Abandoned Memorial: State Collapse and the Yugoslav Exhibition at Auschwitz

Speaker: Jelena Subotic, Professor, Dept. of Social Science, Georgia State University

What happens to Holocaust memory in the aftermath of state collapse? During the Holocaust in Yugoslavia, more than 20,000 Jews, communists, Roma and other “enemies” of the Third Reich were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camp. Very few survived. At the end of World War II, communist Yugoslavia opened a national exhibition at Auschwitz Memorial Museum meant to honor Yugoslav victims murdered there. After Yugoslavia collapsed in a series of wars in the 1990s, successor states could no longer agree on what should be presented at the Yugoslav exhibition, and “Block 17” where it was housed remains empty and abandoned. This lecture offers an overview of the Holocaust in Yugoslavia and explains how Holocaust memory becomes politicized at times of great social change.

Presented by The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in partnership with Iowa State Department of History.

Free and open to the public, Registration required