Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
The holocaust plays an important role as a culture of memory
which has influenced on other cases and other cultures of the memory.
There are memories linked with social, cultural traumas,
memories of political violence, memories of extreme violence.
The holocaust is a paradigmatic case in a sense:
The historical severity of the fact and the centrality in Europe,
also by the fact it affects many nations in Europe
and the extreme violence in the heart of Europe.
But beyond the historical elements that distinguish this fact,
it was a massive crime, which it was designed rationally,
it was industrially executed, it has the characteristic
that over the last 60 years there has been a process
in which the Holocaust, let's say, it has become the Holocaust.
The Nazis deliberate attempt to annihilate European Jewry
has turned this term into we know today as the Holocaust.
And that is a process of recounting,
of encoding in which interfere with the culture the media,
and a process of expansion, of transnationalization,
of globalization, by the fact that, the holocaust
is a term that not only makes sense for a community of memory,
for a community of victims, but is a term it reflects,
as today it is said, a civilization gap, a change of era,
a zero time in Europe and it is a reference in Europe.
Many times, it is said that Europe has no future as an EU,
but Europe has a very evident past
and is that disaster which it is as a kind of negative myth,
something that nobody wants to repeat.
It is a sort of basic consensus but especially in Western Europe.
One of the lectures in this Congress
had referred to "every country has its holocaust”.
Let's say, the holocaust which referred to eastern-bloc countries,
the countries occupied by the Soviet Union, the Baltic countries,
or the Czech Republic, Poland, are those potential Stalinists.
There is a certain degree of competition between memories,
but even so the holocaust in its institutionalization,
in his presence as strong memory,
plays a role in which other groups or other States,
take it as point of reference it want to transfer
in some way on its dramatic events.
That would be a perspective on the role
of the holocaust as culture of memory.
How it affects in a transnational way,
on a global basis, to other cultures of memory
as there are parallels in the historical events,
but also how this is done through the public opinion.
We find references to the Holocaust through elements, symbols,
narratives, concepts that make references to the Nazi crime.