From the West European Commemoration of Auschwitz to a Pan-European Commemoration of Auschwitz and the GULag Archipelago: An Inevitable Consequence of the Eastward Extension of the EU for Commemoration Policies

Abstract

The numerous motives for the inter-state unification of western Europe after the Second World War included in particular the desire in relation to peace and security policy to end at all costs the age of wars between the nation states in Europe and the aggressive, intolerant nationalism, and to prevent a Third World War. For this reason, a closely associated European community of states was to be created in democratic, market economy-oriented western Europe. It was to remain open to all European states, particularly also those in the east, as soon as they had liberated themselves from communist rule.

The state-institutional integration in western Europe was to be underpinned by close economic and social integration and the encouragement through education of reconciliation between peoples, initially above all between Germans and French, and towards a European common consciousness. During the Cold War, the motivation to avoid war was supplemented by the motivation of anti-totalitarianism, in particular, anti-Nazism. It was not until the 1960s that the policy of mass murder of the Jews and other groups entered the general consciousness of the people as a particular characteristic of National Socialism. At the same time, policies relating to history, remembrance, memorials and commemoration were given greater significance and thus occasionally became the subject of dispute.

The murder of the Jews has officially been commemorated in Israel since 1959. In Germany, in 1996, 27 January became a national memorial day “for the victims of National Socialism”. The condemnation of the murder of the Jews and of policies of violence in general became a core element of the political identity of the Federal Republic of Germany and also of the European Union. In 2005, the United Nations declared this day a Holocaust memorial day.

The acceptance of post-communist countries into the EU brought with it demands to also commemorate the victims of the communist mass murders on an equal basis with those perpetrated under National Socialism. Finally, in April 2009, the European Parliament set 23 August as a memorial day for the victims of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. In this regard, a heated dispute broke out over the equal weight given to National Socialist and communist rule and of both mass murders. Conversely, it is certainly possible that the commemoration of the genocide of the Jews and Sinti and Roma can be linked as a historically singular, exterministic event to the commemoration of other wide-ranging acts of genocide and mass murder, since the commemoration of the murder of the Jews is also intended to guard against future genocide and mass murder.