Perspectives on the Entangled History of Communism and Nazism
Perspectives on the Entangled History of Communism and Nazism

Author: Klas-Göran Karlsson

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2015-07-15

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 1498518710

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The collective work deals with the problems of if, how, and why the histories of German Nazism and Soviet Communism should and could be situated within one coherent narrative. As historical phenomena, can Communism and Nazism fruitfully be compared to each other? Do they belong to the same historical contexts? Have they influenced, reacted to or learned from each other? Are they interpreted, represented and used together by posterity? The background of the book is twofold. One is external. There is an ongoing debate about the historical entanglements of Communism and Nazism, especially about Auschwitz and Gulag, respectively. Our present fascination with the evil history of genocide has situated the Holocaust as the borderline event in Western historical thinking. The crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Soviet Communist regime do not have the same position but are considered more urgent in the East and Central European states that were subdued by both Nazi and Communist regimes. The other, internal background is to develop an analytical perspective in which the “comnaz” nexus can be understood. Using a complex approach, the authors investigate Communist and Nazi histories as entangled phenomena, guided by three basic perspectives. Focusing on roots and developments, a genetic perspective highlights historical, process-oriented connections. A structural perspective indicates an attempt to narrow down “operational” parallels of the two political systems in the way they handled ideology to construct social utopia, used techniques of terror, etc. A third perspective is genealogical, emphasizing the processing and use of Communist and Nazi history by posterity in terms of meaning and memory: What past is worth remembering, celebrating, debating—but also distorting and forgetting? The chapters of the book address phenomena such as ideology, terror, secular religion, museum exhibits, and denial.

The Holocaust/Genocide Template in Eastern Europe
The Holocaust/Genocide Template in Eastern Europe

Author: Ljiljana Radonić

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-05-21

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1000712125

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The Holocaust/Genocide Template in Eastern Europe discusses the “memory wars” in the course of the post-Communist re-narration of history since 1989 and the current authoritarian backlash. The book focuses specifically on how “mnemonic warriors” employ the “Holocaust template” and the concept of genocide in tendentious ways to justify radical policies and externalize the culpability for their international isolation and worsening social and economic circumstances domestically. The chapters analyze three dimensions: 1) the competing narratives of the “universalization of the Holocaust” as the negative icon of our era, on the one hand, and the “double genocide” paradigm, on the other, which focuses on “our own” national suffering under – allegedly “equally” evil – Nazism and Communism; 2) the juxtaposition of post-Communist Eastern Europe and Russia, reflected primarily in the struggle of the Baltic states and Ukraine to challenge Russian propaganda, a struggle that runs the risk of employing similarly distorting and propagandistic tropes; and 3) the post-Yugoslav rhetoric portraying one’s own group as “the new Jews” and one’s opponents in the wars of the 1990s as (akin to) “Nazis”. Surveying major battle sites in this “memory war”: memorial museums, monuments, film and the war over definitions and terminology in relevant public discourse, The Holocaust/Genocide Template in Eastern Europe will be of great interest to scholars of genocide, the Holocaust, historical memory and revisionism, and Eastern European Politics. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research.

Remembering the Holocaust in Educational Settings
Remembering the Holocaust in Educational Settings

Author: Andy Pearce

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-05-30

Total Pages: 371

ISBN-13: 1351008625

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Remembering the Holocaust in Educational Settings brings together a group of international experts to investigate the relationship between Holocaust remembrance and different types of educational activity through consideration of how education has become charged with preserving and perpetuating Holocaust memory and an examination of the challenges and opportunities this presents. The book is divided into two key parts. The first part considers the issues of and approaches to the remembrance of the Holocaust within an educational setting, with essays covering topics such as historical culture, genocide education, familial narratives, the survivor generation, and memory spaces in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany. In the second part, contributors explore a wide range of case studies within which education and Holocaust remembrance interact, including young people’s understanding of the Holocaust in Germany, Polish identity narratives, Shoah remembrance and education in Israel, the Holocaust and Genocide Centre of Education and Memory in South Africa, and teaching at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. An international and interdisciplinary exploration of how and why the Holocaust is remembered through educational activity, Remembering the Holocaust in Educational Settings is the ideal book for all students, scholars, and researchers of the history and memory of the Holocaust as well as those studying and working within Holocaust education.

Raoul Wallenberg
Raoul Wallenberg

Author: Ulf Zander

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2024-05-14

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 9198557815

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The Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg was responsible for saving the lives of thousands of Jews in Budapest between 1944 and 1945. He is recognised by the Israeli state as one of the Righteous among the Nations. This book examines both Wallenberg’s activities during the Holocaust and the ways posterity has remembered him. It explores secret Swedish diplomacy and how Wallenberg was transformed over time into a Swedish brand. It considers the political aspects of Wallenberg’s Americanisation and analyses his portrayals in music, film and television. Representations of Wallenberg as a monument are discussed with special reference to Swedish and Hungarian examples. The question of how Wallenberg’s memory can and should be kept alive in future is an essential issue related to the politics of memory.

Lessons of History
Lessons of History

Author: Klas-Göran Karlsson

Publisher: Academic Studies PRess

Published: 2024-06-11

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13:

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Lessons of history are often referred to in public discourse, but seldom in scholarly discussions. This book seeks to change this by introducing an innovative analytical model of historical lessons, starting from the basic three-fold perspective that everyone simultaneously is history, shares history, and makes history. Not all history, however, is useful for extracting lessons. Here, what are called borderline historical events, which demonstrate both time-specific and time-transcending qualities, are suggested as useful didactic material. Scholarly works on the Holocaust and Soviet terror, from Raul Hilberg’s and Robert Conquest’s classical works of the 1960s, to more recent books by Jan Gross and Timothy Snyder, are analyzed to identify lessons of history, and how they have changed during a full half-century.

Nordic Fascism
Nordic Fascism

Author: Nicola Karcher

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-12-09

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 1000804682

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Nordic Fascism is the first comprehensive history in English of fascism in the Nordic countries. Transnational cooperation between radical nationalists has especially been the case in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland, where fascism has not only developed through interdependent processes but also through interactions between and beyond national boundaries, and where “racial relationship” has been a core argument. With chapters ranging from the inception of fascism in the interwar years up to the present day, this book offers the first fragments of an entangled history of Nordic fascism. It illuminates how The North occupies a special place in the fascist imagination, articulating ideas about the Nordic people resisting the supposed cultural degeneration, replacement, or annihilation of the white race. The authors map ideological exchange between fascist organisations in the Nordic countries and outline past and present attempts at pan-Nordic state building. This book will appeal to scholars of fascism and Nordic history, and readers interested in the general history of fascism.

Museums of Communism
Museums of Communism

Author: Stephen M. Norris

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2020-11-03

Total Pages: 443

ISBN-13: 0253050316

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How did communities come to terms with the collapse of communism? In order to guide the wider narrative, many former communist countries constructed museums dedicated to chronicling their experiences. Museums of Communism explores the complicated intersection of history, commemoration, and victimization made evident in these museums constructed after 1991. While contributors from a diverse range of fields explore various museums and include nearly 90 photographs, a common denominator emerges: rather than focusing on artifacts and historical documents, these museums often privilege memories and stories. In doing so, the museums shift attention from experiences of guilt or collaboration to narratives of shared victimization under communist rule. As editor Stephen M. Norris demonstrates, these museums are often problematic at best and revisionist at worst. From occupation museums in the Baltic States to memorial museums in Ukraine, former secret police prisons in Romania, and nostalgic museums of everyday life in Russia, the sites considered offer new ways of understanding the challenges of separating memory and myth.

The Wireless World
The Wireless World

Author: Simon J. Potter

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022-09-15

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 019286498X

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The Wireless World sets out a new research agenda for the history of international broadcasting, and for radio history more generally. It examines global and transnational histories of long-distance wireless broadcasting, combining perspectives from international history, media and cultural history, the history of technology, and sound studies. It is a co-written book, the result of more than five years of collaboration. Bringing together their knowledge of a wide range of different countries, languages, and archives, the co-authors show how broadcasters and states deployed international broadcasting as a tool of international communication and persuasion. They also demonstrate that by paying more attention to audiences, programmes, and soundscapes, historians of international broadcasting can make important contributions to wider debates in social and cultural history. Exploring the idea of a 'wireless world', a globe connected, both in imagination and reality, by radio, The Wireless World sheds new light on the transnational connections created by international broadcasting. Bringing together all periods of international broadcasting within a single analytical frame, including the pioneering days of wireless, the Second World War, the Cold War, and the decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the study reveals key continuities and transformations. It looks at how wireless was shaped by internationalist ideas about the use of broadcasting to promote world peace and understanding, at how empires used broadcasting to perpetuate colonialism, and at how anti-colonial movements harnessed radio as a weapon of decolonization.

Memory Crash
Memory Crash

Author: Georgiy Kasianov

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2022-01-11

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 9633863813

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This account of historical politics in Ukraine, framed in a broader European context, shows how social, political, and cultural groups have used and misused the past from the final years of the Soviet Union to 2020. Georgiy Kasianov details practices relating to history and memory by a variety of actors, including state institutions, non-governmental organizations, political parties, historians, and local governments. He identifies the main political purposes of these practices in the construction of nation and identity, struggles for power, warfare, and international relations. Kasianov considers the Ukrainian case in the context of a global increase in the politics of history and memory, with particular emphasis on a distinctive East-European variety. He pays special attention to the use and abuse of history in relations between Ukraine, Russia, and Poland.

Germany in the World: A Global History, 1500-2000
Germany in the World: A Global History, 1500-2000

Author: David Blackbourn

Publisher: Liveright Publishing

Published: 2023-06-06

Total Pages: 558

ISBN-13: 1631491849

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Brilliantly conceived and majestically written, this monumental work of European history recasts the five-hundred-year history of Germany. With Germany in the World, award-winning historian David Blackbourn radically revises conventional narratives of German history, demonstrating the existence of a distinctly German presence in the world centuries before its unification—and revealing a national identity far more complicated than previously imagined. Blackbourn traces Germany’s evolution from the loosely bound Holy Roman Empire of 1500 to a sprawling colonial power to a twenty-first-century beacon of democracy. Viewed through a global lens, familiar landmarks of German history—the Reformation, the Revolution of 1848, the Nazi regime—are transformed, while others are unearthed and explored, as Blackbourn reveals Germany’s leading role in creating modern universities and its sinister involvement in slave-trade economies. A global history for a global age, Germany in the World is a bold and original account that upends the idea that a nation’s history should be written as though it took place entirely within that nation’s borders.