Collective Consciousness, Individual Forgetting

The aim of my presentation is to display but one example of the wide variety of possible applications of bystander eyewitness oral history interviews produced at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). We recorded several dozens of interviews with ethnic Hungarians and Ukrainians who reside in Zakarpattia (Transcarpathian region), Ukraine. This large number of semi-structured interviews can be used for both quantitative and qualitative analysis. In this presentation I will discuss how the Holocaust which erased local Jewish communities is perceived by the elderly inhabitants of this region today. They suffered, and so did we is an oft-repeated refrain in our interviews. The narrative of the genocide of European Jewry in Zakarpattia is shaped by both the near-total absence of Jews (most of the survivors emigrated at some point after the war) and by the strong censorship experienced for half a century under communism. This narrative is further complicated by the dynamics between local ethnic groups. Some Ukrainian interviewees view their Hungarian compatriots as linked to their pre-war oppressors, while many among the ethnic Hungarian minority were affected by the Soviet regime's persecution. Many interviewees equivocate between the extermination of the Jews and other instances of state-sponsored mass violence experienced under Soviet rule. We hear a version of the following sentiment with uncomfortable frequency in these interviews: at least the children should not have been burned in the ovens. How do these different communities of witnesses reflect on the genocide?