Rebecca L. Golbert

Abstract

Through the ethnographic site of Pechora and its conceptual embodiments, I have sought to explore the overlaps of Ukrainian and Jewish memory, the politics of commemorative and memorial practices, the relationship of archival history to living memory, and the role of local Holocaust sites in contemporary social relations and identity practices. I aim also to provide a case study of the structure and meaning of the Holocaust in Ukraine, with its keen differences (from other regional sites of the Holocaust) in policy and practice, marking survivor and witness experiences and memories in distinct ways, which, for the most part, have yet to find articulation in official Holocaust discourses. The intersections of culture, power, and history inherent in processes of remembering and memorializing the Holocaust lie at the foundations of this study.