Geschichtspolitik im erweiterten Ostseeraum und ihre aktuellen Symptome - Historical Memory Culture in the Enlarged Baltic Sea Region and its Symptoms Today

"Establishing “HolocaustMemory” – A Comparison of Estonia and Latvia (S. 159-160)

Eva-Clarita Pettai

Since regaining independence in 1991 the Baltic states have been in a process of reconstructing Baltic history of the 20th century, re-evaluating the existing records and interpretations and establishing a new narrative of the state and nation. This process has not been without turbulences and contradictions as the process of re-writing history directly correspondedwith the young nation states’ need for self-assurance and social stability.

A strong national narrative and new ways of public commemoration were introduced that left little room for alternative narratives or critical interventions. Such interventions, however, came already early on in form of outside criticism that accused Latvian and Estonian officials to neither legally nor morally sufficiently confront questions of past collaboration with the Nazi occupation powers committing crimes against humanity.

These demands came mostly from Western political activists, government representatives and Holocaust survivor organizations. They caught Baltic elites rather by surprise as the destruction of the European Jews during WWII and particularly in Eastern Europe had been largely ignored in the official Soviet historiography. Moreover, the primary interest for research and rectification of “historical truth” by the Baltic peoples was focused on the own nations’ suffering and destruction under Soviet rule, especially during the post-War late Stalinist period. In other words, Holocaust remembrance and research was, if not outright irrelevant, then at least of secondary importance to most people in the Baltics.

This lecture focuses on the question of how this has changed over the past two decades in both Estonia and Latvia. It does so with the fundamental assumption that the mass murder of Baltic Jews during WWII has played a central role in the above mentioned process of defining the young Baltic states’ memory politics in a context of domestic democratization and international (European) integration. First, Iwill give a brief overview of WWII history and memory during the immediate transition and early re-independence period (1988 – 1998).

This will be followed by a more thorough discussion of two main areas of Baltic memory politics, namely the work of the Estonian and Latvian presidential history commissions since 1998 and the field ofHolocaust education in Estonian and Latvian schools. Both areas will be placed into the broader context of publicpolitical discourses on WWII, the Holocaust and their place in collective (national) memory and for civic consciousness today."