The ‘Righteous’ as an Element of Transnational Memory Politics: The Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust and the Memory of the Rescue of Jews during the Second World War
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/APH.2022.125.06Keywords
transnational memory, politics of remembrance, Righteous Among the Nations, Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust, Holocaust rescueAbstract
In the last two decades, the topic of help given to Jews during the Second World War has experienced an extraordinary boom in Europe and beyond. Transnational and intergovernmental organisations such as the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) have played an essential role in promoting this subject. This paper shows that the first big event to introduce the category of the Righteous into transnational memory politics was the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust (2000). Researchers have described the conference as a significant step toward the ‘institutionalisation of a European memory’ and promoting a self-critical, victim-centred, future-oriented and highly personalised Holocaust remembrance. I argue that it was precisely the universalisation of the Holocaust and the notion of a wide-ranging implication of European societies in the genocide, which paved the way for the rescue narratives. However, as this paper demonstrates, the participants in the conference defined the Righteous differently and invoked them for divergent purposes.
References
Allwork Larissa, Holocaust Remembrance between the National and the Transnational: The Stockholm International Forum and the First Decade of the International Task Force (London et al., 2015).
Gensburger Sarah, ‘La diffusion transnationale de la catégorie de “Juste Parmi les Nations”. (Re)penser l’articulation entre diffusion des droits de l’homme et globalisation de la mémoire’, Revue internationale de politique comparée, xxii, 4 (2015), 537–55.
Gensburger Sarah, National Policy, Global Memory. The Commemoration of the “Righteous” from Jerusalem to Paris, 1942–2007 (New York–Oxford, 2016).
Levy Daniel and Natan Sznaider, Erinnerung im Globalen Zeitalter. Der Holocaust (Frankfurt, 2001).
Levy Daniel and Natan Sznaider, ‘Memory Unbound. The Holocaust and the Formation of Cosmopolitan Memory’, European Journal of Social Theory, v, 1 (2002), 87–106.
Kroh Jens, Transnationale Erinnerung. Der Holocaust im Fokus geschichtspolitischer Initiativen (Frankfurt–New York, 2008).
Kroh Jens, ‘Erinnerungskultureller Akteur und geschichtspolitisches Netzwerk: Die Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance und Research’, in Jan Eckel and Claudia Moisel (eds), Universalisierung des Holocaust? Erinnerungskultur und Geschichtspolitik in internationaler Perspektive. Beiträge zur Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus, 24 (Göttingen 2008), 156–73.
Sierp Aline, History, Memory and Trans-European Identity. Unifying Divisions (New York–London, 2014).
Sierp Aline, ‘Integrating Europe, Integrating Memories: The EU’s Politics of Memory since 1945’, in Lucy Bond and Jessica Rapson (eds), The Transcultural Turn: Interrogating Memory Between and Beyond Borders (Berlin, 2014), 103–18.
Wóycicka Zofia, ‘A Global Label and its Local Appropriations. Representations of the Righteous Among the Nations in Contemporary European Museums’, Memory Studies, xv, 1 (Feb. 2022), 20–36.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Title, logo and layout of journal are reserved trademarks of APH.Stats
Number of views and downloads: 433
Number of citations: 1