1
00:00:00,060 --> 00:00:07,980
Last speaker of today and our second keynote is Professor Yelena Subarctic,

2
00:00:07,980 --> 00:00:12,540
who's a professor in the Department of Political Science at Georgia State University.

3
00:00:12,540 --> 00:00:17,490
She writes broadly about international relations theory, memory politics, human rights,

4
00:00:17,490 --> 00:00:23,640
transitional justice, international ethics, state identity and politics of the Western Balkans.

5
00:00:23,640 --> 00:00:32,370
Her first book that I actually extensively drew on during my Ph.D. was called Tajik or is called Had You Just as dealing with the past in the Balkans.

6
00:00:32,370 --> 00:00:42,180
It was published in 2009, and it examined the contested way in which international norms of transitional justice were appropriated by domestic elites,

7
00:00:42,180 --> 00:00:48,720
basically hijacked by domestic elites across the Western Balkans in the 1990s and 2000s.

8
00:00:48,720 --> 00:00:56,730
She's a recipient of a number of research, grants and awards, and her latest book about which we're going to hear as well a little bit yellow

9
00:00:56,730 --> 00:01:01,290
star Red Star Holocaust Remembrance after communism that was published in 2009,

10
00:01:01,290 --> 00:01:06,540
just recently won the Joseph Rothschild prise in nationalism and ethnic studies.

11
00:01:06,540 --> 00:01:12,030
Congratulations. And so her presentation today will be a reflection on the book with the title

12
00:01:12,030 --> 00:01:17,190
Hegemonic Narratives of Holocaust Remembrance in post-Communist Eastern Europe.

13
00:01:17,190 --> 00:01:24,000
Yelena, thank you so much for joining us. I know it's morning for you. You're in Atlanta, so good morning and welcome.

14
00:01:24,000 --> 00:01:29,940
The floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you for organising this.

15
00:01:29,940 --> 00:01:37,680
I'm really sorry that we're not all together. This is a poor substitute, but we'll do our best.

16
00:01:37,680 --> 00:01:45,030
So what I'm going to do is try to share my screen because I have some images to show you as I go through it.

17
00:01:45,030 --> 00:01:54,450
And then I will talk a little bit about the images and then we'll hopefully have a few minutes for for Q&A at the end.

18
00:01:54,450 --> 00:02:00,540
So let me try to figure out how to do this.

19
00:02:00,540 --> 00:02:10,070
So share my screen. Go.

20
00:02:10,070 --> 00:02:15,000
Their work. Perfect.

21
00:02:15,000 --> 00:02:22,760
Okay, good. All right.

22
00:02:22,760 --> 00:02:37,210
In Ober 2017, a commemorative plaque in memory of the 200000 poles murdered in Warsaw in the German death camp, Carl Rochelle was unveiled in Warsaw.

23
00:02:37,210 --> 00:02:45,610
This was a sombre ceremony, with the local priest performing Catholic rites and a representative of the Polish army honouring the dead.

24
00:02:45,610 --> 00:02:49,360
The only problem? Almost none of this was true.

25
00:02:49,360 --> 00:02:56,740
There indeed did exist the camp in Warsaw, where a few thousand Polish citizens died during the German occupation.

26
00:02:56,740 --> 00:03:00,940
But after the burning of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943,

27
00:03:00,940 --> 00:03:08,230
this camp was turned into a concentration and extermination camp for Jews brought in from other parts of Europe,

28
00:03:08,230 --> 00:03:13,690
who were used as slave labour to clear the charred remains of the ghetto.

29
00:03:13,690 --> 00:03:17,470
A total of some twenty thousand people died in this camp.

30
00:03:17,470 --> 00:03:25,840
Most of them Jews, the Polish citizen movement behind this commemorative project was therefore not just

31
00:03:25,840 --> 00:03:30,670
commemorating victims of their own ethnic group at the expense of their victims.

32
00:03:30,670 --> 00:03:36,760
This is an unremarkable and largely ubiquitous feature of commemorative politics everywhere.

33
00:03:36,760 --> 00:03:39,220
What is, however remarkable,

34
00:03:39,220 --> 00:03:47,380
is that the very clear purpose of this commemoration was to put it in direct competition with the memory of the Holocaust,

35
00:03:47,380 --> 00:03:52,880
especially in Poland, the geographic heart of the Genocide.

36
00:03:52,880 --> 00:04:01,370
This is not historic. Anderson, Poland has been going on for quite some time and has attracted much international attention.

37
00:04:01,370 --> 00:04:03,200
In 2018,

38
00:04:03,200 --> 00:04:13,370
the Polish government passed a law that criminalised the use of the phrase Polish death camps to designate a Nazi death camps in occupied Poland,

39
00:04:13,370 --> 00:04:16,910
such as Auschwitz to Brinker and many others,

40
00:04:16,910 --> 00:04:25,440
but also criminalise any insinuation that individual Poles may have committed anti-Jewish crimes during the Holocaust.

41
00:04:25,440 --> 00:04:29,940
At its most extreme, the new Polish remembrance has been averted.

42
00:04:29,940 --> 00:04:36,210
Even the basic understanding of the Holocaust, as in this cartoon published in a right wing Polish mag,

43
00:04:36,210 --> 00:04:45,940
is that depicts the so-called Holocaust, the alleged annihilation of Poles by collaborating Jews and Nazis.

44
00:04:45,940 --> 00:04:53,890
But Poland is hardly alone as a document in my book, Yellow Star, Red Star, Holocaust Remembrance After Communism.

45
00:04:53,890 --> 00:05:05,530
This new historical revisionism has been flourishing across post-communist Europe and is surely visible in historical monuments and memorials.

46
00:05:05,530 --> 00:05:09,940
History, textbooks and rehabilitation and restitution laws.

47
00:05:09,940 --> 00:05:17,080
I found a remarkably strong but nationally flavoured trend of appropriation of Holocaust memory,

48
00:05:17,080 --> 00:05:25,570
especially its narrative and visual repertoire, to instead tell the story of communist oppression.

49
00:05:25,570 --> 00:05:34,480
For example, in 2014, the Historical Museum of Serbia in Belgrade put up a highly publicised exhibition

50
00:05:34,480 --> 00:05:41,710
in the name of the people political repression in Serbia 1944 to 1953,

51
00:05:41,710 --> 00:05:51,730
which promised to display new historical documents and evidence of communist crimes carried out by communist Yugoslavia in the first post-war years.

52
00:05:51,730 --> 00:05:58,430
The most stunning visual artefact displayed was a well known photograph of emaciated prisoners.

53
00:05:58,430 --> 00:06:04,780
One of them pictured here is Elie Wiesel in the Nazi Buchenwald concentration camp.

54
00:06:04,780 --> 00:06:13,280
The picture was taken by a United States Army soldier at Camp Liberation in April 1945.

55
00:06:13,280 --> 00:06:20,510
In the Belgrade exhibition, however, this chronic image, which is one of the most famous photographs of the Holocaust,

56
00:06:20,510 --> 00:06:29,480
was displayed in the section devoted to the Yugoslav communist era camp for political prisoners on the Adriatic island of Gali Optech,

57
00:06:29,480 --> 00:06:35,870
with the caption The example of leading condition of our prisoners.

58
00:06:35,870 --> 00:06:47,580
The visual message of this display was very clearly the communist oppression looked like the Holocaust.

59
00:06:47,580 --> 00:06:54,310
Similarly, in Hungary, the House of Terror museum that opened in 2002 in Budapest.

60
00:06:54,310 --> 00:07:04,840
It's the story of Hungary's 20th century experience as a nation victim of the foreign communist and to a much lesser extent, foreign fascist regime.

61
00:07:04,840 --> 00:07:13,690
The House of Terror goes out of its way to bring home the message that fascism and communism were flip sides of the same coin.

62
00:07:13,690 --> 00:07:21,070
There are multiple visual representations of black totalitarianism and red totalitarianism of the black

63
00:07:21,070 --> 00:07:29,380
arrow crossed juxtaposed with the red star of the fascist uniform juxtaposed with a communist uniform.

64
00:07:29,380 --> 00:07:35,350
Obviously, equation of the two totalitarian regimes is not new, nor particularly surprising.

65
00:07:35,350 --> 00:07:45,850
What is more interesting is that the blunt message of this state institution is presented through the appropriation of not just Holocaust imagery,

66
00:07:45,850 --> 00:07:55,890
but also Holocaust Museum visual displays. Most directly, the House of Terror uses the motto of the Tower of Faces,

67
00:07:55,890 --> 00:08:03,750
portraits of Holocaust victims projected onto the entire length of walls in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington,

68
00:08:03,750 --> 00:08:10,180
D.C., to project portraits of Hungarian victims of communism.

69
00:08:10,180 --> 00:08:22,580
Well, the of tears in the basement of the Budapest Museum is a is a visual repurposing of the children's memorial at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.

70
00:08:22,580 --> 00:08:31,280
And if the government of Viktor Orban, Hungary has further embarked on a spectacular urban revision of its 20th century history,

71
00:08:31,280 --> 00:08:36,770
the memorial to the homes of the German occupation erected in Budapest in 2014,

72
00:08:36,770 --> 00:08:38,180
memorialises Hungary,

73
00:08:38,180 --> 00:08:46,910
the country as the main victim of the German occupation by a not very subtle depiction of Germany's imperial eagle crushing of Hungary,

74
00:08:46,910 --> 00:08:53,700
which is symbolised by Archangel Gabriel. The memorial was unveiled overnight.

75
00:08:53,700 --> 00:09:01,780
And with no accompanying official opening ceremony in order to avoid any public debate and expected protests.

76
00:09:01,780 --> 00:09:10,480
Indeed, immediately upon unveiling Holocaust survivors or their family members placed hundreds of handwritten notes,

77
00:09:10,480 --> 00:09:15,450
pictures and objects outside the memorial that you can see in this picture.

78
00:09:15,450 --> 00:09:22,710
They told a story of 430000 Jews who were deported from Hungary, mostly to Auschwitz.

79
00:09:22,710 --> 00:09:26,970
The quickest rate of protection in the history of the Holocaust,

80
00:09:26,970 --> 00:09:34,510
taking less than two months and done with the active participation of Hungarian civil servants.

81
00:09:34,510 --> 00:09:41,440
And in a manner similar to many new public monuments, museums and memorials across post-communist Europe,

82
00:09:41,440 --> 00:09:54,020
the Budapest Memorial uses architecture as a tool to express myths of nationhood as part of a staged strategy of new visual remembrance of the past.

83
00:09:54,020 --> 00:10:02,450
Specifically, it narratively replaces the memory of the Holocaust and a catastrophe of Hungarian Jewish annihilation

84
00:10:02,450 --> 00:10:09,500
as the central memory of World War Two in Hungary with the memory of Hungarian victimhood and innocence.

85
00:10:09,500 --> 00:10:15,470
It also purposefully replaces the responsibility for the murder of Hungarian Jews from

86
00:10:15,470 --> 00:10:22,370
Hungary's axis allied government and places it firmly with Germany presenting fascism.

87
00:10:22,370 --> 00:10:30,470
And its extermination policies as alien foreign intrusions into the Hungarian body politic.

88
00:10:30,470 --> 00:10:35,030
This shift, therefore completely removes the history of the Holocaust in Hungary.

89
00:10:35,030 --> 00:10:45,710
Before the German occupation in 1944, the period that left 60000 Hungarian Jews killed as early as 1942,

90
00:10:45,710 --> 00:10:53,720
extermination carried out not by Germans, but by Hungarian forces under the rule of Regent Meatless for.

91
00:10:53,720 --> 00:11:00,740
So this new type of Holocaust remembrance that I document in the book is not exactly denial.

92
00:11:00,740 --> 00:11:06,250
Viktor Orban even declared 2014 a year of Holocaust commemoration.

93
00:11:06,250 --> 00:11:14,260
However problematic, it does not prominently feature voices that deny the Holocaust as a historical fact,

94
00:11:14,260 --> 00:11:21,200
nor challenge its most established realities. It is also not quite the same as trivialisation.

95
00:11:21,200 --> 00:11:31,210
While the emphasis always is on the larger ethnic suffering, it is relatively rare to hear outright belittling of Jewish victimisation.

96
00:11:31,210 --> 00:11:39,550
A more nuanced way of understanding this type of Holocaust remembrance is is memory appropriation,

97
00:11:39,550 --> 00:11:45,580
where the memory of the Holocaust is used to memorialise a different kind of suffering,

98
00:11:45,580 --> 00:11:53,300
such as suffering under communism or suffering from ethnic violence perpetrated by other groups.

99
00:11:53,300 --> 00:12:00,350
And as my book demonstrates, this process is not simply a by-product of post-communist transitions.

100
00:12:00,350 --> 00:12:06,050
It is in fact an integral part of the political strategy of post-communist states,

101
00:12:06,050 --> 00:12:10,790
which are basing their contemporary legitimacy on a complete rejection of

102
00:12:10,790 --> 00:12:16,430
communism and a renewed connexion to the pre communist mythically nationally,

103
00:12:16,430 --> 00:12:21,800
pure and above all, ethnic character of states.

104
00:12:21,800 --> 00:12:27,500
It is this rejection of communist doctrinaire supra nationalism and its replacement

105
00:12:27,500 --> 00:12:33,850
with old fashioned ethnic nationalism that colours how the Holocaust is remembered.

106
00:12:33,850 --> 00:12:36,820
And in a global environment of anti-communism,

107
00:12:36,820 --> 00:12:46,780
this nationalised Holocaust remembrance has also completely erased the memory of communist anti-fascist resistance as it's constituted part.

108
00:12:46,780 --> 00:12:54,130
And this exclusion provides contemporary anti-communist regimes their legitimacy shields.

109
00:12:54,130 --> 00:13:03,160
Holocaust remembrance, then, is no longer about the Holocaust at all, but is about very acute legitimacy needs of post-communist states,

110
00:13:03,160 --> 00:13:14,540
which are building their identity as fundamentally anti-communist, which then in turn helps them be perceived as more legitimately European.

111
00:13:14,540 --> 00:13:22,890
To understand this process, I argue that most communist states today are dealing with conflicting sources of insecurity.

112
00:13:22,890 --> 00:13:31,860
They're anxious to be perceived as fully European by, quote unquote core Western European states, a status that remains fleeting,

113
00:13:31,860 --> 00:13:39,950
especially in the aftermath of the openly a.m. Eastern European rhetoric of the euro crisis and more recently, Brexit.

114
00:13:39,950 --> 00:13:46,910
Being fully European, however, means sharing in the cosmopolitan European narratives of the 20th century,

115
00:13:46,910 --> 00:13:51,400
perhaps the strongest being the narrative of the Holocaust.

116
00:13:51,400 --> 00:13:59,320
The European narrative of the Holocaust, which understands it as the foundational block of post-war European identity,

117
00:13:59,320 --> 00:14:04,720
has created stress and resentment in post-communist states,

118
00:14:04,720 --> 00:14:15,330
which have been asked to accept and contribute to this primarily Western European account as members or candidate states of the European Union.

119
00:14:15,330 --> 00:14:21,030
The problem is that the cosmopolitan Holocaust memory, as developed in the West,

120
00:14:21,030 --> 00:14:28,770
simply does not narratively fit with a very different set of Holocaust memories in post-communist Europe.

121
00:14:28,770 --> 00:14:34,920
This lack of fit is evident primarily in the lack of centrality of the shore as the

122
00:14:34,920 --> 00:14:41,950
defining memory of the 20th century experience across the post-communist space.

123
00:14:41,950 --> 00:14:44,380
Instead of the memory of the Holocaust.

124
00:14:44,380 --> 00:14:53,110
Eastern European states after communism constructed their national identities on the memory of Stalinism and Soviet occupation,

125
00:14:53,110 --> 00:14:58,080
as well as pre communist ethnic conflict with other states.

126
00:14:58,080 --> 00:15:06,150
The European Central to the Holocaust then replaces the central issue of communist and ethnic victimisation as the dominant

127
00:15:06,150 --> 00:15:15,270
organising narrative of post-communist states and is therefore threatening and destabilising to these state identities.

128
00:15:15,270 --> 00:15:21,450
So in the book, I document how influencing the European Union's own memory politics and legislation,

129
00:15:21,450 --> 00:15:29,700
the process post-communist states have attempted to resolve these insecurities by putting forward a new kind of Holocaust

130
00:15:29,700 --> 00:15:38,510
remembrance where the memory symbols and imagery of the Holocaust become appropriated to represent crimes of communism.

131
00:15:38,510 --> 00:15:45,210
So the criminal past is not fully denied, but the responsibility for it is misdirected.

132
00:15:45,210 --> 00:15:52,650
And this accomplishes two things. It absolves the nation from acknowledging responsibility for its criminal past,

133
00:15:52,650 --> 00:15:58,210
while at the same time it makes communism as a political project criminal.

134
00:15:58,210 --> 00:16:07,210
By delegitimizing communism. post-Communist states have also removed anti-fascist resistance from the core memory of the Holocaust,

135
00:16:07,210 --> 00:16:16,030
which has been allowed for a revival in ideological normalisation of fascist ideological movements in the present.

136
00:16:16,030 --> 00:16:24,160
But the sensuality of the Holocaust as a foundational European narrative is also soundly rejected across much of post-communist

137
00:16:24,160 --> 00:16:33,100
Europe because of its perceived elevation of Jewish victimhood above victimhood of other regional majority ethnic groups,

138
00:16:33,100 --> 00:16:38,400
a move that is increasingly openly resented. Further,

139
00:16:38,400 --> 00:16:46,860
the European Holocaust memory focus on Jewish suffering is also begrudged in much of the region because it brings about discussion about

140
00:16:46,860 --> 00:16:59,640
extensive and deep local complicity in the Holocaust and material and political benefits of the complete Jewish absence across Eastern Europe.

141
00:16:59,640 --> 00:17:03,690
Jewish businesses, homes and property have over decades of looting,

142
00:17:03,690 --> 00:17:14,220
followed by communist seizures slowly morphed into the general economy with difficult and sporadic attempts at restitution.

143
00:17:14,220 --> 00:17:18,300
Contemporary Holocaust remembrance practises such as those sanctions,

144
00:17:18,300 --> 00:17:24,390
but a Polish or Hungarian government avoid these difficult discussions by

145
00:17:24,390 --> 00:17:29,850
deflecting all responsibility for the genocide of the Jews onto Nazi Germany,

146
00:17:29,850 --> 00:17:35,620
absolving the national past from any appearance of impropriety or crime.

147
00:17:35,620 --> 00:17:40,570
So my book aims to put these episodes of memory inversion in a contemporary political

148
00:17:40,570 --> 00:17:46,750
context by arguing that they're not isolated instances of competing memory,

149
00:17:46,750 --> 00:17:52,840
but instead critical elements of national strategies of political legitimacy.

150
00:17:52,840 --> 00:18:02,960
They served to reposition national narratives in opposition, both to those of communism, but also those historically embraced by Western Europe.

151
00:18:02,960 --> 00:18:13,590
And instead, they claim a national identity that rejects multiculturalism and is rebuilt along ethnic majoritarian lines.

152
00:18:13,590 --> 00:18:19,650
It is quite clear that cultural issues of identity and history have been integral

153
00:18:19,650 --> 00:18:24,390
to the rise and consolidation of populism in post-communist east Europe,

154
00:18:24,390 --> 00:18:31,630
as the question of who are the real victims of history has been central to the populist enterprise.

155
00:18:31,630 --> 00:18:35,770
The fact that East European victimisation under communism is not adequately

156
00:18:35,770 --> 00:18:41,680
understood and appreciated in the West is the central grievance of these movements,

157
00:18:41,680 --> 00:18:51,690
and it feeds into a new cycle of victimisation. This time, the perceived oppression by Western liberal ideas such as gender, ideology,

158
00:18:51,690 --> 00:18:59,620
feminism, LGBTQ rights or even more dramatically, Middle Eastern migration and refugee flows.

159
00:18:59,620 --> 00:19:07,930
The core of populist resentment is the issue of cultural imposition and a deepest cultural imposition

160
00:19:07,930 --> 00:19:18,850
is the imposition of memory of their own past that I thank you very much and I'm going to try and get.

161
00:19:18,850 --> 00:19:26,410
Nadia, thank you so much, Yelena. So far, we only have one question which I will pose to you in a second, but I was wondering when you were speaking,

162
00:19:26,410 --> 00:19:30,130
my question was going to be how does this all play into the hands of populists?

163
00:19:30,130 --> 00:19:34,570
And then you introduced your last slide into the question away from me.

164
00:19:34,570 --> 00:19:38,890
But I was still wondering as a heated debate, starting currently,

165
00:19:38,890 --> 00:19:45,100
especially in studies of nationalism and populism about, you know, as populism even a useful term.

166
00:19:45,100 --> 00:19:53,890
And how does the how does the usage of these various types of interpretations or memory inversions that you're calling them?

167
00:19:53,890 --> 00:19:55,870
How does this play into the hands of populists?

168
00:19:55,870 --> 00:20:04,150
Are they actually populists or are they nationalists because you were, for example, you you mentioned or on the slides you had our Slovakia.

169
00:20:04,150 --> 00:20:10,960
And you know, a lot of people would argue, well, those are not really populist SA nationalists because they are using a lot of these

170
00:20:10,960 --> 00:20:15,020
tropes from the past for nationalist purposes rather than just populist purposes.

171
00:20:15,020 --> 00:20:24,160
And I was just wondering, how did you how did you deal with this conceptual clarity in terms of these,

172
00:20:24,160 --> 00:20:29,770
these two terms, populism and nationalism and how that plays into your book?

173
00:20:29,770 --> 00:20:36,520
Yeah, my book is not centrally about populism, so I think in some ways I sidestep that debate.

174
00:20:36,520 --> 00:20:43,360
But what what was interesting for me and what is relevant is that the argument that I'm making in the book is that

175
00:20:43,360 --> 00:20:50,020
the unresolved understanding of your nationalist past fundamentally organises how you understand your present.

176
00:20:50,020 --> 00:20:55,180
So to the extent that there's a core of nativism nationalism,

177
00:20:55,180 --> 00:21:00,730
a move to ethnic homogeneity that is integral to this populist movements, to that extent, they're interesting to me.

178
00:21:00,730 --> 00:21:07,900
I was there. It's less interesting to me to what extent they're anti-elitist or they're kind of economically populist.

179
00:21:07,900 --> 00:21:10,810
That is not something that is of the core interest,

180
00:21:10,810 --> 00:21:18,790
but what is of core interest is this return to the idea of a nation is a unit that's made of a homogeneous ethnic body.

181
00:21:18,790 --> 00:21:22,660
And almost all of these movements that we now call populist have that dimension.

182
00:21:22,660 --> 00:21:28,480
They're all anti-immigration. They're all into multiculturalism. A lot of them are Semitic, a lot of them are anti-Roma.

183
00:21:28,480 --> 00:21:38,380
And so that core is in the argument that I'm building reflective of a larger kind of

184
00:21:38,380 --> 00:21:45,760
victimisation narrative that has coloured how even official hegemonic narratives of the past,

185
00:21:45,760 --> 00:21:50,050
including the narrative of the Holocaust, is remembered in those countries. Mm hmm.

186
00:21:50,050 --> 00:21:57,100
Thank you very much. So actually, with Peter from Oxford, it's asking or saying excellent point about who's who.

187
00:21:57,100 --> 00:22:03,910
Is the Holocaust, but isn't the same true with ethnicity who suffered most in a in a legitimation?

188
00:22:03,910 --> 00:22:07,930
Right? Is there something new except performative ity?

189
00:22:07,930 --> 00:22:12,640
She's asking, Is there something new in this?

190
00:22:12,640 --> 00:22:21,130
Well, I mean, I guess I guess if I understand the question correctly, the question is, look, what is this type of victimisation?

191
00:22:21,130 --> 00:22:29,440
A type of and of course, you know, interpretation and appropriation of Holocaust narrative is a type of comparative victimisation.

192
00:22:29,440 --> 00:22:34,540
So obviously, you know, I mean, it's it's it's in the universe of cases of competitive victimisation.

193
00:22:34,540 --> 00:22:42,070
So, you know, in this case, it's a competitive victimisation over over the struggle between the memory of the 20th century.

194
00:22:42,070 --> 00:22:46,670
So the fight between the memory of the Holocaust versus the memory of communist crimes.

195
00:22:46,670 --> 00:22:55,000
So certainly the concept of memory appropriation or memory replacement or any of

196
00:22:55,000 --> 00:23:01,600
these other ways in which memory is instrumentalized can travel from the Holocaust,

197
00:23:01,600 --> 00:23:06,760
universal cases or the 20th century to many other competitive victimisation cases.

198
00:23:06,760 --> 00:23:13,570
And you know, I know that there were other presentations today that talk about many other cases of competitive victimisation.

199
00:23:13,570 --> 00:23:17,560
You know, all the way from Rwanda to Zimbabwe and everywhere else.

200
00:23:17,560 --> 00:23:21,610
So certainly this is part of the example of competitive victimisation.

201
00:23:21,610 --> 00:23:31,240
What is interesting to me and what motivated me to write the book is the way in which the insecure national identities in Eastern Europe,

202
00:23:31,240 --> 00:23:36,190
as they relate to the hegemony narratives of the European Union,

203
00:23:36,190 --> 00:23:46,760
play into a very warped idea about the history of 20th century, both in the East and the West.

204
00:23:46,760 --> 00:23:49,240
That was the motivating factor here.

205
00:23:49,240 --> 00:23:56,710
There's a related question to this competitive victimhood, or why do we have to only think that there's only one true victim,

206
00:23:56,710 --> 00:24:01,720
Abigail Brentford is asking us academics and educators or even just in our personal lives.

207
00:24:01,720 --> 00:24:07,750
Do you have any advice for convincing others that there, that there doesn't have to be one true victim of history,

208
00:24:07,750 --> 00:24:15,290
but we can recognise different people's traumas without taking it away from from our traumas?

209
00:24:15,290 --> 00:24:21,110
Good luck. That's an excellent question. And it's very it's very hard, I mean, you know, we're all, you know,

210
00:24:21,110 --> 00:24:28,310
living through a particular political moment of competitive victimisation, you know, both under UK and certainly me here.

211
00:24:28,310 --> 00:24:31,910
And he had his state's, let alone the East European countries that I talked about.

212
00:24:31,910 --> 00:24:35,570
So. So this is something that we all deal with every day.

213
00:24:35,570 --> 00:24:43,850
And I think, you know, if I have if if I have a moral purpose, if you will, with this book,

214
00:24:43,850 --> 00:24:51,980
in addition to kind of intellectual exercise and research, it's something that I call in the book Memories Solidarity.

215
00:24:51,980 --> 00:25:03,720
And this is how my book ends with what I say. It's a call to memory solidarity, which is really this idea that the question brings is that how can we?

216
00:25:03,720 --> 00:25:08,490
Have. Memory that is not ours.

217
00:25:08,490 --> 00:25:17,550
So how come how can we share in the memory of others victimisation without denying that we also suffered?

218
00:25:17,550 --> 00:25:22,560
And so is there a place for us to have solidarity of this memory?

219
00:25:22,560 --> 00:25:33,090
And how do you then present that in very important instruments of education, such as, for example, history textbooks or media representation?

220
00:25:33,090 --> 00:25:40,410
And of course, there is a way to do that. And there's there's nothing inherent in in anybody's individual memory or your family

221
00:25:40,410 --> 00:25:45,840
memory or your societal memory that says that only your own suffering must be recognised.

222
00:25:45,840 --> 00:25:54,210
In fact, I would argue that unless suffering of others is recognised, your own doesn't cannot come to the surface either.

223
00:25:54,210 --> 00:26:04,920
So I think it's really incredibly important to contextualise memories of different groups in a way that that shows that solidarity that,

224
00:26:04,920 --> 00:26:09,450
yes, my family has suffered in this way. And yes, I was a victim of communism.

225
00:26:09,450 --> 00:26:17,730
And yes, my grandfather was arrested by communists, which is all what I talk about my own family in the book.

226
00:26:17,730 --> 00:26:25,590
And then I talk about how why that's important to for me as having a particular family history to then

227
00:26:25,590 --> 00:26:31,290
have solidarity with the history of all the others who had a very different experience and in many ways,

228
00:26:31,290 --> 00:26:34,890
much worse experience of the 20th century than my own family did.

229
00:26:34,890 --> 00:26:47,220
And I think putting those family histories and discussions in in a dialogue is really necessary to to properly, if anything else,

230
00:26:47,220 --> 00:26:59,340
to properly memorialise the incredible suffering that has occurred in our region, the East European region of the 20th century, but also everywhere.

231
00:26:59,340 --> 00:27:06,420
We have a few more questions. And I'll then direct you if you were able to answer those questions in writing on the on the Q&A function.

232
00:27:06,420 --> 00:27:10,710
But let me actually, this is quite a topical question, given what's just happened in Sarajevo over the weekend.

233
00:27:10,710 --> 00:27:18,780
We have a question by Emil Armonk. How do you see the commemorative mass held in Sarajevo this weekend by the Catholic Church?

234
00:27:18,780 --> 00:27:23,430
Are we seeing an increasing resurgence of World War to memory politics in the Balkans?

235
00:27:23,430 --> 00:27:32,100
And how does it compete with narratives of the narratives of the 1990s? I will direct you to my chapters two and three in the book.

236
00:27:32,100 --> 00:27:39,270
That's that's what the book is about. So I have a whole chapter on Croatia, which deals with that exact same question.

237
00:27:39,270 --> 00:27:45,600
And the question, of course, is a critical one. So what I argue in the book is absolutely there is a resurgence,

238
00:27:45,600 --> 00:27:54,930
and I dedicate a whole chapter to Croatia because the resurgence of neo fascist narratives and ideology in Croatia has been quite alarming.

239
00:27:54,930 --> 00:27:56,370
And it's not that new,

240
00:27:56,370 --> 00:28:08,160
but it's it's kind of escalated since around 2016 to the point where even many World War Two era fascist insignia are no longer illegal.

241
00:28:08,160 --> 00:28:11,760
So it's a little bit like allowing swastikas to be worn in Germany.

242
00:28:11,760 --> 00:28:17,970
So that kind of a similar thing is being allowed now in Croatia in different ways.

243
00:28:17,970 --> 00:28:29,280
And so just for those who don't know, the Bleiberg ceremony is a annual commemoration of what these Croatian nationalists call victims of communism,

244
00:28:29,280 --> 00:28:40,170
who were in 1945, mostly a group of Croatian far right fascist fighters who were captured as prisoners of war by the Yugoslav partisans.

245
00:28:40,170 --> 00:28:45,030
And then many of them were killed. So it's a it's a war crime, certainly.

246
00:28:45,030 --> 00:28:55,080
But in the mythology of Croatian right wing fascist movement, this has become what they would call the Holocaust of to martyrs.

247
00:28:55,080 --> 00:29:00,490
So I spend a lot of time in the book talking about how they're actually using the language of the Holocaust, even though they,

248
00:29:00,490 --> 00:29:05,820
these fascists were the ones committing crimes of the Holocaust who claimed that they were the victims of the Holocaust.

249
00:29:05,820 --> 00:29:12,840
So this this is, I mean, a really kind of unbelievable inversion of history that happens every year.

250
00:29:12,840 --> 00:29:21,390
And this was quite alarming that this was now organised by the Catholic Church in Sarajevo of all places,

251
00:29:21,390 --> 00:29:27,300
and Sarajevo was occupied by the Independent, the fascist, independent state of Croatia during World War Two.

252
00:29:27,300 --> 00:29:37,510
Almost the entire Jewish community was was killed, and it was this type of provocation and really inversion of history is.

253
00:29:37,510 --> 00:29:44,890
Is extremely alarming, and it points also to the normalisation of this kind of discourse and to also

254
00:29:44,890 --> 00:29:50,710
the rising power of the Catholic Church as as the arbiter of of the past.

255
00:29:50,710 --> 00:29:58,180
And the Catholic Church has a very difficult task of its own when it comes to the Holocaust and crimes of the 20th century.

256
00:29:58,180 --> 00:30:02,080
So in some ways, they're kind of whitewashing their own role in it.

257
00:30:02,080 --> 00:30:08,500
And this does relate very directly to the wars of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia,

258
00:30:08,500 --> 00:30:19,930
as the Croatian side was seen by the Serbs in the 1990s as a kind of continuation of this fascist history.

259
00:30:19,930 --> 00:30:29,390
And the opposite was obviously understood by Croats when it comes to Serbian World War Two armed forces.

260
00:30:29,390 --> 00:30:35,110
So there's a there's a very clear linkage in how these memories and how these

261
00:30:35,110 --> 00:30:43,030
narratives live and then how they're utilised for much more recent violence.

262
00:30:43,030 --> 00:30:45,220
Thank you. We have a few more questions.

263
00:30:45,220 --> 00:30:50,230
I was going to wrap up, but actually I'm just going to yell and just give you a flavour of some of the questions you ask.

264
00:30:50,230 --> 00:30:57,850
And I was asking about if you could also comment on KDR and what would be the reference points there and also comment

265
00:30:57,850 --> 00:31:05,140
on how does the East European appropriation of Holocaust memorialisation compared to the West European appropriation,

266
00:31:05,140 --> 00:31:11,320
especially in terms of the removal of Jews, Jews stigmatisation that was so extensive.

267
00:31:11,320 --> 00:31:17,830
One of my former students are actually current students is also asking about how do other victims of Holocaust homosexuals,

268
00:31:17,830 --> 00:31:24,460
Sinti and Roma play within these narratives? Ross Smith is asking about what's the role of storytelling in this?

269
00:31:24,460 --> 00:31:33,040
Because in our first keynote, we heard a lot about the power of the story and how stories are crafted and curated to resonate with audiences.

270
00:31:33,040 --> 00:31:38,290
So she's asking, how does some of the issues that you outlined?

271
00:31:38,290 --> 00:31:44,890
How does that what's the role of storytelling in this and whether there are some global templates?

272
00:31:44,890 --> 00:31:51,670
I think this is where we'll have to end the discussion, however. I would encourage you to keep posting questions.

273
00:31:51,670 --> 00:31:56,740
Yelena will hopefully still have a few more minutes to have a look at them and answer in a written form.

274
00:31:56,740 --> 00:32:00,730
But I just really want to thank you, Gil, and I know it's quite early morning for you.

275
00:32:00,730 --> 00:32:06,130
So thank you very much for joining us. And by this, we basically wrap up the conference.

276
00:32:06,130 --> 00:32:15,040
I'm going to hand over the floor to to Yohanna in a moment, but I just want to thank you all for participating.

277
00:32:15,040 --> 00:32:22,210
I want to say that we've discussed actually quite a lot more than what we initially hope we would because a lot of the discussions were so rich.

278
00:32:22,210 --> 00:32:31,810
And not only did we touch about the different actors, the roles of international actors, national and grassroots in terms of economic politics.

279
00:32:31,810 --> 00:32:37,600
But we've also looked at different ideas of competing narratives, competing victimhood.

280
00:32:37,600 --> 00:32:43,120
And I think the fundamental question that we will have to start answering is how do we actually understand these

281
00:32:43,120 --> 00:32:50,350
hegemonic narratives and what is their role in the current changing world in terms of resurgence of nationalism,

282
00:32:50,350 --> 00:32:57,550
in terms of populism, in terms of using Right-Wing narratives,

283
00:32:57,550 --> 00:33:06,340
for justifying new new policies that we're seeing currently in this in this pandemic crisis?

284
00:33:06,340 --> 00:33:13,090
And I will tell you a bit more about our next steps. I just want to thank you all for participating on our behalf.

285
00:33:13,090 --> 00:33:16,120
It really was a fascinating discussion and conversation that we've had.

286
00:33:16,120 --> 00:33:22,480
I'm only really sorry that we are not able now to mingle and have in-person discussions about all of these topics.

287
00:33:22,480 --> 00:33:26,650
But let's hope this is soon over and we will be able to see each other again.

288
00:33:26,650 --> 00:33:34,530
Thank you very much. Over to you. Even though the symposium is now over, this is not the end.

289
00:33:34,530 --> 00:33:40,080
From the very beginning, we envisioned a tangible outcome from this joint endeavour.

290
00:33:40,080 --> 00:33:44,730
And after receiving very positive reactions from prospective contributors,

291
00:33:44,730 --> 00:33:52,740
and especially now after hearing all the presentations and how they really relate and mixed together,

292
00:33:52,740 --> 00:33:59,130
we are certain that we will put together a special issue based on today's symposium.

293
00:33:59,130 --> 00:34:04,830
The special issue will allow us to continue the conversations we've had today,

294
00:34:04,830 --> 00:34:13,830
and this will further allow us to delve deeper into the shared features and common dynamics of hegemonic narratives,

295
00:34:13,830 --> 00:34:18,360
which hopefully will allow us to understand better. As Jesse said,

296
00:34:18,360 --> 00:34:30,210
what are really hegemonic narratives and also to fully appreciate at the same time the uniqueness and specificities of each of the cases.

297
00:34:30,210 --> 00:34:36,600
And that's definitely something to look forward to, and we will keep you updated.

298
00:34:36,600 --> 00:34:41,670
We also recorded today's presentations and of course, subject to permission.

299
00:34:41,670 --> 00:34:51,090
We will make them available online. So please check our web page where you will be able to find further information in due time.

300
00:34:51,090 --> 00:35:02,400
And finally, throughout the day, we've been active on Twitter and if you haven't done so already, have a look at in our four hegemonic narratives.

301
00:35:02,400 --> 00:35:07,760
And you can also find our emails on our website.

302
00:35:07,760 --> 00:35:17,960
And, of course, the most important path. Thank you, Jesse, for doing the heavy lifting and for being the driving force behind us all, it's wonderful.

303
00:35:17,960 --> 00:35:22,460
Also, many thanks to Katherine and Laura for all they support.

304
00:35:22,460 --> 00:35:30,220
And thank you all for joining us today. Into very much thank you for your help and everything you've done.

305
00:35:30,220 --> 00:35:35,722
Good bye, everyone, and hopefully see you soon.