Constructing a Usable Past: Changing Memory Politics in Jasenovac Memorial Museum

Abstract

This chapter shows how the Europeanisation of Holocaust memory enables contemporary Croatia to preserve and disseminate a long-held narrative of Jasenovac that rejects historical context, perpetrator responsibility, and national identity. By tracing changing memory politics at Jasenovac Memorial Museum (JMM) through its three permanent exhibitions (1968, 1988, and 2006), I show how political actors manipulated the same problematic narrative over time to escape historical responsibility. Most recently, in 2006, the new permanent exhibition of JMM presented a narrative of Jasenovac that divorced victims and perpetrators from their ethnic identities and ignored the concentration camp’s location specific context in favour of greater emphasis on the larger Holocaust narrative, relieving Croatia from negative association with the ustaša or responsibility for crimes committed by the regime. This article shows how “European” memory standards do not necessarily result in the proclaimed aim of dealing with the past or act as a support to reconciliatory efforts. In some cases, these standards continue to assist former Nazi-collaborationist states, like Croatia, to relativise domestic crimes that occurred under state fascist regimes.