connections. He works part time for the mayor of Shanghai as a personal
assistant on international affairs. He hosts a stream of official international vis-
itors, and, unusual for China, is able to maintain an unfettered bilingual En-
glish-Chinese website. Interview Pan Guang, Shanghai, 7 July 2015; Center of
Jewish Studies Shanghai (brochure, 2015); Pan (2005); Pan (1995); Pan and Wang
(2002).
237
jonathan goldstein
not the Japanese, helped save Jews in Shanghai. Such discourse maintains
that Chinese traditional hospitality toward Jews extended uninterrupted
from the days of the medieval trade emporium in Kaifeng to wartime
Shanghai. Extrapolating from Pan’s narrative, in September 2013 Bei-
jing’s Museum of the War of Chinese People’s Resistance Against Japa-
nese Aggression twinned »Japanese atrocities against the Chinese« with
»German atrocities against Jews.« The museum mounted a major exhibi-
tion, Nazi German Death Camp – Konzentrationslager Auschwitz, which
featured a »China Saved the Jews« subsection showcasing Shanghai Jew-
ish refugees.19
The Beijing Museum’s equivalence of Chinese and Jewish suffering
parallels other official Chinese efforts equating the atrocity of the Holo-
caust with Japan’s December 1937 Nanjing Massacre of Chinese civilians
and with Japanese experimentation on Chinese subjects by its »Unit 731«
in Manchuria. In a 2008 British publication, historians Jerry Gotel and
Zhang Qianhong argue that a »China also experienced the Holocaust«
narrative takes no notice of the substantial body of scholarship on Holo-
caust uniqueness. While never mitigating the horror of Chinese suffer-
ing, and, indeed, Japanese crimes against humanity, the corpus of Holo-
caust scholarship which seeks to establish the uniqueness of the Jewish
tragedy is largely ignored in China. The Chinese narrative minimizes or
ignores completely the work of Japanese scholars and American sinolo-
gist/Japanologist Joshua Fogel in understanding Japan’s role in these war-
time atrocities.20
Equally significantly, many historians, both ethnic Chinese and West-
ern, disagree with Pan’s (and China’s) official interpretation about Shang-
hai’s specific role in Holocaust rescue. No visas were required for immi-
gration to that city, which for years had been controlled by a committee
of foreign consuls. »Visas« issued by Chinese Consul Ho Fengshan in
19 Pan Guang Interview, 7 July 2015; Kranzler (1976); Sun (2000), pp. 11 ff.; Mao
(2002), pp. 34-39; Eber (2002); Timmermans (2011), p. 3.
20 Timmermans (2011), p. 3, notes that the 1997 American publication of Iris
Chang’s The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of WWII »makes frequent,
though often simplistic, references to Holocaust memory.« A substantial schol-
arly literature has arisen in response to Chang’s narrative. On Japanese schol-
arship on the Nanjing massacre and Chinese attempts to minimize that effort,
see: Fogel (2007), pp. 267-284, and Fogel (2000), which includes an essay by
Takashi Yodshida on Japanese scholarship. On Holocaust uniqueness, see: Katz
(1981), pp. 161-183, Katz (2015), pp. 84-98, and Katz (1997), p. 2; Zhang and Gotel
(2008), pp. 82-94; Li et al. (2002); Schwarcz (2002), pp. 183-204.
238
Vienna, as well as by other Chinese, Manchukuoan, and Dutch diplo-

mats, unquestionably enabled Jews to escape German persecution and
imprisonment. But those acts were wholly unrelated to providing a viable
safe haven. Between July 1937 and the end of 1941, due to the Second Si-
no-Japanese War, neither Chiang Kai-shek’s »Republic of China,« which
was in the process of fleeing from Nanjing to Chongqing, nor the Nan-
jing-based, pro-Japanese puppet regime of Wang Jingwei, nor the »Provi-
sional Government of China« which Japan’s North China army bolstered
in Peiping, posed obstacles to Jewish entry. The Japanese kept the gates
of Shanghai open until their occupation of the entire city in 1943. From
1937 until 1943 Jews benefitted from bureaucratic inertia as efficient pass-
port control ceased to exist. Travel documents were no longer checked
for validity or for the all-important presence of an entry visa. Transporta-
tion to Shanghai was a problem, but not the matter of official entry doc-
uments. Ernest Heppner, from Breslau, Germany, marveled when he and
his mother got off the boat at the Shanghai Customs House on March
28, 1939, that »it was difficult to believe that no one asked for our papers
as we passed through … Hundreds of thousands of Jews in Europe were
trying to find a country permitting them entry, and here Jews could just
walk ashore.«21
In short, despite suggestions of Jewish refugee Jacob Berglas and Sun
Yat-sen’s son Sun Fo, there was never an explicit Chinese program of Ho-
locaust rescue. Jewish refugees were assisted by mutual self-help, by res-
ident Shanghai Jews, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Com-
mittee. Some Shanghai survivors assert that local Chinese played no
substantial role in the physical survival of Jewish refugees, who remained
there until their liberation by American troops in August 1945.22
Still other historians have asserted that the Chinese perceived the Jews,
and even Holocaust survivors, as Western imperialists, albeit temporarily
destitute. Yet this narrative can be articulated only outside of China, as in
2014 by Xia Yun, a Peking University graduate and University of Oregon
Ph.D. who teaches Holocaust studies at Valpariso University in Indiana.
Xia proclaimed her thesis from the safety of a podium at a 2014 Asian
Studies conference in Philadelphia. Such a thesis, at variance with offi-
21 Heppner (1994), p. 40, and Berton (2011).

22 Marcus (2014), pp. 1, 3. This issue contains ongoing debate on the degree to
which the Chinese helped the Jews.
239
jonathan goldstein
cial Chinese interpretation, in all likelihood could not have been promul-
gated within China proper without serious repercussions.23
Thus Pan’s rendition of Holocaust history and memory, and that
of some of his Chinese colleagues, paint »China and the Chinese« in
a uniquely nationalistic light. Although freed from the shackles of a
once-dominant Communist paradigm, Chinese academics have yet to
achieve a nuanced interpretation of Holocaust study. Furthermore, there
is almost no mention of the intentionalist/functionalist debate, a divide
within Holocaust studies as basic as the debate over the »frontier thesis«
among American historians. Nor do Chinese scholars cite the ambiva-
lence of Japanese attitudes toward the Jews. On the one hand the Jap-
anese retained elements of antisemitism, but on the other they allowed
Jewish immigration into Chinese territory under their control. The Jap-
anese are never credited in the nationalistic Chinese narrative of Holo-
caust rescue. They usually simply go unmentioned.
Apart from Pan, two other recently-minted ethnic Chinese scholars
of Jewish subjects should be mentioned in connection with Chinese ef-
forts to procure overseas assistance as the country promotes its »China
saved the Jews« narrative. In Harbin, Qu Wei established the Heilongji-
ang Academy of Social Sciences Center for Jewish Studies, which hews
closely to the »China saved the Jews« narrative even though the city was
under total Japanese (Manchukuoan) control from 1938 to 1945. Har-
bin’s synagogue has been gut-rehabbed at public expense and turned into
a museum in which Jews and Chinese are featured as fellow »victims of
Fascism« of the Japanese and Germans. Qu has travelled widely in the
United States to promote his objectives, participating with many Har-
bin colleagues in an American-funded conference in Sarasota, Florida, in
which this author participated. In 2004, Qu and the Harbin CCP spon-
sored an international gathering of former Harbin Jews to showcase the
refurbished synagogue, commemorate Harbin’s role as a Chinese-Jewish
haven, and promote foreign investment and tourism.24
In 2003, Fu Youde, an Oxford University Jewish Studies graduate, se-
cured CCP support for a Shandong University Center for Judaic and In-
ter-Religious Studies. China’s Ministry of Education designated Shan-
dong as one of its 100 »prestigious key research institutes,« giving Fu’s
perhaps the highest official gloss of any Chinese HJIS program. Fu is first
23 Xia (2014); Altman and Eber (2000); Krebs (2004), p. 118; Naoki (2009), pp. 22-
38; Golkhman (2006), p. 130.
24 Qu and Li (2004); Qu and Li (2006); Golkhman (2006), p. 121; Goldstein
(2006).
240
and foremost a philosopher rather than a historian. He gives two lectures

on the Holocaust in an annual undergraduate class on modern Judaism
and delivers Holocaust lectures at other Chinese colleges and universities.
With the assistance of former Tokyo Rabbi Marvin Tokayer, Fu has built
a substantial Jewish studies library containing many books about the Ho-
locaust. Like Pan and Qu, Fu emphasizes China’s World War II assistance
to Jewish refugees.25 Unlike these projects, there have been significant
Western efforts to produce a more balanced Chinese scholarly narrative.
American and Israeli Efforts to Promote

a More Nuanced Chinese Scholarly Narrative
Precisely because Western institutions and donors have heavily endowed
China’s promotion of HJIS, and particularly its Holocaust component,
they have the potential to exert some influence on curricula and presenta-
tion. Therein lies the hope for a more nuanced scholarly narrative.
The Sino-Judaic Institute (SJI), founded in California in 1985, has sup-
ported HJIS at Nanjing, Kaifeng, and other PRC universities. In 1992 it
financed the travel of six of China’s up-and-coming Jewish studies schol-
ars, including Xu and Pan, to a Harvard University conference on Jews
in China in general and the impact of the Holocaust on Shanghai, Har-
bin, and Tianjin in particular. For the first time, China’s Jewish studies
experts interacted extensively with Irene Eber, David Kranzler, Marcia
Ristaino, Vera Schwarcz, and other American and Israeli Holocaust spe-
cialists as well as with Holocaust refugees from China who represented a
wide diversity of viewpoint and interpretation. Significantly, the Harvard
conference also included Japanese Holocaust specialists and general Japa-
nologists Lane Earns, Maruyama Naoki, Sato Izumi, Ben-Ami Shillony,
and Frank Joseph Shulman.26
Two American scholars who are fully independent of the Chinese of-
ficial narrative stand at the forefront of the promotion of an unfettered
discussion of Jewish and Holocaust history in China. Ilan Troen directs
Brandeis University’s Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, which fea-
tures the Holocaust and many other aspects of Jewish history. Schuster-
25 Fu (2008), pp. 72-81, 97-102; James Mooney, In China, a Growing Interest in All
Things Jewish, Chronicle of Higher Education, 11 August 2006; Jamie Fleish-
man, Chinese Professor Discusses Judaism and Confucianism, Brandeis Hoot
Community Newspaper, 9 August 2005.
26 Chevat and Chevat (1992), pp. 10 ff., and Laytner (1992), pp. 8-11.
241
jonathan goldstein
man has published a Chinese-language anthology of essays on Jewish

themes, which PRC students use at Troen’s summer seminars in the US
and Israel. In 2009 Schusterman sponsored a Jewish studies seminars at
Peking University, China’s most prestigious publicly funded academic
institution, and at the provincial Shandong University. A total of 130 se-
nior Chinese academics, journalists, and think tank scholars attended
both events. Brandeis has admitted one PRC Chinese to its Jewish stud-
ies doctoral program. It has also created a collaborative relationship with
Sichuan International Studies University, which is developing a Jewish
studies program in China’s largest city/province of Chongqing with the
assistance of SJI and Rabbi Tokayer.
Ephraim Kaye, an American with energy equal to that of Ilan Troen,
directs the school for overseas students at Israel’s national Yad Vashem
Holocaust museum. Unlike Troen, Kaye specializes in Holocaust his-
tory. With the assistance of British/Israeli Holocaust educator Kathryn
Berman, Kaye hosts Chinese students at summer and winter Holocaust
institutes in Jerusalem. Kaye’s students represent a broad cross-section of
Chinese talent: M. A. and Ph.D. candidates, emerging and established
practitioners of Jewish and Holocaust education, high school teachers,
and journalists and others who disseminate knowledge of the Holocaust
in China. His curriculum for Chinese students is enriched by world-class
Israeli scholars Yehuda Bauer, Dan Michman, Robert Rozette, Efraim
Zuroff, and the late Robert Wistrich, as well as by survivors represent-
ing a wide diversity of viewpoints and interpretations. Yad Vashem also
maintains a collection of Chinese-language materials, including the first
Chinese-language textbook on the Holocaust, published in 1995 by a pio-
neering Henan University professor. In a modest version of the Brandeis
and Yad Vashem seminars, Henan University hosted a week-long semi-
nar on the Holocaust. Under the protective umbrella of inviting foreign
experts, Henan University included a diversity of viewpoint on the Ho-
locaust unavailable elsewhere in China.27
27 PRC scholars who have participated in the Brandeis Summer Institutes in Israel
Studies (SIIS) include Yiyi Chen, Peking University, 2009, Yang Yang, Shanghai
International Studies University, 2011, Wu Bing, Sichuan International Stud-
ies University, 2011, Song Lihong, Nanjing University, 2012, and Liang Pingan,
Shanghai International Studies, 2013. As of 2014 She Gangzheng, a Peking Uni-
versity alumnus, is enrolled in Brandeis’ Ph.D. program in Near Eastern and Ju-
daic Studies. Email, Ilan Troen to the author, 25 February 2014; Timmermans
(2011), p. 8; Points East (March 2011), p. 12.
242
Conclusion: The Future of HJIS in China

As suggested above, since Deng Xiaoping’s opening of China in 1978-79,
a nurturing political context has enabled HJIS to develop in China. Be-
fore Deng China’s sole Jewish studies activity consisted of teaching the
Soviet narrative of the Holocaust in public schools and universities and
Biblical subjects at Nanjing’s minuscule showcase seminary. Since Deng,
that theological institution has come back to life, with over 100 seminar-
ians preparing for the ministry. Thanks to the efforts of Xu Xin and his
American backers, Chinese seminarians and other students can access the
resources of Nanjing’s university library. With over 7,000 volumes, its
collection on general Jewish and Holocaust themes is far larger than that
of the seminary in its heyday. Outside of Israel it is probably the most ex-
tensive on the Asian continent.28
Equally significant, Chinese academics have been permitted to travel
to Brandeis, Harvard, Oxford, Yad Vashem, and even to Henan Univer-
sity with its contingent of foreign experts, where they have been exposed
to a wide variety of historical interpretations. While still under the tight
regulation of the Chinese Ministry of Education, CASS, and the Shang-
hai Academy of Social Sciences, HJIS, with its significant Holocaust
component, is now as routine an academic pursuit as the study of Amer-
ican or German history. Consistent with Deng’s admonitions, Chinese
institutions aggressively seek Western endowment, but many programs
are also publicly funded. Recent academic appointments include that of
Dr. Chen Yiyi, a Brandeis summer institute alumna, as Director of the
Institute of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Peking University.29 On a more
popular level, in 2008 the publicly funded East China Normal University
Press published A Jewish Girl in Shanghai, the first Chinese graphic novel
about the Holocaust. Hewing closely to the official Chinese Holocaust
narrative, a young Jewish girl and her brother find refuge in Shanghai
during the war and befriend a young Chinese boy. All are brutalized by
the Japanese. The same narrative is retained in Wang Gengfa’s privately
funded animation of the novel, the first, and so far only, Holocaust-re-
lated film made in China.30
Bearing in mind the progress HJIS has made in China since shedding
the Soviet model, one can remain cautiously optimistic about the future.
It is unfortunate that the PRC still retains an academic research agenda,
28 Wald (2004), p. 52.

29 On Professor Chen Yiyi, see: Wen (2014), p. 11.
30 Wu (2008), and Timmermans (2011).
243
jonathan goldstein
pedagogical initiatives, institutes, libraries, memorializations, and publi-

cation programs with somewhat narrow and nationalistic emphases. An
encouraging feature within this scenario is that Chinese HJIS programs
are staffed by scholars with academic credentials from Western institu-
tions, notably Brandeis, Harvard, Oxford, and Yad Vashem. There is
much scholarly collaboration and international academic travel. On a
personal level, Chinese scholars are surely aware of diverse perspectives
and may be able to introduce them as China continues to develop.
244
Acknowledgements
This book is the product of several years of international – indeed al-

most global – collaboration among scholars from a variety of disciplines.
When we created our study group to explore the memories of the de-
struction of European Jews in 2011, we soon realized that several meet-
ings would be necessary to address and explore our questions about this
seemingly limitless topic. Our first meeting at Augsburg University, in
2011, served as an initial attempt to explore the global dimensions of Ho-
locaust memory, and included presentations on China, the Ukraine, and
Latin America, among other regions. The second meeting, held at the
University of Haifa in 2012, paid specific attention to the various forms
of engagement with the Holocaust in Israel. It was hosted by Gilad Mar-
galit (1959-2014) of the Haifa Center for German and European Studies
and Amos Morris-Reich of the Bucerius Institute for Research of Con-
temporary German History and Society. Our third and final conference,
hosted by Norbert Frei at the Jena Center 20th Century History in 2013,
focused specifically on the question how ethnic minorities have related
to manifestations of Holocaust memory throughout the Western world.
The results of our discussions at these meetings are reflected in this
book. In addition, three scholars who did not participate in our confer-
ences agreed to contribute chapters to this volume: Aomar Boum, Yulia
Egorova, and Fabien Jobard. We would have preferred to include the
contributions of all participants in the volume, but had to restrict our-
selves to what we believe is a broad spectrum of representative case stud-
ies. Nevertheless, we would like to thank all speakers, commentators,
and panel chairs of our three conferences for their participation and
scholarship: Gur Alroey, Jackie Feldman, Donald Fixico, Maria Framke,
Amos Goldberg, Atina Grossmann, Jonathan Huener, Anke John, Lutz
Kaelber, Reinhild Kreis, Angela Kühner, Wendy Lower, Kristina Meyer,
Amos Morris-Reich, Francis Nicosia, Götz Nordbruch, Amalia Ran,
Michael Rothberg, Birgit Schwelling, Susanna B. Schrafstetter, Natan
Sznaider, Annette Weinke, Yasemin Yildiz, and Denise Youngblood.
We would like to express our gratitude to the organizations and in-
stitutions that have provided financial and logistical support for the
three conferences and for the preparation of this volume: the Stiftung
Deutsch-Amerikanische Wissenschaftsbeziehungen (SDAW/Founda-
tion German-American Academic Relations), the Lehrstuhl für die Ge-
schichte des europäisch-transatlantischen Kulturraums at Augsburg Uni-
245
versity, the Center for German and European Studies and the Bucerius
Institute for Research of Contemporary German History and Society at
the University of Haifa, the Carolyn and Leonard Miller Center for Ho-
locaust Studies of the University of Vermont, and the Jena Center 20th
Century History.
We are particularly grateful to Norbert Frei for his dedication and
support of this project and for agreeing to publish the volume as part of
the series Beiträge zur Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts. The generous sup-
port of the Jena Center 20th Century History and Christiane and Nico-
laus-Jürgen Weickart as well as the Carolyn and Leonard Miller Center
for Holocaust Studies at the University of Vermont made the publication
of this volume possible. We would also like to thank a number of people
whose competent dedication and hard work was essential for the com-
pletion of the manuscript, namely our transatlantic team of student assis-
tants, Lauren Fedewa and Felix Krone, Dana Smith, who copy edited the
manuscript in record time, but above all Kristina Meyer, who masterfully
managed the publication process.
Gilad Margalit, who was instrumental in the founding of our study
group and who hosted our second meeting in Haifa, did not live to see
the publication of this book. We dedicate it to his memory.
January 2017 Jacob S. Eder, Jena

Philipp Gassert, Mannheim
Alan E. Steinweis, Burlington, Vermont
246
Abbreviations
AHS Grammar School (Austria)
AKP Justice and Development Party (Turkey)
AMIA Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Society
ANC African National Congress
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
BHS Vocational High School (Austria)
BMS Vocational Middle School (Austria)
CASS Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
CCP Chinese Communist Party
Coffad Sons and Daughters of African Deportees (France)
CONADEP National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (Argentina)
CPN Communist Party of the Netherlands
Cran Representative Council of Black Institutions (France)
Crif Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions (France)
DAIA Jewish umbrella organization (Argentina)
EU European Union
FPÖ Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs
GDR German Democratic Republic
HJIS Holocaust, Jewish, and Israel Studies (China)
HTIB Turkish Workers’ Association (Netherlands)
IOT Turkish-Dutch umbrella organization
ISIS Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
KMAN Committee for Moroccan Workers in the Netherlands
MHP National Action Party (Turkey)
MK Member of the Knesset (Israel)
M-OA Mass-Observation Archive
MP Prime Minister
MVVN Moroccan Women’s Association (Netherlands)
NBC National Broadcasting Company (US)
NGO Non-governmental organization
NOI Nation of Islam (US)
NSDAP Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
NVU Nederlandse Volksunie
PISA Programme for International Student Assessment
PRC People’s Republic of China
SJI Sino-Judaic Institute
SNCC Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
STEM Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
TRC Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South Africa)
UNEM Union Nationale des Etudiants du Maroc
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
UNFP Union Nationale des Forces Populaires
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
VdU Verband der Unabhängigen (Austria)
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270
Notes on Contributors
Arnd Bauerkämper is Professor of Modern European History at the Free

University Berlin. His most important publications include Die »radikale
Rechte« in Großbritannien: Nationalistische und faschistische Bewegung vom
späten 19. Jahrhundert bis 1945 (1991); Ländliche Gesellschaft in der kommunis-
tischen Diktatur: Zwangsmodernisierung und Tradition in Brandenburg 1945-
1963 (2002); Die Sozialgeschichte der DDR (2005); Der Faschismus in Europa
1918-1945 (2006); Das umstrittene Gedächtnis: Die Erinnerung an National-
sozialismus, Faschismus und Krieg in Europa seit 1945 (2012); The Collectiviza-
tion of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe: Comparison and Entangle-
ments (2013, co-edited with Constantin Iordachi).
Aomar Boum is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of

California in Los Angeles. His multi-disciplinary background and academic
experience are at the intersections of Middle Eastern and North African
studies, Islamic studies, religious studies, African studies, and Jewish studies.
His most important publications include Memories of Absence: How Muslims
Remember Jews in Morocco (2013) and, as a co-author, the Historical Dictio-
nary of Morocco (2006 and 2016) as well as the Concise History of the Mid-
dle East (2015). He is currently finishing an ethnographic and historically
grounded book with Daniel Schroeter titled The Monarchy, Jews and Holo-
caust Politics in Morocco, 1930s-Present.
Jacob S. Eder is Research Associate at the Friedrich Schiller University

Jena. His publications include Holocaust Angst: The Federal Republic of Ger-
many and American Holocaust Memory since the 1970s (2016). He has received
numerous research fellowships and awards, including the Fraenkel Prize of
the Wiener Library. He is currently working on a book project about Ameri-
can Jewish Relief Organizations and Global Jewish Politics in the 20th Century.
Yulia Egorova is Reader in Anthropology at Durham University. Her

main area of research is the anthropology of Jewish communities. Her most
important publications include The Jews of Andhra Pradesh: Contesting Caste
and Religion in South India (2013, with Shahid Perwez) and Jews and India:
Perceptions and Image (2006).
Philipp Gassert is Professor of Contemporary History at the University

of Mannheim. His books include Kurt Georg Kiesinger, 1904-1988: Kanzler
zwischen den Zeiten (2006) and Amerikas Kriege (2014). He is executive di-
271
notes on contributors
rector of the German Association for American Studies and has held visiting
professorships at the Universities of Pennsylvania, Haifa, and Vienna.
Shirli Gilbert is Associate Professor in the Department of History and

the Parkes Institute at the University of Southampton. Her main areas of re-
search are Holocaust studies, memory, modern Jewish history, and apartheid
South Africa. Her most important publications include Music in the Holo-
caust: Confronting Life in the Nazi Ghettos and Camps (2005), A Nazi and a
Jew: Forgotten Letters, Family Legacies, and Ordinary Friendship in the Shadow
of the Holocaust (2017), and Holocaust Memory and Racism in the Postwar
World (forthcoming 2018, co-edited with Avril Alba).
Jonathan Goldstein has been a Research Associate of Harvard Univer-

sity’s John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies since 1985 and a Pro-
fessor of East Asian History at the University of West Georgia since 1981. His
fields of research include the Jewish communities of China, Sino-Israeli re-
lations, and the Holocaust and its impact on East Asia. His books include
Jewish Identities in East and Southeast Asia (2015), Stephen Girard: Trade with
China (2011), The Jews of China (2 vols., 1999 and 2000), China and Israel
(1999; updated Chinese edition 2006; updated Hebrew edition forthcoming
2016), America Views China (1991), Georgia: East Asian Connection (1982, 2nd
ed. 1990), and Philadelphia and the China Trade (1978).
Fabien Jobard is Directeur de Recherches CNRS at the Centre Marc Bloch

in Berlin. His work mainly focuses on the criminal justice system. His most
important publications include Sociologie de la police (2015, with Jacques de
Maillard); Rioting in the UK and France (2009, with Dave Waddington and
Mike King), and L’atelier du politiste (2007, with Pierre Favre and Olivier
Fillieule).
Tony Kushner is Professor of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations at the Parkes

Institute at the University of Southampton. His main areas of research are
Jewish history, migration history, history and memory, and the history of
racism. His most important publications include The Holocaust and the Lib-
eral Imagination: A Social and Cultural History (1994), Refugees in an Age of
Genocide (1999, with Katharine Knox), The Battle of Britishness: Migrant
Journeys 1685 to the Present (2012).
Sarah Ozacky-Lazar is Research Fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Insti-

tute. Her main areas of research are the Arab community in Israel and Jew-
ish resistance during the Holocaust. Her recent publications include Envi-
ronment and Peace: Theory, Politics and Activism (2009, with Shahar Sadeh),
272
Conditional Citizenship: On Citizenship, Equality and Offensive Legislation

(2016, with Yousef Jabareen) and Locals: Conversations with Arab Citizens in
Israel (2016, with Yoav Stern).
Oliver Rathkolb is Professor in the Department of Contemporary His-

tory at the University of Vienna. He is the editor or author of several books
addressing interdisciplinary questions of contemporary history and commu-
nications/media history. His award-winning book The Paradoxical Republic:
Austria 1945-2005 was published by Berghahn Books (New York/Oxford) in
2010.
Michal Shaul is Lecturer in the Department of History and the direc-

tor of the »Amital« Holocaust Studies Program at Herzog College in Gush
Etzion, Israel. Her book Pe’er Tachat Efer: Hachevra Hacharedit BeIsrael Bet-
zel Hashoah, 1945-1961 (»Holocaust Survivors and Holocaust Memory in the
Haredi Community in Israel, 1945-1961«), was published by the Yad Vashem
International School for Holocaust Studies and Yad Ben-Zvi in Hebrew.
It is based on her award-winning doctoral dissertation and won the Shazar
Prize in 2016.
Batya Shimony is Senior Lecturer in the Hebrew Literature department

at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and Achva Academic College. Her
most important publications include On the Threshold of Redemption: The
Story of the Ma’abara – First and Second Generation (2008); On »Holocaust
Envy« in Mizrahi Literature (2011); From Babylon to the Ma’abara: Iraqi Jew-
ish Women in the Mass Immigration (2012), and Shaping Israeli-Arab Identity
in Hebrew Words: The Case of Sayed Kashua (2013).
Daniel Stahl is Coordinator of the Study Group on Human Rights in

the 20th Century and a Researcher at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
Currently he is working on a project about the arms trade and international
law. His publications include Nazi-Jagd: Südamerikas Diktaturen und die
Ahndung von NS-Verbrechen (2013) and Recht auf Wahrheit: Zur Genese eines
neuen Menschenrechts (2016, co-edited with José Brunner).
Alan E. Steinweis is Professor of History at the University of Vermont,

where he also serves as Director of the Center for Holocaust Studies. His
books include Kristallnacht 1938 (2009), Studying the Jew: Scholarly Antisemi-
tism in Nazi Germany (2006), and Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Ger-
many (1993). He has held visiting professorships at the universities of Heidel-
berg, Frankfurt, Munich, and Beersheba.
273
Annemarike Stremmelaar is Lecturer in Middle Eastern History at

Leiden University. Her main areas of expertise are Turkey, the Middle East,
and Muslims in the Netherlands. In the past she has worked as a researcher,
lecturer and editor at Leiden University, Radboud University (Nijmegen),
the ISIM international Institute for Islam in the Modern World (Leiden),
and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Amster-
dam). Her most recent publications include the articles Turkish Antizionism
in the Netherlands: From Leftist to Islamist Activism (2016) and Reading Anne
Frank: Confronting Antisemitism in Turkish Communities (2016).
Clarence Taylor is Professor of History at Baruch College and The Grad-

uate Center, City University of New York. His most important publications
include Knocking at Our Own Door: Milton A. Galamison and the Struggle to
Integrate New York City Schools (1997) and Reds at the Blackboard: Commu-
nism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union (2001).
274
Index
Aafreedi, Navras 220 f., 224, 226 Calic, Marie-Janine 53

Ababou, M'Hamed 163 Camara, Sakile Kai 173
Åberg, Einar 154 Cameron, David 82
Achcar, Gilbert 151 Carlotta, Estela de 197
Adaf, Shimon 128 Carson, Ben 13
Ahmadinejad, Mahmud 18, 99, 101, 111 Chamberlain, Neville 78
Aini, Lea 130, 136, 139 Chaumont, Jean-Michel 105
Alba, Richard 19 Chen Yiyi 243
Alfonsín, Raúl 190 f. Chetty, R. Shanmukham 218
Amar, Shlomo Moshe 164 Chiang Kai-shek 239
Ansari, M. A. 227 Childress, Clenard H. 184
Arsalan, Chakib 168 Chirac, Jacques 36, 105
Asmal, Kader 205 Citrom, Elizabeth 169
Asper, Izzy 24 Clarke, John Henrik 179 f.
Assmann, Aleida 14 Clinton, Bill 13 f., 23, 27
Auerbach, Franz 202 Cohen, Patrick 95 f.
Ayranci, Mustafa 66 f. Coluche 97
Azdural, Ahmet 70 Columbus, Christopher 179,
181 f.
Baker, William 174 Conrad, Sebastian 14
Barakeh, Muhammad 140 f. Coulibaly, Amedy 95
Barak, Ehud 193 Cross, Colin 78
Bardèche, Maurice 101 Crow, Jim 175
Barzani, Nava 134 Crutcher, Mark 182 f.
Bauerkämper, Arnd 28
Bauer, Yehuda 242 Dačić, Ivica 53
Bauman, Zygmunt 206 Dacre, Paul 84
Begin, Menachem 232 Darkaoui, Abdellah 166
Belinfante, Judith 65 Darwish, Mahmud 151 f.
Ben Barka, Mehdi 162 f. Demjanjuk, John 193
Benn, Tony 79 f., 82 Deng Xiaoping 232 f., 235, 243
Berglas, Jacob 239 Derakhti, Siavosh 161
Berman, Kathryn 242 Derby, Lauren 162
Berton, Peter 234 Desai, Anita 224
Bishara, Azmi 144 Descartes, René 104
Blair, Tony 87, 93 Dies, Martin 173
Bose, Subhas Chandra 217 Dieudonné (M’Bala M’Bala) 28,
Boum, Aomar 28 95-105, 107-110
Bourdieu, Pierre 104 Diner, Dan 54
Brandt, Willy 35 Droste, Bernd von 205
Brooks, Duwayne 85, 92 ff. Du Bois, W.E.B. 175 ff., 186
Brown, Gordon 81 f. Duhalde, Eduardo 197
Browning, Christopher 206 Dupas, Rebecca 23
Brunstein, Esther 93 Dutta, Priyadarsi 222
275
index
Eagleston, Robert 215 Gotel, Jerry 238

Earns, Lane 241 Graf, Jürgen 167
Eber, Irene 241 Graiver, David 189
Eckel, Jan 14 Granatstein, Yechiel 117
Ecury, Boy 64 Gustav III, King 157
Egorova, Yulia 29 Guttman, Anna 221, 223 f.
Eichmann, Adolf 11, 14, 35, 63, 115, 117,
119 ff., 125 f., 189, 193 Habibi, Emil 143 f.
Elst, Koenraad 225 Haider, Jörg 46, 48
Ensel, Remco 67 Halabi, Marzuk 152
Estreicher, Stanislaus Ritter von 175 ff. Harris, Cyril 210
Hassan, King II 154, 164
Fallaci, Oriana 98 Hassan, Prince of Jordan 149
Falwell, Jerry 182 Hauner, Milan 216
Farbstein, Esther 123 Hazan, Haim 15
Farrakhan, Louis 181 Heppner, Ernest 239
Faurisson, Robert 96, 100, 102 f., 105, Hintermann, Christiane 48 f., 51 ff., 55, 57
109, 167 Hitler, Adolf 78, 173-177, 189, 203, 216 ff.,
Finkelstein, Norman 105 220 f., 227, 234
Finkielkraut, Alain 98 Höllwart, Renate 56
Fischer, Joschka 36 Hunter, Johnny 184
Fogel, Joshua 238
Foner, Nancy 19 Izumi, Sato 241
Frank, Anne 28, 77, 86-90, 93, 142, 201,
206 ff., 211 ff. Janzon, David 167
Freud, Sigmund 136 Jeismann, Karl-Ernst 49
Friedman, Menachem 111 Jenkins, Simon 77
Fu Youde 240 f. Jikeli, Günther 39, 153
Jobard, Fabien 28
Gadhafi, Moammar 101 Johnson, Linton Kwasi 92 f.
Gandhi, Mahatma 216 Jones Ross, Felicia G. 173
Garaudy, Roger 101 Jubran, Salem 145
Garnitschnig, Ines 56 Judt, Tony 11 f., 16
Garzón, Baltasar 191-194
Gates, Henry Louis 180 Karacaer, Haci 61 ff., 66, 71-75
Gautier, François 224 f. Kathrada, Ahmed 208
Georgi, Viola 49 Kaufman, Edy 190 f., 193
Gerst, Yehuda Leib 117 f. Kaye, Ephraim 242
Gevisser, Mark 202 Khalid Abdul Muhammad 168
Gilbert, Shirli 29 Khatib, Othman 149 f.
Gilman, Sander 219 Khatib, Tawfiq 141
Gilroy, Paul 80 Kimmerling, Baruch 125
Gogh, Theo van 66 King, Martin Luther 23, 177 f.
Goldberg, Amos 15 King, Rodney 85
Goldman, Daniel 196 Kirchner, Christina 197
Goldstein, Jonathan 29 Kirchner, Néstor 194, 197
Golwalkar, Madhav Sadashiv 217, 222 Kom, Anton de 64
Goodman, Paul 218 Kranzler, David 241
276
index
Kreisky, Bruno 55 Ofili, Chris 92

Kushner, Tony 28 Oord, Ad van den 70
Oostindie, Gert 75
Laski, Neville 218 Opai, Keri 8
Lawrence, Doreen 83, 85, 87 ff., 91-94 Oron, Yair 145
Lawrence, Neville 83 ff., 87, 89, 91, 93 Osrin, Myra 211 f.
Lawrence, Stephen 28, 77, 83-94 Otterbeck, Jonas 158 f.
Le Pen, Jean-Marie 96, 98 f., 105, 109 Oufkir, Muhammad 163
Le Pen, Marine 102 Owens, Jesse 173 ff.
Levy, Daniel 14, 17, 199 Ozacky-Lazar, Sarah 29
Lichfield, John 101 Oz, Koby 133
Lifton, Robert J. 206
Pan Guang 228, 236 ff., 240 f.
MacDonald, David 9 Pan Guangdan 231
MacPherson, Lord 83 Pappé, Ilan 38
Madbouh, Muhammad 163 Perón, Juan Domingo 195
Maduro, George 64 Popinski, Judith 161
Mahamid, Khaled 146 f. Powell, Adam Clayton Jr. 173
Mahmud, Syed 218 Powell, Enoch 79, 90
Maier, Charles 209 Prager, Moshe 116 f.
Majadla, Ghaleb 149 Presser, Jacques 63
Majali, Nazier 146, 150
Mandela, Nelson 91 f., 201, 204, Qu Wei 240, 241
206 ff.
Marley, Bob 92 Rafael, Shmuel 132
Marschall, Sabine 204 Rajshekar, V.T. 223
Mbeki, Govan 208 Rami, Ahmed 28, 153-157, 159, 162-170
Menem, Carlos 191, 195 Rassinier, Paul 102, 167
Merah, Mohammed 95 Rathkolb, Oliver 28
Michman, Dan 242 Richardson, Ben 173
Milner, Iris 131 Ristaino, Marcia 241
Minor, Ethel 179 Rivlin, Reuven 140
Mintz, Binyamin 116 Ronen, Avihu 151
Mohammed V, Sultan 168 Rosenfeld, Alvin H. 27
Mohammed VI, King 164, 168 Rothberg, Michael 14 f., 77 f., 93, 214 f.,
Moisel, Claudia 14 223
Mortazavi, Farid 166 Roth, Norman 165
Moskovits, José 196 Rotstein, Shmuel 116
Rozette, Robert 242
Nachshoni, Yehuda 116 Rupnow, Dirk 55
Naoki, Maruyama 241
Nasser, Gamal Abdel 168 Sanger, Margaret 183
Nates, Tali 214 Sarkozy, Nicolas 103, 106
Natour, Salman 142 Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar 217, 219
Nehru, Jawaharlal 217 ff. Schindler, Oskar 94, 196
Netanyahu, Benjamin 140 Schmid, Stefan 51 f.
Nora, Pierre 121 Schoenfeld, Moshe 120
Novick, Peter 14, 172 Schwammberger, Josef 195
277
index
Schwarcz, Vera 241 Turia, Tariana 7, 19, 29

Segal, Ronald 202 Türkeş, Alparslan 67
Seidman, Hillel 116
Semoun, Elie 97 Udoro, Elvin 94
Shapira, Anita 122 f. Uhl, Heidemarie 54
Sharshevsky, Persia 117 Ulichki, Fenna 68
Shaul, Michal 28
Shenhavi, Mordecai 134 Valls, Manuel 107
Shillony, Ben-Ami 241 Vranitzky, Franz 36, 46
Shimony, Batya 28
Shofani, Emil 145 Waldheim, Kurt 45
Shulman, Frank Joseph 241 Walnes, Gillian 86 f.
Smooha, Sammy 150 Wang Faliang 237
Soral, Alain 101 Wang Gengfa 243
Spielberg, Steven 94, 196 Wang Jingwei 239
Stahl, Daniel 29 Weber, Mark 167
Sternfeld, Nora 55 f. Weinstein, Marcos 196
Stitou, Mustafa 65 Weissmandl, Michael Dov 119 f.
Stone, Dan 224 Wheeler, Charles 83 f.
Strache, H.C. 47 Wiesel, Elie 23
Strauss-Kahn, Dominique 97, 100 Wieviorka, Michel 107
Stremmelaar, Annemarike 28 Wilson, Sir Horace 78
Sucary, Emilia 135 ff. Wistrich, Robert 242
Sucary, Yossi 135, 137 ff. Wodak, Ruth 59
Sundquist, Eric 171, 185 Wood, Marcus 88
Sun Fo 239
Sun Yat 239 Xia Yun 239
Sznaider, Natan 14, 17, 199 Xu Xin 235 f., 241, 243
Xun Zhou 219
Taylor, Clarence 29
Thackerey, Bal 220, 222 Yablonka, Hanna 126 f., 133 f.
Thanhauser, Juan 187 ff., 197 f. Yüksel, Selami 74
Thomas, Laurence Mordekhai 185
Tibi, Ahmad 140 f. Zephaniah, Benjamin 92 f.
Timerman, Jacobo 189 ff., 197 Zhang Qianhong 238
Tokayer, Marvin 241 f. Zürcher, Jan-Erik 70
Troen, Ilan 241 f. Zuroff, Efraim 242
278

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Bibliografische Information der deutschen Nationalbibliothek

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ISBN (Print) 978-3-8353-1915-8

5 As quoted in ibid., p. 391.

memory has gained such an important position in New Zealand, a coun-

9 MacDonald (2003), pp. 383, 396 f.

tle about how minorities, some of whom have experienced or internal-

ume aims to provide case studies in order to offer a new perspective on

significance.24 While memorials, museums, and scholarly centers exist in

for the discrimination of women in Pakistan or the terrorist attack on

ration and memorialization of the Holocaust.39 Every country, society, or

39 See, for example: Gerstenberger and Glasman (2016).

results of mass communication – television, movies, and more recently

striking example. Here, the Western »claims to the Holocaust’s universal-

48 Assmann and Conrad (2010), p. 9; see also: Assmann (2010), pp. 98 f.

52 Alba and Foner (2010).

58 Bernd Ulrich, Özlem Topcu, and Heinrich Wefing, Geteilte Erinnerung:

factors need to be taken into account when we try to answer questions

ceremony with Bill Clinton was Rebecca Dupas, an African American

64 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, U. S. Holocaust Museum 20th An-

the growth and the changes in Western Holocaust memorial cultures. As

67 Eder (2016), pp. 17-28.

involvement, the institution, however, became dedicated not only to the

making the commemoration of their suffering a key aspect of their iden-

74 See, e. g.: Rosenfeld (2011).

question of how minorities of non-European origin have engaged with

extending the spatial limits of their investigations, and leaving their

Studies of migration and of memory are often pursued independently of

The Problem and the Challenge

of migrants, have largely been ignored by politicians and scholars. More

interrelated memorialization co-exist in European migration societies,

Memories of the Holocaust and the Second World War

9 Bauerkämper (2012b), p. 192.

to Germany. It also triggered soul-searching among non-Germans in

12 Marchart, Öhner, and Uhl (2003).

References to human rights have increasingly shaped memories of the

Migrants from Muslim, Arabic, and East European States

mination of the Jews. The process of integration has been particularly

Middle East have been complemented and reinforced by disputes that

knowledged the specific nature of the Holocaust as a crime against hu-

Interaction between Migrants and the Majority Population:

24 Jikeli (2013), p. 118.

homes in Eastern Europe from 1944 to 1948 or in Hungary in 1956. In-

27 Ohlinger (2010), p. 18.

so at the expense of de-contextualizing the extermination of the Jews and

ism. In this way, linking memories of victims of xenophobia to those of the

A Plea for Self-Reflexivity, Empathy, and Knowledge

34 Bodeman and Yurdakul (2008).

ing in museums and on memorial sites should be combined with precise

There are three important national particularities that impact examina-

1 Rathkolb (2010), pp. 11-14, 125 f., 256-260.

tion of the history of National Socialism pursued by the Haider-led FPÖ

3 Embacher (2010), p. 29.

regional, identity clusters. The second half of 2015 witnessed an intensi-

the bestowment of citizenship (as a means to hinder, if not stop, immi-

Consciousness and Construction of Identity of Youths with an Immigration

schools about administering the questionnaire between November 2005

20 These schools included: 3rd district BORG 3, Landstraßer Hauptstraße; 14th

Almost 90  of all respondents, regardless of immigration back-

21 Quote from http://www.verein-zeitgeschichte.univie.ac.at/fileadmin/user_up-

thesis titled Empirische Untersuchung zum Geschichtsbewusstsein von Lehr-