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ABSTRACT
The article addresses the emerging memorial spaces on the fault lines of the post-Soviet and Western memorial cultures. Taking as a case study the Memorial Complex in Trastsianets, located on the fourth biggest site of Nazi mass killing in Europe, it analyses the way Belarus revisits its memorial paradigms and factors the Holocaust into its national narrative. Looking at the political underpinnings of the project, rivaling artistic visions and the transnational diplomatic efforts involved, the article examines how different stakeholders negotiate the symbolic significance and material appearance of this major but little known Eastern European Holocaust site.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Magdalena Waligórska is assistant professor of Eastern European History and Culture at the University of Bremen, Germany. She is the author of Klezmer's Afterlife. An Ethnography of the Jewish Music Revival in Poland and Germany (Oxford University Press, 2013).
Notes
1 Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence; Gitelman, Bitter Legacy; Cholawsky, Jews of Bielorussia; Botvinnik, Pamiatniki genocida evreev Belarusi; Smilovitsky, Katastrofa evreev v Belarussi; Ioffe, Belorusskie evrei; Friedman, “Die Ghettoisierung der jüdischen Bevölkerung”; Epstein, The Minsk Ghetto; Gerasimova and Selemenev, Vyzhit‘-Podvig; Rudling “The Invisible Genocide”; Adamushko et al., Svidetel'stvuiut palachi; Vinnitsa, Kholokost na okkupirovannoi territorii; Desbois, Porteur de mémoires; Al'tman, “Shoah: Gedenken verboten!”
2 An estimated 2.3–2.4 million Belarusians were killed during World War II, including 500,000–550,000 Jews. It is estimated that at least 800,000 Jews (including victims deported from other countries) were killed in occupied Belarus by the Nazis. Rudling “The Invisible Genocide,” 60–1. On Holocaust in Belarus see also: Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence; 175–224. Epstein, The Minsk Ghetto; Andreas Hollender et al., Existiert das Ghetto noch?; Gitelman, ed. Bitter Legacy; Smilovitsky, Katastrofa evreev v Belarussi; Gerasimova and Selemenev, Vyzhit‘-Podvig; Grossman, Ehrenburg and Lustiger, Das Schwarzbuch, 227–400.
3 Keding, “Konkurrenz der Erinnerungen.”
4 Botvinnik, Pamiatniki genocida evreev Belarusi.
5 Rudling, “The Invisible Genocide,” 65; Rudling, “For a Heroic Belarus!”43–62; Marples, “Our Glorious Past,” 92–101; Ackermann, “Wem gehört der Große Sieg?”
6 Rudling, “The Invisible Genocide,” 64.
7 Spishen, “Chernyi obelisk,” 190–1. Inna Gerasimova documented other early Holocaust monuments across Belarus for an exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Minsk. See her: “K voprosu o klassifikatsii pamiatnikov Kholokosta.” Also Zvi Gitelman lists some Belarusian Holocaust memorials in A Century of Ambivalence, 189, 205.
8 Smilovitsky, “Die Partizipation der Juden,” 287; Rudling, “The Invisible Genocide”; Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence, 225–66. On early Stalinist anti-Jewish purges see: Bemporad, Becoming Soviet Jews, 177ff.
9 Grossman, Erenburg, Lustiger et al., Das Schwarzbuch, 1013–98; Al’tman “Die Wiederspiegelung,” 17–32.
10 Exeler, Reckoning with Occupation, 151–62.
11 See: Sahm, “Holocaust Memorials.”
12 For statistics on the Jewish community, see: Brym, The Jews of Moscow, Kiev and Minsk, 3. An interesting new initiative is a Polish–Belarusian–Ukrainian project “Shtetl Routes”, see: Majuk, Szlakami Sztetli.
13 Friedman, “Jews in Belarus”; Bielawska, et al. Good Practices in the Preservation and Promotion of Jewish Heritage; Waligórska, “Jewish Heritage and the New Belarusian National Identity Project.”
14 Rudling, “The Invisible Genocide,” 73–4.
15 Waligórska, “Jewish Heritage and the New Belarusian National Identity Project,” 16–18.
16 Motzkin, “Memory and Cultural Translation,” 274.
17 Davoliute, The Making and Breaking of Soviet Lithuania; Himka, “The Reception of the Holocaust”; Portnov, “Memory Wars in Post-Soviet Ukraine.”
18 The number of known victims, Western European Jews deported to Minsk, is around 30,000, see: Rentrop, Tatorte der “Endlösung”, 211. The newest estimates of German historians point to 60,000 as the number of all victims of Maly Trastsianets: Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde,770. For the methodology of the Soviet-era estimates of the number of victims, see: Botvinnik, Pamiatniki genocida evreev Belarusi, 21–4.
19 Kohl, “Trostenez,” 234; Sahm, “Holocaust Memorials,” 198.
20 Ioffe, “Tragicheskii noiabr 1941 goda,” 66–77.
21 Adamushko et al., Lager Smerti Trostenets, 5–14. Kohl, “Trostenez,” 240.
22 Kohl, “Trostenez,” 241; Kohl, Das Vernichtungslager Trostenez, 15.
23 Kohl, Das Vernichtungslager Trostenez, 16–21.
24 Ihar Kuznetsou in Borel, “Nerazgadannye tainy Trostentsa.”
25 Botvinnik, Pamiatniki genocida evreev Belarusi, 23.
26 Kolas, Trastsianets.
27 Yatskevich, “Zur Gründung einer Gedenkstätte in Trostenez,” 246–7.
28 Sahm, “Holocaust Memorials,” 200–3.
29 Aliaksandr Lukashenka, 8 June 2014, Trastsianets.
30 Sahm, “Holocaust Memorials,” 198.
31 Galina Levina, personal interview, Minsk, 9 June 2014.
32 Kuznetsou in Spasiuk “Belorusskie vlasti skryvaiut vsiu”; Kuznetsou in Borel, “Nerazgadannye tainy Trostentsa.”
33 Sahm, “Holocaust Memorials,” 202.
34 A possible change in the official attitude has been signalled by the official campaign of clearing the site of mass shooting in Kurapaty in November 2017. See: Poczobut, “Białoruskie władze porządkują Kuropaty.”
35 Dashuk and Shakhnovich, “Memorialnyi Kompleks Trostenets.”
36 Andreev, “Memorial v Trostentse.”
37 “Lukashenko otkryl Memorialnyi Kompleks Trostenets” Nasha Niva, 23.06.2015, http://nn.by/?c=ar&i=151727&lang=ru (accessed 5.11.2015).
38 For more on the idea of “counter-monuments” and “public counter arts of memory” see: Young, At Memory's Edge.
39 “Lukashenko prinial uchastie v mitynge-rekvieme na otkrytii Memorialnogo Kompleksa Trostenets” Belta News Service, 22.06.2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As-pUvZOisg (accessed 6.11.2016).
40 Full video coverage of the event available at: “Lukashenko prinial uchastie v mitynge-rekvieme na otkrytii Memorialnogo Kompleksa Trostenets” Belta News Service, 22.06.2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As-pUvZOisg (accessed 6.11.2016).
41 Aliaksandr Lukashenka, 8 June 2014, Trastsianets, translation by the author.
42 Aliaksandr Lukashenka, 22 June 2015, Trastsianets, official news feature ATN: Novosti Belarusi i Mira, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYjzfJwYigs (accessed 5.11.2016).
43 Fridlander cited in Young, At Memory's Edge, 14.
44 President Lukashenka appeared at the Yama memorial in 1997, 2000, and 2008, during the celebration of the 65th anniversary of the liquidation of the Minsk ghetto. Notable is also Leonid Levin's extension to the Yama memorial from 2000.
45 Lewis, “Overcoming Hegemonic Martyrdom,” 374.
46 Research on collaboration and Belarusian complicity in anti-Jewish violence still mostly takes place outside of Belarus, see: Rein, “Local Collaboration in the Execution of the ‘Final Solution’”; Smilovitsky, “Antisemitism in the Soviet Partisan Movement”; Slepyan, “The Soviet Partisan Movement”; Walke, Pioneers and Partisans.
47 Vernichtungsort Malyj Trostenez, 87.
48 Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 12.
49 Lewis, “Overcoming Hegemonic Martyrdom.”
50 Quoted after Rudling, “The Khatyn Massacre in Belorussia,” 45. See also: Goujon, “Memorial Narratives of WWII Partisans.”
51 Lewis, “Overcoming Hegemonic Martyrdom,” 375.
52 Young, “Countermonuments as Spaces for Deep Memory,” 47.
53 Lewin, “Trostenez (Blagowschchina),” 50–3.
54 Saindon, “A Doubled Heterotopia”; Rosenberg, “Contemporary Holocaust Memorials in Berlin,” 84–7.
55 Sahm, “Holocaust Memorials,” 202.
56 See: IM-MER: Initiative Malvine: Maly Trostinec Erinnern at: http://www.waltraud-barton.at/immer/de/presse.html (accessed 14.11.2016). Recently, Belarusian schoolchildren from the area have been fixing similar temporary signs with the names of Belarusian victims of Blahoushchyna, See: Vernichtungsort Malyj Trostenez, 180.
57 Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 23.
58 Gauck, “Grußwort von Bundespräsident Joachim Gauck.” Translation by the author.
59 Sahm, “Holocaust Memorials,” 201.
60 Ibid., 202.
61 Olick, In the House of the Hangman, 338.
62 Ibid. 339.
63 Bobrowski, “Wanderausstellung zum Vernichtungsort Trostenez,” 58.
64 Manfred Zabel, “Gebet im Wald von Blagowschtchina / Gedenkstätte Trostenez bei Minsk,” unpaginated manuscript.
65 Van Alphen, “List Mania in Holocaust Commemoration,” 11.
66 Ibid., 12.
67 Waligórska, Klezmer's Afterlife, 173–200.
68 Rosenberg, “Contemporary Holocaust Memorials in Berlin,” 76.
69 Assmann cited in Lewis, “Overcoming Hegemonic Martyrdom,” 369.
70 “Parallelgeschichten aus Minsk,” TAZ, 24.11.2016, https://taz.de/Schau-zum-Nazi-Lager-Malyj-Trostenez/!5356315/ (accessed 14.12.2016).
71 I mean the ‘third space’ as defined by Homi Bhabha: as a space of negotiation where the rearticulation of cultural dichotomies enables the emergence of something new that is ‘neither the one nor the other.’ See: Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 25.
72 Lewis, “Overcoming Hegemonic Martyrdom,” 401.
73 Lustiger-Thaler, “Remembering Forgetfully,” 190.