Trivialization of World War Two and Shoah in Greece: Uses, Misuses and Analogies in Light of the Current Debt Crisis

The Holocaust Museum of Greece, Thessaloniki: In Whose Memory?

“…Setting up an expert committee and compiling an 800-page report to support reparation claims (Králová and Karasová 2015, 321), the conservative Samaras government (New Democracy; 2012–2015) helped stir up anti-German sentiment (Public Issue 2013). The national memory of WWII, which centered on Greek victimhood, was blatantly exploited in Greek political and public discourse (Droumpouki 2013, 190–191; Bickes et al 2015, 343–344). The reparation claims were promptly picked up on by SYRIZA, which promised to successfully conclude Greek-German talks once elected.…”

“…Profiting from xenophobic reactions within Greek society from the peaking migration crisis, the far-right XA enjoyed exceptional political success, even becoming the third-largest party in the 2015 legislative elections. Much to the dismay of Greece’s Jewish Communities, the XA openly used antisemitic rhetoric, blaming “Jews and Zionists” for instigating the Greek economic crisis (Droumpouki 2013, 191) and accusing them “of seeking to eliminate the Greek nation through US-induced globalization and cosmopolitanism” (Ellinas 2013, 551).…”

“…While significantly more attention has been focused on the Holocaust in Greece over the past two decades (Droumpouki 2013(Droumpouki , 2016Molho 2016;Apostolou 2018;Lewkowicz 2006;Králová 2017), the HMG project has yet to be subjected to wider scholarly or public debate. Such an omission is not new, as demonstrated by historians and memory scholars, sometimes even in comparative studies (Himka and Michlic 2013;Makhotina et al 2015, most recently, e.g., Radonić 2021.…”

Laughing to forget or to remember? Anne Frank memes and mediatization of Holocaust memory

“…Holocaust denial; Whine, 2020) and promoting communication practices which cultivate disengaged or cynical attitudes toward the past suffering (Hoskins, 2020). Such trivialization – or ‘banalization’ (Misztal, 2008) – of painful memories not only challenges the canonical narratives of mass atrocities, but also can potentially reinforce existing discriminatory practices by stimulating stigmatization of the Other (Droumpouki, 2013). These concerns become particularly pronounced considering the acceleration of translation of the analog commemoration models into the digital ones following the COVID pandemic (Ebbrecht-Hartmann, 2021) that leads to the past being increasingly interacted with in environments, which are less controlled by the memory institutions.…”

Rethinking the multiple meanings of the Mediterranean through Lawrence Osborne’s Beautiful Animals (2017)

“…Northerners or Westerners, as Lauren Talalay (2013) has shown, were furthermore inclined to view the crisis as Greece squandering its classical heritage. Greeks themselves, on the other hand, leant towards conceiving of the austerity measures in terms of another German occupation (Droumpouki, 2013) given the outsized role Germany played in the negotiations, but also as a new form of colonization taking after the Ottoman Empire (Knight, 2012). In the wake of the events of 2008, both the disastrous financial situation and mass migration to and through Greece were also viewed in terms of a twin crisis for the Greek economy, politics, and society (Lafazani, 2018).…”