27 January 2020

"He spoke Yiddish like a Jew": Neighbors' Contribution to the Mass Killing of Jews in Northern Bukovina and Bessasrabia, July 1941




Dr. Simon Geissbühler (Romania and the Holocaust: Events Contexts Aftermath, ibidem, 2016): Holocaust memory in Romania as well as in those areas controlled by Romania during the Second World War which are now part of Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova is fragile, fragmented, and often guided by a semi-passive attitude of wanting-not-to-know. […] A big gap exists between public knowledge about the Holocaust and scholarly research. Large parts of the Romanian population as well as people now living in those places where atrocities were perpetrated by Romanians do not want to know. Most traces of Jewish life before the Holocaust and of the Holocaust itself have been neglected or even erased. Jewish cemeteries in Northern Bukovina, southwestern Ukraine, and the Republic of Moldova are often in a state of neglect. Very few synagogues still exist, and most have long since been destroyed or converted for other purposes. Mass graves are difficult to locate and most often not even recorded on maps. There are only very few and no new Jewish or Holocaust museums in these regions. […] There are some positive countertrends, however, but it is too early to speak about a strong wind of change when it comes to Holocaust memory in present-day Romania.




Courtesy: Oxford Academic Press • Holocaust and Genocide Studies

No comments:

Post a Comment