Abstract
In: Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung 2015. Berlin: Metropol Verlag, pp. 161–180.
Nowadays the Kravchenko trial is largely forgotten. Yet, it was very important in the late 1940s as the crimes of the Stalinist regime were exposed before an international audience. The most important witness was Margarete Buber-Neumann, who had recently published her memoirs about her imprisonment in a Gulag in Kazakhstan, her extradition to Nazi Germany 1940 during the Hitler-Stalin Pact and her detention in Ravensbruck until 1945. The article shows that the process in Paris became a decisive event for the political evolution of Buber-Neumann, notably because her testimony made her a leading person in the anti-totalitarian movement. Being a leftist, anti-communist Socialist in the early years of the Cold War, Buber-Neumann was placed between the fronts of the then hegemonic political currents. She considered it her duty to speak about her experience under two dictatorships. Thus she gave many public talks and acted as a witnessed in trials, as well as founding and edited several magazines. Over the years with the changing political situation in Western Germany Buber-Neumann became more and more conservative, as she suspected even the moderate Left of be infiltrated by communist agents. Her rigid anticommunism finally let her to cooperate with revisionist organizations, join the Conservative Party and support Franz Josef Strauss from the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) as the candidate for chancellor of Germany in 1980.
Über den Autor
Sebastian Voigt, Dr. phil., M.A., seit 2013 wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Institut für Zeitgeschichte, München – Berlin und Lehrbeauftragter an der Universität Leipzig. Stipendiat der Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung (2001–2004), der Fulbright-Kommission (2002–2003) und der Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (2003–2006). Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Simon-Dubnow-Institut für jüdische Geschichte und Kultur an der Universität Leipzig. 2008 Promotionsstipendium der Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. 2009 bis 2012 Promotionsstipendium der Hans-Böckler-Stiftung. Dissertation zum Thema »Zwischen Résistance und Holocaust. Zur politischen Erfahrungsgeschichte jüdischer Intellektueller im Nachkriegsfrankreich«. Veröffentlichungen u. a.: »Ungewöhnliche Konversionen? Von Mao zu Moses. Linksradikalismus und jüdische Zugehörigkeit im Frankreich der späten Siebzigerjahre«, in: Jahrbuch für Historische Kommunismusforschung 2013, Berlin 2013, S. 137–152; »Antisemiten als Koalitionspartner? Die Linkspartei zwischen antizionistischem Antisemitismus und dem Streben nach Regierungsfähigkeit«, in: Zeitschrift für Politik (2011), H. 3, S. 290–309 (mit Samuel Salzborn); »Pierre Goldmans Prozess. Literarische Interventionen von Hélène Cixous und Régis Debrais«, in: Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts/ Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook X (2011), Göttingen/Oakville, Conn. 2011, S. 369–388.