The ‘Righteous’ as an Element of Transnational Memory Politics: The Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust and the Memory of the Rescue of Jews during the Second World War

Abstract

In the last two decades, the topic of help given to Jews during the Second World War has experienced an extraordinary boom in Europe and beyond. Transnational and intergovernmental organisations such as the Council of Europe, the European Parliament and the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) have played an essential role in promoting this subject. This paper shows that the first big event to introduce the category of the Righteous into transnational memory politics was the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust (2000). Researchers have described the conference as a significant step toward the ‘institutionalisation of a European memory’ and promoting a self-critical, victim-centred, future-oriented and highly personalised Holocaust remembrance. I argue that it was precisely the universalisation of the Holocaust and the notion of a wide-ranging implication of European societies in the genocide, which paved the way for the rescue narratives. However, as this paper demonstrates, the participants in the conference defined the Righteous differently and invoked them for divergent purposes.

New constellations of mnemonic wars: An introduction

“…Transnational or inter-governmental organizations and international networks, such as the Council of Europe, UNESCO, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) or the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), influence national memory cultures by promoting selected topics and forms of commemoration, and also by setting heritage protection or exhibition standards. However, while on a declarative level, local memory agents try to comply with transnational memory policies, at the same time they often pursue their particularistic agendas (Kroh, 2006; Wóycicka, 2022). This is also true for legal norms.…”