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CO-WINNER: John D. Bell 2024 Memorial Book Prize
A profoundly original historical inquiry, this work offers a critical reflection on the silences of the past and the remembrance of the Holocaust.
List of contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction
On the "Rescue of the Jews" and National Exceptionalism: A Riddle of Received Wisdom
Knowledge about the Holocaust: Justice, Fiction, and Controversies
Contours of an Investigation
Nationalizing the Past, Internationally
Reassessing the Cold War Era
The Way Forward
Chapter 1. The Judicial Production of an Account of Anti-Jewish Persecution: The Genesis of a Heroic Narrative
Judging in Time of War
The (In)visibility of Anti-Jewish Crimes in the "General Trials"
The Construction of a Judicial Cause by Bulgarian Communist Jews
A Sketch of the Trial Scene
Courtroom 11
The Germans, the Fascists, and the "Good People": Drawing the Perimeter of Guilt
A Fascist is an Anti-Semite... and Vice Versa
The Euphemization of Jewish Suffering
The Posterity of the Court: A Central Elision
Chapter 2. Deportation of the Jews, from Belomorie to the Screen: Negotiating a "Socialist" Reading of the War
Cinemas on Unequal Terms in Bulgaria and East Germany
Elusive Presences of the Holocaust on the Screens
One Co-production, Two Institutions, Several Agendas
Konrad Wolf and Angel Wagenstein, a Dear Friendship
Shooting Notes, and Other Digressions
Script, Storyboard, and Film: Effects of Cutting and Framing
Two Very Different Wars: The Bulgarian Lens
Negotiating an East-East Reading of Nazism: German Polychromy?
Jewish Fates, in a Minor Key
Jewish Passivity: A Question of Gender?
Christian Signs forJewish Suffering? A Transnational Symbolic Repertoire
Chapter 3. The Deportation of Jews from Northern Greece: The Mysterious Journeys of a 1943 Film Footage
Archival Inventories as Texts and Gaze
A Film withoutan Author or Instructions?
Scrutinizing Frames that Resist Analysis
From Visual Document to Legal Evidence: The Beckerle Case
Judicial Cooperation between West Germany, the United States, Israel, and Bulgaria: A Tale of the Cold War
When Art Meets the Intelligence Community
Cultural Diplomacy and the "Rescue of the Bulgarian Jews"
The "Rescue" Goes West: Managing Scarcity and Acquisition Competitions
Managing Scarcity and Acquisition Competitions
Epilogue
Chapter 4. Accounts of "Rescue" and Deportation in Dialogue: Memory Controversies after 1989
Bringing Back the Polyphony of the Past: (In)divisible Truths
When History takes Center Stage
Re-negotiating the Territorial Span of Bulgaria's Historical Narrative
Words and Walls of Conflict in Balkan Jewish Communities
The "Blagovest Sendov" Affair: A Bulgarian Forest in the (Domestic) Political Arena
Dimitär Pes¿ev: A New Topography of Memory
Chapter 5. Fruitful Disputes? Transnational Mobilizations and the Institutionalization of a Space of Dissensus
Charting a New Historiography
Bulgarian-Macedonian Holocaust Controversies
When European Institutions Discuss History and Memory
Games of Scale, Games of Chess: Debating Bulgaria's Memory Policies
Remembering the Holocaust to Fight Anti-Semitism: A Room forConvergence?
In the Spotlight of Euro-Atlantic Integration
Conclusion
Historiographical Disputes
What We Talk About When We Talk About the Holocaust
Jewish Voices in the Writing of the Past
Challenges of the Page: Leafing Through Time, Speaking the Seen
Appendix: The March 1943 Deportations from Territories Occupied by Bulgaria
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Nadege Ragaru, translated by Victoria Baena and David A. Rich
Summary
CO-WINNER: John D. Bell 2024 Memorial Book PrizeA profoundly original historical inquiry, this work offers a critical reflection on the silences of the past and the remembrance of the Holocaust.
