Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance After Communism

Yellow Star, Red Star asks why Holocaust memory continues to be so deeply troubled-ignored, appropriated, and obfuscated-throughout Eastern Europe, even though it was in those lands that most of the extermination campaign occurred. As part of accession to the European Union, Jelena Subotic shows, East European states were required to adopt, participate in, and contribute to the established Western narrative of the Holocaust. This requirement created anxiety and resentment in post-communist states: Holocaust memory replaced communist terror as the dominant narrative in Eastern Europe, focusing instead on predominantly Jewish suffering in World War II. Influencing the European Union's own memory politics and legislation in the process, post-communist states have attempted to reconcile these two memories by pursuing new strategies of Holocaust remembrance. The memory, symbols, and imagery of the Holocaust have been appropriated to represent crimes of communism.

Yellow Star, Red Star presents in-depth accounts of Holocaust remembrance practices in Serbia, Croatia, and Lithuania, and extends the discussion to other East European states. The book demonstrates how countries of the region used Holocaust remembrance as a political strategy to resolve their contemporary "ontological insecurities"-insecurities about their identities, about their international status, and about their relationships with other international actors. As Subotic concludes, Holocaust memory in Eastern Europe has never been about the Holocaust or about the desire to remember the past, whether during communism or in its aftermath. Rather, it has been about managing national identities in a precarious and uncertain world.

The Big Gray Truck
1. The Politics of Holocaust Remembrance after Communism
2. At the Belgrade Fairgrounds
3. Croatia's Islands of Memory
4. The Long Shadows of Vilna
The Stakes of Holocaust Remembrance in the Twenty-First Century

Jelena Subotić is Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University in Atlanta. She is the author of Hijacked Justice and numerous scholarly articles.

Yellow Star, Red Star approaches Holocaust studies from a post-Communist perspective and is an important contribution to the historical canon.

Jelena Subotic has written a fine, compelling and angry book. In Yellow Star, Red Star, she argues that Holocaust history in post-Communist countries has been ignored, subverted, adapted, adopted and misused and, in the two Balkan countries, used as a prop for creating post-Yugoslav national identities.

The complicated politics of memory and commemoration regarding the Holocaust in post-communist Eastern Europe is the subject of Suboti's thoughtful analysis... Disturbing in its implications, this well-written and reasoned work is required reading for those studying history and memory.

Yellow Star, Red Star is an excellent, in-depth analysis of current political processes afflicting postcommunist Holocaust memory. It should be required reading for anyone studying Eastern Europe, Holocaust memory, and the current rise of ethno-nationalism.

Yellow Star, Red Star is a scientifically well-grounded work recommended as a seminal volume, a must read for those with an interest in Serbian, Croatian, and Lithuanian history.

Mrázek's social and anthropological history, together with Subotić's analysis of the historical and current factors of Holocaust remembrance has significantly expanded the field of literature. From the lives of people incarcerated in camps to the lives of people trapped by mythohistories and competitive victimhood, Mrázek and Subotić allow readers to walk in the footsteps and footfalls of history.

Jelena Subotic's book has earned all the accolades it has so far received. It is an excellent foundation for a serious discussion and understanding of the moment we live in.

Compellingly argued and written with genuine literary flair, Jelena Subotić's study is also a call to action, urging us to look more critically at the ways in which memory can be manipulated to suit political needs.

Cronin's biography vividly depicts the colourful career, penetrating intellect and literary talent which made him one of the most interesting, if not influential, Russian conservative thinkers of the nineteenth century.

Jelena Subotić's second book is a compelling and prescient warning on the dangers inherent in contemporary political re-framing of Holocaust memory. Yellow Star, Red Star is bold and necessary.