Should There Be One Universal Narrative for Remembering the Holocaust? On a Universal Narrative of the Holocaust and Remembering the Past in Ukraine

Do we need a universal narrative of the Holocaust? Should such a narrative become the basis for remembering and commemorating the genocide of the Jews? These are vast questions that can obviously not be comprehensively addressed in this short essay. My intention here is rather to consider some implications of raising these questions, and to ponder the potential consequences of the answers we may propose.

To my mind, the simple, though perhaps somewhat evasive answer to the first question is Yes, and No. Let us examine what is meant by the notion of a universal narrative for remembering a historical event. In order to construct such a narrative of remembrance, I believe, we must first agree on what needs to be remembered. As a historian, I would insist that remembrance of a historical event must rely first and foremost on some sort of consensus over “what actually happened.” Without a general agreement over the historical facts, remembrance can veer in widely diverging directions. Hence, a “universal narrative for remembering the Holocaust” must be rooted in a universal historical narrative of the Holocaust. But is that possible? Has there ever been such a narrative? Are we closer to it now than in the past, or heading in the opposite direction? Is it even desirable to have such a universal historical narrative?

Again, to my thinking, the answer must be both, Yes and No. This is the case not only for the Holocaust, but for any major historical event. Take for instance the French and the Russian Revolutions, or the two world wars; or European colonialism, decolonization and neocolonialism. Generally speaking, most people with a modicum of historical knowledge will agree on some of the basic geographical, chronological facts, and perhaps even on the most general interpretive frameworks regarding the causes, nature, and consequences of such events. But clearly, from this point on, the divergence of views will rapidly grow, be it for temporal reasons (colonialism was seen differently in 1890s Britain than it is today) or across geographies (African views of colonialism and neocolonialism differ from those of the French). The ultimate impossibility of creating a universal narrative of any major historical event means that its memory and commemoration will also differ from place to place and time to time. Suffice it to note, for instance, that the current Russian memory of the Great Patriotic War differs substantially from the British and American memories of the Second World War (indeed, these may be memories of two radically different wars); even the chronology of the war is different, considering that for Britain and France it began in 1939, and for the Soviet Union (and the United States) in 1941.

This divergence of historical experience and its consequent commemoration has to do not only with states and nations, but also with individual and collective experiences outside the framework of states and their subsequent politics of memory. Here, the cases of colonialism and the Holocaust are especially pertinent, but of course so are numerous other historical events. The German experience of Nazism, the Second World War, and the Holocaust, differs substantially from that of German Jews. But if that is the case, do we accept the Nazi narrative that the Jews in Germany were not German? Do we then speak of a Jewish national memory, even though German Jews had a substantially different identity from that of Jews in, say, Poland or Ukraine? Conversely, if Germany opts to incorporate the history and memory of the Holocaust into its historical narrative and commemorative practices, as in the commemoration of all victims of war and tyranny in the newly built Neue Wache (“New Guard”) in Berlin, does that not distort the history of an event whose very essence was the removal of one group of citizens from the nation, its history, and its collective memory? Is the very idea of a universal historical narrative essentially ahistorical, then, making any commemorative practices based on it effectively fraudulent, even when the intentions are well meaning?

To be sure, one can also make the opposite argument: if we cannot agree on some kind of a universal historical narrative, then, so to speak, all bets are off; everything that has occurred in the past is relative to a point of view, open to any interpretation, or, ultimately, can be denied. This was, essentially, the argument of such “negationists” as Robert Faurisson in the 1980s. How do we know that the Holocaust happened, or happened as some historians, or some survivors have told us? This is, of course, also part of the politics of the “big lie”, whether carried out by fascists and Bolsheviks in the 1930s and 1940s, or practiced to ever greater effect by various authoritarian regimes today: such as Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Turkey, as well as by former American President Donald Trump and his numerous followers today. If we cannot all agree on some fundamental facts, whether in the past or in the present, then not only can we reach no consensus on commemoration and remembrance, but we also open ourselves to perpetual manipulation, whereby those who lie best (about the past and the present) will also own the future.

Is there a middle way between enforcing a universal narrative of the past that obfuscates and at times erases entire groups and experiences, on the one hand, and denying the very existence of a past that we can all agree on, however complex, contradictory, and perpetually open to reinterpretation it may be, on the other? I believe such a venture is possible, but only if we remain both constantly vigilant and open-minded: aware that while the past does always change depending on where and when we look back at it, the past is also always subject to abuse by those who want to master the future. Historians can and should play a major role in this struggle, and any politics of memory, remembrance, and commemoration must be subjected to reasoned, balanced, and careful historical scrutiny by historians, knowing full well that at least since the nineteenth century, historians have all too often been recruited by political regimes and ideologies, or have appointed themselves, as manipulators of the past and false prophets of the future.

Where does this leave us in the concrete case of Ukraine, as well as Ukrainian and Jewish memories and identities? Here, I think, we can identify an example of how a middle way between universal narrative and national specificity can play an important role in coming to terms with a contested and traumatic past. As I see it, there is an urgent need in Ukraine to create a more comprehensive, critical, and well documented record of the Second World War and the Holocaust. This record has to conform to the more general historical picture of the Holocaust that has emerged in the historiography of the past few decades, but at the same time must focus on the often poorly documented events in the country itself. Such reconstruction will come at a price, as invariably happens when nations look back at their own “dark years,” and will shed an uncomfortable light on those who have until now sheltered in the shadow of denial and obfuscation. Other nations have gone through this process, with varying degrees of success. This does not mean that we should throw the baby out with the bathwater: the experience of the pain and suffering of Ukrainians, stretching back to the 1917 Revolution and the Civil War (1917–1922) that followed it, and into the post-1945 period, forms a basic component of the Ukrainian national identity, as it should. So too is the struggle of Ukrainians for national independence and for the preservation of Ukrainian culture, which has reached a new climax with the illegal and brutal Russian invasion in February 2022. But in writing the history of the Holocaust in Ukraine one cannot flinch from facing the truth of massive Ukrainian collaboration, complicity, and self-directed actions in the persecution and murder of their Jewish neighbors, at times by those who, especially since 1991, have been glorified as freedom fighters.

Such historical research must come from within Ukraine, and be then taught in schools and universities. Again, not only the dark sides of this past need to be researched and reconstructed. The coexistence of Jews within Ukrainian society must be written about and taught. The fact that towns throughout Ukraine, and certainly in the former eastern Galicia, where the majority of the urban population before the Second World War was Jewish and Polish, do not teach that history in their own towns to their own students, explains why it is also so difficult to remember and commemorate the murder of these Jews (and the ethnic cleansing of the Poles) in these very towns by or with the help of their Ukrainian neighbors. Once that past has been taught, the commemoration of the few acts of heroism and sacrifice by those who tried to save their neighbors will no longer appear as an attempt to whitewash the past, but rather as truly exceptional and therefore, remarkable moments of goodness at a time of mayhem, mass murder, and betrayal. I can imagine local Ukrainian historians and students researching the prewar past of their own towns and the events that took place there during the war, as so many German historians did in the 1980s, thereby breaking the wall of resentful silence and evoking empathy for their former neighbors, so many of whom now lie in mass graves surrounding these towns.

This is the ground upon which commemoration and remembrance can grow. To begin commemoration without setting the historical record straight is bound to distort the past rather than allow it to give meaning to and shed light on the present. This does not mean that a single acceptable narrative will be created, but that Ukrainian historians will engage with the most painful parts of their history, as historians have done in Poland, Germany, and France, for instance. Remembrance should never be about forgetting, nor should commemoration be about erasure. First, let us tell what happened, as truthfully as we can. Only then, will we be able to think about how that past can be remembered.

There is another reason why this critical engagement with the Ukrainian past is so important. Since its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has been trying to legitimize this illegal action by claiming to be conducting a denazification operation. The reason that this blatant propaganda has found some purchase is precisely because Ukraine has failed to confront those dark years in its past. There is no question that today’s Ukraine is a democracy, and Russia is not. Once the process of coming to terms with the violent and intolerant strains of Ukrainian ethnonationalism begins in earnest, Ukraine will be able to look to the future with greater confidence and honesty, and the allegations disseminated by Russia will be all the more easily exposed as being nothing more than a hopeless attempt to justify the unjustifiable.