Moldova: The Holocaust as Political Pawn
The Awkward Handling of Jewish Heritage
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Moldova is having a hard time in finding an appropriate way to acknowledge the Jewish heritage of Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transnistria. It is even more difficult to enshrine the remembrance of the victims of the Shoah in the country’s collective memory, as an analysis of school books shows. Commemoration of the Holocaust has become a political pawn in a dispute over history and the politics of identity. Politicians and historians are arguing over “Moldovanism” and “Romanianism”. Behind this is a struggle over Moldova’s political orientation. Reviving Jewish community life seems easier than working through the past and remembrance.
(Osteuropa 8-10/2008, pp. 481–492)