Now we should all acknowledge our Holocaust guilt.' Denmark and the Holocaust as European Identity

Författare

Sune Bechmann Pedersen

Summary, in English

The subject for this paper is the role of the Holocaust in contemporary

European politics of identity. The Council of Europe and the European

Parliament have recently adopted resolutions about the Holocaust and most

European states are now member of the Holocaust Task Force. In

international relations the acknowledgment of the nation’s role in the

history of the Holocaust has become increasingly important and several

academics have suggested that the Holocaust should and will compose the

cornerstone identity marker for a future common European identity.

The contemporary institutional practices and institutions promoting the idea

of the Holocaust as a uniting factor to the European peoples are analysed in

the paper with Denmark as a case. The three subjects of scrutiny are the

Danish Jewish Museum, the Auschwitz Remembrance Day and the teaching

of Holocaust history in the Danish education system. In addition, political

and academic discourse is also studied. The paper concludes that there is

currently no influential Danish promulgator of the idea that the Holocaust

composes a common European experience that unites the individual

Europeans.

Publiceringsår

2008

Språk

Engelska

Fulltext