Keywords
Holocaust, Shoah, Extermination Camp, Treblinka, Sobibór, Majdanek, Historical Memory, Memorialization, Myth
Abstract
The Nazi extermination camps of Treblinka, Sobibór, and Majdanek, all located in Eastern Europe, are understudied, underdiscussed, and undermemorialized in public and scholarly memory. In this paper, I seek to conduct case studies of these three camps, their histories, and their commemoration efforts. Ultimately, four main factors prevented these camps from achieving the solemn recognizability they deserve and from having their victims’ stories adequately told; little remains of these camps compared to concentration camps in Germany, fewer individuals survived them to emphasize their importance, the Soviet Union possessed near complete control of their study and commemoration, which allowed for them to intentionally neglected by Soviet and Polish authorities due to certain ideological difficulties they epitomized to Soviet narratives of the Second World War.
Recommended Citation
Bluestein, Isaac (2023) "Soviet Commemoration and Myth-Making of the Nazi Extermination Camps: Case Studies on Treblinka, Sobibór, and Majdanek," Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal: 4 (1), 5-29. https://works.swarthmore.edu/suhj/vol4/iss1/1
Included in
European History Commons, Holocaust and Genocide Studies Commons, Jewish Studies Commons, Slavic Languages and Societies Commons