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Criminalizing Denial as a Form of Erasure: The Polish-Ukrainian-Israeli Triangle

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Memory Laws and Historical Justice

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Abstract

This chapter argues that recent laws criminalizing or penalizing certain versions of the past in Poland, Ukraine, and Israel, exploit the urge to prohibit denial of victimization as a tool to obfuscate their own unsavory past. Thus Ukraine has wanted Israel to recognize the Holodomor of 1931–1932 as genocide, even while denying Ukrainian collaboration in the Holocaust, and criminalizing any defamation of its World War II insurgents. Poland has criminalized denial of these very same insurgents’ ethnic cleansing operations as genocide, and penalizes assertions of Polish collaboration in the Holocaust. And, Israel condemns such practices of whitewashing the past by Poland and Ukraine even as it has legislated against commemorations of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing by Israeli forces of the Palestinians in 1948.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Turkish Penal Code as amended in 2008 states: “Any person who publicly denigrates the Turkish nation, the state of the Turkish Republic, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey or the judicial bodies of the state shall be sentenced to six months to two years of imprisonment.” See Nikolay Koposov, Memory Laws, Memory Wars: The Politics of the Past in Europe and Russia (New York: Cambridge UP, 2018) 111–112, who argues that this amendment was meant to protect those who deny the Armenian genocide (which is the official position of Turkey) rather than to criminalize its assertion. See also Jahnisa Tate, “Turkey’s Article 301: A Legitimate Tool for Maintaining Order or a Threat to Freedom of Expression?” Georgia Journal of International and Comparative Law 37.1 (2008): 181–217; Bülent Algan, “The Brand New Version of Article 301 of Turkish Penal Code and the Future of Freedom of Expression Cases in Turkey,” German Law Journal 9.12 (2008): 2237–2252.

  2. 2.

    The single best recent study of this entire complex is Koposov, Memory Laws. See also John-Paul Himka and Joanna B. Michlic, eds., Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe (Lincoln: Nebraska UP, 2013).

  3. 3.

    “Law of Ukraine №376–V ‘On Holodomor of 1932–33 in Ukraine’,” canada.mfa.gov.ua/en/ukraine-%D1%81%D0%B0/holodomor-remembrance/holodomor-remembrance-ukraine/holodomor-law-ukraine, accessed June 9, 2018. For a slightly different translation, see Koposov, Memory Laws, 189.

  4. 4.

    “Yushchenko Condemns Antisemitism at Knesset Plenum,” November 15, 2007 [in Hebrew], news.walla.co.il/item/1195390, accessed June 9, 2018.

  5. 5.

    Dan Williams, “Russian envoy says Israeli bill on Ukraine’s Stalin-era deaths a ‘wrong step’,” Reuters, February 7, 2018, www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-russia-ukraine/russian-envoy-says-israeli-bill-on-ukraines-stalin-era-deaths-a-wrong-step-idUSKBN1FR1YW, accessed June 9, 2018.

  6. 6.

    Omer Bartov, Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018) 158–264; Kai Struve, Deutsche Herrschaft, ukrainischer Nationalismus, antijüdische Gewalt: Der Sommer 1941 in der Westukraine (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2015); John-Paul Himka, Ukrainians, Jews and the Holocaust: Divergent Memories (Saskatoon, Sask.: Heritage Press, 2009).

  7. 7.

    David R. Marples, Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine (Budapest: Central European UP, 2007); Per Anders Rudling, “‘The Honor They So Clearly Deserve’: Legitimizing the Waffen-SS Galizien,” The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 26.2 (2013): 114–137; Per Anders Rudling, “The Cult of Roman Shukhevych in Ukraine: Myth Making with Complications,” Fascism 5.1 (2016): 26–65; Per Anders Rudling, “The OUN, the UPA and the Holocaust,” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian & East European Studies 2107 (2011): 1–72; John-Paul Himka, “Debates in Ukraine over nationalist involvement in the Holocaust, 2004–2008,” Nationalities Papers 39.3 (2011): 353–370; Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, “Debating, Obfuscating and Disciplining the Holocaust: Post-Soviet Historical Discourses on the OUN–UPA and Other Nationalist Movements,” East European Jewish Affairs 42.3 (2012): 199–241. See also Marco Carynnyk, “Foes of Our Rebirth: Ukrainian Nationalist Discussions About Jews, 1929–1947,” Nationalities Papers 39.3 (2011): 315–352.

  8. 8.

    Bartov, Anatomy of a Genocide, 265–302; Grzegorz Motyka, “Der Krieg im östlichen Galizien,” Karta 30 (2000): 36–37; Timothy Snyder, “The Causes of Ukrainian-Polish Ethnic Cleansing 1943,” Past and Present 179 (2003): 197–234; Mikolaj Terles, Ethnic Cleansing of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, 1942–1946 (Toronto: Alliance of the Polish Eastern Provinces, 1993).

  9. 9.

    See, e.g., Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust, trans. Haim Watzman (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993); Gulie Ne’eman Arad, “Israel and the Shoah: A Tale of Multifarious Taboos,” New German Critique 90 (2003): 5–26; Roni Stauber, The Holocaust in Israeli Public Debate in the 1950s: Ideology and Memory, trans. Elizabeth Yuval (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2007); Yechiel Klar, Yonat Klar, and Noa Schori-Eyal, “The ‘Never Again’ State of Israel: The Emergence of the Holocaust as a Core Feature of Israeli Identity and Its Four Incongruent Voices, Journal of Social Issues 69.1 (2013): 125–143. On the interaction between traumas and politics of memory of the Holocaust and the Nakba, see Bashir and Amos Goldberg, “Deliberating the Holocaust and the Nakba: Disruptive Empathy and Binationalism in Israel/Palestine,” Journal of Genocide Research 16.1 (2014): 77–99; Bashir and Amos Goldberg, eds., The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Grammar of Trauma and History (New York: Columbia UP, 2018).

  10. 10.

    See, e.g., Shira Stav, “Nakba and Holocaust: Mechanisms of Comparison and Denial in the Israeli Literary Imagination,” Jewish Social Studies 18.3 (2012): 85–98.

  11. 11.

    See, e.g., Marci Shore, “Conversing with Ghosts: Jedwabne, Żydokomuna, and Totalitarianism,” The Holocaust in the East: Local Perpetrators and Soviet Responses, ed. Michael David-Fox, et al. (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014), 5–28; Paweł Śpiewak, Żydokomuna: interpretacje historyczne (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo “Czerwone i Czarne,” 2012); Andrzej Żbikowski, U genezy Jedwabnego: Żydzi na Kresach Północno-Wschodnich II Rzeczypospolitej, wrzesień 1939–lipiec 1941 (Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2006); Antony Polonsky and Joanna B. Michlic, eds., The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy Over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2004); Marek Wierzbicki, Polacy i Żydzi w zaborze sowieckim: stosunki polsko-żydowskie na ziemiach północno-wschodnich II RP pod okupacją sowiecka (1939–1941) (Warsaw: Stowarzyszenie Kulturalne Fronda, 2001); Jan Tomasz Gross, Upiorna dekada: trzy eseje o stereotypach na temat Żydów, Polaków, Niemców i komunistów, 1939–1948 (Kraków: TAiWPN Universitas, 1998).

  12. 12.

    “Act of 18 December 1998 on the Institute of National Remembrance –Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (Journal of Laws, 19 December 1998),” www.memoriaabierta.org.ar/materiales/pdf/act_poland_1998_inr.pdf, accessed June 9, 2018. For a slightly different translation, see Koposov, Memory Laws, 161.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., 161–162.

  14. 14.

    “Full text of Poland’s controversial Holocaust legislation,” The Times of Israel, February 1, 2018, www.timesofisrael.com/full-text-of-polands-controversial-holocaust-legislation/, accessed June 9, 2018.

  15. 15.

    See, e.g., Tara John, “Poland Just Passed a Holocaust Bill That Is Causing Outrage,” Time, February 1, 2018, time.com/5128341/poland-holocaust-law/; Marc Santora, “Poland’s ‘Death Camp’ Law Tears at Shared Bonds of Suffering With Jews,” New York Times, February 6, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/02/06/world/europe/poland-death-camp-law.html; Brigit Katz, “Poland’s President Signs Highly Controversial Holocaust Bill into Law,” Smithsonian Magazine, February 7, 2018, www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/poland-grants-initial-approval-controversial-death-camp-bill-180967975/; Nikolay Koposov, “Memory Laws and Nationalist Lies,” Project Syndicate, March 7, 2018, www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/poland-holocaust-law-nationalist-tool-by-nikolay-koposov-2018-03; Alissa Valles, “Scrubbing Poland’s Complicated Past,” The New York Review, March 23, 2018, www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/23/scrubbing-polands-complicated-past/, all accessed June 9, 2018.

  16. 16.

    See note 12.

  17. 17.

    Bartov, Anatomy of Genocide, 82–128; Jan Grabowski, Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2013); Jan Tomasz Gross and Irena Grudzińska Gross, Golden Harvest: Events at the Periphery of the Holocaust (New York: Oxford UP, 2012); Havi Dreifuss, We Polish Jews? The Relations between Jews and Poles during the Holocaust—The Jewish Perspective (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2009 [in Hebrew]); Jan T. Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz. An Essay in Historical Interpretation (New York: Random House, 2006); Joanna Beata Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present (Lincoln: Nebraska UP, 2006); Natalia Aleksiun, “Jewish responses to Antisemitism in Poland, 1944–1947,” Contested Memories: Poles and Jews during the Holocaust and Its Aftermath, ed. Joshua D. Zimmerman (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers UP, 2003), 247–261; Frank Golczewski, “Der Jedwabne-Diskurs. Bemerkungen im Anschluß an den Artikel von Bogdan Musiał,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 50.3 (2002): 412–437; David Engel, “Patterns of Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1944–1946,” Yad Vashem Studies 26 (1998): 43–85; Frank Golczewski, Polnisch-jüdische Beziehungen 1881–1922: Eine Studie zur Geschichte des Antisemitismus in Osteuropa (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1981).

  18. 18.

    Alina Cherviatsova, “Memory Wars: The Polish-Ukrainian Battle about History,” Verfassungsblog: On Matters Constitutional, February 9, 2018, verfassungsblog.de/memory-wars-the-polish-ukrainian-battle-about-history/, accessed June 9, 2018.

  19. 19.

    Ibid. See also Koposov, Memory Laws, 201–203, with slightly different translations. Koposov rightly notes that the law introduced no specific sanctions for such acts.

  20. 20.

    Cherviatsova, “Memory Wars”; Koposov, Memory Laws, 205.

  21. 21.

    See, e.g., Rick Lyman, “Polish Parliament Approves Law Curtailing Courts’ Independence,” New York Times, July 21, 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/07/21/world/europe/poland-courts-independence.html; Pawel Sobczak, “Polish parliament, defying EU, approves judiciary overhaul,” Reuters, December 8, 2017, www.reuters.com/article/us-poland-judiciary-supremecourt/polish-parliament-defying-eu-approves-judiciary-overhaul-idUSKBN1E21PR; Christian Davies, “Polish MPs pass judicial bills amid accusations of threat to democracy,” The Guardian, December 8, 2017, www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/08/polish-mps-pass-supreme-court-bill-criticised-as-grave-threat, all accessed June 9, 2018.

  22. 22.

    See: www.polin.pl/en, accessed June 9, 2018.

  23. 23.

    Omer Bartov, “The Truth and Nothing But: The Holocaust Gallery of the Warsaw POLIN Museum in Context,” New Directions in the History of the Jews in the Polish Lands, ed. Antony Polonsky, Hanna Węgrzynek, Andrzej Żbikowski (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies Press, 2018), 111–118.

  24. 24.

    See, e.g., Dariusz Stola, Director of POLIN Museum, and Piotr Wiślicki, Chairman of the Board of the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland, “Statement of POLIN Museum concerning a proposed amendment to the Act on the Institute of National Remembrance,” January 29, 2018, www.polin.pl/en/news/2018/01/29/statement-of-the-director-of-polin-museum-concerning-a-proposed; Professor Andrzej Nowak, Jagiellonian University, and Professor Robert Frost, Fletcher Chair in History, University of Aberdeen, “An Open Letter to Mr. Mateusz Morawiecki, Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland,” February 27, 2018, www.polin.pl/en/news/2018/02/27/an-open-letter-to-mr-mateusz-morawiecki-prime-minister-of-the; “Polish ex-presidential candidate sues Jewish museum over tweet,” The Times of Israel, March 20, 2018, www.timesofisrael.com/polish-ex-presidential-candidate-sues-jewish-museum-over-tweet/; Eva Hoffman, “Hearing Poland’s Ghosts,” New York Review, March 22, 2018, www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/03/22/hearing-polands-ghosts/, all accessed June 9, 2018.

  25. 25.

    The official site of the memorial declares, “The Wall That Heals. Honoring the men and women who served in the controversial Vietnam War, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial chronologically lists the names of more than 58,000 Americans who gave their lives in service to their country.” See www.nps.gov/vive/index.htm, accessed June 9, 2018.

  26. 26.

    On the politics of memory in Ukraine, see, e.g., Christoph Mick, Lemberg, Lwów, L’viv, 1914–1947: Violence and Ethnicity in a Contested City (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue UP, 2016); Omer Bartov, Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2007). More generally on the violent potential of victimhood narratives, see Omer Bartov, “Defining Enemies, Making Victims: Germans, Jews, and the Holocaust,” The American Historical Review 103.3 (June 1998): 771–816.

  27. 27.

    “Born from the waves” refers to the iconic novel by Moshe Shamir, With His Own Hands [be-mo yadav] (Merkhavyah: Sifriyat Poalim, 1951 [in Hebrew]). See also A. B. Yehoshua, In Praise of Normality: Five Essays on the Question of Zionism (Tel Aviv: Schocken, 1984 [in Hebrew]); Oz Almog, The Sabra: The Creation of the New Jew, trans. Haim Watzman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Anita Shapira, “Where did the Negation of the Diaspora Go?” Alpayim 25 (2003 [in Hebrew]): 9–54; Yuval Dror, “From ‘Negation of the Diaspora’ to ‘Jewish Consciousness’: The Israeli Educational System, 1920–2000,” Israel Studies Forum 18.2 (2003): 58–82; Gideon Katz, “Negation of the Diaspora from an Israeli Perspective: The Case of A. B. Yehoshua,” Handbook of Israel, ed. Eliezer Ben-Rafael, et al. (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2016) II: 1116–1333.

  28. 28.

    Among the first to oppose the notion of “sheep to the slaughter” was the influential poet Nathan Alterman, whose poem, “The Day of Remembrance—and the Rebels,” was published in the newspaper Davar on April 30, 1954: “On Memorial Day the fighters and the rebels said: / Do not put us on a pedestal, to separate us from the Diaspora as a sacred light. / At this memorial hour we descend from the pedestal / To intermingle once again in the darkness with the history of the masses of Israel… / The fighters and the rebels said a share of the nation’s heroism and honor goes / Also to the Jewish fathers who said the underground will bring disaster, / And also to that boy or girl who / Went on and on till they were lost somewhere / And all they left behind is a little white sock / On a memorial stone in the archive.” But Alterman’s lines were not well received; it took the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, and the wars of 1967 and 1973, to finally undermine the distinction between the heroic rebels and the slaughtered sheep. See also: blog.nli.org.il/eichmann_trial/, accessed June 9, 2018. On the expulsion of the Palestinians as a dream come true, see Alon Confino, “Miracles and Snow in Palestine and Israel: Tantura, a History of 1948,” Israel Studies 17.2 (2012): 25–61; Alon Confino, “The Warm Sand of the Coast of Tantura: History and Memory in Israel after 1948,” History & Memory 27.1 (2015): 43–82.

  29. 29.

    The main exceptions at the time were the novella by S. Yizhar, Khirbet Khizeh, trans. Nicholas de Lange and Yaacob Dweck (Jerusalem: Ibis Editions, 2008, orig, pub. 1949), and the poem by Avot Yeshurun, “Passover on Caves,” published in 1952. For a series of essays on these and other writings on 1948, see Amir Eshel, et al., eds., “History and Responsibility: Hebrew Literature Facing 1948,” special issue, Jewish Social Studies 18.3 (2012): 1–224.

  30. 30.

    Central District 57/3/ Military Prosecutor, Defendants Major Malinki et al., Verdict XVII 90 (1958) 211–214. See also Leora Y. Bilsky, Transformative Justice: Israeli Identity on Trial (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004) 170. Further in Adi Parush, “Critique of the ‘Black Flag’ Test: The Verdict in the Kafr Qasim Affair, the Black Flag Test, and the Concept of a Manifestly Unlawful Order,” Kafr Qasim: Events and Myth, ed. Ruvik Rosenthal (Tel Aviv: Ha-Kibbutz ha-Meu’khad, 2000 [in Hebrew]), 131–177; Ziv Borer, “Clear and Obvious? How Can a Soldier Identify a Manifestly Unlawful Order?” Mishpat ve-Tsava 17 (2004 [in Hebrew]): 351–407; Keren Weidberg, “Justice Dr. Benjamin Halevy” (seminar paper, Law School, Haifa University, 2009 [in Hebrew]), 27–36.

  31. 31.

    See, e.g., Yehonatan Kilnger, “The Most Moral Army in the World” (June 18, 2006 [in Hebrew]): 2jk.org/praxis/?p=570; Avraham Burg, “The Half-Most Moral Army in the World” (April 5, 2016 [in Hebrew]): www.haaretz.co.il/opinions/.premium-1.2904314?=&ts=_1528508023351; Niki Gutman, “We Are the Most Moral Army in the World, and Hamas Exploits It” (May 17, 2018 [in Hebrew]): www.israelhayom.co.il/article/556857, all accessed June 9, 2018.

  32. 32.

    Weidberg, “Benjamin Halevy,” 32. There are various similarities here to the court-martial and conviction for premeditated murder of United States Army First Lieutenant William Calley for his part in the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War on March 16, 1968, in which up to 500 Vietnamese civilians were murdered. The court rejected Calley’s argument of obeying the order of his superiors and sentenced him to life in prison, but thanks to the public outcry in the United States, his sentence was drastically reduced even before President Nixon granted him clemency after only three and a half years under house arrest. See, e.g., Christopher J. Levesque, “The Truth Behind My Lai,” New York Times, March 16, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/03/16/opinion/the-truth-behind-my-lai.html; Seymour M. Hersh, “The Scene of the Crime,” New Yorker, March 30, 2015, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/30/the-scene-of-the-crime; Seymour M. Hersh, “Coverup-I,” New Yorker, January 22, 1972, www.newyorker.com/magazine/1972/01/22/i-coverup. According to the 2016 US Manual for Courts-Martial, “An order requiring the performance of a military duty or act may be inferred to be lawful and it is disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate. This inference does not apply to a patently illegal order, such as one that directs the commission of a crime.” See Article 90, 2 (a) (1): jsc.defense.gov/Portals/99/Documents/MCM2016.pdf?ver=2016-12-08-181411-957, all accessed June 9, 2018. This logic was applied in 2004 in the case of military personnel charged with mistreating prisoners and detainees in Iraq under orders.

  33. 33.

    Even the interim report of the IDF and the Israeli Foreign Ministry issued on June 14, 2015, notes that a total of 2125 Palestinians were killed during the operation, of whom 761 were “uninvolved civilians,” including “369 children under the age of 15… 284 women… and 108 men…” An additional 428 males aged 16–50 killed had not been identified as civilians or militants. See “Annex—Palestinian Fatality Figures in the 2014 Gaza Conflict,” mfa.gov.il/ProtectiveEdge/Documents/PalestinianFatalities.pdf. On material damage see, e.g., Jason Burke, “Gaza homes ‘uninhabitable’ as tens of thousands come back to rubble,” The Guardian, August 11, 2014, www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/11/damage-gaza-homes-israel-hamas-conflict; Jeremy Ashkenas, et al., “Assessing the Damage and Destruction in Gaza,” New York Times, August 15, 2014, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/03/world/middleeast/assessing-the-damage-and-destruction-in-gaza.html?_r=0, all accessed June 9, 2018.

  34. 34.

    A report by the Israeli Foreign Ministry on “factual and legal aspects” of the Gaza conflict in 2014, dated June 14, 2015, blames Hamas for crimes against humanity, while insisting that the IDF went out of its way to avoid civilian casualties and damage to structures. See mfa.gov.il/ProtectiveEdge/Pages/default.aspx and “Israel’s Investigation of Alleged Violations of the Law of Armed Conflict”: mfa.gov.il/ProtectiveEdge/Documents/IsraelInvestigations.pdf. See also Gerald M. Steinberg, et al., “NGOs and the Political-Legal Theater in Operation Protective Edge,” Strategic Assessment 19.1 (2016): 73–86: www.inss.org.il/wp-content/uploads/systemfiles/adkan19-1ENG_3_Steinberg%20et%20al.pdf. Further, e.g. Ralph Seliger, “How Vulnerable Is Israel To War Crimes Charges?” The New York Jewish Week, January 12, 2015, jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/how-vulnerable-is-israel-to-war-crimes-charges/; David Shulman, “Israel Without Illusions: What Goldstone Got Right,” New York Review, November 17, 2009, www.nybooks.com/daily/2009/11/17/israel-without-illusions-what-goldstone-got-right/, all accessed June 9, 2018.

  35. 35.

    See, e.g., Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust, trans. Haim Watzman (New York: Henry Holt, 2000), 255–322. See also Weidberg, “Benjamin Halevy,” 14–26.

  36. 36.

    Segev, Seventh Million, 323–386; Weidberg, “Benjamin Halevy,” 22–26; Hanna Yablonka, The State of Israel vs. Adolf Eichmann, trans. Ora Cummings with David Herman (New York: Schocken Books, 2004).

  37. 37.

    Cited in Omer Bartov, The “Jew” in Cinema: From The Golem to Don’t Touch My Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2005), 87, 91–92.

  38. 38.

    See, e.g., Doron Bar, “Holocaust and Heroism in the Process of Establishing Yad Vashem (1942–1970),” Dapim 30.3 (2016): 166–190; Jeffrey C. Blutinger, “Yad Vashem and the State of Holocaust Education in Israeli Schools in the 1960s,” Jewish Social Studies 21.1 (2015): 123–150; Amos Goldberg, “The ‘Jewish Narrative’ in the Yad Vashem Global Holocaust Museum,” Journal of Genocide Research 14.2 (2012): 187–213.

  39. 39.

    Further on this in Bartov, Erased.

  40. 40.

    See, e.g., Andre Liebich and Oksana Myshlovska, “Bandera: Memorialization and Commemoration,” Nationalities Papers 24.5 (2014): 1–21; Wilfried Jilge, “‘Nationalist-Ukrainian Struggle for Liberation.’ The Re-evaluation of the Second World War in Ukraine,” Osteuropa 58.6 (2008): 167–186; Wilfried Jilge, “The Politics of History and the Second World War in Post-Communist Ukraine (1986/1991–2004/2005),” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 54.1 (2006): 50–81.

  41. 41.

    That is the basic contention of Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010).

  42. 42.

    See “Records of the Law Book,” March 30, 2011, www.nevo.co.il/law_word/law14/law-2286.pdf, 686.

  43. 43.

    Appeal by Hagai Elad and Hassan Jabarin: www.acri.org.il/he/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/nakbaletter.pdf.

  44. 44.

    The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, “Abolish the Nakba Law,” January 5, 2012, www.acri.org.il/he/11916; Appeal to Supreme Court of Justice, case 3429/11, May 4, 2011, www.acri.org.il/he/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/hit-4.5.11.pdf.

  45. 45.

    “Abolish the Nakba Law”; Supreme Court of Justice ruling, case 3429/11, January 5, 2012, elyon1.court.gov.il/files/11/290/034/C04/11034290.C04.htm.

  46. 46.

    In this context, see the remarkable and largely forgotten novel by Dan Ben-Amotz, To Remember, to Forget, trans. Zeva Shapiro (Tel-Aviv: Metziuth, 1979), about this major Israeli public figure’s relationship to his Diaspora past and his remaking into the iconic Israeli.

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    Omer Bartov

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    Elazar Barkan

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Bartov, O. (2022). Criminalizing Denial as a Form of Erasure: The Polish-Ukrainian-Israeli Triangle. In: Barkan, E., Lang, A. (eds) Memory Laws and Historical Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94914-3_8

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