The conference “Memory of the Holocaust: the Common and the Divisive” took place in Moscow on September 25-26, 2013. The conference was organized by the MEMORIAL Historical, Educational, Human Rights And Charitable Society, the EVZ Foundation, and the Heinrich Böll Foundation.

Over two days of eventful work, scholars, researchers, teachers, museum workers, and public figures from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Germany, Italy, and Israel discussed the problems of contemporary memory of the Catastrophe in European countries. Special attention was given to the situation in post-Socialist countries.

The conference was dedicated to the different practices and mechanisms of recording and reproducing memory in modern Europe, and not to the historical aspects of the tragedy itself. The talks and discussions involved many difficult and ambiguous questions of preserving and reproducing the memory of the tragedy in contemporary social, political, and intellectual contexts, which are different for every European country. The scholars examined conflicts between different versions of historical memory of war and political ideologies, including state-approved versions that influence collective identies and that are open in varying degrees to commemorating those who were killed in the Holocaust and learning the lessons of this mid-XX century tragedy. Many contemporary problems are largely pre-determined by how the current political and intellectual elites, as well as societies as a whole, are either unprepared or unwilling to learn the lessons of the past. In this context, an honest analysis and reflection upon different memory practices as well as an exhange of experience as part of civil society become especially important.

A separate panel was dedicated to contemporary anti-Semitism in different countries of the region.

EAJC General Council member Vyacheslav Likhachev spoke on how anti-Semitism relates to the electoral strategies of the radical right in different post-Soviet countries.