''Vergangenheitsbewältigung'' po česku : holokaust v českém samizdatu

• Authors: Peter Hallama

Title variants

EN

A Czech ''Vergangenheitsbewältigung'' : the holocaust in Czech Samizdat

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

CS

a2_Disidenti připouštěli, že otázka viny (Schuldfrage) se sice týká i Československa, avšak vztahovali ji na vyhnání německé menšiny po druhé světové válce. Naopak téma holokaustu mezi disidenty žádnou podobnou debatu nevyvolalo. Chování Čechů během druhé světové války, postoj k Židům a domácí antisemitismus tak nebyly vůbec zpochybňovány. Z tohoto důvodu byl podle autora holokaust v pracích věnovaných českým dějinám dvacátého století spíše přehlížen, nebo v lepším případě jen sporadicky zmiňován, ať již tyto texty vycházely oficiálně, nebo samizdatem.

EN

This is a Czech translation of ''Vergangenheitsbewältigung'' auf Tschechisch: Der Holocaust im tschechischen Samizdat" which is published in Peter Hallama and Stephan Stach (eds.), Gegengeschichte: Zweiter Weltkrieg und Holocaust im ostmitteleuropäichen Dissens (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag 2015, pp. 237-60). The author analyses representations of the Holocaust in Czech dissent literature published as samizdat in the 1970s and 1980s. He concentrates on historical writings, but also considers journalistic contributions, memoirs, and works of belles-lettres, as well as translations of publications. In particular, the article considers two aspects that highlight the difficulties one faced and continues to face when trying to fully integrate the Holocaust into Czech national history. First, the Holocaust was often understood by the dissidents as evidence of the inhuman nature of totalitarian regimes. This interpretations, however, led to placing the persecution of the Jews by the Nazi regime on the same level as the persecution of the Czechs by the Nazi and Communist regimes. Second, if there was a reassessment or questioning to the Czech national master narrative, then topics such as home-grown antisemitism or the Holocaust were not addressed. The dissidents admitted that Czechoslovakia also had its question of guilt, but they related it to the expulsion of the German minority after the Second World War. The Holocaust, by contrats, did not generate any similar debate among the dissidents. The behaviour of Czechs during the Second World War, the attitude towards Jews, and domestic antisemitism were thus not questioned at all. The Holocaust has, according to the author, therefore tended to be overlooked or, at best, mentioned only incidentally in writing about twentieth-century Czech history - whether the authors published their texts in state-owned publishing houses or in samizdat.

Keywords

CS

historiografie; holocaust (1939-1945); samizdat

EN

historiography; holocaust (1939-1945); samizdat

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Soudobé dějiny (Contemporary History)
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 23
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 371-390
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Peter Hallama

• Soudobé dějiny, redakce, Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v.v.i., Vlašská 9, 118 40 Praha 1, Czech Republic

unknown

Petr Dvořáček

• Soudobé dějiny, redakce, Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v.v.i., Vlašská 9, 118 40 Praha 1, Czech Republic