The Currency Value of the Holocaust and the Dynamics of ‘Zombie Memory’: Toward a Reconceptualization of Contemporary Holocaust Remembrance

ABSTRACT

In this article, we reconceptualize how contemporary Holocaust memory functions through the metaphors of common currency and ‘zombie memory.’ As currency, Holocaust memory is a medium of exchange that is perceived as a commodity produced to satisfy political wants or needs. For the most part, however, Holocaust memory lays dormant until triggered into life by specific events with particular characteristics that associate in the popular imaginary with the Holocaust – a mode of operation we call ‘zombie memory.’ We illustrate this dynamic of Holocaust memory by analyzing how the Holocaust has been referred to and discussed in light of current developments such as COVID-19, the rise of VOX in Spain, and political discourse in England about past and present mass atrocities. We demonstrate how the Holocaust is evoked in discursive occasions beyond those commemorative moments wherein it is by definition the focus of attention: how it is analogically utilized to express concerns, to push towards a specific policy goal, or to politically criticize others. As such, we underline how Holocaust memory can be converted within and between cultures, contributing to understanding and justification of domestic political actions. Situated in Holocaust studies, memory studies, and public discourse analysis, this research attests to the ongoing social process of negotiation over meaning-making.

KEYWORDS:

• Holocaust memory
• COVID-19
• VOX
• genocide
• immigration
• currency
• zombie memory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, “Memory Unbound: The Holocaust and the Formation of Cosmopolitan Memory,” European Journal of Social Theory, vol. 5 (2002): pp. 87–106.

2 Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009).

3 Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).

4 Astrid Erll, “Travelling Memory,” Parallax, vol. 17, no. 4 (2011): pp. 4–18.

5 Charles S. Maier, The Unmasterable Past (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).

6 Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, “A Looming Crash or A Soft Landing? Forecasting the Future of the Memory ‘Industry’,” The Journal of Modern History, vol. 81, no. 1 (2009): pp. 122–58, here pp. 126–27.

7 Saul Friedlander, “Trauma, Transference and 'Working Through' in Writing the History of the Shoah,” History and Memory, 4, no. 1 (1992): pp. 39–59, here p. 3.

8 John R. Gillis, (ed.), Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993); Claudia Koonz, “Between Memory and Oblivion: Concentration Camps in German Memory,” in John R. Gillis, (ed.), Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), pp. 258–80.

9 Jeffrey C. Alexander, “On the Social Construction of Moral Universals: The Holocaust from War Crime to Trauma Drama,” European Journal of Social Theory, vol. 5 (2002): pp. 5–85.

10 Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ron Eyerman, and Bernard Giesen, Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).

11 Jeffrey C. Alexander, “Culture Trauma, Morality, and Solidarity: The Social Construction of ‘Holocaust’ and Other Mass Murders,” Thesis Eleven, vol. 132, no. 1 (2016): pp. 3–16.

12 Rosenfeld, “A Looming Crash,” p. 135.

13 Robin Wagner-Pacifici and Barry Schwartz, “The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating a Difficult Past,” American Journal of Sociology, vol. 97, no. 2 (1991): pp. 376–420; Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, “Commemorating a Difficult Past: Yitzhak Rabin’s Memorials,” American Sociological Review, vol. 67, no. 1 (2002): pp. 30–51.

14 Alan E. Steinweis, “The Auschwitz Analogy: Holocaust Memory and American Debates over Intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 19, no. 2 (2005): pp. 276–89.

15 See, for example, Kathrin Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone, (eds.), Contested Pasts: The Politics of Memory (London: Routledge, 2003). See also Jeffrey Olick, The Politics of Regret: On Collective Memory and Historical Responsibility (New York: Routledge, 2007).

16 Ibid.

17 Tracy Adams, “Sharing the Same Space: How the Memory of the Holocaust Travels in Political Speech,” The Sociological Quarterly, vol. 63, no. 2 (2020): pp. 247–65.

18 Gregor Feindt et al., “Entangled Memory: Toward a Third Wave in Memory Studies,” History and Theory, vol. 53, no. 1 (2014): pp. 24–44. Others consider the Holocaust to be the last (horrific) stage in the ongoing development of a field that already began to acknowledge atrocities of colonialism and racism.

19 Maurice Halbwachs, La Memoire Collective (Paris: Albin Michel, 1950).

20 Jan Assmann and John Czaplicka, “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity,” New German Critique, vol. 65 (1995): pp. 125–33; Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux De Memoire,” Representations, vol. 26, no. 1 (1989): pp. 7–24.

21 Feindt et al., “Entangled Memory.”

22 Erll, “Travelling Memory.”

23 Chiara De Cesari and Ann Rigney, (eds.), Transnational Memory: Circulation, Articulation, Scales (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2014).

24 Wolfgang Welsch, “Transculturality – The Puzzling Form of Cultures Today,” in Mike Featherstone and Scott Lash, (eds.), Spaces of Culture: City, Nation, World (London: Sage, 1999), pp. 194–213.

25 Aleida Assmann, “The Holocaust – A Global Memory? Extensions and Limits of a New Memory Community,” in Aleida Assmann and Sebastian Conrad, (eds.), Memory in a Global Age (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

26 Alexander, “On the Social Construction”; Alexander et al., Cultural Trauma.

27 Levy and Sznaider, “Memory Unbound.”

28 Alison Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).

29 Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory.

30 See also De Cesari and Rigney, Transnational Memory.

31 Assmann, “The Holocaust,” p. 109.

32 Ibid., p. 111.

33 For example, Alexander et al., Cultural Trauma; Assmann, “The Holocaust.”

34 For example, Adams, “Sharing the Same Space”; J. C. Alexander, S. Dromi, “Trauma Construction and Moral Restriction: The Ambiguity of the Holocaust for Israel,” in Ron Eyerman, Jeffrey C. Alexander, and Elizabeth B. Breese, (eds.), Narrating Trauma: On the Impact of Collective Suffering (Paradigm Publishers, Boulder, CO, 2011); Yağmur Karakaya and Alejandro Baer, “‘Such Hatred Has Never Flourished on Our Soil’: The Politics of Holocaust Memory in Turkey and Spain,” Sociological Forum, vol. 34, no. 3 (2019): pp. 705–28.

35 Jelena Subotić, "The Appropriation of Holocaust Memory in Post-Communist Eastern Europe," Modern Languages Open, vol. 22, no. 1 (2020): pp. 1–8. https://doi.org/10.3828/mlo.v0i0

36 Assmann, “The Holocaust,” p. 114.

37 Nurit S. Novis-Deutsch et al., Sites of Tension: Shifts in Holocaust Memory in Relation to Antisemitism and Political Contestation in Europe (Haifa: The Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education, 2023).

38 For a full list of keywords, see Novis-Deutsch et al., Sites of Tension.

39 See for example, Ruth Wodak, “The Discourse-Historical Approach,” Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, vol. 1 (2001): pp. 63–94; Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer, “Critical Discourse Analysis: History, Agenda, Theory, and Methodology,” Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, vol. 2 (2009): pp. 1–33.

40 Notably, the Holocaust was not the only reference point during this period. The Spanish Flu, World War II, and AIDS were also evoked to help make sense of COVID-19. See Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi and Mathias Jalfim Maraschin, “Between Remembrance and Knowledge: The Spanish Flu, COVID-19, and the Two Poles of Collective Memory,” Memory Studies, vol. 14, no. 6 (2021): pp. 1475–88; Tracy Adams and Sara Kopelman, “Remembering COVID-19: Memory, Crisis, and Social Media,” Media, Culture & Society, vol. 44, no. 2 (2022): pp. 266–85; Jonathan Catlin, “When Does an Epidemic Become a ‘Crisis’? Analogies between COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS in American Public Memory,” Memory Studies, vol. 14, no. 6 (2021): pp. 1445–74.

41 Lyric Crane, Holocaust Distortion and the COVID-19 Pandemic. https://cedar.wwu.edu/wwu_honors/540; Moritz Golombek, Pandemic Politics As a Holocaust 2.0?: The Perception Of The Holocaust In Telegram-Communications of German Covid-Protesters, 2022 (PhD diss.), http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-478375/div>; Liat Steir-Livny, “Traumatic Past in the Present: COVID-19 and Holocaust Memory in Israeli Media, Digital Media, and Social Media,” Media, Culture & Society, vol. 44, no. 3 (2022): pp. 464–78.

42 Juan Manuel González-Aguilar and Mykola Makhortykh, “Laughing to Forget or to Remember? Anne Frank Memes and Mediatization of Holocaust Memory,” Media, Culture & Society, vol. 44, no. 7 (2022): pp. 1307–29, here p. 1322.

43 Laura Ascone et al., Decoding Antisemitism: An AI-driven Study on Hate Speech and Imagery Online, Discourse Report 3 (Berlin: Technische Universität Berlin: Center for Research on Antisemitism, 2022: https://decoding-antisemitism.eu/publications/third-discourse-report/), p. 8.

44 Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann, “Digital Sites of Tension,” in Novis-Deutsch et al., Sites of Tension, pp. 360–407.

45 Marta Simo, “Teaching and Learning about the Holocaust in Spain,” in Sara J. Brenneis and Gina Hermmann, (eds.), Spain, the Second World War, and the Holocaust: History and Representation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2020), p. 587.

46 Alejandro Baer and Natan Sznaider, “Between ‘No Pasaran’ and ‘Nunca Mas’: The Holocaust and the Revisiting of Spain's Legacy of Mass Violence,” in Brenneis and Hermmann, Spain, the Second World War, and the Holocaust, pp. 611–2; Alejandro Baer and Natan Sznaider, “Ghosts of the Holocaust in Franco’s Mass Graves: Cosmopolitan Memories and the Politics of ‘Never Again,’” Memory Studies, vol. 8, no. 3, (2015): pp. 1–17.

47 Baer and Sznaider, “Between ‘No Pasaran’ and ‘Nunca Mas’,” p. 616.

48 Simo, “Teaching and Learning,” p. 588.

49 See Marta Simo, “The Shifting Holocaust Memory in Spain,” in Novis-Deutsch et al., Sites of Tension, pp. 187–212.

50 Alternative for Germany is a right-wing populist political party in Germany.

51 See Ebbrecht-Hartmann, “Digital Sites of Tension.”

52 Raquel Andres Dura, “Vox niega que hubiera personas LGTBi en Auschwitz,” Lavanguardia (January 30, 2020), https://www.lavanguardia.com/local/valencia/20200130/473219476527/VOX-niega-hubiera-personas-lgtbi-auschwitz.html

53 Cristina Vazquez, “Vox rechaza en Valencia una declaración sobre el Holocausto porque condena la LGTBIfobia,” El Pais (January 30, 2020), https://elpais.com/politica/2020/01/30/actualidad/1580391677_928689.html

54 BOCG-14-D-125: https://www.congreso.es/public_oficiales/L14/CONG/BOCG/D/BOCG-14-D-125.PDF (p. 11).

55 (No author), “VOX aprovecha una iniciativa contra el Holocausto para que el Congreso condene el nacionalsocialismo y el comunismo,” Europa Press (February 7, 2021): https://www.europapress.es/nacional/noticia-VOX-aprovecha-iniciativa-contra-Holocausto-congreso-condene-nacionalsocialismo-comunismo-20210207110051.html

56 Patricia R. Blanco, “How Spain’s far-right Vox party copies Nazi propaganda techniques,” El Pais (April 18, 2021), https://english.elpais.com/spanish_news/2021-04-28/how-spains-far-right-Vox-party-copies-nazi-propaganda-techniques.html

57 Ibid.

58 Número de expediente 161/002795 - DSCD-14-CO-447, available at: Chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.congreso.es/public_oficiales/L1/CONG/DS/CO/DSCD-14-CO-447.PDF

59 Ibid., p. 38.

60 Ibid., p. 40.

61 Ibid., p. 42.

62 See, for example, Edward Lucas, “China is a Menace at Home – and Abroad,” The Times, May 13, 2019, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/china-is-a-menace-at-home-and-abroad-2zsdxjt26; Evie Breese, “Meet the British Orthodox Jew Standing Up for China’s Uighur Muslims,” The Independent, January 17, 2020, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/uighur-muslims-china-concentration-camps-london-protest-embassy-a9277921.html; Olivia Marks-Waldman, “The Persecution of Uighur Muslims in China Shows We Have not Learned from Past Genocides,” The Independent, July 21, 2020, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/uighur-muslims-china-persecution-genocide-rwanda-bosnia-human-rights-a9630106.html

63 Marks-Waldman, “The Persecution of Uighur Muslims in China.”

64 See, for example, “The Times View on Aung San Suu Kyi and Crimes against the Rohingya: Fallen Star,” The Times, December 12, 2019, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-times-view-on-aung-san-suu-kyi-and-crimes-against-the-rohingya-fallen-star-5jxxpk6pp; David Aaronovitch, “The Westminster Holocaust Memorial Doesn’t Hit Me in My Heart,” The Times, March 1, 2019, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/david-aaronovitch-the-westminster-holocaust-memorial-doesnt-hit-me-in-my-heart-97765wdc5; Patrick Wintour, “UK Free to Make Trade Deals with Genocidal Regimes after Commons Vote,” The Guardian, January 19, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/19/uk-free-to-make-trade-deals-with-genocidal-regimes-after-commons-vote

65 See Robert Fisk, “Genocides Begin in the Wilderness, Far from Prying Eyes – in Ottoman Turkey as well as Nazi Germany,” The Independent, July 25, 2019, https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/holocaust-armenia-genocide-shoah-nazi-germany-turkey-ottoman-a9020601.html

66 Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory.

67 Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Speech at the Holocaust Memorial Day Service, Gov.UK, January 27, 2020, https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-at-the-uk-commemorative-ceremony-for-holocaust-memorial-day; see also Jonathan Romain, “We Don’t Need Another Memorial to the Holocaust,” The Times, October 8, 2020, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/we-dont-need-another-memorial-to-the-holocaust-5th8qzmxc; Alex Brummer, “In the Name of my Aunt Rosie and Victims of the Holocaust, I’m Outraged at Bids to Block a UK Memorial,” The Daily Mail, January 26, 2021, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9190979/ALEX-BRUMMER-aunt-Rosie-Im-outraged-bids-block-UK-memorial.html; “The Times View on Aung San Suu Kyi and Crimes Against the Rohingya: Fallen Star,” The Times, December 12, 2019, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-times-view-on-aung-san-suu-kyi-and-crimes-against-the-rohingya-fallen-star-5jxxpk6pp

68 Tony Kushner, “Too Little, Too Late? Reflections on Britain's Holocaust Memorial Day,” Journal of Israeli History, vol. 23, no. 1 (2004): pp. 116–29.

69 Kara Critchell, “Remembering and Forgetting: The Holocaust in 21st-Century Britain,” Quest: Issues in Contemporary Jewish History, 10 (2016): pp. 23–59.

70 See, for example, Louise London, Whitehall and the Jews, 1933–48: British Immigration Policy and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

71 Arieh J. Kochavi, “The Struggle Against Jewish Immigration to Palestine,” Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 34, no. 3 (1998): pp. 146–67; idem., Post-Holocaust Politics: Britain, the United States, and Jewish Refugees, 1945–1948 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001).

72 See, for example, Critchell, “Remembering and Forgetting”; Kara Critchell, “From Celebrating Diversity to British Values: The Changing Face of Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain,” in Tom Lawson and Andy Pearce, (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Britain and the Holocaust, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), pp. 429–49; Andy Pearce, “An Emerging ‘Holocaust Memorial Problem?’ The Condition of Holocaust Culture in Britain,” The Journal of Holocaust Research, vol. 33, no. 2 (2019): pp. 117–37; Sites of Tension Report, forthcoming.

73 For a critical discussion about this tendency to highlight certain mass atrocities and ignore others, with varying explanations, see Alexander L. Hinton, Thomas La Pointe, and Douglas Irvin-Erickson, (eds.), Hidden Genocides: Power, Knowledge, Memory (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2013); René Lemarchand, (ed.), Forgotten Genocides: Oblivion, Denial, and Memory (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); A. Dirk Moses, “Toward a Theory of Critical Genocide Studies,” SciencesPo, 2008, https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document/toward-theory-critical-genocide-studies.html; Alexander L. Hinton, “Critical Genocide Studies,” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, vol. 7, no. 1 (2012): pp. 11–2; Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002).

74 Jeffrey S. Bachman, “A 'Synchronized Attack' on Life: The Saudi-led Coalition's 'Hidden and Holistic' Genocide in Yemen and the Shared Responsibility of the US and UK,” Third World Quarterly, vol. 40, no. 2 (2019): pp. 1–19.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tracy Adams

Tracy Adams is a research affiliate at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University. Her research interests include the intersection of memory, conflict, culture, and politics; and how meaning is constructed through interactive processes of negotiation. She has been published in journals such as The British Journal of Sociology, The International Journal of Cultural Sociology, Sociological Forum, Media, Culture & Society, and Memory Studies.

Shmuel Lederman

Shmuel Lederman is a research fellow at the Weiss-Livnat International Center for Holocaust Research and Education, University of Haifa. His research interests include political theory, genocide studies, and the Israeli-Arab conflict. He teaches in the Weiss-Livnat International MA Program in Holocaust Studies at the University of Haifa, and at the Department of History, Philosophy, and Judaic Studies at the Open University of Israel. He also serves as the Assistant Editor of History & Memory.