Nations Make Strides in Analyzing the Past

Stairs lead down to the Wall of Names section of the vast five-year-old monument at the site of the Nazi death camp in Belzec, Poland.

Rome
Along row of shoes where Jews were shot dead on the bank of the Danube River in Budapest. The image of a grand synagogue chiseled into stone at the place it once stood in Bratislava. A museum, a wall of names and a vast symbolic field of ashes at the site of the Belzec death camp in Poland. A giant menorah and the statue of a tortured figure at a corner in the Ukrainian city of Lviv.

These are just a few of the monuments to victims of the Holocaust that have been erected in Eastern Europe in the 20 years since the fall of communism opened the way to a dramatic, painful and ongoing confrontation with history.

Under communism, Jewish suffering was subsumed as part of overall suffering in World War II. Most memorials in Communist Europe -- even at death camps like Auschwitz and Buchenwald -- honored generic "victims of Nazism."

But over the past two decades, numerous memorials have been built, countless plaques have been affixed, educational programs have been instituted, Holocaust museums have been established, and a number of countries have adopted an annual Holocaust Remembrance Day to serve as a focal point for study and commemoration.

"Education is a slow process, and changing inherited and accepted concepts and beliefs is a difficult task in any context," said Samuel Gruber, president of the International Survey of Jewish Monuments. "In this light, I think we can look at amazing progress over the past two decades."

But the process has been far from smooth, and far from complete, and it varies from country to country and locale to locale.

"The way that the Holocaust is remembered is a good indication of the health of a nation," said Warren Miller, chairman of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, which has sponsored a number of Holocaust memorial projects.

"When the Holocaust is denied, freedom is under assault," he said. "Where the Holocaust and its victims are remembered, freedom is secure."

Some states, especially those that were themselves victims of the Nazis, have taken many measures to confront their history, and recognize culpability in the deportation and murder of Jews.

In Poland, the memorials and museums at Holocaust sites such as Auschwitz and Belzec have been revamped to provide factual information and context.

New memorial plaques have been put up throughout the nation, and numerous public and private education projects on the Holocaust and Jewish history have cropped up.

"But when the subject focuses on questions about the Polish role as collaborators with the Nazis or Polish self-expressions of anti-Semitism, it's still quite controversial," said Rabbi Andrew Baker, the American Jewish Committee's director of international Jewish affairs.

In some countries, nationalism, local pride and complex political and other legacies have put up obstacles to evaluation.

"Progress is relative," said Gruber. "These are still fledgling democracies. Some countries are much further along the path to historical accountability and sincere commemoration than others, but many have had further to go."

In places such as Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, which were allied with the Nazis, honest evaluation of the past means acceptance of direct local participation in the Holocaust.

Education is vital, according to Maros Borsky, director of the Slovak Jewish Heritage Center.

"The evil that happened in society will not be healed, but the next generation must learn about it," said Borsky.

In areas that once formed part of the Soviet Union, the issues are compounded.

In the Baltic countries, in particular, nationalists have long regarded the Nazis as the lesser of two wartime evils -- "liberators" against the Russians who occupied their countries.

In 2002, for example, Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga had to intervene directly to ensure that the inscription on a monument to 25,000 Jews killed in the Rumbula Forest near Riga included mention of Latvian collaborators, as well as Nazis among the perpetrators.

"She said this is a place of national shame," recalled Miller. "It was a huge step forward, and an example for other European leaders to follow."

In Ukraine, nationalist aspirations after decades of Russian domination have eclipsed the memory of Jewish suffering, particularly in western Ukraine, which before World War II was part of Poland and had a complex multiethnic profile.

"Generally speaking, Jewish issues, including the Holocaust, are still not seen as part of one's own history," said Tarik Cyril Amar, academic director of the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv.

The high-profile dedication Oct. 8 of a national Holocaust memorial in the Romanian capital Bucharest illustrated many of these points.

Under Marshal Ion Antonescu, Romania was an ally of Nazi Germany. Deportations of Jews ordered by Antonescu resulted in the deaths of some 280,000 Jews. Even after the fall of communism, this fact was largely ignored or minimized, and Antonescu is often viewed as a hero by Romanian nationalists.

"Six years ago, there was no difficulty in getting Romanian leaders to acknowledge that there was a Holocaust in their country, but they understood this as what Hungarians did to Jews in Romanian territory under their control," said Baker.

Romania Marks the Shoah
Construction of the monument and marking the date of Oct. 9 as Holocaust Commemoration Day were mandated by an international commission on the Holocaust in Romania, headed by Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, which released a 400-page report in 2004 as Romania was preparing to enter the European Union.

Political dignitaries, Holocaust survivors and religious leaders from Europe, Israel and the United States attended the ceremony, and Romanian President Traian Basescu spoke.

The Romanian state and Romanian society, declared Basescu, "reaffirm their decision to assume the blame for the past and to uncover the historic memory in the spirit of truth.

"So much has been done," acknowledged Baker, "but there is still much to do."