Bilateral Israeli-German cooperation project
of the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam (Jan C. Behrends), Tel Aviv University (Scott Ury) and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem/Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for Russian and East European Jewry (Semion Goldin)
Project management: Professor Jan C. Behrends (ZZF Potsdam/Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Professor Scott Ury (Tel Aviv University)
Duration: February 2025 - January 2027
Funded by: The German Israeli Foundation (GIF)
This project examines the public debates about the memory and image of “the Jews” in Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine. It asks what role the discussions in this region played in the collective memory and in the historical debates in the different periods: late communism (1980-1989), post-communism (1989-2004) and populist nationalism (2004-2020).
Despite their long presence in the region, anti-Jewish policies were continued against Jews in East Central European societies during late communism from 1980 to 1989. Often under the guise of 'anti-Zionism' or 'anti-cosmopo-litanism'”. As part of this discriminatory policy, the memory of the Holocaust was removed from the collective memory of the war. Because it left no room for Jewish victims and suffering. In the period of post-communism from 1989 to 2004, public debates about “the Jews” and their murder were seen as part of a larger process of democratization, historical reappraisal and post-communist nation-building - but also as a link between these processes and the rapid expansion of the EU in the region.
The rise of populist nationalism and Russia's war against Ukraine since 2014 mark the third period in this history of the memory of “the Jews” in the region. This period also saw profound changes in the memory of “the Jews” and intense historical debates, the so-called wars of memory.
