Books
Central European University Press, 2022
Reined into the service of the Cold War confrontation, antifascist ideology overshadowed the narr... more Reined into the service of the Cold War confrontation, antifascist ideology overshadowed the narrative about the Holocaust in the communist states of Eastern Europe. This led to the Western notion that in the Soviet Bloc there was a systematic suppression of the memory of the mass murder of European Jews. Going beyond disputing the mistaken opposition between “communist falsification” of history and the “repressed authentic” interpretation of the Jewish catastrophe, this work presents and analyzes the ways as the Holocaust was conceptualized in the Soviet-ruled parts of Europe.
The authors provide various interpretations of the relationship between antifascism and Holocaust memory in the communist countries, arguing that the predominance of an antifascist agenda and the acknowledgment of the Jewish catastrophe were far from mutually exclusive. The interactions included acts of negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing. Detailed case studies describe how both individuals and institutions were able to use antifascism as a framework to test and widen the boundaries for discussion of the Nazi genocide. The studies build on the new historiography of communism, focusing on everyday life and individual agency, revealing the formation of a great variety of concrete, local memory practices.
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Now OPEN ACCESS!
This study takes a very nuanced and critical look at the way in which the Holoc... more Now OPEN ACCESS!
This study takes a very nuanced and critical look at the way in which the Holocaust is remembered in Czechoslovakia. It scrutinizes the traditional explanations for the lack of a reappraisal. Why did the reappraisal of the Holocaust in Czechoslovaian begin so late and so hesitantly? To the present day the idea still holds on that it was the Communist regime that was responsible for the Holocaust remaining a taboo in Czechoslovakia. The subject, it was said, had been “occupied” as a discussion theme. This study refutes this explanation and looks at the Jewish view of the Shoah. It analyzes the conditions and possibilities of remembrance in Communist Czechoslovakia and clearly shows that the development was induced by Czech nationalism, anti-Semitic stereotypes and a heroic view of history.
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Papers
Aspasia, 2021
Part of the Special Forum on Socialist Masculinities. Guest Editor: Peter Hallama. OPEN ACCESS
... more Part of the Special Forum on Socialist Masculinities. Guest Editor: Peter Hallama. OPEN ACCESS
This introduction to Aspasia's Special Forum on the history of men and masculinities under socialism demonstrates the interest and originality of applying critical men's studies and the history of masculinities to state-socialist Eastern Europe. It reviews existing scholarship within this field, stresses the persisting difficulties in analyzing everyday performances of gender and masculinities in socialist societies, and argues for adopting new approaches in order to get closer to a social and cultural history of masculinities. It puts the contributions to this Special Forum in their broader historiographical context-in particular, concerning studies on work, family, violence, war, disability, and generational change and youth-and shows how they will contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics and everyday performances of gender in state-socialist societies.
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Opfernarrative. Konkurrenzen und Deutungskämpfe in Deutschland und im östlichen Europa nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg , 2012
[History, Memory Studies and the Passive Turn. The Victim’s Perspective in Cultural Memory Studies]
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Judaica Bohemiae, 2020
Scholars continue to stress that communist regimes suppressed Jewish life and Holocaust memory be... more Scholars continue to stress that communist regimes suppressed Jewish life and Holocaust memory behind the ‘Iron Curtain’, and as a consequence to believe that they were static and isolated from their evolution in theWest. In this article, I challenge this belief. I analyze the first big gathering of child survivors in Prague and Terezín in the fall of 1986 in order to shed new light on the dynamics of Jewish life and Holocaust memory in communist Czechoslovakia. I stress the cultural activities of Jewish communities, highlight their international contacts, and explain child survivors’ gradual assertion of a distinct generational consciousness and its lasting impact on how the Holocaust has since been represented.
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Deportiert nach Mauthausen (Europa in Mauthausen. Die Geschichte der Überlebenden eines nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagers in Österreich, Bd. 2, 2021
OPEN ACCESS. [Communists, Jews, and members of the SS, Czechs, Germans, and Ruthenians: the manif... more OPEN ACCESS. [Communists, Jews, and members of the SS, Czechs, Germans, and Ruthenians: the manifold Czech paths to Mauthausen]
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Gender and Power in Eastern Europe. Changing Concepts of Femininity and Masculinity in Power Relations, 2021
This chapter investigates the issue of fatherhood in socialist East-Central Europe (East Germany ... more This chapter investigates the issue of fatherhood in socialist East-Central Europe (East Germany and Czechoslovakia). Far from attempting to give a full picture of the phenomenon of fatherhood under socialism, the author’s aim is to discuss the critical potential of addressing masculinities and fatherhood under communist rule. Indeed, while largely neglected by historians so far, part of the debates about fatherhood challenged traditional gender stereotypes, strongly disagreed with communist family policies, and opened a space for frank criticism of one of the communists’ central claims: equality. Two phenomena are particularly significant in this respect: fatherly emotions and the case of lone fathers. This article is a first effort to bring these debates forward, in drawing on a few selected case studies from different fields, such as the media, film, and labor.
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East European Politics and Societies, 2020
Research on the history of masculinities and fatherhood during state socialism in East Central Eu... more Research on the history of masculinities and fatherhood during state socialism in East Central Europe is still rare. Therefore, scholars in the field of women’s and gender studies sometimes reproduce the idea of men in that region as stable characters across the period of socialist rule. In particular, they insist that “official,” that is, state-sanctioned, representations of masculinity did not change. Yet, as I show, there is evidence that socialist authors, journalists, and even the politburos of the regions’ communist parties did reflect on what they perceived as the need to change the conceptions of men and fathers. They advocated men’s greater participation in housework and child care. In this article, I examine this “struggle for a socialist fatherhood” in the GDR, focusing mainly on the discussions and suggestions of sociologists, educationalists, psychologists, and sexologists active in the study of childhood and adolescence, sex education, or marriage and family. From the 1960s on, experts from these fields as well as communist politicians targeted increasingly men to implement equality in marriage and parenting. In the 1970s and 1980s, their suggestions became more and more concrete. These suggestions as well as the theoretical discussions demonstrate the enduring belief in the socialist society’s ability to overcome traditional gender stereotypes. Even in the late 1980s, they were future directed and contained a utopian element.
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Edited Books & Journal Issues
Did history return to the countries of East Central Europe after 1989? Has the historical memory ... more Did history return to the countries of East Central Europe after 1989? Has the historical memory of these countries been frozen before 1989? Without a doubt the ruling socialist and communist parties exploited, suppressed and falsified history, especially the history of World War II. So far, however, little attention has been drawn to the fact that dissidents in these counties found their own way to come terms with history. They created a variety of own «Counter-Histories», which opposed the communist narrative. Discussing the Holocaust, the expulsion of the Germans or the non-communist resistance against Nazism, they touched sensitive or tabooed issues, which appeared on the agenda also after 1989. This volume traces these debates - partly for the first time - and analyses them as part of a dissident historical culture.
Gab es nach 1989 eine «Rückkehr der Geschichte» in die Länder Ostmitteleuropas? War das historische Gedächtnis dort zuvor «eingefroren»? Zweifellos instrumentalisierten, unterdrückten und verfälschten die herrschenden Parteien die Geschichte, insbesondere jene des Zweiten Weltkriegs. Bisher wenig beachtet blieb jedoch, dass Dissidenten in diesen Ländern die Geschichte auf ihre eigene Weise aufarbeiteten. Sie entwarfen eine Vielzahl von «Gegengeschichten», die dem vorherrschenden, kommunistischen Narrativ zuwiderliefen. Mit dem Holocaust, der Vertreibung der Deutschen oder dem nichtkommunistischen Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus wurden heikle oder tabuisierte Themen diskutiert, die auch nach 1989 auf der Tagesordnung standen. In diesem Band werden solche Debatten – teilweise zum ersten Mal – nachgezeichnet und als Teil einer oppositionellen Geschichtskultur analysiert.
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Workshops & Conferences
This workshop aims to consider critical men’s studies and the history of masculinities, and to ma... more This workshop aims to consider critical men’s studies and the history of masculinities, and to make these approaches fruitful for Eastern European gender studies and the gender history of socialism. Its objective is to stimulate new paths for writing the histories of masculinities under socialism, focusing especially on examining the meanings of masculinities in everyday life. Therefore, the workshop opens with a general discussion of the history of masculinities, including two keynote speeches of Jürgen Martschukat (The Politics of Masculinity and Whiteness in Recent American History) and Erica L. Fraser (Military Masculinity and Postwar Recovery in the Soviet Union), and a film screening and discussion (introduced by György Kalmár). The second part of the workshop presents different case studies on the history of masculinities under socialism and will be organized around the discussion of pre-circulated article drafts.
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Call for Papers
We are inviting papers for this international workshop that aims to gather scholars working on so... more We are inviting papers for this international workshop that aims to gather scholars working on socialist masculinities in Central and Eastern Europe. Our main objectives are to reconsider the state of the art and discuss new ways for writing a history of masculinities under socialism. We wish to engage in a transdisciplinary discussion, involving historians, sociologists, anthropologists, demographers, art historians, political scientists, and scholars from neighbouring fields of research.
The central questions of the workshop are: Which role were men and fathers to play in the construction of a “new” socialist family? How where masculinities transformed in socialist movements and state-socialist countries? The workshop is interested, on the one hand, in the ideologies and the utopian reflexions of the place of men in a future communist society. On the other hand, it aims at questioning the everyday life of socialist men and fathers, as well as the everyday life of men and fathers living under socialism.
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CfP for a workshop at the University of Bern, Switzerland, in cooperation with Aspasia. The Inter... more CfP for a workshop at the University of Bern, Switzerland, in cooperation with Aspasia. The International Yearbook of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern European Women’s and Gender History. Deadline: 30 September 2019.
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Books
The authors provide various interpretations of the relationship between antifascism and Holocaust memory in the communist countries, arguing that the predominance of an antifascist agenda and the acknowledgment of the Jewish catastrophe were far from mutually exclusive. The interactions included acts of negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing. Detailed case studies describe how both individuals and institutions were able to use antifascism as a framework to test and widen the boundaries for discussion of the Nazi genocide. The studies build on the new historiography of communism, focusing on everyday life and individual agency, revealing the formation of a great variety of concrete, local memory practices.
This study takes a very nuanced and critical look at the way in which the Holocaust is remembered in Czechoslovakia. It scrutinizes the traditional explanations for the lack of a reappraisal. Why did the reappraisal of the Holocaust in Czechoslovaian begin so late and so hesitantly? To the present day the idea still holds on that it was the Communist regime that was responsible for the Holocaust remaining a taboo in Czechoslovakia. The subject, it was said, had been “occupied” as a discussion theme. This study refutes this explanation and looks at the Jewish view of the Shoah. It analyzes the conditions and possibilities of remembrance in Communist Czechoslovakia and clearly shows that the development was induced by Czech nationalism, anti-Semitic stereotypes and a heroic view of history.
Papers
This introduction to Aspasia's Special Forum on the history of men and masculinities under socialism demonstrates the interest and originality of applying critical men's studies and the history of masculinities to state-socialist Eastern Europe. It reviews existing scholarship within this field, stresses the persisting difficulties in analyzing everyday performances of gender and masculinities in socialist societies, and argues for adopting new approaches in order to get closer to a social and cultural history of masculinities. It puts the contributions to this Special Forum in their broader historiographical context-in particular, concerning studies on work, family, violence, war, disability, and generational change and youth-and shows how they will contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics and everyday performances of gender in state-socialist societies.
Edited Books & Journal Issues
Gab es nach 1989 eine «Rückkehr der Geschichte» in die Länder Ostmitteleuropas? War das historische Gedächtnis dort zuvor «eingefroren»? Zweifellos instrumentalisierten, unterdrückten und verfälschten die herrschenden Parteien die Geschichte, insbesondere jene des Zweiten Weltkriegs. Bisher wenig beachtet blieb jedoch, dass Dissidenten in diesen Ländern die Geschichte auf ihre eigene Weise aufarbeiteten. Sie entwarfen eine Vielzahl von «Gegengeschichten», die dem vorherrschenden, kommunistischen Narrativ zuwiderliefen. Mit dem Holocaust, der Vertreibung der Deutschen oder dem nichtkommunistischen Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus wurden heikle oder tabuisierte Themen diskutiert, die auch nach 1989 auf der Tagesordnung standen. In diesem Band werden solche Debatten – teilweise zum ersten Mal – nachgezeichnet und als Teil einer oppositionellen Geschichtskultur analysiert.
Workshops & Conferences
Call for Papers
The central questions of the workshop are: Which role were men and fathers to play in the construction of a “new” socialist family? How where masculinities transformed in socialist movements and state-socialist countries? The workshop is interested, on the one hand, in the ideologies and the utopian reflexions of the place of men in a future communist society. On the other hand, it aims at questioning the everyday life of socialist men and fathers, as well as the everyday life of men and fathers living under socialism.
The authors provide various interpretations of the relationship between antifascism and Holocaust memory in the communist countries, arguing that the predominance of an antifascist agenda and the acknowledgment of the Jewish catastrophe were far from mutually exclusive. The interactions included acts of negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing. Detailed case studies describe how both individuals and institutions were able to use antifascism as a framework to test and widen the boundaries for discussion of the Nazi genocide. The studies build on the new historiography of communism, focusing on everyday life and individual agency, revealing the formation of a great variety of concrete, local memory practices.
This study takes a very nuanced and critical look at the way in which the Holocaust is remembered in Czechoslovakia. It scrutinizes the traditional explanations for the lack of a reappraisal. Why did the reappraisal of the Holocaust in Czechoslovaian begin so late and so hesitantly? To the present day the idea still holds on that it was the Communist regime that was responsible for the Holocaust remaining a taboo in Czechoslovakia. The subject, it was said, had been “occupied” as a discussion theme. This study refutes this explanation and looks at the Jewish view of the Shoah. It analyzes the conditions and possibilities of remembrance in Communist Czechoslovakia and clearly shows that the development was induced by Czech nationalism, anti-Semitic stereotypes and a heroic view of history.
This introduction to Aspasia's Special Forum on the history of men and masculinities under socialism demonstrates the interest and originality of applying critical men's studies and the history of masculinities to state-socialist Eastern Europe. It reviews existing scholarship within this field, stresses the persisting difficulties in analyzing everyday performances of gender and masculinities in socialist societies, and argues for adopting new approaches in order to get closer to a social and cultural history of masculinities. It puts the contributions to this Special Forum in their broader historiographical context-in particular, concerning studies on work, family, violence, war, disability, and generational change and youth-and shows how they will contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics and everyday performances of gender in state-socialist societies.
Gab es nach 1989 eine «Rückkehr der Geschichte» in die Länder Ostmitteleuropas? War das historische Gedächtnis dort zuvor «eingefroren»? Zweifellos instrumentalisierten, unterdrückten und verfälschten die herrschenden Parteien die Geschichte, insbesondere jene des Zweiten Weltkriegs. Bisher wenig beachtet blieb jedoch, dass Dissidenten in diesen Ländern die Geschichte auf ihre eigene Weise aufarbeiteten. Sie entwarfen eine Vielzahl von «Gegengeschichten», die dem vorherrschenden, kommunistischen Narrativ zuwiderliefen. Mit dem Holocaust, der Vertreibung der Deutschen oder dem nichtkommunistischen Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus wurden heikle oder tabuisierte Themen diskutiert, die auch nach 1989 auf der Tagesordnung standen. In diesem Band werden solche Debatten – teilweise zum ersten Mal – nachgezeichnet und als Teil einer oppositionellen Geschichtskultur analysiert.
The central questions of the workshop are: Which role were men and fathers to play in the construction of a “new” socialist family? How where masculinities transformed in socialist movements and state-socialist countries? The workshop is interested, on the one hand, in the ideologies and the utopian reflexions of the place of men in a future communist society. On the other hand, it aims at questioning the everyday life of socialist men and fathers, as well as the everyday life of men and fathers living under socialism.