By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, April 18th, 2012 The anger and recriminations between Poles and Jews in the days leading up to the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz threatened to overshadow their shared commemoration of their common suffering. Fundamentally conflicting memories led to offense and fed hatreds. For the Jews, the meaning of Auschwitz is summarized by the notion of the Holocaust, the Shoah. It is the symbol of the project of Jewish annihilation. While it is clear that people of a vast array of ethnic, cultural, sexual, national and religious backgrounds suffered in Auschwitz, the Jewish suffering has special significance. The death camps were constructed to exterminate Jews. This was the culmination of Jewish persecution in Christian Europe.
Poles, that is, Polish Catholics, see things differently. Nearly twenty percent of the Polish population died during the war. Seventy five thousand Polish (Catholic) lives were lost in Auschwitz; a high percentage of the surviving inmates of the camp were Polish. The memory of Polish losses is one of close experience. From the Polish point of view, the international community has failed to recognize the depth and extensiveness of Polish suffering. For Jews and for many others in the West, the immensity of the Nazi crimes has been summarized by the figure six million, six million Jews from throughout Europe consumed by the Nazi death machine. In Poland, the number has been remembered in a different way: six million Poles killed during the war (half of whom were Jewish, but this conventionally is not noted).
It was with this background that the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation was marked. Many Jewish organizations and individuals found the Polish plans for the ceremony wanting, and many Poles viewed their objections with suspicion. The World Jewish Congress threatened to boycott the commemoration entirely. In its judgment, the Polish authorities were trying to transform the ceremonies into a Polish event. At times, the rhetorical conflict over the planning of the event became very tough. Michel Friedman, a leading Jewish spokesman and member of the German Christian Democratic Party, complained that equal representation of Polish Christian and Jewish victims presented a gross misrepresentation of history. He declared: “If I recall the history precisely, I have to say that the . . .
Read more: Why Poland? Part 2: Commemorating Auschwitz
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, April 9th, 2012 My mother was not pleased when I told her that I would be going to Poland to do my dissertation research, thirty-five years ago. “Why Poland?” This was not a simple or innocent question, motivating it were the horrors of the twentieth century, and the pain and suffering of her family. For, I am the grandson of Victor and Brana Frimet who came from the small town of Bulschwietz near the city of Lemberg (Lwow to the Poles, Lviv, to the Ukrainians). The Frimet’s memories of their times in that place, then Poland, were not sweet. This was a town, a city, a nation and a region where multiculturalism has not been a very happy matter, as it was not for much of twentieth century Europe, especially for my people. My grandparents left in 1920, and they never looked back, never regretted leaving “the land of their fathers.” Our relatives who remained perished in the Holocaust. Why, then, was I going back?
My answer to my mother’s question was filled with the naiveté and the self-centeredness of youth. I was looking for adventure. I wanted to visit Europe after I had completed my studies. I had a good dissertation proposal to study theater in Poland, and a major foundation was willing to pay for a year’s preparation and language study and a year or more of research and living expenses in Europe. This was a great opportunity, both personal and professional. For me, the pain of my people and my family were things of the past, to be remembered and understood, but not something that should restrict my ambitions and plans. In retrospect, mine was “the wisdom of youth.”
Because I was not restricted by the very recent past, which seemed not so recent to me, I could attempt to develop the capacity to remember and to understand, as would never have been the case had I been constrained by my mother’s memories of her parents. But the insight of my mother’s question persists. It sheds light on many of the problems I have faced in the course of my research and experiences in East and Central Europe, and it may help us understand the problems of clashing collective memories . . .
Read more: Why Poland?: Poles and Jews Before the Fall of Communism
By Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, February 21st, 2012 Most studies of the politics of collective memory assume a kind of enlightenment prejudice. Confronting the memory of a collective trauma or accomplishment is seen as being the precondition of some sort of progressive action. Examples I have thought about, both as a scholar and a citizen, include: the Jewish and specifically Israeli confrontation with the Holocaust as a political precondition of “never again.” And in a parallel fashion, the German confrontation with the genocide understood as a requirement for a decent democratic society in the shadows of the Nazi regime. The need to “re-remember” the trauma of slavery in the United States, as Toni Morrison put it in her classic novel, Beloved, as a way of addressing the enduring problems of race and racism in America. The need of Poles to remember their history apart from communist ideology as a way of developing an independent democratic movement in the 70s and 80s, contributing to the great events of 1989.
An example of a memory project left undone: I remember talking to a visiting scholar from China. He was studying the Cultural Revolution with the American journalist and student of recent Chinese history, Judith Shapiro. He admired the Jewish memory work on the Holocaust and wondered why there was no similar work being done in China, confronting the atrocities of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. He asked me once: was there something about the Jewish and the Chinese political culture, or, at least, their distinctive collective experiences that explained these different approaches to collective trauma? The supposition was that to remember was to set one free.
Poland
Then there is Adam Michnik, Poland’s leading intellectual opposition leader in the 70s and 80s, and later after the changes of ’89, the editor of Poland’s major newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza. And also importantly for me a personal friend and a friend and colleague of many at my university, the New School for Social Research, a frequent visitor since he received an honorary degree from us at the 50th anniversary of the University in Exile. He is memory worker, although he calls himself a historian. He uses history in . . .
Read more: For and Against Memory: Poland, Israel-Palestine and the United States
By Gary Alan Fine, February 10th, 2012 In January 2008, during the Presidential primary season, a man by the name of Larry Sinclair posted a video on YouTube that claimed that Illinois State Senator Barack Obama had supplied him with cocaine and that they had sexual relations in the back of a limousine. Mr. Sinclair subsequently took a lie detector test, which, seemed to suggest that he was telling the truth. This was a powerful claim, particularly since now four years later few Americans have ever heard of it. Mr. Sinclair appeared on the Jeff Rense radio talk show and his story was posted on the Drudge Report and other political websites interested in alternative knowledge and conspiracies.
Early on the Obama campaign realized that they would be beset by a torrent of rumors. Perhaps, this was because of the historic nature of his candidacy. Perhaps this was a function of the bitter political strategies of his opponents. Perhaps, it was a function of the Internet as an unregulated site for absurd claims, or perhaps, this was politics as currently played. To cope with these rumors, the Obama campaign established a website, “Fight the Smears,” with the goal of helping voters to “Learn the Truth about Barack Obama.” Or at least, the truth as the Obama campaign claimed it to be. The website claimed that the truth included that “the McCain campaign is maliciously distorting Barack’s strong record on crime,” and “Barack Obama is a committed Christian and not a Muslim.” Both political opinions and rumors are targeted on this website.
However, the website, designed to treat contemptuous smears, did not deny that Barack Obama supplied Mr. Sinclair with illegal drugs or that Mr. Sinclair engaged in oral sex with the commander-in-chief. These assertions were not addressed. Some allegations are beneath contempt. To remove any suspense let me announce that I will not address whether Mr. Sinclair’s story is true. The point is that this story of Barack Obama being on the “down low” never reached such a critical mass that the campaign felt that a public refutation was warranted.
Rumors, doubtful truth claims, misleading information, and, yes, even lies are part of what a candidate, any candidate, must face. John McCain was accused of having an . . .
Read more: Promiscuous Facts: Barack Obama and Uncertain Knowledge
By Andras Bozoki, February 3rd, 2012 The Hungarian political system for twenty years was a liberal democracy, characterized by a multiparty system, free elections, representational government, strong opposition, free media, strong, independent courts and credible institutions that protected the rule of law (i.e., the Constitutional Court and the Ombudsman Office). With a few striking exceptions, human rights and religious freedoms were respected. During the two decades after 1989, the incumbent governments had always lost the elections (except for 2006). The media criticized politicians. Democracy was consolidated, and in 2004, Hungary joined the European Union. Hungary remained until relatively recently (until the eve of 2006), a success story of democratic achievement. But more recently, Hungary took a serious autocratic turn, as I explored in my post last year. Here, I explore the problem of the transition from democracy more closely, as this transition has since escalated. Is it possible for my country to return to an authoritarian system as a fully-fledged member of the European Union?
Conceptual underpinnings of the regime
The policies of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his ruling Fidesz Party are based on the pillars of “national unification,” the “central arena of power,” the change of the elites, power politics and the era of “revolutionary circumstances.” This is more than just empty rhetoric. Prime Minister Orbán genuinely believes them to be true.
First: almost all of Orbán’s important messages are based on the notion of “national unification,” which has both symbolic and literal importance. He expressly criticizes the Trianon Peace Treaty that concluded World War I as well as the legacy of the Communist system and the forces of globalization, which he sees as the most important political issues of the day. Orbán suggests that the “nation” serves as the bastion to offer protection against these forces. The idea of national unification furthermore maintains that Hungarians living outside of Hungary are not minorities, but full members of the Hungarian nation with corresponding rights and privileges. As such, these Hungarians are now granted Hungarian citizenship upon request, regardless of where they live, and thus they are also automatically granted voting rights. Orbán believes that the civic rights to freedom, membership to the European Union, belonging to the political allies of the . . .
Read more: The Crisis of Democracy in Hungary, 2012
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