Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism. By Jelena Subotić. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2019. Pp. xx + 244. Cloth $29.95. ISBN 978-1501742408.

Abstract

Dotnuva, the home of many of the author’s relatives, Sklarew meets Aleksandra Balandienė, a friend of her mother’s cousin. Having found out about Balandienė’s trauma (the death of her husband), the author starts singing “Marija, Marija” (Mary, Mary), a religious song that was sung by Lithuanian deportees on their way to Siberia, together with Balandienė. Sklarew believes that her research findings on traumatic memory should not be limited only to the study of Holocaust memory. She writes about the multiple traumas of the twenty-first century, which include the posttraumatic stress disorder experienced by returning veterans and the traumas experienced by refugees and civilians who have experienced war. These traumatic experiences have a lot in common with the feelings of Holocaust survivors—“the persistent expectation of danger; intrusion—the indelible imprint of the traumatic moment; and the constriction—the numbing response of surrender” (123). Sklarew’s investigation of Holocaust memory has helped her to empathize with her own students who were war veterans, and whose experiences she compared with the children Holocaust survivors. Sklarew’s willingness to transcend ethnic, national, and generational boundaries in her investigation of traumatic memory is probably the major strength of her book. Therefore, it will be of interest to scholars from various disciplines and various countries studying traumatic memory in different contexts.