Memory on Demand: The Jewish Past in Today’s Hlybokaye

Abstract

In this article, we discuss the ways in which the memory of the Jewish past functions in today’s Belarusian town of Hlybokaye: the contexts of its production and consumption, the key actors, forms and mechanisms. We take the restoration of the old Jewish cemetery by visiting activists and the erection of a monument to the famous townsman Eliezer Ben-Yehuda as cases. We argue that only random representations of the Jewish past have been appearing in local knowledge and that neither local groups nor outside actors have so far stated demand for an overarching general local narrative about Jewish Hlybokaye. On the one hand, the Jewish theme in the local knowledge of today’s town is secondary, while on the other, there has been occasional demand for it.