Untold Neighbours’ Histories: The Holocaust in Slovakia from Two Perspectives
- VRZGULOVÁ, Monika. Nevyrozprávané susedské histórie: Holokaust na Slovensku z dvoch perspektív. Bratislava: VEDA, Ústav etnológie SAV, 2016. 139 s. Etnologické štúdie, 25. ISBN 978-80-224-1542-2.
In the book, the author presents her findings and data collected using the oral history method during twenty years of her research on the Holocaust in Slovakia.
The author contemplates on the possibilities and limits of this method, as well as on the identity – subjectivity – memory relationship. She introduces, compares, and comments on the contents of memories about the historical events related to the Holocaust in Slovakia, as communicated today by Jewish and non-Jewish actors. For the first time ever, the monograph brings new qualitative data to the academic discourse in Slovakia (which the author produced as part of an international research project), representing the group memory of non-Jewish eye-witnesses of the Holocaust, thus expanding the topic of constructing the Holocaust memory by another perspective. She juxtaposes these new data with the qualitative data obtained via interviews with Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. The work enriches the reflections and research on memory and the Holocaust with multiple perspectives of remembering, observes the relationship between group memories and the social and political discourse, and explores the contents of memory policies and cultures of present-day Slovak society in relation to the Holocaust historical period. The book can be considered part of that current within the academic research on the Holocaust and memory which was launched, for instance, by the texts of Jan T. Grossman, or more recently, the works of Jan Grabowski, Natalie Aleksiun, Hana Kubátová, or Omer Bartov, thus establishing a platform for a broader international comparison.
