Language:
English
Year of publication:
2022
Titel der Quelle:
Geschichtsoptimismus und Katastrophenbewusstsein
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2022) 427-453
Keywords:
Vajs, Albert
;
Jews History 20th century
;
Jews Biography
;
Jewish organizations
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Influence
Abstract:
Taking as a starting point the life and work of the Yugoslav Jewish legal expert Albert Vajs [Weiss] (1905–1964), this paper focuses on three interconnected aspects of postwar Jewish life that together shed light on the ways in which Holocaust memory was articulated in the two first decades of socialist Yugoslavia. As president of the Jewish Federation, Vajs played a crucial role and often took the lead in well-organized efforts to rebuild the Yugoslav Jewish community and to integrate it into the socialist state, to commemorate the country’s victims of the Holocaust in public space, to document war crimes conducted on Yugoslavia’s territory, including the genocide of its Jewish population, and to prosecute Nazi war criminals and perpetrators of the Holocaust. These efforts were defined by the dynamics and tensions between the necessity to articulate Jewish concerns within the dominant socialist paradigm and the endeavor to carve out a space for Jewish specificity. The article argues that the relationship between the socialist state and its Jewish citizens cannot be reduced to top-down regulations, but was rather characterized by the active engagement of the Jewish community.
DOI:
10.13109/9783666317361.427
URL:
Locate this publication in Israeli libraries
Permalink
