The Holocaust has become a globally recognized reference for suffering and has often been appropriated as a framework for (re-)understanding collective identities. This article examines the agenda of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) in relation to the memory of the Holocaust in post-Milošević Serbia. It focuses on the Jasenovac Committee of the SOC and the role of its head, Bishop Jovan (Ćulibrk), in the memorialization of Staro Sajmište, a distinguished place of the Holocaust in occupied Serbia. Based on primary sources encompassing Orthodox media, official statements, and interviews with mnemonic agents in the region, the author argues that the SOC has established itself as an acknowledged actor in the remembrance of the Holocaust in Serbia and beyond. Such a position allows it to point out Serbian martyrdom as part of the Holocaust imaginary, reinforce Serbian victimhood-oriented collective identity, and capitalize on the symbolic advantages of ultimate victimhood for its own regenerative ends.
The Greek Civil War officially ended in 1949 with the defeat of the communists; however, the battle over the interpretation of the conflict, its consequences, and the manner of remembering it is ongoing. In this context, we focus on the relation between two polarized master narratives of the Greek Civil Warthe communist and the anticommunist-and personal accounts of former child refugees of the Greek Civil War living in the Czech Republic. Based on oral testimonies, we explore how narrators remember and convey the most contested issues related to their displacement, institutional care, education, political positioning, and social belonging as child refugees in Czechoslovakia. We claim that this shared community of memory outlived the times of narrative uniformity comforting its members by providing shared meaning to both their past and present, reinforcing their group belonging and preventing yet another uprooting within the Czech(oslovak) society. In this way, our study contributes to a better understanding of the ideologically-imposed interpretations of the consequences of the Greek Civil War and of the Czechoslovak history and minority politics.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.