Despite the Holocaust's profound impact on the history of Eastern Europe, the communist regimes successfully repressed public discourse about and memory of this tragedy. Since the collapse of communism in 1989, however, this has changed. Not only has a wealth of archival sources become available, but there have also been oral history projects and interviews recording the testimonies of eyewitnesses who experienced the Holocaust as children and young adults. Recent political, social, and cultural developments have facilitated a more nuanced and complex understanding of the continuities and discontinuities in representations of the Holocaust. People are beginning to realize the significant role that memory of Holocaust plays in contemporary discussions of national identity in Eastern Europe. This volume of original essays explores the memory of the Holocaust and the Jewish past in postcommunist Eastern Europe. Devoting space to every postcommunist country, the essays in Bringing the Dark Past to Light explore how the memory of the "dark pasts" of Eastern European nations is being recollected and reworked. In addition, it examines how this memory shapes the collective identities and the social identity of ethnic and national minorities. Memory of the Holocaust has practical implications regarding the current development of national cultures and international relationships.

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, formerly socialist countries have gone through manifold transformations, whilst remnants of socialism remain ubiquitous. The volume explores various spaces of the postsocialist landscape, presenting a mixture of real and imaginary spaces, of memory and nostalgia, of aesthetic and political symbolism, of the global East and the global South, of academic and essayistic writing. It casts a glance at the heterogeneous relics of socialism and their transformation in very different parts of the world. From the description of (post-)socialist interiors, façades, neighborhoods, parks, monuments, and objects towards the imaginary spaces of literature, the contributors describe the concreteness and intimacy of some of the places that span across and even beyond of what is left of the »second world« today.

This much-needed guide to translated literature offers readers the opportunity to hear from, learn about, and perhaps better understand our shrinking world from the perspective of insiders from many cultures and traditions. In a globalized world, knowledge about non-North American societies and cultures is a must. Contemporary World Fiction: A Guide to Literature in Translation provides an overview of the tremendous range and scope of translated world fiction available in English. In so doing, it will help readers get a sense of the vast world beyond North America that is conveyed by fiction titles from dozens of countries and language traditions. Within the guide, approximately 1,000 contemporary non-English-language fiction titles are fully annotated and thousands of others are listed. Organization is primarily by language, as language often reflects cultural cohesion better than national borders or geographies, but also by country and culture. In addition to contemporary titles, each chapter features a brief overview of earlier translated fiction from the group. The guide also provides in-depth bibliographic essays for each chapter that will enable librarians and library users to further explore the literature of numerous languages and cultural traditions.

It is a quiet place, with lush green grass covering the location of the former Belarusian village. A village that was burned to the ground with its inhabitants in 1943. Anyone familiar with this small corner of Eastern Europe is chilled to the bone by the events that transpired there, and the village’s name Khatyn has now come to embody a horrific national tragedy. But tragedy is not all this name embodies, for it also reminds people of the tremendous courage of those who fought for the life and freedom of their country. It is the story of this village and the events that surround its annihilation that are the focus of Ales Adamovich’s novel Khatyn, which was written on the basis of historical documents. The author, himself a World War II veteran and partisan, depicts the reality of the partisan resistance to fascism in Belarus. The main character is a man named Florian, who in his memories returns to events that transpired some thirty years ago, when as a teenager he joined a partisan unit and met his future wife, Glasha. He witnesses how the villagers of Khatyn are burned alive as reprisal for supporting the partisan movement. The monstrous cruelty of the death squad and its commanders manifested itself in the act of punishing the entire community for the deeds of those who had helped the partisans. The village, composed mostly of the elderly and mothers with children, was locked inside a barn. After being covered with dry hay, the barn was set ablaze with the families inside. Over half a century later, Adamovich’s story about the courage of ordinary people has not lost its immediacy. Today, the world is still marred by war crimes committed against communities of noncombatant. Khatyn is a testament to an event that must not be forgotten, and to a reality that must not be repeated.

In the spring of 1940, the Soviet Union carried out the mass executions of 14,500 Polish prisoners of war - army officers, police, gendarmes, and civilians - taken by the Red Army when it invaded eastern Poland in September 1939. This work details the Soviet killings, the elaborate cover-up of the crime, and the subsequent revelations.