ABSTRACT
How to make sense of the Holocaust? This question was crucial for many actors behind the Iron Curtain. The contributions of this book challenge the black-and-white picture that was drawn of the state-socialist past, not only in the Western world during the Cold War but also within the former People’s Republics after the upheavals of 1989. The general assumption was that it was not possible during those years to elaborate any discourse on World War II without an underlying political agenda in which the Jewish experience’s specificity could not fit. Yet, the careful examination of actions undertaken by various actors demonstrate that Eastern Europe did not completely suppress Holocaust historiography and memory.
