The result of a research project conducted by Swedish scholars, this text examines interpretations and representations of the Holocaust in European societies, primarily focusing on the most recent decades. Using specific case studies, the articles in this anthology study how, when and why the collective memory of the Holocaust has been expressed and activated for cultural, economic, political and social reasons.

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• The Holocaust as a Problem of Historical Culture - Theoretical and Analytical Challenges
  • History of Effect
  • The Cultural Significance of the Holocaust
  • “Living History” and Living History
  • Holocaust Controversies
  • Cultural Trauma
  • Change and Variation
  • Theoretical Instruments
  • Outline of the Book
  • Notes
• Calendar, Context and Commemoration - Establishing an Israeli Holocaust Remembrance Day
  • Memory and Public Commemoration
  • Israeli Historical Consciousness
  • Early Israeli Reactions to the Holocaust
  • Establishing a Memorial Day
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
• The Presence of the Holocaust - Vergangenheitsbewältigung in West Germany, East Germany and Austria
  • The First Post-War Years, 1945–1949
  • The Foundation of the Three States
  • From the Silence of the Fifties to Holocaust Televised in the 1970s
  • From die Wende 1982 to die Wende 1989–1990
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
• Ambivalence, Bivalence and Polyvalence - Historical Culture in the German-Polish Borderlands
  • Who Owns the Holocaust?
  • Memories Without Monuments
  • From Küstrin to Warsaw–Germans, Poles and Jews
  • The Notion of Bivalence
  • The Role of Prussia
  • The Role of Jews
  • Prussia and Poland
  • The “Owner” of the Holocaust
  • Notes
• The Jedwabne Killings –A Challenge for Polish Collective Memory - The Polish debate on Neighbours
  • A Few Remarks on Concepts and Instruments of Analysis
  • The Use and Non-Use of the History of Polish-Jewish Relations during World War II
  • “The Devil is in the Details” or the Scholarly Use of History
  • “Time for Penance”–On the Moral Use of History
  • “We are Now a Different People” –On the Existential Use of History
  • In the Shadow of Jedwabne –On the Political Use of History
  • “This Book Has Been Written on Commission” –On the Ideological Use of History
  • Has Anything Changed? Some Conclusions
  • Notes
• Their Genocide, or Ours? - The Holocaust as a Litmus Test of Czech and Slovak Identities
  • Who Are “We” and Who Are “They”?
  • The Common Legacy: Remembrance of the Holocaust under Communist Rule
  • Slovakia–the Holocaust as an Explosive
  • The Predominating Czech Attitude: Their Holocaust is not Our Holocaust
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
• The Holocaust and Russian Historical Culture - A Century-Long Perspective
  • Russian Historical Culture, Nationalism and Antisemitism
  • Ambiguities and Paradoxes
  • The Absence of the Holocaust
  • Limited Openness
  • The New Right
  • The Power of Historical Culture
  • Notes
• From Famine to Forgotten Holocaust - The 1932–1933 Famine in Ukrainian Historical Cultures
  • So That This Tragedy Will Not Be Forgotten
  • The Facts Established
  • Ethnopolitics or Moral Responsibility?
  • The Famine in Independent Ukraine
  • Finding Meaning in the Ukrainian Famine
  • The Famine in Ukrainian Historical Cultures
  • Notes
• Holocaust at the Limits - Historical Culture and the Nazi Genocide in the Television Era
  • The Holocaust and Historical Culture
  • Visual Representations of the Holocaust and Its Critics
  • Documenting and Screening the Unimaginable
  • Holocaust: The Story of the Family Weiss
  • The Americanisation of the Holocaust
  • To Show Holocaust or Not–That Is the Question
  • Conclusions
  • Notes
• About the Authors