The Fate of the Jews Under Communist Eyes

Description: In the framework of the "History after the Fall" collaborative project, on the occasion of the sixty-year anniversary of the deportation of the close to six-hundred thousand Hungarian Jews, OSA wishes to organize an exhibition on the representation of the deportation and the fate of the Central European Jewry under the decades of Communist rule. The exhibition would concentrate on the different East and Central European national exhibitions in Auschwitz before 1989, when Communist propaganda presented the history of the twentieth century, mainly as the story of the permanent fight between Fascism and Communism, thereby erasing the Jews from the concentration camps and from history. Under the Communist description the inmates of the camps were predominantly political prisoners, antifascist resistors against Fascism.
As a result of the long decades of Communist indoctrination, after the Fall, the East and Central European countries found themselves helpless in the face of resurgent extreme right wing, racist and anti-Semitic propaganda: if the only problem with Fascism was its anti-Communist nature, than what is the problem with being neo-Fascist after the crimes of Communism became public?

Objectives: The exhibition aims at initiating a new public debate, a post-Communist, Central European version of the German "Historikerstreit". The exhibition would be accompanied by visible media campaign, addressing the moral responsibility of the Central European societies under right- and left-wing totalitarian regimes.

Responsible Co-organizer: CEU/OSA

Other Co-organizers involved: KARTA

Target Group: General Public

Timetable: Autumn 2004, duration 2 months

Expected Results: Increase informed public debate and shed new light on the ideological foundations of post-communist neo-fascist movements in the region.

The Representation of Jews under Communism

Description: The seminar will be part of the normal academic instruction at the History Department of the Central European University . A semester-long seminar with similar, but not quite identical topic will be organized by scholars at the Romanian Institute of Recent History. Working on the syllabus, and putting together the reader will be a collaborative work. During the semester, professors from Budapest and Bucharest will visit each other's institution and will take over the class for a week. The two classes at the two locations will be part of an e-group, so the students will be in touch with each other throughout the semester.
The important historical issue, related to the exhibition at the Open Society Archives, will be discussed from multiple perspectives, relying on the historical experiences of the different historical environments.

Objectives: Clarify our historical understanding of this issue under the former Communist regimes.

Responsible Co-organizer: CEU/OSA, KARTA, HAIT (Budapest, Warsaw, Dresden). Faculty will be exchanged among participating institutions.

Other Co-organizers involved: All

Target Group: European Academic community.

Timetable: 2004, duration 1 semester

Expected Results: The multi-ethnic nature of the class at the CEU, located in Budapest, and the specificity of the Romanian case study would provide a rich and unusual learning environment.

Fascism and Communism

Description: Advanced graduate students would analyze new interpretations of totalitarian regimes. The main focus will be on recent historiographical schools in East and West, on new archival documents and on new ideologically motivated conclusions of recent research.

Objectives: To see and to show the interrelationships between these two defining regimes of the tragic twentieth century history.

Responsible Co-organizer: CEU/OSA, KARTA, HAIT, ICH, ZZF (Budapest, Warsaw, Dresden, Prague, Berlin) Faculty will be exchanged among participating institutions.

Other Co-organizers involved: All

Target Group: Advanced graduate students

Timetable: 2005, duration 1 semester

Expected Results: A comprehensive historiographical assessment of new developments on the interrelationships between fascism and Communism in history writing.

Historical Comparison of Fascism and Communism

Description: The common 19th century roots of radical utopian ideologies and social movements. The urge to deep continuous social intervention on the macro-sphere. The problematic nature of historical comparison; the secret agendas behind comparing totalitarian regimes; the use of history as ultima ratio in contemporary political debates. Anti-fascism description of 20th century history, and the resurrection of neo-fascism after the fall of the Communist regimes.

Objectives: Provoke professional historical and public debate over these contested and until now repressed historical and ideological issues.

Responsible Co-organizer: IRIR (Bucharest)

Other Co-organizers involved: CEU/OSA

Target Group: General Public

Timetable: Spring, 2005, duration 2 months

Expected Results: Raise general consciousness of public, stimulate and contribute to important public debate on these sensitive issues.

Comparing Fascism and Communism

Description: The workshop would concentrate on the key methodological and theoretical issues of the comparative method. Marc Bloch's ideas would be reassessed in the light of the historical works on fascist-communist comparison. The professional, political, and moral pitfalls of comparison.

Objectives: Raise historic awareness by the analysis of the iconic moments under the Communist regimes, supported by primary materials, essential documents, and multi-media presentation of the times.

Responsible Co-organizer: IRIR

Other Co-organizers involved: All

Target Group: Academic community and advanced graduate students

Timetable: May 2005, duration 2 days

Expected Results: Stimulate and contribute to professional debates, initiate important dialogue among historians from opposing ideological camps. Set an example for civilized social dialogue.

Historical Revisionism

Description: The workshop would focus on the practice and background assumptions of rewriting history. Besides the use and abuse of the middle ages in the newly independent and post-communist states, the conference would focus on the revisions of twentieth century history in Europe after 1989. The themes would include the history of World War II, collaboration and resistance, the Cold War and the history of Communism. Besides East and Central European cases, French, Italian and American historiographical examples would be analyzed.

Objectives: To treat recent historical revisionism as one of the defining elements of the post-Communist intellectual landscape in Europe.

Responsible Co-organizer: ICH (Prague)

Other Co-organizers involved: All

Target Group: Professional historians, the media, university students

Timetable: February 2006, duration 2 days

Expected Results: To put this important agenda on the intellectual map of informed European public debates.

A Cold War Chronolgoy: 1949-1989

Description: Berlin 1948, 1953, Poznan and Budapest 1956, Prague 1968, Russian Dissidents, Poland 1971, 1978, Solidarnosc, 1989. Using and analyzing the local and international contexts of these key events; the European reactions consequences. Historical documents, documentary films, home-movies, and photographic collections.

Objectives: Raise historic awareness by the analysis of the iconic moments under the Communist regimes, supported by primary materials, essential documents, and multi-media presentation of the times.

Responsible Co-organizer: Civica (Sighet)

Other Co-organizers involved: All

Target Group: General Public

Timetable: Autumn 2005, duration 2 months

Expected Results: Raise historical consciousness of the general public, stimulate and contribute to public debate

A Living Museum : how does memory pass on from one generation to another

Description: The workshop would address the important theoretical issues of collective memories, representation of martyrs, victims, victors and protagonists of different regimes. The death and rebirth of memorials. The function of memorials in public awareness. The role of memorials in creating, maintaining and changing historical identities.

Objectives: Reassessing important public aesthetic, ideological and historical issues.

Responsible Co-organizer: Civica

Other Co-organizers involved: All

Target Group: The workshop will be open to the public, the proceedings of the seminars would be published in a volume, representatives of the media will be invited, and faculty members of different universities would be encouraged to participate actively at the collective work.

Timetable: July 3-5, 2005

Expected Results: Region-wide revaluation of the function and role memorials in Central Europe.

Social Policies and Public Health of totalitarian regimes

Description: A comparative analysis of the public health policy of fascist Italy, the Third Reich and the Communist regimes (cancer research, public hygiene, psychiatric treatment, etc.), and an effort to understand the peculiar nature of the centralized totalitarian welfare state.

Objectives: The initiate the study of the neglected field, open to comparison.

Responsible Co-organizer: CEU/OSA, HAIT (Dresden, Prague). Faculty will be exchanged among participating institutions.

Other Co-organizers involved: All

Target Group: Advanced graduate student

Timetable: 2006, duration 1 semester

Expected Results: To thematize this important issue for further scholarly work.

Post-Communist Anti-Communism

Description: The workshop would analyze the documents (textbooks, feature-, documentary- and propaganda films, exhibition catalogues, memorials, traces of historical remembrance) that the student participants of the "History after the Fall" project collect in the former Communist countries. The workshop tries to locate the historical perception of Europe in East and Central Europe, influenced by the need to come to terms with the legacy of the recent past. Silence around central issues of the post World War II decades has a profound impact on how recent history is perceived in the Eastern parts of Europe .

Objectives: The aim of the workshop is to contribute to understanding the nature and the scholarly and political consequences of historical revisionism from an anti-Communist perspective.

Responsible Co-organizer: CEU/OSA

Other Co-organizers involved: All

Target Group: The workshop will be open to the public, the proceedings of the seminars would be published in a volume, representatives of the media will be invited, and faculty members of different universities would be encouraged to participate actively at the collective work.

Timetable: October 2006, 2 days

Expected Results: Public discussion on these issues might contribute to a more constructive role the former Communist countries might play in the community of European nations.

Workshop and seminar materials 1.

Description: Collection of essays based on the work of the "Fascism and Communism" parallel seminar. The essays, written by both senior and junior scholars would be the result of an extended collective work, including advanced graduate students, who study these topics with a fresh eye. The work would also include the result of the "Historical Comparison" exhibition.

Objectives: To reach both the professional and the interested general public and initiate a new wave of public debate.

Responsible Co-organizer: CEU Press

Other Co-organizers involved: All

Target Group: Academic community, students

Timetable: December 2006

Expected Results: A serious, unusual scholarly work