War and Public Memory: Case Studies in Twentieth-Century Europe

256 Pages·2020·4.719 MB·English

by  David A. Messenger

WAR AND PUBLIC MEMORY
WAR, MEMORY, AND CULTURE
SERIES EDITOR
Steven Trout
ADVISORY BOARD
Joan Beaumont
Philip D. Beidler
John Bodnar
Patrick Hagopian
Mara Kozelsky
Edward T. Linenthal
Kendall R. Phillips
Kirk Savage
Jay Winter
Series published in cooperation with
http://www.southalabama.edu/departments/research/warandmemory/
Susan McCready, Content Editor
WAR AND PUBLIC MEMORY
CASE STUDIES IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY EUROPE
David A. Messenger
THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS
TUSCALOOSA
The University of Alabama Press
Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380
uapress.ua.edu
Copyright © 2020 by the University of Alabama Press
All rights reserved.
Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should
be addressed to the University of Alabama Press.
Typeface: Scala Pro and Tw Cen MT
Cover image: Architectural detail of the facade of the Jüdisches Museum
in Berlin, Germany, designed by the architect Daniel Libeskind;
iStock.com/Anticiclo
Cover design: David Nees
Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-0-8173-2044-7 (cloth)
ISBN: 978-0-8173-5964-5 (paper)
E-ISBN: 978-0-8173-9274-1
In remembrance of my grandfathers, veterans of the
Second World War for the United States and Canada,
Maurice O. Messenger and John W. Murray

CONTENTS
List of Figures ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
ONE Studying the Cultural Memory of War: Theory and Practice 7
TWO Local, National, and International Memory of the First World War
and the Armenian Genocide 23
THREE The Bolshevik Revolution, Communism, and Successor States after
the First World War: Memory and Identity in Interwar Eastern
Europe 45
FOUR Victors’ Memory, Forgetting, and Recovery: Civil War Memory in
Spain 61
FIVE Germany, Nazism, Collaboration, and the Holocaust: The History of
the Second World War in Europe 84
SIX Dealing with Nazism in Germany 101
SEVEN War Memory in France and Poland 119
EIGHT Finding the Holocaust and Jewish History in Contemporary
Europe 145
NINE The Memory of Communism and Conflict in Eastern Europe 160
TEN War, Violence, and Memory Return: The Collapse of Yugoslavia and
the War in Bosnia 184
Conclusion 201
Notes 205
Selected Bibliography 217
Index 227

FIGURES
1.1. Cannons at the entrance of the Imperial War Museum, London 18
1.2. View of former Nazi Congress Hall, Nuremberg, Germany 19
2.1. War memorial, Plymouth Hoe, Devon, England 32
2.2. Armenian genocide memorial, Yerevan, Armenia 44
3.1. Fragment of the Monument to Heroes of the First World War,
Poklonnaya Hill, Moscow, Russia 51
3.2. Josef Pilsudski monument, Pilsudski Square, Warsaw, Poland 57
4.1. Valley of the Fallen, Valle de los Caídos, El Escorial, Madrid, Spain 66
4.2. Three statues of the monument to the forgotten of the Spanish Civil War,
Jerte Valley 76
5.1. Pawiak Prison (now Museum of Prison Pawiak), Warsaw, Poland 87
5.2. Rail entrance to concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau KZ
Poland 95
6.1. Memorial in Warsaw, Poland, marking the 1970 visit of West German
chancellor Willy Brandt 109
6.2. View of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin,
Germany 115
7.1. Paris, France, cityscape with a fragment of the courtyard of the Shoah
Memorial 133
7.2. Warsaw Uprising Monument, Warsaw, Poland 141
8.1. “Stumbling blocks” (stolpersteine), Konstanz, Germany 150
8.2. Polin: Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw, Poland 154
9.1. Statues of the Communist era, Memento Park, southwest of Budapest,
Hungary 175
9.2. House of Terror museum, Budapest, Hungary 182
10.1. Monument for the Bosnian Muslims killed in the Srebrenica massacre and
during the Bosnian War, Srebrenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina 191
10.2. Memorial of Srebrenica massacre with gravestones in the back-
ground 200