Selective perceptions: The Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust

Adamson's conference report focuses on those speeches delivered at the Stoc kholm International Forum on the Holocaust that evinced a nationalistic ten dency, particularly those given by delegates from Bulgaria, Latvia, Hungary and Turkey. He addresses the relationship between social conditions and so lidarity with local Jewish communities, and shows, for instance, that where as the representatives from Latvia and Turkey suggested that hardship was l ikely to threaten solidarity, the representative from Bulgaria argued rathe r that hardship was likely to enhance it. Another issue taken up concerns h ow moments from the historical past are put to use as constituents of natio nal myths: whereas the speakers extolled resistance against the Nazis as th e heroic acts of individuals, any collaboration was drained of intelligibil ity and a sense of responsibility, and reduced to being merely an episode o f the national tragedy. Adamson also observes that the representatives from Latvia and Hungary put considerable emphasis upon their respective domesti c legal statutes and their prohibition of racial hatred; this, he argues, i s a very weak source of moral justification. Adamson then goes on to analys e and criticize the speeches delivered by the Bulgarian and Latvian delegat es. On this subject he concludes that, in terms of, for instance, self-sacr ifice or resistance against the Nazis, the former's speech considerably exa ggerated the benevolent character of the Bulgarian people as a whole; it al so, falsely suggested that deportations of Jews in particular areas outside Bulgarian borders were not carried out by 'Bulgarians', and described, con trary to the evidence, the Bulgarian parliament as unanimously opposed to a ntisemitism. The Latvian delegate, in her turn, offered a rather subjective theory of the origins of 'barbarity' that was historically dubious.