K Vanished History L
MAKING SENSE OF HISTORY
Studies in Historical Cultures
General Editor: Stefan Berger
Founding Editor: Jörn Rüsen
Bridging the gap between historical theory and the study of historical memory,
this series crosses the boundaries between both academic disciplines and cultural,
social, political and historical contexts. In an age of rapid globalisation, which tends
to manifest itself on an economic and political level, locating the cultural practices
involved in generating its underlying historical sense is an increasingly urgent task.
Volume 1
Volume 10
Western Historical Thinking: An Intercultural
Debate
Time and History:The Variety of Cultures
Edited by Jörn Rüsen
Volume 2
Identities:Time, Diference, and
Boundaries
Edited by Heidrun Friese
Volume 3
Narration, Identity, and Historical
Consciousness
Edited by Jürgen Straub
Volume 4
Thinking Utopia: Steps into Other Worlds
Edited by Jörn Rüsen, Michael Fehr,
and Thomas W. Rieger
Volume 5
History: Narration, Interpretation,
Orientation
Jörn Rüsen
Volume 6
The Dynamics of German Industry:
Germany’s Path toward the New Economy
and the American Challenge
Werner Abelshauser
Volume 7
Meaning and Representation in History
Edited by Jörn Rüsen
Volume 8
Remapping Knowledge: Intercultural Studies
for a Global Age
Mihai Spariosu
Volume 9
Cultures of Technology and the Quest for
Innovation
Edited by Helga Nowotny
Edited by Jörn Rüsen
Volume 11
Narrating the Nation: Representations in
History, Media and the Arts
Edited by Stefan Berger, Linas
Eriksonas, and Andrew Mycock
Volume 12
Historical Memory in Africa: Dealing with
the Past, Reaching for the Future in an
Intercultural Context
Edited by Mamadou Diawara, Bernard
Lategan, and Jörn Rüsen
Volume 13
New Dangerous Liaisons: Discourses on
Europe and Love in the Twentieth Century
Edited by Luisa Passerini, Lilianna
Ellena, and Alexander C. T. Geppert
Volume 14
Dark Traces of the Past: Psychoanalysis and
Historical Thinking
Edited by Jürgen Straub and Jörn Rüsen
Volume 15
A Lover’s Quarrel with the Past: Romance,
Representation, Reading
Ranjan Ghosh
Volume 16
The Holocaust and Historical Methodology
Edited by Dan Stone
Volume 17
What is History For? Johann Gustav
Droysen and the Functions of Historiography
Arthur Alfaix Assis
Volume 18
Vanished History:The Holocaust in Czech
and Slovak Historical Culture
Tomas Sniegon
VANISHED HISTORY
The Holocaust in Czech and
Slovak Historical Culture
Tomas Sniegon
berghahn
NEW YORK • OXFORD
www.berghahnbooks.com
First published in 2014 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
©2014 Tomas Sniegon
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sniegon, Tomas, author.
Vanished history: the Holocaust in Czech and Slovak historical culture /
Tomas Sniegon.
pages cm. -- (Making sense of history; v. 18)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-78238-294-2 (hardback: alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-78238295-9 (ebook)
1. Jews--Czech Republic--History. 2. Holocaust, Jewish
(1939-1945)--Czech Republic--Inluence. 3. Jews--Slovakia--History.
4. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Slovakia--Inluence. 5. Jews-Czechoslovakia--History. 6. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Czechoslovakia-Inluence. 7. Czech Republic--Ethnic relations. 8. Slovakia--Ethnic
relations. 9. Czechoslovakia--Ethnic relations. I. Title.
DS135.C95S57 2014
940.53’18094371--dc23
2013044572
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Printed on acid-free paper.
ISBN: 978-1-78238-294-2 (hardback)
ISBN: 978-1-78238-295-9 (ebook)
Contents
List of Illustrations
viii
Introduction
Czechoslovak history’s velvet awakening
From Cold War to peace, from Hiroshima to Auschwitz
The tragedy of the Czech and Slovak Jews
The organisation of this study
Theoretical and conceptual starting points
Historical narrative
The use of history
The Holocaust’s Americanisation and Europeanisation
The Holocaust, historical cultures and research
1
1
3
4
6
7
9
10
13
18
Chapter 1. Czech and Slovak historical narratives
The Jewish narrative and Theresienstadt
The main plots of the primary narratives
Narrators – bearers of historical culture
The diaspora and the communists
27
33
39
44
46
Chapter 2. The Holocaust in Czechoslovak historical culture
before 1989
Between the Slánský trial and individualisation on the cinema
screen
The period of bad conscience
Stalinist communism, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust
The literature of individualisation
Films of the new wave
The communist normalisation
56
56
57
60
63
65
69
vi
Vanished History
Chapter 3. The Holocaust’s uneven return
Czechoslovakia towards dissolution, 1990–1992
Slovakia: the Holocaust as an irritant to nationalism
Anti-Semitic stereotypes
Mild nationalism and its silent sympathisers
The insuicient opposition
The Czech Republic: their Holocaust is not ours
Concluding remarks
73
73
75
81
84
89
93
101
Chapter 4. Schindler’s List arrives in Schindler’s homeland
Oskar Schindler as a problem of Czech historical culture
Oskar Schindler created by Steven Spielberg
Schindler’s identity according to Thomas Keneally
Earlier returns to Czechoslovakia
The non-compromisers: ‘Drive Schindler out!’
Schindler’s shadow over the Czech parliament
Invisible Schindler stories – fear, doubt and compromise
Schindler? Allow him in!
No challenge to ‘the real Czech trauma’
107
107
110
111
113
115
118
121
127
130
Chapter 5. Pig farm as a Porrajmos remembrance site
The Holocaust of the Roma as a new challenge for Czech
historical culture
Holocaust, Porrajmos, Shoah
The Porrajmos and Roma in the Czech context
Lety, Polansky and the Americanisation of the Porrajmos
A part of the globe that has been stolen – the moral use of
history
From the defence of Roma identity to that of Czech identity – the
scientiic use of history
‘Don’t forget us’ – the existential use of history
For Roma or without Roma? The ideological use and non-use
of history
Czech continuity
134
Chapter 6. The Slovak war history goes to Europe
The Holocaust in the Slovak national-European narrative
The uprising
The museum as a historical-cultural object
The history of the museum before 1989
The period of great uncertainty and the Holocaust
The search for a new meaning
The Europeanised resistance, the doubtful Holocaust
134
135
137
138
141
147
152
157
161
166
166
168
169
171
173
178
186
Contents
Auschwitz-Birkenau as a diferent Slovak Holocaust
Europeanisation at the cost of the Holocaust
vii
192
195
Chapter 7. The Holocaust – lacking historical cultures in Slovakia
and the Czech Republic
The ‘Jew-free’ Czech victim role
The ‘Jew-free’ Slovak heroisation
Cultural Europeanisation as a determining factor
201
202
205
207
Conclusion
211
Bibliography
219
Index
233
Illustrations
Figure 1
Figures 2
and 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
Figure 6
The suitcase of the Czech Jewish woman prisoner
x
Zdena Fantlová exhibited at the Museum in
Auschwitz. Fantlová was deported to Auschwitz with
her entire family but was the only one who survived
the Holocaust. After the victory of the communist
regime in Czechoslovakia she emigrated irst to
Australia in 1949 and later to the United Kingdom.
The Shop on Main Street was the irst Czechoslovak
68
ilm and the irst ilm about the Holocaust ever
awarded an Oscar, in 1966. This picture shows the
main ‘hero’, the carpenter Tono Brtko (Jozef Króner),
when he – while drunk – parodies ‘The Führer’.
Two Slovaks on their way from Jozef Tiso’s grave
76
in Bratislava where they took part in a ceremony
glorifying the ‘founder of the irst Slovak nation state’.
Their idol Tiso was the President and ‘Führer’ of that
state.
The memorial of those Czech Jews who were
95
murdered during the Holocaust. The names of more
than 70,000 victims are written on the walls of the
Pinkas synagogue in Prague.
A memorial dedicated to Oskar Schindler in his
109
hometown Svitavy, in German Zwittau. The house
where Schindler was born in 1908 is seen here as well.
However, a memorial plaque to honour Schindler
could not be placed directly on the house since the
owner in 1994 refused to accept it due to Schindler’s
ethnic origin and Nazi past.
Illustrations
Figure 7
Figure 8
Figure 9
Figure 10
Figure 11
Figure 12
Figure 13
Figure 14
Oskar Schindler and ‘his’ workers in the factory in
Cracow.
Oskar Schindler and his family members in Svitavy,
Czechoslovakia, before the Second World War.
Oskar Schindler with his sister Elfriede and mother
Franzisca in his hometown of Svitavy, Zwittau. The
photo is from 1916, two years before Zwittau became
included into the new-born Czechoslovak Republic.
Oskar Schindler and his wife Emilia.
A cruciied Romani man as a symbol of the victims
of the Porrajmos, the Holocaust of the Roma in the
Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia. This memorial
plaque is placed inside a small cemetery in Černovice
near the former Porrajmos camp Hodonín u
Kunštátu.
Lety u Písku, ‘AGPI Písek-production of pork meat’.
In the same place, a concentration camp for Gypsies
from the Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia was
located during the Second World War.
The Museum of the Slovak National Uprising in
Banská Bystrica, Slovakia. The building consisting of
two parts connected by a bridge was built in the
1960s.
The statue, ‘Victims Warn’, made by the sculptor Jozef
Jankovič, is situated at the entrance to the museum. It
was removed in the early 1970s during the era of the
communist ‘normalisation’ but returned in 2004. The
message, stressing the sufering of anonymous victims,
did not correspond with the goals of the communist
propaganda wanting to emphasise the heroic resistance
of the communist and partisan ighters.Introduction
ix
111
113
115
128
139
155
171
184
Figure 1 The suitcase of the Czech Jewish woman prisoner Zdena Fantlová
exhibited at the Museum in Auschwitz. Fantlová was deported to Auschwitz with her
entire family but was the only one who survived the Holocaust. After the victory of
the communist regime in Czechoslovakia she emigrated irst to Australia in 1949 and
later to the United Kingdom. Photo: Tomas Sniegon
Introduction
Czechoslovak history’s velvet awakening
This book is an analysis of the Holocaust’s position in Czech and Slovak
historical culture during ‘the long 1990s’, a period which commenced with
the radical political changes in Europe of 1989 and developed towards the
Czech Republic’s and Slovakia’s entry into the European Union in 2004.
In a broader perspective the book concerns the role of history during the
two societies’ development from dictatorship to democracy, when both were
forced to redeine themselves both internally and in relation to the wider
world. It deals with questions surrounding values and expectations that were
relected at a national Slovak and Czech level, and their relation to, primarily,
a supranational, European historical culture that was being created in parallel. It is precisely this European historical culture and its relation to certain
selected national historical cultures that has been the focus for the project, The
Holocaust and European Historical Culture, within whose frame this work has
been written.1
In concrete terms, I focus on the Czech and Slovak manifestations of historical consciousness in relation to the Holocaust or Shoah: the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis against Jews and certain other ethnic/religious groups
during the Second World War. This event has not been randomly selected. The
Holocaust struck and deeply afected both of the countries that are at the
centre of this book. At the same time the genocide against the Jews during the
period of this study has attained a broader signiicance in terms of its European
and universal symbolic value. Because the Czech Republic and Slovakia have
endeavoured to become part of an international context in the post-communist era, it has been an urgent matter for them to deal with their painful history.
At the end of the Cold War, the political situation in Central Europe
changed dramatically. Until 1989 Czechoslovakia was a communist state,
strongly dependent on the Soviet Union. Towards the end of 1989 communist
Notes for this section begin on page 23.
2
Vanished History
rule was replaced by a newly born democracy during a peaceful process called
the ‘Velvet Revolution’. But as early as 1 January 1993 Czechoslovakia split
into two independent states: the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Velvet
Revolution culminated in a peaceful ‘velvet divorce’, which ended the velvet
process and initiated a wholly new period in the development of both countries.
Even if the disintegration of the Czechoslovak state was not totally unexpected, many were surprised by the speed of the process. The radical changes
afected almost all aspects of life. The old system disappeared after several
decades of stagnation. The newly won freedom of the press and other forms
of expression, freedom to travel, freedom of commerce and freedom to choose
diferent political parties ofered people in Czechoslovakia new possibilities,
but at the same time increased competition, social stress and confrontation with
the surrounding world. In such an atmosphere, old and established values were
challenged and continuously redeined, while new ones were still waiting to be
born or developed. Thus the Velvet Revolution was not only a political, ideological and socioeconomic revolution, but a cultural and mental one as well.
In this turbulent situation, where hopes of a brighter future were strong,
history did not just become a passive remnant. While in 1990 the Slovak historian, Lubomír Lipták, described the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia in
November 1989 as a radical change without precedent, as ‘a change that needed
neither historical attire nor sweeping slogans’,2 another historian,Vilém Prečan,
spoke just a few years later about ‘a surplus of history’.3 History had great and
sometimes even decisive signiicance for orientating individuals and collectives
in the Czech Republic and Slovakia in the direction of something perceived as
a better society and a happier situation in life. Historical consciousness, which
every human being develops in order to mentally be able to move between
yesterday’s questions, today’s tasks and tomorrow’s promises, therefore came to
function as an active and mobilising power in this transformation.
Many historical disclosures began to be served as the ‘truth’ that had at last
arrived to replace the communists’ ‘lies’ and ‘fallacies’. Suddenly there was not
only one, but two, three or even more ‘truths’ that conlicted with each other.
They were supported by previously suppressed historical facts and, moreover,
often claimed to be ‘scientiically proven’. But which historical arguments was
a person to accept as his or her own, and how was that person to ind a standpoint in this argumentation? Which historical events did he or she most want
to forget and which, conversely, were to be highlighted? And why? Should the
Holocaust belong to the irst or the second category?
During the Cold War a relative silence regarding the history of the Holocaust
prevailed, particularly in Eastern Europe, where the sufering of the Jews was
not allowed to compete with the communists’ sufering and heroism. After the
fall of the Berlin Wall, the Holocaust began to be held up on an increasingly
broad front. The British historian, Tony Judt, enthusiastically describes the new
attention paid to the Holocaust in Europe as ‘the very deinition and guarantee
Introduction
3
of the continent’s restored humanity’.4 The Holocaust has become a phenomenon that now reaches far beyond Europe’s borders; some researchers even
talk about the Holocaust as the foundation for a new global or ‘cosmopolitan’
memory, the function of which is to create a basis for the defence of human
rights.5 Irrespective of whether one regards these claims as exaggerated or not,
it is not possible to ignore that the Holocaust in our particular era has been
given emphasis, especially in Western societies, more than any other historical event. How was this emphasis concretely manifested during the intensive
transformation of the two Central European states of this study?
From Cold War to peace, from Hiroshima to Auschwitz
Among the historical events most often noted in Czechoslovakia during the
early post- communist development were the most decisive moments from the
communist period: the victory of communism in 1948, the terror of the Stalin
era until the mid-1950s, and the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Union
and the Warsaw Pact which halted the reform process that became known
internationally as the Prague Spring of 1968. Second World War traumas can be
added to these.6 Despite the Second World War having ended forty-ive years
earlier, it was only following the cessation of the Cold War that it became possible to freely discuss all its aspects. For example, in 1990 the Czechs were able
to celebrate for the irst time since 1948 that their part of Czechoslovakia had
been liberated not only by the Red Army but also by American troops.
Discussions about pre-1945 history became in certain respects even more
important than debates about the just-concluded communist epoch, particularly in debates concerning foreign policy and events and processes, such as
the reuniication of Germany or European integration. The period up to 1945
represented, namely, a time when Czechoslovakia, far more than later, had contacts with the well-developed democratic countries in the West, which at this
stage were seen simultaneously as Czechoslovakia’s new and old allies. This
did not, however, mean that the memories were only positive. Thoughts about
the Munich Agreement of 1938 and the Western powers’ so-called appeasement
politics, which left Czechoslovakia to Hitler, had left a bitter aftertaste for many
Czechs and Slovaks. But the memory of the Second World War, the most traumatic event in twentieth-century Europe, was no longer there to serve as a cut
of between separate countries and rival ideologies.
As the Swedish historian Klas-Göran Karlsson points out, the traumatic
war history after the fall of the Berlin Wall has not only been the focus of
national historical accounts, it is instead treated in a way which is thought
to answer to ‘European’ values.7 The process of reconciliation between old
enemies, which at one time was the basis for Western Europe’s integration, was
now expanded to the other side of the former Iron Curtain. The memory of
4
Vanished History
the Second World War was put to use to avoid violent conlicts in the future,
but served also as a building block for the new European identity which as early
as 1992 was formally decided in the so-called Maastrich Treaty.8 The political
will to overcome old conlicts between East and West was manifest both during
the process of reuniting Germany in 1990 and at the celebrations of important,
positive junctures in the Second World War, such as the Fiftieth Anniversary of
the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944 and the surrender of the Third Reich
in 1945. Despite neither Germany nor Russia being invited to Normandy in
1994, and despite many Western statesmen boycotting the military parade at the
celebrations in Moscow in May 1995 as a protest against Russia’s ongoing war
in Chechnya, the victory over Nazism was still unanimously presented as a new
springboard for Europe’s united future.
Now that the immediate threat of a global nuclear war between the
world’s dominating military superpowers has disappeared, Hiroshima has lost
some of its political-symbolic signiicance. Instead it is the Holocaust that has
become the strongest symbol of absolute evil, the lowest point in history. As the
Israeli Holocaust historian of Czech-Jewish descent, Yehuda Bauer, observed
in 2000 at the opening ceremony of the ‘Stockholm International Forum on
the Holocaust’, the Holocaust has become a universal concern and one that,
according to him, is politically expressed: ‘Major politicians, wrongly but characteristically, compare Saddam Hussein to Hitler, or the tragedy in Kosovo
to the Holocaust’.9 Another proof he submitted for the increasing global signiicance of the Holocaust is an Auschwitz museum now being built near
Hiroshima, and the fact that a department for teaching about the Holocaust has
been opened at Shanghai University.
But did the Holocaust play any role whatsoever in the Czech and Slovak
historical debates? Were there strong tendencies towards remembering or,
perhaps, an interest in forgetting? Who wanted to remember and who wanted
to forget?
The tragedy of the Czech and Slovak Jews
Before presenting my theoretical points of departure and my analytical tools,
I would like to briely discuss the course of the Holocaust in the area which
after 1918 had become Czechoslovak territory and which during the Second
World War was divided into two parts: the occupied Protectorate of Bohemia
and Moravia on the one side and the Slovak Republic on the other.
The number of Czechoslovak citizens who lost their lives during the
Second World War is estimated at 360,000. Even though the old numbers
from the early post-war period have been re-examined and partly modiied since 1989, all kinds of evidence show that most of these victims were
Jews. According to statistical records about 270,000 Czechoslovak Jews were
Introduction
5
murdered, which means that as many as three out of four Czechoslovak victims
of Second World War violence were killed in the Holocaust as a result of antiJewish politics.10 Almost 80,000 Jewish victims came from the Protectorate of
Bohemia and Moravia, i.e., the area of the Czech Lands with the exclusion
of the Sudetenland, the territory annexed by Hitler’s Third Reich after the
1938 Munich Agreement.11 Roughly 70,000 were Jews from Slovakia. The rest
of the victims came from territories that were taken away from Slovakia by
Hungary shortly after the Munich Agreement: southern and eastern Slovak
regions (approx. 42,000 victims) and the poorest eastern province of Ruthenia
(approx. 80,000 victims).12 Among the victims of the Nazi genocide were also
around 5,500 Czech and 2,000 Slovak gypsies.13
In the Czech territory, i.e., the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the
occupying power, Germany, was responsible alone for ‘the inal solution’. In
Slovakia, however, the domestic regime, led by the Catholic priest, Jozef Tiso,
organised the forcible measures and deportations with their own forces and
in that way took over a great part of the responsibility from Germany. At the
end of the war, Tiso’s Slovak regime stood among the losers, side by side with
its main ally, Germany, while Bohemia and Moravia were liberated and thus
situated on the winning side.
Slovakia was never forced into openly dealing with its war history on
the international stage. As early as 1945, Slovakia ceased to exist as an international entity and was once again included in Czechoslovakia. The stance of
the Allied great powers, in particular that of the USA, was of decisive importance. The USA never recognised Slovakia as an independent state and viewed
Czechoslovakia’s exile government in London, with Edvard Beneš at its head,
as the country’s sole oicial representative during the war. In December 1941
the USA even ignored the declaration of war by Slovakia.14 The reuniication of the Czech and Slovak parts was part of the Beneš government’s plan
to reconstruct the irst Czechoslovak Republic within its pre-war borders
and in this way cancel the results of the Munich Agreement with regard to
constitutional law. Thus even the trial of Jozef Tiso and his close collaborators in 1947 was seen as an internal Czechoslovak matter rather than part of
the international post-war judicial processes.15 At the end of the war Tiso led
to German Bavaria, where he was captured by American troops and shortly
thereafter handed over to the Czechoslovak authorities. In April 1947 Tiso
was sentenced to death in accordance with Czechoslovak law and executed
just three days later. The trial was characterised by an intensive political power
struggle in Slovakia and the whole of Czechoslovakia. This fact made it easier
for those who wanted to interpret the sentence as a communist or Czech
revenge against the man who had become the main symbol of the Slovak
state.16
Despite the fact that the communists could have had reason to use Tiso
ideologically as a frightening example of Nazi collaboration in their historical
6
Vanished History
propaganda, they did so only to a limited degree during their time in power.
They probably feared that giving too much voice to historical problems would
threaten the sensitive relations between Czechs and Slovaks and increase the
opposition to communism in Slovakia. Why the same regime that had deined
itself as being consistently anti-Nazi and anti-fascist avoided a debate of the
Holocaust is something I will discuss in more detail later, as this question is
central for this study.
The organisation of this study
At the core of this study are four concrete examples of history’s position in
Czech and Slovak societies where Holocaust history directly or indirectly
stands at the centre.These examples are intended to relect diferent attitudes to
‘the inal solution’ and the memory of it among Czechs and Slovaks during the
period of transition from communism to democracy. However, the study does
not strive to present a complete list of all the cases touching upon the Holocaust
in Czech and Slovak development after 1989. Instead, it focuses on those situations where the post-communist constructions of meaning with regard to
Czech and Slovak history were confronted with the process of making sense of
the Holocaust. Thus, the selected cases, over and above other situations, can be
argued to relect the essential features of Czech and Slovak historical cultures
in relation to the Holocaust.
In the following part, the theoretical, conceptual and analytical starting
points will be explained. Thereafter, a survey of the use of Holocaust history
in Czechoslovakia between 1945 and 1989 will be presented as an empirical background description. During this period history was irst and foremost
decided by the dictates of communist ideology.
The subsequent four empirically orientated chapters will, from a main
principle of chronology, illuminate the historical-cultural development in the
Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The irst of these chapters will focus on the Czech and Slovak historical
debate against the background of Czechoslovakia’s division in 1990–1992. It
was at this time that the irst Slovak nation state or, alternatively, the German
satellite of the Second World War, was primarily debated.The reason for putting
focus on this particular period is that nationalistic sentiments were most strongly
expressed during this time, while the old Czechoslovak communist historical
narrative was being replaced by new ones.
The second empirical chapter is concerned with the Czech reaction to
the American ilm, Schindler’s List, perhaps the most well-known and inluential
historical-cultural product about the Holocaust. Directed by Steven Spielberg, it
portrays a former Czechoslovak citizen, the Sudeten German, Oskar Schindler,
paying tribute to his heroic action in saving more than 1,000 Jewish prisoners.
Introduction
7
Here the Czech reactions are placed in relation to the Americanisation of the
Holocaust.
In the third empirical chapter another Czech debate will be analysed: the
debate concerning two memorial sites, Lety and Hodonín u Kunštátu, where
during the Second World War there were two concentration camps for Roma
from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia who were threatened with
extermination. At these sites the Czechs, after the war, constructed a pig farm
and a holiday establishment, a fact that during the 1990s drew signiicant attention and protests. As will be shown, the process described as the Europeanisation
of the Holocaust meant that the genocide of the Jews and that of the Roma
were coupled together without consideration of the diferences between the
two operations, a concept whose problems become evident when viewed
through the lens of the Czech actions.
In the inal empirical chapter the main question is how the Holocaust
has been presented in a Slovak museum, which during the communist era
was the most prominent museum about the Second World War in Slovakia.
The establishment was later converted into the irst museum in the country
to also include the history of the Holocaust. It was above all this museum that
was given the task of adjusting the memory of the war and the Holocaust
to the needs of the new Slovakia: a Slovakia which had introduced a democratic system and strengthened its ties with the European Union and NATO.
Thus the complications surrounding the Europeanisation of Slovak history and
the Second World War are given particular attention in this chapter. Lastly, a
concluding discussion with a summary of my indings will be presented.
Theoretical and conceptual starting points
The concept of historical consciousness is of fundamental theoretical signiicance for this book. The function of historical consciousness is to orientate
people in a low of time by relating the comprehension of their own present
situation to, on the one hand, experiences and memories of the past, and on
the other hand, expectations and fears in relation to the future. Historical consciousness places all human beings in a context of meaning which is greater
than their own clearly deined lives. The concept is meaningful when dealing
with individual as well as collective contexts of signiicance, but it is in the latter
sense as a mental tool, which to a high degree is determined by collective experiences and memories, and which incorporates us into a collective context, that
it will be used in the present work. In practice this collective context has often
comprised a national unity, but in our era this is challenged by both regional
and transnational unities. As has already been stated, this study highlights a
European historical context of meaning that competed with or complemented
the Czech and Slovak context.
8
Vanished History
It has to be mentioned, however, that the concept of historical consciousness as used here is diferent from the traditional usage of the term historical
consciousness in the Czech and Slovak scholarly contexts. Some Czech and
Slovak historians, among them, Miroslav Hroch, had used the term (historické
vědomí) already during the 1960s, i.e., before the deinition of historical consciousness which was established by Karl-Ernst Jeismann in 1979 and which
is used here.17 However, they did not understand the term in the same way as
Jeismann did later. According to Hroch, the term relected the level of historical
knowledge and common awareness about (especially national) history.18 This
interpretation was questioned in 1995 by another Czech historian, Zdeněk
Beneš.19 However, it is only now, in very recent years, that the concept of historical consciousness has been approached on a broader bases that is closer to
Jeismann’s original deinition.20
Historical consciousness is, to a great extent, connected to diferent social
and cultural developments in a society and a state, but it can also be triggered
by various political interest groups which have the capacity and will to create
meaning from the past, as well as the power and possibility to reach out to
large parts of the population with their message. In such situations, historical
consciousness can be transformed into an efective weapon in the struggle for
political power in a country.
Hence, it may be presumed that historical consciousness is most often
mobilised in times of rapid change, turbulence and crisis. It is then that our
need for and interest in orientating ourselves and creating meaning in time
increases. The period of Central European history examined in this book was
deinitely such a time.
An important aspect of the term historical consciousness is that it helps us
to see that history is so much more than a subject of science and teaching. The
historical dimension has links to problems concerning existence and identity,
moral-judicial decisions, political and ideological questions of contention, and
so much more.Those wishing to examine historical consciousness are, however,
faced with the problem that the object, as such, cannot be analysed. Analyses
can only be directed towards the concrete manifestations of historical consciousness, which will here be described as aspects of a historical culture. At the
centre of this culture stands a historical artefact or product, which can consist
of a scientiic monograph or history textbook for teaching use, but which may
also be a ilm, a monument or a debate relating to a current historical question. Such historical-cultural products will be analysed in the separate empirical
chapters to follow.
A historical culture has been described as a communicative context, linked
to the historical products mentioned.21 These can consequently be analysed
in terms of sender/production, intermediary/communication and recipient/
consumption. The following account will not be purely historiographical, i.e.,
focused on how and under which conditions historical products are depicted,
Introduction
9
but will also show how history is communicated in the Czech Republic and
Slovakia in political debates, ilm reviews and museum exhibitions. The question of how historical-cultural artefacts are received is diicult to assess. It is
in all likelihood partly dependent on the efectiveness of the communicative
process, and partly traditions and conceptions regarding historical development, which brings us back to the primary cultural question of which history a
society believes to be worth saving, debating, celebrating or forgetting.
An adjacent perspective on historical culture has to do with power. The
research questions that are related to power and inluence are multiple: Which
groups in a society have the power to choose which historical perspectives are
promoted or withheld? What role does the state play as a conveyor of history?
What importance do domestic actors have in highlighting and mobilising
crucial questions, and to what extent is the historical-cultural debate inluenced in a country of international actors, questions and trends? What power
functions does history exercise in a society?
Historical culture has traditionally been framed in a national manner and
has often had a strongly homeland-focused and patriotic stamp. During the
communist era it had a special character particularly with regard to modern
history, as ‘national values’ were coupled with a class perspective. The national
framework was, even so, constantly among the decisive criteria. Books and
museum exhibitions have had Czechoslovak, Czech or Slovak history as a
focal point. Interpretations of historical phenomena such as war have been
built around ‘national’ actors and structures even more than those of domestic
political events.
Against this background it has seemed reasonable to base this book upon
national historical cultures.The term ‘nationalising’ signiies in this context that
a historical phenomenon is ‘written into’ a national interpretative context sanctioned by long usage and is adapted to the values seen as characterising it. This
does not, however, mean that historical cultures cannot be connected to other
categories than the nation and state. Among those that become visible in this
book are professional groups, regions and ethnic groups. Above all, as has been
mentioned, the national historical-cultural context over the past decades has
been challenged by a European-wide interpretative context. In this work, the
‘Europeanisation’ of history will signify the communicative process by which
a historical-culturally interesting phenomenon is placed in relation to what is
perceived and portrayed as European interpretations and values.
Historical narrative
One method of analysing historical culture is by positioning the narrative at the
centre. This will be further explained later in this introductory chapter. First, it
is necessary to present an analytical framework for the narrative concept.
10
Vanished History
A narrative is always a story about something.The communicative element
is prominent: there is always someone who narrates, and someone who takes
in the story. A historical narrative concerns our relationship with the past; it is
a presentation of how selected, mutually dependent events follow upon one
another in a temporal perspective.
The narrative, which has a beginning, a middle section and a conclusion,
is bound together by a plot. A plot ties together the story’s diferent stages
and therefore contributes to creating context, wholeness and meaning around
questions regarding what happened, how it happened and why it happened. A
historical narrative emphasises the totality and not the separate event that stands
out as important, because it is precisely the plot that decides the choice of events
in diferent historical narratives and not the opposite. The same events can,
however, be included in diferent historical narratives when they are presented
with diferent plots in focus.
Notions such as goals and means, actors, intentions and motives become
particularly important in a storyline of this kind, while structural, impersonal
conditions end up in the background.22 This close link to dimensions such as
identity, morality and power illustrates the narrative’s close relation to historical
consciousness.
In the narrative two extreme positions are often placed against each other
to create excitement and conlict, and the story frequently ends with the antagonisms being solved – or culminating. Clearly, not everything we relate can
qualify as a narrative in a deeper sense. Nor can all stories be described as
having the same historical signiicance. Some are strictly individual and particular, while others are common goods and function in a unifying or separating
manner.
In historical culture, narratives are constructed, chosen and valued. In a
competitive situation, some are seen as useful and important while others are
not. In the historical-cultural context we often adapt our interpretation of the
past and formulate our stories in connection to already formulated narratives,
placing them in the more general themes that characterise them.23 Researchers
sometimes use the term grand narratives or master narratives, which are deined
as stable conveyors of meaning that ideologically and culturally support and
legitimise whole institutions or societies. Attempting to ind these kinds of
slow-moving narratives in Czechoslovakia’s changeable history is far from
unproblematic. Despite this, I will be focusing on such hegemonic narratives,
which fulil the necessary criteria more than all the others.
The use of history
Every historical culture has a procedural aspect. This concerns questions on
how historical consciousness is expressed and how historical culture is created.
Introduction
11
Historical culture is a product of individuals and collectives who actively use
history. They mobilise and activate their historical consciousness and transform
it into concrete texts and actions. Individuals and groups use history to satisfy
diferent needs and interests, and to attain diverse goals.
As Klas-Göran Karlsson has shown, it is possible when considering these
needs and goals, and in addition diferent historical and societal contexts, to distinguish between at least several diferent types of history usage. These include
scientiic, existential, moral, ideological and political use, as well as non-use.24
A typology of this kind conlicts with the traditional understanding of our
attitude towards history that developed during the professionalisation of the
history discipline, namely, that scientiic historians are the only ‘true’ users of
history, while all others more or less abuse it. However, as Friedrich Nietzsche
demonstrated as early as the end of the 1800s, traditionally understood historical science cannot deal with and satisfy all the historical dimensions concerned
with history as a necessity of life.25
Karlsson’s thought is that the typology can be analytically applied to diferent societies and ages to provide knowledge about similarities and diferences
in regard to the use of history.The presented uses of history comprise analytical
categories or ideal types. Several of the uses can overlap and strengthen each
other, which in this book is most clearly shown in the chapter on the Holocaust
of the Roma, the Porrajmos. Sometimes a use of history is instead weakened by
another. As the borders between these attitudes are not always exactly clear, and
as diferent ways of using history can be combined, the typology is not intended
to be used in a normative way. However, with its help it is possible to better
understand the main actors’ needs and intentions.
Existential history usage helps its practitioners to seek answers to questions
about existence and identity. It is triggered by a need to remember in order to
orientate oneself in a society characterised by uncertainty and crisis, a society
in the process of rapid change or under strong pressure. This use is often found
in groups struggling against amnesia, unconscious forgetting, and striving for
cultural homogenisation.
Moral history usage expresses thoughts about questions of right and wrong
in history, about good and bad. History becomes a moral-political power in a
time when political liberalisation or another radical change makes it possible to
bring previously unnoticed or consciously suppressed historical questions into
the political-cultural agenda.The main practitioners of this method, often intellectual and cultural elites, are eager for forgotten and previously denied, even
banal and trivialised history to be accepted, rehabilitated and reinstated. Their
goal can generally be described as settling things, with the functional state
power restoring the situation that prevailed before this power’s encroachment
on history.
Political and ideological history usage arises in connection with questions
about power and legitimacy. The political use is metaphoric, analogical,
12
Vanished History
instrumental and comparative. The intention here is to invoke historical phenomena to support a current issue and by this means bring about a political
debate. Similarities are strongly emphasised to the detriment of diferences,
which makes the relationship between then and now both simple and unproblematic. The objects used in such comparisons are not selected randomly; what
is important is that they possess strong emotional, moral and political power.
The ideological use of history is connected to those systems of ideas that exploit
history in order to justify a position of power. Its main practitioners who, like
those of the political use of history are political and intellectual elites, invoke
‘historical laws’ and ‘objective needs’ in order to construct a relevant contextual
meaning which legitimises a certain power position, and which rationalises it
by portraying history in such a way that mistakes and problems on the road to
power are toned down, trivialised or ignored.
A special form of the ideological use of history is the non-use of history.
This refers to the desire not to be ‘disturbed’ by history in situations where it is
deemed important to focus on the present and the future. Intentional non-use
of history thus does not comprise temporary and unintentional forgetting.
Rather, it represents a conscious tendency not to legitimise the existing society
with the aid of history or cultural heritage, or parts thereof, but instead to refer
to speciic socioeconomic conditions in the present or to a bright future. The
historical dimension is deliberately ignored and suppressed.
Scientiic history usage has developed around the question of what is true
or false in the interpretation of the past. It is based on a professional and
theoretical-analytical and methodological system of rules within the scientiic
discipline and history as a taught subject. In contrast to the political use of
history, the scientiic use consciously distances the historical dimension from
present interests and needs. The past is to be studied in itself and unique
aspects and diferences, rather than similarities, between historical phenomena
are emphasised. This genetic, prospective view generally represents history as
a science.
A boundary between the scientiic and the ideological use of history is
also important, though not always completely clear. In both cases interpretation and the creation of meaning play a central role, and in both cases intellectual groups are the main actors. In Karlsson’s opinion the main diference
should be seen in the aims of both uses: while history as a science is normally
carried out with the intention of creating new knowledge and thereby contributing to intra-scientiic research development, ideological history is used to
convince and to mobilise large groups of people for the great ideological task.
Practitioners of scientiic history often place emphasis on parts of the context
of historical meaning, whereas ideological practitioners tend to underline the
whole.26
Introduction
13
The Holocaust’s Americanisation and Europeanisation
It has already been stated that nationalisation and Europeanisation belong to
those historical-cultural processes which since 1989 have most inluenced the
question of what position the Holocaust is given in the Czech and Slovak
historical cultures. However, it must also be noted that the Holocaust’s
Americanisation has also inluenced the Holocaust debate, particularly in the
Czech case.
Both the Americanisation and Europeanisation of the Holocaust became
prominent and analytically relevant processes within the context of the Cold
War’s end, but despite their being generally accepted as important, researchers still have problems deining what the Americanisation and Europeanisation
of the Holocaust actually entail. It is particularly the Americanisation of the
Holocaust, which has been developing since the 1970s, that is diicult to see
as a clearly formulated narrative that might pose long-term challenges for the
main Czech and Slovak historical narratives.
The Holocaust’s Americanisation can be perceived in two ways. The irst
concerns how the Holocaust is incorporated into the domestic American
historical culture and how it inds its place in the historical consciousness of
Americans, i.e., what role it is given in relation to American values and in
American conceptions about the future of the USA. Researchers have pointed
out that the Holocaust’s positioning in an American- meaning context can
primarily be connected to leading elements in American societal life, such as
multiculturalism and ethnicity, while at the same time the Holocaust’s representation in an American context is adapted to ‘traditional’ American values,
such as positive and forward-orientated thinking, a striving for ‘happy endings’,
a focus on strong individual heroes and the toning down of brutality, despair
and a tragic view of life.27 The American historian and linguist Alvin Rosenfeld
associates the Holocaust’s Americanisation with ‘a tendency to individualize,
heroize, moralize, idealize and universalize’.28
The second perception in regard to the Americanisation of the Holocaust
is linked to the question of whether the USA with the help of the Holocaust’s
‘American’ representation has inluenced other countries and cultures both
through political activities and by the distribution of popular culture produced
by the American ilm and television industry, and American mass media with
its global reach.
Both perceptions are, of course, closely connected to each other. In this
study I wish to draw attention to the ‘outwardly directed’ Americanisation
in relation to the Czech and Slovak historical cultures after the fall of communism. However, it must be pointed out that despite the signiicant inluence of the USA in regard to both political and economic contacts and the
export of popular culture, it is still unclear and unascertained how much and
in which ways this political and cultural Americanisation of the Holocaust has
14
Vanished History
inluenced the democratic process in the Eastern and Central European region
since 1989.
A concrete sign of American inluence is, irstly, that the term Holocaust
itself initially only came to be used in Czechoslovakia at the beginning of
the 1990s. Prior to this the Holocaust was denoted either with a Czech or
Slovak translation of the German term ‘the inal solution’ or as ‘race reprisals’
– though without information connecting these terms to the Jews. After the
demise of communism the American term was inally adopted; it had been used
in the USA since the end of the 1960s and particularly since 1978, when the
American television series of the same name was broadcast, irstly in the USA
in April 1978 and later in Western Europe.29
The formation of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust by US
President James Carter in the same year can be seen as another important
milestone here, since one of the most important goals of this commission was
to create a new American deinition and understanding of the Holocaust – even
though an originally non-American phenomenon. Created at a time ‘when the
Holocaust had moved not only from the periphery to the center of American
Jewish consciousness, but to the center of national consciousness as well’,30 the
mechanical transplantation of this deinition back into the European and especially Central European context of the early post-Cold-War era was far from
problem-free.31 While the irst breakthrough of the parallel cultural and political interest in the Holocaust in the USA in 1978 did not afect Czechoslovakia
at all, the following wave in 1993, dominated by the opening of the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. and the worldwide
success of the ilm Schindler’s List, became much more relevant, especially for
the newly formed Czech Republic.
There were also political activities that can be linked to the role of the
USA in NATO and to NATO’s expansion, which also came to encompass
diferent uses of the Holocaust term. In this book I demonstrate historicalcultural manifestations of these activities in connection to the mid-1990s
Czech debate on the genocide of the Roma.The political initiative on the part
of the USA was, however, never as great as for example in Romania, which in
2003, less than one year before the country became a NATO member, established the American-Romanian International Commission on the Holocaust
in Romania – also known as ‘The Wiesel Commission’. This Commission was
initiated by then-Romanian President, Ion Iliescu, and led by American professor, Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who had himself survived the
Holocaust and who moreover had his roots in Transylvania. The Commission’s
two most important aims were to include the Holocaust in Romanian historical culture and, with the help of this inclusion, prove to the world at large that
the new post-communist Romania respected human rights on a historical basis
and was therefore developing in the right direction, as seen from a Western
perspective.32
Introduction
15
With regard to the inluence of American popular culture one can, above
all, discuss Steven Spielberg’s ilm, Schindler’s List, which had a special connection to the Czech Republic. This movie was not a clear guide to how the
Holocaust should be written into Czech and Slovak historical narratives, a guide
that could be perceived as American. In connection with Schindler’s List, the
nationalisation of the Holocaust became more than problematic, as I will demonstrate in the chapter devoted to this subject. All this being said, Schindler’s List
was followed in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia by a further American
initiative: Steven Spielberg’s, Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation.
Focused on interviews with those who had survived the Holocaust, this activity also came without a clear American message, i.e. without being framed into
what could be described as an American meaning.33
The Holocaust’s Europeanisation can, on the other hand, be interpreted
much more unequivocally. Because European institutions began to use the
Holocaust to give historical legitimacy to the ongoing European integration process in the 1990s, one can irst and foremost perceive the process of
Europeanisation as an attempt to create a common European historical narrative, or at least a common European view of the Holocaust that would
be able to compete with established national narratives and induce the EU
members and candidate countries to concur. What is meant by the Holocaust’s
Europeanisation is therefore a historical-cultural process stemming from the
EU goal of including the Holocaust as a cultural aspect of the current process
of European integration.34
As previously mentioned, it was initially the Second World War and not
speciically the Holocaust that was used in this process shortly after the end of
the Cold War, the aim being to bridge the diferences between East and West.
One could not, however, speak of either a united or centralised view of the
Second World War. It was only when the Holocaust had been put forth as the
war’s most signiicant component that the Europeanisation process gained a
historical foundation stone which could assist the EU in developing a cultural
counterpart to the member states’ common political decisions and common
European market.35 The Holocaust has, as one of the European institutions
concluded,‘driven the EU’s founders to build a united and peaceful Europe and
thus been at the very root of the European integration project’.36
The relationship between the memory of the Holocaust and respect
for human rights in Europe after the Cold War began to receive attention
irst when the EU was set to expand eastwards while simultaneously fearing
the radical growth of post-communist nationalist and religious hatred in the
former Yugoslavia, which grew into the most violent conlict in Europe since
the end of the Second World War. This can be illustrated by the fact that in
1995, during the irst expansion after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were
no special EU demands placed upon the new member countries of Finland,
Sweden and Austria. This was particularly interesting in Austria’s case, as it was