Dr Joanna Michlic – Bringing the Dark to Light: Memory of the Holocaust in Post-Communist Europe

With the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, coming to terms with the Holocaust and the destruction of the East European Jewry was one of the political, moral and cultural challenges that encumbered post-communist countries in their ‘return’ to Europe. However, the restoration of memory has not been a smooth or unifying process. It is still undergoing many dynamic transformations of competing and discordant remembering, hindered by recollections of the Gulag and reluctance to come to terms with the wartime past and fate of local Jewish communities.

Dr Michlic will examine the two major stages in the process of restoration of Holocaust memory in post-communist Europe. She will argue that in order to understand its ongoing dynamics, three key dimensions should be considered: remembering to remember, remembering to benefit, and remembering to forget. It is by studying these dimensions carefully, she proposes, that we can learn the nature of the reconceptualization of Jews and the Holocaust, and the limits of recognition and integration of the “dark past”, by broader multigenerational sections of post-communist societies. This event has been recorded and is available as a podcast at the following URL: http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2012/03/joanna-michlic-bringing-the-dark-to-light-memory-of-the-holocaust-in-post-communist-europe/