as such, many argue that it is a unique case which no other case truly resembles, and therefore one cannot really learn from it about other cases. Such is, for example, the position of Saul Friedländer. The belief in the specialness and uniqueness of the Holocaust has become among many an unnegotiated fundamental that makes it difficult to learn from it analogically about other cases, and analogies are often received in one of two ways. On one hand, in any comparison one must emphasize how much the case does not reach the level of cruelty and extremity that characterized the Holocaust, which in practice allows for the normalization of those other events— they are, after all, not " like the Holocaust." And on the other hand, in cases that are politically sensitive to Western, Israeli, or Jewish ears( e. g. regarding Israel), the comparison is completely forbidden since it is perceived as banalization of the Holocaust or even as antisemitism. Therefore, I think that the use of the Holocaust- despite it being a very radical case of genocide- as a special and unique reference point is in fact very problematic historically, and very harmful morally and politically. Such a hierarchy does not exist in any other comparative field— is there in nationalism studies one case that is a paradigmatic case in light of which all other cases are studied? Does it exist in the study of empires or revolutions? Is there one case of a revolution or historical empire that receives such a central and almost theological status? Comparative research assumes fundamental equality of all members in the comparison group. And this is how it should be with regard to the Holocaust as well despite it being one of the most extreme cases of genocide.
2. While Holocaust memory has long shaped EU remembrance politics, the eastward enlargement in the early 2000s introduced post-communist perspectives that often equate Nazism and Stalinism. What are the implications of integrating these narratives into a shared European memory?
In September 2019, the European Parliament adopted by a large majority a resolution calling for the commemoration of the crimes of both the communist regimes and the Nazi regime, and even established August 23 as a day for commemorating the victims of crimes by all totalitarian regimes. In many respects, this resolution revives the conceptual world of Hannah Arendt from the early 1950s during the Cold War, who spoke, at least ostensibly, in her book " The Origins of Totalitarianism ", of both: the Nazis and the Stalinist Soviet regime as two forms of totalitarian regimes. Since then, the concept has largely lost the appeal it had during the Cold War. The resolution itself has several aspects in my view. On one hand, it expresses the current situation in Europe where nationalism and even ultranationalism are rising again. Often the memory of suffering from the communist era expresses these tendencies. On the other hand, the suffering of Eastern European peoples under communist rule, which was at times, especially during the Stalin era, extremely murderous, receives recognition and this is a blessed matter and might also somewhat calm the " memory wars." But this begins to be particularly problematic in my view when the memory of the crimes of communist regimes is intended to obscure the horrors of the Nazi regime and its partners and collaborators in many countries in Eastern Europe such as Romania, Hungary, Ukraine, etc. The hope is that the extension and inclusion of memories will enable more recognition and more political responsibility and not the opposite. Nonetheless, I have a concern that this is primarily an expression of the growing exclusionary ethnic-nationalism of Eastern European peoples who place their national suffering as victims at the center of their identity and wash away the more
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Observing Memories ISSUE 9