Many studies have emphasised that the Holocaust has been used all around the world as a template to make sense of a range of crimes and injustices. Yet very few of them systematically analyse the circulation and adaptation of this template in local contexts from a comparative perspective and engage with the political and ethical implications of this process. This is the goal of Memory and Forgetting in the Post-Holocaust Era. The Ethics of Never Again, a book written by two scholars who have extensively published on the universalisation of the Holocaust and combine their challenging reflections and familiarity in relation to several societies in this important book.
Baer and Sznaider’s book starts with a discussion of the threefold commandment that defines Never Again, namely ‘remember atrocity, honor the victims, learn for the future’ (p. 4). Baer and Sznaider underline that the mantra Never Again reflects a new temporality: it is ‘a reverse utopia that projects the catastrophes of the past onto the future [in order to avoid them]; or a minimal utopia that contents itself with preserving a standard of living’ (p. 5). Therefore, the struggle for justice driven by this kind of memory is ‘conservative. Its vision is not epic but tragic. It is not geared toward construction of a new man and a new society but toward fending off repetitions of horrific pasts’ (p. 6). Victims are, so to speak, the embodiment of this struggle. They play a key role in adapting a decontextualised memory of the Holocaust and a moral universal to a range of local contexts. Indeed, the apparently straightforward mantra Never Again raises several questions. What may, and should not, happen again? Who may be affected by these events and/or processes? And who may be held responsible for them? Providing answers to these questions is the political task that derives from the ethics of Never Again, and memory activists are key actors to carry it out.
Baer and Sznaider criticise the argument that the memory of the Holocaust has become so powerful that it overshadows the memory of other crimes. Rather, following Rothberg (2009) and other authors, they claim that Holocaust discourse has ‘[galvanised] local memory work within different settings, leading to awareness and recognition of other victims of political violence’ (p. 14). However, as the universalisation of the Holocaust entails the (re-)definition of a range of crimes as genocide, ‘the boundaries and divisions – often introduced by the perpetrators – that a post-atrocity society seeks to overcome’ are merely reproduced (p. 16). Very often, this construction of group identities is intertwined with a simplistic ‘(innocent) victim – (evil) perpetrator’ dichotomy, so that struggles for memory and justice may simply rule out (debate about) forgiveness or reconciliation.
These arguments are analysed in detail in Chapters 2, 3 and 4 about Argentina, Spain and Eastern Europe respectively. Chapter 2 discusses the influence of Holocaust discourse to shape the memory of the repression in Argentina. Baer and Sznaider highlight the importance of the representation of the absolute innocence of victims, in particular in the report of the CONADEP, the commission created by the government to investigate the crimes of the military dictatorship soon after its collapse. Interestingly, the very title of the report, Nunca Más (Never Again), was chosen by one of its authors after a visit at the Dachau concentration camp (Crenzel, cited p. 36). Baer and Sznaider also explain that the term genocide is widely used in Argentina, which ‘represents the most complete stage of the adoption of an ethics of Never Again in societies that are revisiting and reframing their legacies of mass violence’ (p. 42). The authors stress the political and judicial logics that account for this widespread use and, in the most stimulating part of this chapter, they critically engage with the influential work of Daniel Feierstein (2014) that reconceptualises genocide as a social practice. Baer and Sznaider contend that by challenging the definition of the groups protected by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, in which political groups are not included, Feierstein repoliticises the disappeared but, at the same time, and somewhat contradictorily, questions the innocence that defines them as victims of the repression of the dictatorship (pp. 43–48). Finally, Chapter 2 analyses the influence of the Holocaust in the aesthetic representations and memorialisation of the repression in Argentina. The conclusion argues that the adoption of the concept of genocide has allowed activists to hold a range of social and economic actors accountable for the repression, but that the downside is that any notion of reconciliation is unthinkable while the political identities and projects attributed to the disappeared are taken up uncritically in the present.
Chapter 3 turns to Spain, a country in which the influence of the Holocaust is much more implicit and indirect since Holocaust discourse has been adopted as the struggle of Argentinian activists became a source of inspiration in the 2000s and through Spain’s belated Europeanisation. Baer and Sznaider claim that activists contend that a truly European country committed to defending human rights must come to terms with its past. Besides, many aspects of the discourse (in particular, the very concept of ‘disappeared’) and practices of Spanish memory activists (for example, the use of pictures of Franco’s victims) are directly imported from Argentina. In other words, since the early 2000s Spain has gradually adopted a depoliticised, Holocaust-inspired Never Again paradigm that has eclipsed, though not entirely eliminated, the anti-fascist ‘No Pasarán’ (They shall not pass) inherited from the Civil War (1936–39). The authors explain that membership of the European Union has entailed commemoration of the Holocaust, which, in turn, has increased the visibility of the thousands of Republicans deported to Nazi concentration camps. However, a Holocaust discourse that concentrates on its Jewishness has also been used by conservatives to avoid equating Franco’s crimes with Nazi crimes in general (pp. 93–97). Baer and Sznaider conclude the chapter by arguing that ‘the Spanish case shows that the Holocaust, or the culture of human rights that springs from its definition as a crime against humanity, is not necessarily a catalyst for processes of overcoming the past. The Holocaust exists as a memory paradigm […] but not as a shared memory’ (pp. 99–100), as its recontextualisation can produce contradictory meanings and lessons for various actors.
The third and last case study is Eastern Europe (Chapter 4). This is a very interesting case owing to the role of Eastern countries in the Holocaust but also, unlike Western countries, the decades spent under Soviet yoke.
Only after 1989 did the Holocaust become relevant, and the question of collaboration overlapped with the questions about the crimes of communist rule or occupation. Thus, we encounter layered memory narratives and conflicts within a national framework of competitive victimhood and suffering (p. 106).
The concluding chapter of the book returns to the central idea that the Holocaust has become ‘a global symbol of ultimate evil’ (p. 133). However, rather than a closed narrative, it is a ‘memorial paradigm’ (p. 133) whose meaning and lessons remain contested and are rearticulated in a variety of local contexts. Yet this paradigm has profoundly changed the political values of societies. Baer and Sznaider turn to Sophocles’ Antigone to warn against the implications of Never Again for the politics of memory. Instead of the widespread ‘one-dimensional’ (p. 140) reading that opposes memory and justice to forgetting and peace, or Antigone to Creon, the authors recover the character of Haemon and the virtue of political prudence. The authors stress that their argument is not a defence of impunity but, rather, a call to take local contexts and voices into account in order to fulfil the goals of justice and memory that are otherwise seen as universal ideals.
This is an argument in favor of flexible principles. It is thus about compromise. These are the right principles to guide choices even when trying to reach the humanitarian goal of creating a society in which people live better, safer, freer, less fearful lives. It also implies a careful consideration of the benefits of burying the past and the drawbacks of remembrance (pp. 140–141).
The Holocaust paradigm essentialises the identities of victims and perpetrators, a rigid dichotomy that perpetuates itself in the present as some victims define themselves as the owners of memory and as the present is seen as a continuity of the past. Ultimately, this hinders the possibility of new beginnings. Nowadays, it is extremely difficult for states to sweep difficult pasts under the carpet. Yet ‘this in itself is no guarantee that memory will be “open” […] It is no guarantee for pluralism or hope’ (p. 147). Baer and Sznaider also argue that Judaism and its concept of remembering, zakhor, provide a less absolutist way of reconceiving the duty to remember than Never Again. In the final pages of the book, they defend an ethics of Never Again that is aware of its own limits and, since it aims at preventing the repetition of past crimes, is attentive to all human beings.
The three case studies in Memory and Forgetting in the Post-Holocaust Era are analysed from a critical perspective that should characterise any analysis of the politics of memory. For example, while Baer and Sznaider defend the legitimacy of the demands of Franco’s victims in Spain, they also question the ‘romantic mystification of the Second Republic’ by memory activists (p. 87) and ask whether the propaganda-driven memorialisation of the people killed by the Republicans during the Civil War by Franco’s regime can be seen as an appropriate form of reparation that justifies their neglect in democracy (p. 99). However, some of the arguments about the implications of the transnationalisation of the Holocaust paradigm are not new and have already been highlighted. Besides, the quality of the empirical chapters is uneven. The analysis of the Spanish case is very good, while Chapter 4 only handpicks a few illustrations of the authors’ main arguments. The chapter about Argentina reviews many examples of the influence of the Holocaust, but a striking feature is the fact that the bulk of the analysis is based on secondary literature. Very little new empirical evidence is provided. For example, Baer and Sznaider note that some grassroots memorial initiatives in Argentina ‘evince unequivocal Shoah connections’ (p. 52) and ‘echo’ a similar project to commemorate victims of Nazi persecution in Germany (p. 53). Primary or interview data would be extremely useful here to know whether the Argentine practice actually draws inspiration from the German project and to better understand the reasons why the Holocaust paradigm is seen as relevant to commemorate the victims of the Argentine dictatorship.
Nevertheless, the authors’ general reflections about the mantra Never Again and the challenging and bold lesson of Memory and Forgetting in the Post-Holocaust Era regarding the ‘dark side’ of the well-intentioned but complex idea of Never Again are an important message for activists, practitioners, scholars and citizens alike.