Marie Louise Seeberg - The Holocaust as Active Memory: The Past in the Present

THE HOLOCAUST AS ACTIVE MEMORY

The Past in the Present

Edited by

MARIE LOUISE SEEBERG

NOVA (Norwegian Social Research), Norway

IRENE LEVIN

Oslo and Akershus University College, Norway

CLAUDIA LENZ

European Wergeland Centre for Education on Human Intercultural Understanding, Human Rights and Democratic Citizenship, Norway

ASHGATE

Marie Louise Seeberg, Irene Levin and Claudia Lenz 2013

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Marie Louise Seeberg, Irene Levin and Claudia Lenz have asserted their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
The Holocaust as active memory : the past in the present.

1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Historiography. 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Psychological aspects. 3. Holocaust survivors--Psychology. 4. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives.
I. Seeberg, Marie Louise. II. Levin, Irene. III. Lenz, Claudia, 1968
940.5318-dc23

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Seeberg, Marie Louise.

The Holocaust as active memory : the past in the present / by Marie Louise Seeberg, Irene Levin and Claudia Lenz.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4094-5108-2 (hardback) -- ISBN 978-1-4094-5109-9 (ebook) -

ISBN 978-1-4094-8487-5 (epub) 1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Influence. 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Historiography. I. Levin, Irene. II. Lenz, Claudia, 1968- III. Title.

D804.3.S434 2013
940.5318--dc23

2012040431

ISBN 9781409451082 (hbk)
ISBN 9781409451099 (ebk-PDF)
ISBN 9781409484875 (ebk-ePUB)

Marie Louise Seeberg, Irene Levin and Claudia Lenz

Suzanne Vromen

Lena Inowlocki

Dorota Glowacka

Julia Bernstein

Tova Benski and Ruth Katz

Nicole L. Immler

Sofie Lene Bak

Oula Silvennoinen

Ulf Zander

Irene Levin

Sofie Lene Bak is an historian and Assistant Professor at The SAXO Institute (Archaeology, Ethnology, Greek and Latin and History), Copenhagen University. She was previously Project Manager for the research and documentation project on Wartime experiences of the Danish Jews 19431945 at The Danish Jewish Museum. She is the author of books on the Holocaust in Denmark and on anti-Semitism before and during the Second World War. Her main fields of interest are Danish Jewish history, the history of anti-Semitism and racism, oral history, and memory and commemoration culture.

Tova Benski is a sociologist and Senior Lecturer at the Department of Behavioral Sciences, the College of Management-Academic Studies, Rishon Lezion, Israel. Her fields of research include qualitative methods, ethnicity, gender, social movements, peace studies, womens peace movements, the sociology of emotions, and transgender dynamics. Her co-authored book Iraqi Jews in Israel won a prestigious academic prize in Israel.

Julia Bernstein, cultural anthropologist, sociologist and artist, is Lecturer at the Institute for Comparative Educational Studies and Social Sciences of Cologne University, and at the Department for Social Work and Health of the University of Applied Sciences in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Her main research focuses on migration processes, transnational perspectives, transformations in ex-socialist societies and questions of identity, especially through the analysis of material culture and food consumption.

Dorota Glowacka is Professor of Humanities at the University of Kings College in Halifax, Canada, where she teaches critical theory and Holocaust studies in the Contemporary Studies Programme. She has published numerous articles, book chapters and books in the area of Polish, American, and French literature, critical theory, and Holocaust studies. Her current research interests include continental philosophy, Holocaust literature and art, Polish-Jewish relations, genocide studies, critical race theory, politics of memory, and trauma theory.

Nicole L. Immler, historian and Post-doctoral Researcher, is affiliated with the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. Her current research analyzes the effects of the Austrian compensation politics on NS-victims and their families, exploring the Afterlife of Restitution. Her main fields of research are memory politics and its link to transitional justice mechanisms such as reparations, the mediation of memory processes in society and in families, auto-/biographies, and the relations between memory, culture and identity.

Lena Inowlocki, sociologist, is Professor at the University of Applied Sciences Frankfurt am Main and associated with the Department of Social Sciences, Goethe University Frankfurt. She has published widely within qualitative research, especially biographical and ethnographical on transmission among generations in migrant and Jewish Displaced Persons families. Her other research interests include adolescence and the transformation of tradition, gender, religion and ethnicity in different European contexts.

Ruth Katz is a sociologist and Professor at the department of Human Services, and Senior Researcher at the Center for Research & Study of Aging, University of Haifa, Israel. She has published on various groups in Israeli society, among them Arabs, Russian immigrants, Kibbutz members, single mothers, widows, and older family members. She has also taken part in international, comparative studies on intergenerational family relations and well-being. Her main fields of interest are intergenerational family relations, work-family conflict and balance, migrant and minority families, needs and services for families, family caregiving and working carers, and the quality of life of older people.

Claudia Lenz, political scientist, is Research and Development Coordinator at the European Wergeland Centre for Education on Human Intercultural Understanding, Human Rights and Democratic Citizenship, Norway. Her fields of research are historical consciousness, memory cultures and memory politics with regard to World War II and the Holocaust, and she has published extensively on these topics.

Irene Levin is Professor of Social Work at Oslo and Akershus University College. and the coordinator of the Ph.D. programme of Social Work and Social Policy. She has published numerous books and articles in the fields of family, social work, Holocaust and qualitative methods. She is a member of the Swedish Council of Science and has also arranged many international conferences among which Families and Memories is one.

Marie Louise Seeberg is Research Professor at NOVA (Norwegian Social Research) where she coordinates the Research Group for Migration and Transnational Studies. A social anthropologist, she has pursued her interest in refugees, migration and ethnic relations from various perspectives. This has led to publications in a wide array of topics, such as studies of the meanings of home and homeland among Vietnamese refugee families in Norway, of how Dutch and Norwegian schools deal with ethnic and other differences, of health and care worker migration into Norway, and of conditions for asylum seeking children in Norway.