The Holocaust/Shoah as a Tabooed Component in Czech Society´s Memory after World War II?

• Authors: Soukupová Blanka

Title variants

CS

Holocaust/šoa jako tabuizovaná součást paměti české společnosti po druhé světové válce?

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

The text analyses the thematization of a key phenomenon of 20th century history and the axis of post-war Jewish identity − the Holocaust/Shoah in the Czech lands with overlaps to Central Europe. In contrast to propositions of the well-known political scientist Pavel Barša (the Holocaust became the cornerstone of Jewish identity only at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, when the State of Israel argued for it within its policy in regards to the occupied Arab territories and the moral category of innocent victim became crucial for Western mind-set), it tries to prove that the Holocaust, for which the Hebrew term Shoah is used in this case, became the pillar of Jewish identity already after the end of World War II. It was also at that time that the growing communist propaganda, which completely dominated the public space after the February coup (1948), began to use it for its own interests. In parallel, the treatise denies that the thematization of the Shoah/Holocaust was dominated by Jews as victims; in the post-war decades both minority Jewish and majority Czech representations worked with two categories: victims of racism and fighters against fascism, even though the communist representation (including the Jewish communists) from the beginning marginalized the Jewish resistance on the Western fronts and also the theme of the uniqueness of the Holocaust phenomenon.

Keywords

EN

Holocaust/Shoah; Czech lands; Jewish identity; heroes; victims; propaganda

• Publisher: The National Institute of Folk Culture
• Journal: Národopisná revue (Journal of Ethnology)
• Year: 2022
• Volume: 32
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 13 - 21

Contributors

author

Soukupová Blanka