The Ukrainian Diaspora, the Holocaust, and the migration of memory, 1945-2019

World War II created a sizable Ukrainian community of Displaced Persons, DPs. Most of these intensely political migrants continued to North America where they developed a memory culture centered on the traumas of 20th century political violence. While the concept of genocide played a prominent and central role in their narration of the past, the Holocaust remained a blind spot. The diaspora narration was repatriated to Ukraine at the same time as the Holocaust became a centerpiece of historical memory and political culture in Western Europe. An "undigested" past around wartime Ukrainian Nationalism has caused controversies and clashes within Ukraine as well with several of its neighbors. Since 2014 - and in particular since 2022 - accusations of "Nazism" and "genocide" has been cited by the Russian Federation to legitimize its war of aggression. Why is this - and it there a way to address the traumas of the past?

Per Anders Rudling's main areas of research is East and Central Europe, in particular identity, nationalism, and memory in the Polish-Ukrainian-Belarusian borderlands. He has taught World, European, Russian and Ukrainian history, as well as graduate and honors' seminars in theory at the universities of Alberta, Greifswald, Lund, Oslo, and Vienna.