Bringing the Dark Past to Light

This anthology brings together twenty essays on Eastern European perceptions of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe since 1989–90. The pieces are arranged alphabetically by country from Albania to Ukraine. The editors of the volume contributed essays on the countries they see as bracketing the range of post-Communist engagement with “the Holocaust” (p. 9). Michlic, who co-authored the essay on Poland, was then at Brandeis and is now a professor at the University of Bristol. She is perhaps best known as co-editor of a documentation of the debates triggered by Jan Gross's 2001 book about the July 10, 1941 massacre of Jewish Poles in Jedwabne.1 In fact, she sees that debate as having made Poland the country where the “second phase of restored memory has reached the most sophisticated level” (p. 9). Himka, now a professor emeritus at the University of Alberta, is a specialist in Ukrainian history. His assessment is that in Ukraine “the first phase of restored memory still has the upper hand,” with “the second civic phase trying to establish itself in public discourse ... only with great difficulty.” This two-phase model of Holocaust recollection is implicit throughout the collection, and is discussed in greater detail below

Communism · Documentation · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Sociology · The Holocaust · Ukrainian · Eastern European Communism and Reforms · Polish Historical and Cultural Studies · Polish-Jewish Holocaust Memory Studies · Classics · History · Law · Philosophy

• The Neighbors Respond

  Zev Garber•Shofar•2005

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