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Violeta Davoliute, Vilnius: Genealogical Writing and Perpetrator Postmemory of the Holocaust in Lithuania
This presentation explores the relationship of trauma, memory, and locality in the genealogical writings of third-generation descendants of Lithuanian Holocaustperpetrators. Each reflects on the experience of war and displacement through the prism of the stories and silences that circulated in their families and émigré communities from Eastern Europe in North America. Each challenges the received family narrative, travels to the site of historical atrocity, and contemplates individual and collective implication in the Holocaust.
As distinct from the nationalist utopia of antagonistic memory and the de-territorialized ethics of cosmopolitan memory, they highlight locality as the prime arena for encounters between subjects in the present and theirimplication in the difficult past.Violeta Davoliute is Professor at the Institute of
International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University, a Senior Researcher at the Lithuanian
Institute of History and Project Leader of Facing the Past: Public History for a Stronger Europe (Horizon Europe, 2022-2025).
Violeta Davoliute wishes to acknowledge the co-funding of the European Union under the WIDERA programme (EUROPAST project, Grant Agreement No. 101079466).