World War II in Post-Communist Memorial Museums

This project investigates representations of the World War II period in state-funded post-communist memorial museums (re-)established after 1989 in the context of the Europeanization of Memory and the efforts to re-narrate history after the fall of the communist regimes. This cultural, historical and political study makes a qualitative approach in comparing exhibitions in memorial museums in the EU member states of Central and Southeastern Europe, namely: the Museums of Occupation(s) in Tallinn and Riga, the Museum of Genocide Victims in Vilnius, the Warsaw Rising Museum, the Terezn Memorial, the Museum of the Slovak National Uprising, the House of Terror and the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest, the Museum of Contemporary History in Ljubljana, and the Jasenovac Memorial Museum. This project will also consider the meaning of absence in the cases of Bulgaria and Romania, countries that do not have significant World War II museums. The research focuses on how World War II is represented in countries in which post- or anti-com- munism is the dominant discourse. Beyond presenting an overview of the museums, how they were established, and what they represent, the project considers how double or triple occupation and the Holocaust (i.e., victimization and collaboration) have been negotiated in each country, as well as how these negotiations were affected by the process of EU-integration. Dynamics of the victim-narratives and self-critical confrontation of the past are analyzed, particularly in terms of how the museums reference European standards and the extent to which they incorporate the archetypal trend among Holocaust museums of highlighting individual victims. Accordingly, this project will provide the first ever typology of World War II memorial museums in post-communist EU member states. Comparative research drawing from memory and museum studies concentrates on three levels of analysis. First, the location and role of the museums in each society will be examined through exhibition catalogs, museum officials publications, and museum websites, all of which are understood as sources of (critically questioned) information that have not yet been subjected to a systematic discourse analysis and interviews with museum officials. Second, the exhibitions core narrative will be explored using as sources the exhibition themselves, publications in which museum representatives explain their goals, interviews with museum personnel, catalogs, and museums websites. Third, the museum aesthetics, the role of 3D-objects, photographs and texts will be analyzed, distinguishing between exhibitions with a) ontological-authentic objects; b) constructed-authentic objects; and c) installations staging the past as something one can touch, smell and walk through. Additionally, the exhibition texts and catalogs will be subject to a systematic discourse analysis.

World War II in Post-Communist Memorial Museums Politics of History Between an 'Invocation of Europe' and the Focus on 'Our' Suffering Memorial museums are a supporting pillar, a flagship of national politics of history in the context of transnational political processes. The overarching question of this habilitation project is how World War II is exhibited in large, publicly (co-)funded memorial museums which (re )opened after 1989 in 'Eastern' EU member states. How did the efforts to join the EU influence the permanent exhibitions and which impact do current authoritarian tendencies have on them? This first typology of how WWII is exhibited in the eleven post-Communist EU member countries distinguishes two ways how those museums communicated with 'Europe' during EU accession talks: - One group of museums 'invocated Europe': they tried to prove the respective country's 'Europeaness' by copying musealization trends from 'western' Holocaust museums - dark exhibition spaces, a focus on individualizing victim stories and photographs especially of Holocaust victims, the inclusion of Roma victims und the confrontation with the 'own' collective's collaboration; - The other group demanded from 'Europe' to acknowledge their country's suffering under Communism and strived to 'contain' Holocaust memory so that it does not 'compete' with the narrative of 'our own' collective victimhood. In recent years museums in the Baltics have changed their position in this typology - partly due to a generation change - resulting in new permanent exhibitions and museums' renaming. The project analyzed one representative museum dealing with the World War II from each 'Eastern' EU member state, if possible in the capitol. Systematic research was conducted for the Museum of Occupations in Tallinn, the Museum of Occupation of Latvia, the Museum of Genocide Victims in Vilnius, the Warsaw Rising Museum, Terezn Memorial (Small Fortress and Ghetto Museum), the Museum of the Slovak National Uprising in Bansk Bystrica, the House of Terror and the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest, the Museum of Contemporary History in Ljubljana, and the Jasenovac Memorial Museum in Croatia - including the 'missing' of memorial museums dealing with the WWII in Sofia and Bucharest. Beside the exhibitions the project also looked into 52 museum guidebooks published since the institutions' opening - thus including the transformation of politics of history over the time: In the Communist era historical taboos were broken in the more liberal 1960s as opposed to the more repressive phases before and after. After 1989 museums were finally able to address Communist crimes. After the 'Europeanization of memory' in the course of EU-integration Hungary and Poland are currently not only more and more endangering democratic checks and balances, but also adopting their museum landscape to the official historical revisionism of the Fidesz respectively the PiS party.