Abstract
Today, Raoul Wallenberg is decorated with honorary citizenships, commemorated by innumerable newspaper articles and books, documentary as well as feature films, theater plays, symphonies, and musicals. Stamps of several nations have published his portrait. Streets, public buildings, and institutions in many countries bear his name. Monuments are just one part of the huge Wallenberg commemoration.
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Notes
For the importance of the series Holocaust for the historic event of the Holocaust to become better known, see for example Ulf Zander, “Historical Culture and the Nazi Genocide in the Television Era,” in Klas-Göran Karlsson and Ulf Zander (eds), Echoes of the Holocaust. Historical Cultures in Contemporary Europe (Lund, 2003), 255–92 (including many references to other works on the series).
To avoid confusion, this is how I use the term Holocaust: I follow Yehuda Bauer’s definition of it as the attempt to annihilate every member of European Jewry. Yehuda Bauer, Die dunkle Seite der Geschichte: Die Shoah in historischer Sicht. Interpretationen und Re-Interpretationen (Frankfurt/Main, 2001), see the Introduction and Chapter 1, “Was war die Shoah?,” especially 30. Even if some favor enlarging the term to apply to other victim groups too, in the context of this study, Bauer’s definition is fully satisfying: Raoul Wallenberg came to Budapest with the purpose of saving the remaining Hungarian Jews, even if he eventually helped other persecuted groups as well.
Dan Diner, Beyond the Conceivable: Studies on Germany, Nazism, and the Holocaust (Berkeley, 2000), see 1 and 3.
See also Michael Jeismann, Auf Wiedersehen Gestern: Die deutsche Vergangenheit und die Politik von morgen (Munich, 2001). His study shows how the Holocaust became an important part of international politics.
The Holocaust Conference of Stockholm in January 2000 can be seen as a culmination of an earlier development. This Conference on Education, Remembrance and Research gathered more than 40 heads of state together to discuss the question of how recognition of the Holocaust can best serve democracies to become aware of intolerance and xenophobia. See the conference homepage <http://www.holocaustforum.gov.se/index.html> [this site was still in use when accessed on March 6, 2007, but was no longer available when accessed in July 2008]. For the conference itself, see especially Jens Kroh, Transnationale Erinnerung: Der Holocaust im Fokus geschichtspolitischer Initiativen (Frankfurt/New York, 2006).
To give just three examples, representative of the many publications and films that commemorate the unknown rescuers, see Wolfgang Benz (ed.), Überleben im Dritten Reich: Juden im Untergrund und ihre Helfer (Munich, 2003)
Bertil Neuman, En miljon bortglömda hjältar: berättelser om mod och goda gärningar under Förintelsen, 2nd, enlarged and rev. edn (Stockholm, 2000); or the homepage of research project “Silent Heroes” Memorial Center <http://www.gedenkstaette-stille-helden.de/english.html> [reaccessed July 22, 2008].
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© 2009 Tanja Schult
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Schult, T. (2009). The Monuments as Part of the Wallenberg Commemoration. In: A Hero’s Many Faces. The Holocaust and its Contexts. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230236998_6
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