European Parliament, Transnational Cultural Memory, and the Holocaust

Abstract

In this article, I examine how and, above all, why the Holocaust became a central tenet of transnational and pan-European memory politics. The development of the cultural memory of the Holocaust is interpreted through Jan Assmann's framework of cultural memory.  The central source material consists of documents from the European Parliament. The first part of the text explores the contexts of European integration, particularly how "identity integration" became increasingly significant part in the integration policies from the 1990s onwards and why the Holocaust was given such a prominent role in shaping identities. The second section utilizes the perspective of Assmann's cultural memory and elucidates how the EP instrumentalized the Holocaust at the core of its memory politics.