Volume 67, Issue 4

Public discourses about wars and mass violence are often dominated by questions of guilt and victimhood as well as a focus on the figures of ‘perpetrators’ and ‘victims’. This can also be observed concerning the public remembrance of the 1992-1995 conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina. However, attempts were made here to promote the memory of another war-related figure: that of the rescuer who helped people ‘from the other side’. The author analyses these attempts at remembrance in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and places them within the context of global efforts to publicly acknowledge rescuers, in particular the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’.

In January 2019, the Ukrainian Orthodoxy received what is known as the tomos from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which established the independent Orthodox Church in Ukraine. The granting of autocephaly to the Orthodox Christians of Ukraine caused a deep crisis in the Orthodoxy and a conflict between Constantinople and Moscow. The Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) condemned the Ecumenical Patriarch’s action and accused the Patriarchate of Constantinople of encroaching on the ‘canonical territory’ of the ROC. The author examines the foundations of this formation of a new Orthodox Church, the religious and political factors influencing the process of its establishment, and the reaction of the Russian Orthodox Church leadership and Russian politicians. He also reflects on the consequences for relations within Orthodoxy, for ecumenical dialogue, and for contacts between Ukraine and Russia.

The Holocaust has become a globally recognized reference for suffering and has often been appropriated as a framework for (re-)understanding collective identities. This article examines the agenda of the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) in relation to the memory of the Holocaust in post-Milošević Serbia. It focuses on the Jasenovac Committee of the SOC and the role of its head, Bishop Jovan (Ćulibrk), in the memorialization of Staro Sajmište, a distinguished place of the Holocaust in occupied Serbia. Based on primary sources encompassing Orthodox media, official statements, and interviews with mnemonic agents in the region, the author argues that the SOC has established itself as an acknowledged actor in the remembrance of the Holocaust in Serbia and beyond. Such a position allows it to point out Serbian martyrdom as part of the Holocaust imaginary, reinforce Serbian victimhood-oriented collective identity, and capitalize on the symbolic advantages of ultimate victimhood for its own regenerative ends.

The exhibition ‘“We Live Word to Word.” Banat – Transylvania – Bukovina. Ethno graffiti of Southeastern Europe’ resulted from an interdisciplinary project seminar at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, based on a team ethnographic journey to Romania and Ukraine. Participants in the seminar, initiated in 2018, investigated how communities and togetherness have been constructed in multiethnic societies. The purpose was to find out what has remained of the region’s multicultural nature after the political changes of 1989. The team made their own observations, recorded interviews, and took notes, the resulting fragments of cultural diversity being later pieced together in the exhibition. Some contributions were colourful—even garish—while others were tender and withdrawn. Combined and linked, the final result seemed like a fleeting picture such as might have been sprayed from the aerosols of a street-artist — a sort of ‘ethnograffiti’. In this article, the authors reflect on how the exhibition was put together.