Paper short abstract:

Romanian public culture has overtly acknowledged the Romanian participation in the Holocaust very late, officially only at the beginning of this century, with the Wiesel state report (2003). Antisemitism and the (lack of) remembrance of the Romanian Holocaust then developed a digital turn.

Paper long abstract:

Romanian public culture has overtly acknowledged the Romanian participation in the Holocaust very late, officially only at the beginning of this century, with the Wiesel state report (2003). My paper will present an overview of the topic for the last three decades or so, emphasizing the religious meaning of the Holocaust and the strategies (some inevitably seemingly religious or pseudo-religious) in trivializing or in negating and then excising the Holocaust from the Romanian interwar and post-war history. Even if the process is unfortunately not unknown in other post-dictatorial countries in Central and Easter Europe (Hungary, Poland or Croatia), the digital turn in discussing and framing such an essential remembrance (or, for that matter, sorry proper remembrance) has not only presented the main characteristics described by the panel, but involved a rather significant number of religious authorities, religiously affiliated persons and sympathizers, including the digital revival of the infamous Iron Guard. They have concocted a particular form of lack of remembrance and negationist rewriting of history which may interest the worldwide scholar of religion nowadays precisely because – as in the 1930s-1940s – they benefitted from that unique expertise of some scholars of religion, history, and culture. My presentation will explore their significance for the present topic by highlighting their ‘technological turn’.