Exchanges and interactions in the tracing of atrocity - For a European landscape of remembering

Hartmut Schröder

In an initiative hosted by the Heinrich Böll Foundation and the International Memorial Society, the European History Forum aims to promote exchanges centring on people's experience of the culture of commemoration in the disparate regions of Europe, particularly in eastern and south-eastern Europe. After last year's focus on 's invasion of the and Yugoslavia in 1941, attention has now turned to the European approach to sites associated with conspicuous acts of terror and violence in the 20th century.

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Habbo Knoch, Director of the Foundation for Lower Saxony Memorials, began by presenting a number of widely diverging reflections on the practical challenges to be met when addressing these locations.

Against the backdrop of a "boom in historic sites" over the last 20 years, a surge in recollection, an upswing in 'battlefield tourism' and 'heritage industry' and a "global rush to commemorate atrocities", Knoch observed how important it was for a dialogue to open up between eastern and western Europe on how to approach sites where acts of terror had been committed. Although museums had sprung up in many European countries, a study of the condition and development of these historic locations suffused with past violence revealed considerable disparities along East-West lines.

Memorial sites - historic sites - traumatic sites

Knoch referenced the notion of memorial sites, Pierre Nora's "lieux de mémoire", which he defined as "long-lasting locations, spanning generations, where collective memory and identity have crystallised", locations that are "intensely relevant to political, societal and cultural relations" and of which the tangible sites (monuments, museums, etc.) form but a sub-group. Memorial sites are, by definition, open to multiple interpretations and cannot necessarily be construed solely in terms of their physical location. They are described in words over and over again, changing with the passage of time as a result of shifting perceptions, analyses and political instrumentalisation. At the same time, warns Knoch, metaphorical aspects of the memorial sites raise difficult issues, as they distract attention from real historical incidents. Sites associated with specific events and acts had to be directly addressed; only then could they be defined in their historical context and protected from a certain laxity of interpretation.

1 If they are to embed themselves in the social or political consciousness, the historic sites, i.e. the many locations where incidents occurred, have first to be "discovered". Historic sites are inextricably linked with the fates of individuals (Aleida Assmann) and a suggestion of the need to act (Knoch). Straddling historic and memorial sites, a developmental process is underway that depends largely on the selection and design of the locations concerned. A visit to a historic (geographically fixed) site - and here a distinction is made between primary sites (the venues of suffering, as it were) and secondary sites (which are commemorated by means of a monument or memorial) - produces in the individual a private mode of perception and a raft of expectations that have to be considered. Regardless of the private visualisations taking place, the historic site has to be divorced from the Now, not least in order to temper the experience of overwhelmment. The site stands at the threshold between past and present, a "mysterious gateway to a past world".

In the aftermath of the two world wars a landscape of traumatic sites (atrocity sites) emerged in Europe. These sites of mass violence are hewn into the European landscape of recollection, would remain etched in the landscape regardless of whether or not they were marked on a map. They are a permanent fixture in people's awareness, form part of the negative memory and hence constitute a challenge, as they invert a "positive" memory that has been handed down for centuries and which created a set of myths rooted in the people's own heroism. The sites are cumbersome; they cannot be incorporated; they pose questions that niggle at society, at policy makers and at the governmental status quo. There is always a second story involved, a tale of people's and institutions' response to the crimes perpetrated there. Through the response to what went on, through the position they hold in the social consciousness, memorial sites, historic sites and traumatic sites are intrinsically connected. Only a small minority of traumatic sites are also (central) memorial sites.

The making of a site of remembrance

Taking Bergen-Belsen as an example, Knoch illustrated the factors that can inform the site as a post-atrocity location. Firstly, as early as 1945, the place was charged with a symbolism purveyed by the media. To this can be added, consciously or subconsciously, destruction, decay and neglect. In Bergen-Belsen the huts were burned down to prevent the spread of typhus, so the physical infrastructure of the site no longer exists. Subsequent design of the site, in keeping with certain interpretations and with a specific intention in mind, implies a certain notion of how the site should be cast - the graves and the park establish no direct link to the real concentration camp. Beyond this, rituals, events and civic activities all have a part to play. In 1960 Konrad Adenauer had

2 commemorated the Jewish victims above all others. Then there has been the commentating as part of exhibitions and documentation centres created in Bergen-Belsen in 1966, 1990 and 2007: these displays add a dimension to the site by virtue of their narratives, which cannot avoid emphasising certain aspects and omitting others and which exert their own influence on the overall way in which the subject is addressed. Finally we have the emergence of functioning memorials that assume semi-responsibility for the site.

What happens to the site?

Knoch described five phases in the practical approach to the traumatic site. The initial phase involves the recollections of survivors, whose markers of remembrance enshrine the location and make of the traumatic site a historic site. During the 1950s, however, many of these Bergen-Belsen markers vanished. This first stage is followed by a period of profanisation, characterised by destruction or unthinking design, in which the previously established significance of the site is eradicated - something that lasted many years in both German states. The next phase can be termed the juridical approach, in which the historic site is rendered recognisable as the scene of a crime. For the Federal Republic, the emphasis here is on Auschwitz and, to a lesser extent, Majdanek, although there is no genuine experiencing of the site. As civic society searches for traces of past events, we see a resurgence of the historic sites. Attention is drawn to the breadth of historic sites; eyewitnesses confer a legitimacy on the "forgotten places". Since the 1990s a process of museum-related professionalisation has been underway, setting better standards, establishing better features and facilities, and providing educational support. Current developments involve liaison with other sites. Memorial sites today are accorded legitimacy within the political context. Knoch rounded off his statement by observing that the German experience might form an important part of the international dialogue on the subject.

What can be achieved by addressing and grappling with sites of cruelty and violence?

However we approach sites of terror, the very act of doing so is a resource for democratic learning. Rituals rooted in respect and human valuation can be a force for education. As pointed out by Mathias Heyl, the sites can also be forensically examined as scenes of a crime. Documents and traces have to be secured, the things they tell about the place logged and preserved. Knoch has noted that the reason no rebuilding goes on in the Federal Republic is that it is precisely in conserving what has remained behind that a message is sent about the physical site. Through the physicality of historical events, the site can become a platform for cognitive and reflexive learning about history. Empathy

3 alone is not enough, insists Knoch; it must go hand-in-hand with an appreciation of the historical context. The historic site can render the deeds "palpable" and reveal how the place of past evils relates to the geography of the living. A study of the chronology of the formation and interpretation of a site and how they have affected its identity is an integral part of a thoughtful visit to the location. Memorials can counteract the tendency of recollection to become "impressionistic" and help preserve the hard edge (Hartwig) of the experience. As keepers of an anamnetic culture (Metz), traumatic sites can also serve to prevent a ritualistic ossification. Knoch stresses the need to visualise things over and over afresh as a way to acquire a moral competence. After all, traumatic sites must be discussed as manifestations of the disenfranchisement of individuals and the destruction of legal systems. Knoch holds that this central approach provides an important frame of reference that is of use when placing the sites in the context in which the crimes were committed.

Knoch points out that, given the continued lack of a European identity and the fact that most action is taken on a national scale, the dynamics of a supranational openness on the one hand and a focus on national themes on the other hand can result in conflict. He counters the notion that traumatic sites might block the emergence of a European community of remembrance by suggesting that, when going about the necessary integration of the history of 20th-century violence into the national and international debates, interpretations and quests for identity, account must be taken not only of national particularities but also of the universal nature of those events. Again, it was not suffering or violence but the category of disenfranchisement and the rule of law that created the frame of reference. The legality dimension throws up a raft of references that, in a pedagogical capacity, can mediate between the events that took place at the historic site and questions being asked today. This category, concludes Knoch, far more than symbolic memorial sites or "ex-territorial atrocity sites", can help to heighten the visibility of interaction between perpetrators and victims and of the historical sites where deeds were committed.

City tours

As a stimulus for the discussions to follow, there followed three historical walking tours through the centre of Berlin. They took the themes "Memorial sites - remembering Nazi rule", "Jewish life and persecution - resistance and extermination" and "Dictatorship and repression in the GDR". The sheer density of historic sites, which despite their numbers are still marked as such and include unspectacular, almost empty spots, is impressive, as is the great diversity of forms taken by the commemorative features and monuments. One key aspect was the approach taken towards different generations of remembering. How

4 does GDR remembering merge into the remembering of a post-unification Germany, if it can at all? A conspicuous example of an attempt to achieve this was provided by the sheet of Plexiglas in Berlin's Lustgarten, which covers the GDR plaque commemorating the Baum communist resistance cell and is now dedicated to the memory of Jewish resistance. Important, too, was the inclusion of memorials to helpers of the persecuted, to unsung heroes, not simply memorials recalling the victims and perpetrators. The discussion afterwards quickly turned to address problematic aspects of the culture of remembering in individual countries.

Consensus - controversy - participation - form. National differences in memorial culture

Natalya Kolyagina of Memorial pointed out that most Russian monuments - unlike in Germany, where there have been heated debates over memorials - were foisted on the people without any dialogue being entered into or any civic involvement in the decisions. In Russia there was a "commemoration industry" that liaised closely with the authorities and in which the structures were such that alternative or undesirable projects had little chance of being adopted. The question was always whether the "products" moved the observers and conjured up in them a mental connection to whatever they were being invited to remember, and whether the sites could therefore be considered official sites of remembrance. According to Kolyagina, commemoration policy is also influenced by anniversaries (2011: Stolypin; 2012: the bicentenary of Napoleon's invasion in 1812, the quatercentenary of the liberation of Moscow from Polish occupation in 1612 and 1,150 years of Russian statehood). In view of the predomination of "classical" monuments, one section, at least, of the population is open to the idea of new types of commemoration and would embrace new kinds of monuments, while another section of society would react negatively to new forms of memorial such as those in Berlin, for instance the Monument for the Murdered Sinti and Roma. She made the point that new forms can also lead to eventual changes in people's mentality. One thing worth noting, she went on, was that since the protests last year there had been a marked rise of interest in a "return to names", in remembering individual victims of mass terror.

Nicolas Moll observed that when it comes to remembering the war 1992-95 and, before that, World War II, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, there was a marked lack of consensus that might form a basis for healthy debate. The country played host to three different cultures of remembrance, each informed by its respective ethnic and national group and each dominated by its own one-sided discourse on local heroism and victimhood. The polarisation of society all but prevented the respective local minority of indulging in any active process of remembrance. As an example, in Serbian-dominated Prijedor it was

5 extremely hard, according to Moll, to organise any event to commemorate Bosnian or Croat victims. By contrast, in Herzegovina it was well nigh impossible to remember the Serbian victims of terror. Commemorating people who transcended ethnic borders in lending help was likewise very difficult, as such people were widely considered to be "traitors". Furthermore, the effect was still being felt of the national mobilisation of the 1980s, in which discourse focussed heavily on events in Yugoslavia during the Second World War (partisans, Ustaša, etc.). During the war 1992-95 there had been some removal of monuments to make way for other memorials. Parallel to this, an attempt was being made by civic society, in mediums such as art and film, to emerge from this rigidified landscape of commemoration. In Moll's view, however, this was not yet possible at the historic sites themselves; it could only happen in the virtual sphere or at geographically removed locations. Only when there was broad knowledge of what had happened and a process of critical reflection had begun could the issue of participation be addressed. The heroising effect of concentrating on the victims of atrocity begs the question of whether the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina might not be comparable with the memorial culture that developed in western Europe in the wake of the First World War, when memorials cultivated the notion of a "heroic death". On this point Moll commented that in Bosnia-Herzegovina the issue was often one of civilian casualties, although this raised its own problem of interpretation in that the line between civilian and military was sometimes blurred. Irena Ristić raised the question - particularly in reference to the western Balkans - of whether the cohesion of society should come before any consensus over how to remember or whether this consensus is a prerequisite for cohesion.

For Ukraine, Volodimir Maslichuk from Kharkiv observed a heterogeneity of memorial culture amongst the regions and down the generations. People's views of the past, especially of the Soviet era, are many and varied. Vying with memories and reminders of the Holodomor of 1932/33 and the Terror was the argument, for instance, that the Soviet system, "for all its excesses", should also be remembered for its modernisation and aerospace achievements. There were also the conflicting memories of the Second World War, in eastern as well as western Ukraine. Study of made for a problematic chapter in Ukrainian memorial culture, according to Maslichuk. The contradictory nature of the Ukrainian case was clear when one considered, for instance, that under Yushchenko a memorial to the dead of the Holodomor was erected outside Kharkiv even though certain streets of the town still bear the names of some of the people directly responsible. Yushchenko had been acting in line with a policy of remembrance (even though the Holodomor had been addressed by his predecessors and been an issue particularly for the independence movement), but the tide of feeling was now turning in favour of a return to Soviet ideals. Maslichuk pointed out that Ukraine, too, had its civic memorial initiatives. In western Ukraine, where the roots of totalitarianism were shallower,

6 more diversity and activity could be observed: there it was possible to have memorials to Soviet soldiers, to combatants in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and to Jewish victims erected alongside each other, whereas in the east of the country a "memorial war" was being waged.

According to Maslichuk, no adequate culture of differentiation and dialogue had yet emerged in Ukraine. It was hard to talk in terms of a true policy of remembrance. One attempt to avoid the issue involved a return to those Soviet heroes who chime with the Ukrainian narrative. In matters of tolerance towards others and also aesthetics - monuments to Bandera are reminiscent of Lenin monuments - the country as a whole, from an idealistic perspective, had not yet left Soviet territory.

With respect to Belarus, Vazlav Areshka of the vytoki.net portal remarked later that in the debate on memorial culture and the range of relations possible between state and society he felt as if he were walking the aisles of a supermarket without a penny in his pocket, since he lived in a country where "authoritarianism triumphed". Whilst in other countries the attention was on past events, in Belarus the era of terror had not yet ended. New perpetrators of acts of terror and new sites of criminal acts were continually coming to light there. Kurapaty, site of the Stalinist mass shootings, has become a place of protest, with the associated police violence and arrests. Minsk in particular had many sites recalling past acts of terror, sites that overlap with those of acts perpetrated at the behest of the current Lukashenko regime. In Belarus there is still no line dividing the era of mass violation of citizens' rights from the present day, leading to the all-important question: Where does remembering begin and the present day cease? Areshka suggests that we should start work now on a map of future memorial sites, which would include Okrestina Prison.

Regarding the (west) German experience, Andreas Poltermann stressed the importance of the work done by historians at a local level, of the unearthing of information, including that pertaining to perpetrators and helpers - always awkward for a society. As a result, people now viewed the culture of memorialisation in a completely different way. Being part of the process bringing about a change in societal consciousness was an important experience. Poltermann also pointed out that the controversy surrounding the building of a monument such as the Central Memorial for the Victims of War and Dictatorship was quite possibly the most important thing about the debate, the aspect that remained in people's minds when the dust had settled. Beyond the question of the identity of perpetrators and helpers, the process of remembering also had to pose the question "Where were you?" to all those who looked the other way and consciously or subconsciously betrayed their neighbours or slammed the door in their face.

7 Topographies of Terror – three examples

The problems and opportunities associated with the creation and design of a topography of terror were illustrated using three examples.

'Memorial' - Ryazan chapter

Andrei Blinushow began by presenting the work done by the Ryazan chapter of Memorial. While it has successfully managed to raise a number of monuments to the victims of war, terror and political repression and to representatives of various groups of sufferers according to nationality (Poles, Germans, Hungarians, Rumanians), the monuments are located on the outskirts of the city and access is poor. The municipal authorities have so far prevented a monument from being erected in the city centre. The organisation has published a local history guide to acts of terror committed and provides free tours of the city. The archive can also be accessed online. Blinushow himself works with a "suitcase that renders him a nomad". It was given to him by an ex-prisoner of the Gulag and now serves as a mobile display case for documents and photos.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a resident of Ryazan since 1957, is one of the central figures in the excursions. The initiative to have a street named after him has met with staunch resistance for the last five years. The choice of sites was hampered by limited access to sources of information. While in Perm it was possible to work unimpeded with the original documents, in Ryazan there was often only access to photocopies, which had first to be applied for by the relatives of victims. A range of approaches had ultimately proved useful in establishing the 20 memorials.

A Topography of Red Terror in Tbilisi

Irakli Chvadagiani presented the first project of the Soviet Past Research Laboratory (SovLab) in Tbilisi. He began by explaining that prior to 1990 there had been no modern study of recent history. Since that date the various political and economic crises suffered by Georgia had prevented the creation of research institutes or social initiatives. Georgian documentation of the history of this period resembled a colourless, lifeless book. City tours of Red Terror Topography focus on the former residences of victims and perpetrators, on places of detention etc. in the capital, Tbilisi. Information is collated and analysed to provide a real insight into individual fates during the Great Terror. The challenge consisted in overcoming the problems posed by social exclusion in post-Soviet society and the scarcity and traumatised state of eyewitnesses. The project aims to stimulate the growth of a culture of remembrance. Firstly, its has set itself the educational goal of communicating the importance of addressing recent history; secondly, it seeks to 8 use alternative means to make possible, encourage and propagate an alternative view of the Soviet history of Georgia, a view that differs from the prevailing official line as propounded in the Museum of Soviet Occupation in Tbilisi. According to Chvadagiani, the points of friction with the official anti-Soviet view resulted from the authorities' policy of blotting out Georgian collaboration in Soviet acts of terror and "playing the ethnic card". When it came to the civil war and ethnic conflict, this denial of its own share of responsibility was even more marked. The situation in Georgia was also illustrated by the fact that a compendium of Gulag victims was published just as the scandal surrounding prison torture was breaking, and no connections were made in society regarding this 'coincidence'. This showed that the heart of the Soviet Union was, to a certain extent, still beating in Georgia.

Staro Sajmište – topography of a forgotten site

Maria Glišić (Heinrich Böll Foundation, Belgrade) gave a presentation on Staro Sajmište, one of the locations most deserving of memorial-site status in Serbia and the subject of a Heinrich Böll Foundation conference in May 2012. This former Belgrade New Trade Show Ground of 1937 served as a concentration camp from December 1941 onwards and was used as an "internment camp" between 1942 and 1944. The site is not an official memorial, although it does feature a number of monuments. As part of the task of giving appropriate structure to the (various) forms of remembrance involving this site, both phases of the camp had to be researched, according to Glišić. And this meant honouring all groups that were subject to Nazi persecution (, Roma, members of the Serbian resistance), thus breaking with the former "intrinsically Yugoslavian site of suffering" and rejecting a memorialisation that played a role in nationalist politics and gave undue prevalence to Serbian victims in the Independent State of Croatia. Moreover, Serbian had to be assigned its place in the European history of Nazi domination and the Holocaust, and the post-war history of remembrance (or forgetfulness) at Staro Sajmište had to be properly addressed and confronted. One particular problem was the issue of what type of markings and signage to use for the site and what would be the result for the present-day inhabitants if buildings were modified for the purpose of creating a memorial (the infrastructure is the same as it was, albeit now under mixed ownership and no longer recognisable as a hermetic complex of buildings). Wolfgang Klotz elaborated that the persecuted, including considerable numbers of Roma and Sinti, had a pragmatic attitude towards their predicament, fearing forced displacement yet willing to accept new accommodation. As the latter scenario was unlikely to materialise, given the situation in Serbia, the local inhabitants tended to be against the creation of a memorial. The investment value of real estate in the central location also posed a potential problem. The

9 site at Topovske Šupe, another former concentration camp in Belgrade, has been sold off and plans are underway to build a shopping centre on the spot. In the opinion of Glišić, grassroots initiatives alone could not prevent transformations like this from going ahead, so to have a municipal working group looking into the issue was a cause for optimism.

Nicolas Moll recalled the former collection facility / interim camp at Drancy near Paris. It has reverted to its (former) use as a social-housing estate, which is why the modern memorial complex established close by has few supporters among the locals. In Ryazan, where detached, single-family houses have been built on gravesites, the only option, according to Blinushow, is to appeal to the owners. He also reminded people of the tradition of burying those shot by firing squad in NKVD buildings. Irakli Chvadagiani recounted how inhabitants of buildings formerly used as detention centres related that Beriya had personally tortured people there, only to be caught dreaming, half an hour later, of the money that could be used to open a fancy restaurant in the same building.

It was reported from Belarus that in Kurapaty, site of shootings during the Great Terror - about which the Government asserted that it was not "them" [the Government] but the opposition that was doing the commemoration - plans for a shopping centre have triggered a furore. And already the memorial crosses are being vandalised and the local inhabitants are walking their dogs on the site.

What can memorials achieve (in the future)?

Thomas Lutz of the memorial section of the Topography of Terror Foundation pointed out that memorials, unlike monuments, were working entities and - in view of questions such as 'who negotiates?' and 'what is on display?' - highly political places. As they were at risk of being used for political ends they had to be insulated from short-term political wrangling, and this was best achieved by continuously extending and updating the facts and figures that form the basis for their existence. One of the functions of a memorial was to present the stories of all groups of persecuted people (very few sites of Nazi persecution are concerned only with a single group), albeit with distinctions made to reflect, say, prisoner hierarchies within a camp. Depictions of camp goings-on had to avoid injuring the feelings of other groups of sufferers - a delicate undertaking at sites such as Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald, each of which had a post-war existence as a Soviet "Speziallager". Then there is the issue of what to do with the graves; remembering the dead and learning from the deaths are sometimes at odds with each other. Lutz stressed that only when a society addresses the issue of its own perpetrators and those responsible for crimes can it be said to be ready to grasp the nettle of history in a democratic fashion. Through involvement with the historic site of "palpable" acts and a description of specific duties and freedoms (Camp Foreman X could do such-and-such..), 10 it was potentially possible to begin looking at history. The events were all the more graspable for having taken place in a sub-camp "three miles away", not just in Berlin or "in the East". According to Lutz, there was a limit, however, to what historic sites could do on their own. Without the backing of a culture of remembrance and the preparatory work done by schools, memorials could not achieve that much.

Wulf Kansteiner, a media expert from Binghamton University (New York), detected from hints provided by German television and other sources that the German culture of historiography might not be well equipped for the future in a number of key areas. He sees western Europe facing huge challenges to engender an awareness of history in the years to come. Two current developments underlie his theory. Firstly, eyewitnesses to the Holocaust are shrinking in number, resulting in what Assman calls a shift from communicated memory to cultural memory. This affected a person's emotional link to the past. Secondly, there was a culture shift taking place from linear to digital. In the light of this two-pronged swing the memorials and memorial culture should be aiming to continue, even among subsequent generations, to trigger reflection on, and communication regarding, individuals' share in evildoing. The various actors should be aware, however, that the Holocaust paradigm that has applied since the late 1970s was extremely problematic in Germany. Kansteiner compared the paradigm to a cattle market: "You have a look at this and we'll show you survivors (who imply a happy end of sorts)." For this reason, he went on, we might have to attempt the impossible and try to predict tomorrow's approach to history. The challenge was then to find ways to achieve this ("how can I get a 15-year-old sitting at a computer to think about his own involvement in bad acts?") and perhaps even to reconsider the substance of what is taught: Kansteiner warned that the Holocaust might not be (so) important to people two generations from now.

Sergei Bondarenko from Moscow is conducting an analysis of the landscape of Lenin monuments (destruction, decay and brand new structures) and people's reactions to the same. He reported on overnight "re-dedications" of Lenin monuments (transforming them into anti-monuments, symbols of the political system of the day, etc.) and attributed this to the monuments being pointless space fillers devoid of meaning and hence wholly suitable to being used for this "interactive" commemorative work. The idea was not only to influence perceptions of society but also to observe people's responses. Bondarenko suggested that it had to be possible to adopt new ideas, new ways of thinking, in the Naomi Klein sense of "history jamming". As an example of this he mentioned the adaptation of Apple's "Think Different" commercial to one showing a portrait of Stalin with the slogan "Think completely different". Beyond the question of whether something can undergo root-and-branch change, there would always be voices reacting and in need of support.

11 On the issue of "interactive" (partial) design of commemorative sites Kansteiner pointed out that the reason why interactive media were so attractive was that consumers had the feeling that, by changing a product, they could exert power, which was why new generations were hard to reach using linear channels of communication. In the question of digital interactivity, western institutions continued to opt for retention of control over the sites, monuments, etc. Yet, as noted by Lutz, memorials were increasingly using tools such as Facebook when it came to conveying information and building a community. He emphasised, however, that visitors to sites of remembrance were interested in non-virtual material and that memorials were absolutely capable of playing their part in the educational process, for instance using professionally compiled eyewitness reports.

Wolfgang Klotz spoke out against a "nirvana of indiscriminate interactivity" and underlined that the object or site of interest had to be able to check, to defy, the observer. This conscious awkwardness should be comparable to a lecture by Primo Levy. Kansteiner agreed insofar as the development of interactive formats for young people posed considerable technical challenges. On the other hand technical immersion was fascinating to young people and sooner or later the culture of remembrance would have to go down that road. He conceded that interactivity might well bring its own set of problems (denial) but also pointed out that, with the technology, even ambivalent observers could be led to reflect. Alma Mašić stressed that in emergencies such as ex-Yugoslavia information and outreach had to be the prime aims as a way of preserving remembrance and countering suppression and denial. The internet project on the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica, which she was shortly to present, certainly used modern, interactive formats to appeal to young people, but cold, hard facts remained the mainstay of the project.

In a comment on the "communicative friction" regarding the Lenin monuments welcomed by Kansteiner, Mischa Gabowitsch noted that this could be understood as an emergency measure, one that looked good to outside observers but was in fact necessary because no one wanted the monuments around.

On the question of "ossified rituals" Lutz mentioned the speech given by Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel at the inauguration of the Monument for the Murdered Sinti and Roma - in itself a praiseworthy speech but followed a day later by a call from German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich for tougher rules for asylum seekers from Serbia and Macedonia (read: Sinti and Roma)!

Virtual, interactive site of remembrance

The issue of "digitised remembrance work" was taken up in more detail by one of the work groups, which examined a number of individual cases. First Tadeusz Przystojecki

12 presented "Zentrum Stadttor / Theater NN", a municipal project in . In a historical treatment radiating outwards from the ancient gate to the city, the gate to the old Jewish Quarter, the Centre studies the history of Jewish life in the city and has now extended its research to encompass the history of the city as a whole. The multimedia library and an encyclopaedia now contain 5,000 photos and 1,700 eyewitness reports. A virtual historical model of the city was created for the website along with theme tours of the city. A remarkable example of the work being done is the "Letters to Henio" project. At the precise spot where a photo was taken of a young Jewish boy, Henio Zytomirski, young people have been engaged in letter-writing initiatives. The project includes workshops for school children and a fictitious Facebook profile in Henio's name, in which historians set out his life. Przystojecki showed that this kind of reconstructive work and others can function well as documentary approaches to remembrance.

Harald Binder presented the "Center for Urban History of East Central Europe" in Lviv, which lays out information on the city's historical locations in digital form. Alongside the city tours on offer, historical locations such as the sites of former synagogues are juxtaposed to the empty sites existing today. Some entries depicting the history of the city are complemented by interviews with eyewitnesses. The Center asks for contributions from the public in the form of photos and personal stories. The project aims to piece together Lviv's complex history, an undertaking that requires extremely sensitive treatment by a foreign organisation of the controversial aspects of the city's past (which included collaboration with the Nazi regime). In Binder's view the time was not yet ripe for dialogue.

Alma Mašić presented "Mapping Genocide Srebrenica", a project of the Youth Initiative for Human Rights aimed largely at young people, which presents a "documentary animation" of the massacre at Srebrenica. Designed for online and DVD viewing, the documentation is an assemblage of stylised cards where users can click their way through the events (including military action) that unfolded between 6th and 19th July 1995. The narration is accompanied by TV footage, and supporting documents (e.g. relating to the International Tribunal in The Hague) can be called up via a menu. Mašić explained that the project was conceived as an early-warning tool for genocide and a means to combat denial and the blotting out of reality, which was why the cards are preceded by a definition of genocide and the user is afforded a step-by-step insight into how the killings were openly prepared and planned. The presentation had used only reliable, neutral sources of information and had not recorded interviews with witnesses on account of the emotionality involved. Responding to a critical question from Wulf Kansteiner concerning the 'baddie' aesthetic of the trailer, the dramatic music and a definition of genocide that was read out in a tone that smacked of command, Mašić countered that this was the media style that appealed to young people and the language used in the DVD was relatively straight and monotonous.

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Sites of shootings, mass graves

In another work group studying approaches to sites of shootings and mass graves Andrei Umansky set out the work of Yahad - In Unum, an organisation searching for witnesses in Ukraine, Belarus and other countries of eastern and central Europe who can lead them to mass graves of Jews and other persecuted groups. Gravesites - and their respective memorials, if located elsewhere - are logged by GPS, marked and documented. Information on five locations has also been given to the American Jewish Committee for more detailed research. Umansky reported that the work was receiving widespread backing from the authorities and the local population. There had even been some spontaneous local initiatives, with people banding together to design sites of remembrance or organise their upkeep. He stressed that the organisation had to push on with the project as a matter of urgency, given that the number of living eyewitnesses was dwindling fast.

In her presentation regarding the conditions which have to be endured in Russia by anyone involved in the sites of shootings and mass graves, Lena Shemkova of the International Memorial Society began by referring to the many hundreds of sites whose precise location was known in relatively few cases (1.1 million people had been shot dead). Another problem was posed by the secrecy, which often made it extremely difficult to identify the burial site of named individuals. Even after the discovery of a burial site, the exhumation of bodies and other investigations were hampered by the passivity of the Public Prosecutor. If the site was not officially designated as such, there were clashes with economic or other interests where the marking or preservation of the site was concerned. When it came to designing the memorial sites, success was partly dependent on whether the Russian Orthodox Church, which had been entrusted with the administration of many sites, took a tolerant and correct approach so that no one's feelings were trampled on. The dead were made up of people of many different nationalities and many victims had been non-believers.

Wolfgang Klotz came up with the spontaneous idea of starting off by putting up simple signs at all Yugoslavian sites - from Sajmište to the mines into which the partisans drove their victims - announcing them as places of remembrance. In the choice of site Lena Shemkova pointed out the difficulty of deciding between the identity of the place and communication, in cases where the site was in a remote location. She stressed that the aim had to be to establish what had become of individual people and to restore to them their names and biographies. The reason why the Stolpersteinei were so ideal and touching was that they showed that a particular individual had lived at that address and was now lying dead and buried in a distant location.

14 Initiatives involving gravesites are beset with difficulties in Ukraine, too, where on the one hand local authorities are preventing the exhumation of Polish victims in Volhynia and on the other hand "black archaeologists" regularly break into graves in search of precious metals.

Dmitri Chmelnizkii called for commemoration to include the victims that people were reluctant to remember - the German civilians shot by Soviet troops after the cessation of hostilities and whose graves are largely unidentified and Soviet POWs who were repatriated by the western allies to the USSR and inevitably ended up in Stalin's prison camps. Andre Tichomirow endorsed Chmelnizkii's appeal, mentioning in the same context a camp for Soviet war prisoners in Grodno: at the site of remembrance, the remembering does not extend to the facility's post-war function as a repatriation camp.

City tours

City tours are still a good means of conveying history and also represent an opportunity. The challenge lies in the mode of communication, which does not necessarily involve dialogue and which should include stories of substance featuring real individuals as a way of avoiding generalisation: micro stories have to be incorporated into the macro history. The need to bring today's reality into convergence with past events poses another challenge. Alexandra Polivanova of Memorial Moscow reported that educational measures lay the ground for guided walking tours of the city for young people. Contextual knowledge had to be provided in a controlled and sensitive fashion to avoid "drowning" the youngsters in a mass of information and impressions.

The European culture of remembering and looking ahead to the next history forum

Throughout the event references were continually being made to the heterogeneity of the European culture of commemoration. Across this landscape of remembering there is a need for a comparison of projects, to bolster a shared - not uniform! - paradigm of European remembrance. As underscored by Lena Shemkova, great care had to be taken when comparing National Socialist and Soviet acts of terror, and any equivalences or matching of atrocity against atrocity had to be expressly rejected as much out of respect for the victims as for any other reason. Given this heterogeneity, Thomas Lutz highlighted the necessity of first accepting the different cultures of commemoration and being tolerant of the conditions underlying them. There were a number of calls from the forum participants to bind the former Yugoslavia and Belarus into work to promote European recollection of atrocities. In discussions of individual narratives it was important to make cross-connections, to shed light on western European responses to the Gulag or

15 European responsibility in the wars of Yugoslav succession, both of which are issues of Pan-European remembering. The European culture of remembrance had also to respond to a situation where in western Europe there was a need to de-radicalise important, problematic minorities and in eastern Europe the primary need was to de-radicalise states (Kansteiner).

The forum participants from Bosnia-Herzegovina stressed that this exchanging of information and sharing of experiences generated an atmosphere of solidarity and was of great help in their efforts to combat xenophobia and the suppression of truth. It was agreed that the forum was an excellent opportunity to finally get beyond the familiar format of bilateral meetings between historians from, say, Russia and or Ukraine and Poland; the complexity of certain historical issues could not be properly addressed from a bilateral perspective that excluded now one group of third parties and now another. In the light of this understanding it was proposed that the next history forum focus on the massacre in Volhynia and the Yugoslavian civil war in the shadow of the Second World War. Andrii Portnow suggested that such a conference could then include an examination of the attempts to manipulate and distort that were bound to accompany the anniversary of the events in Volhynia in 1943 and also a presentation of any civic initiatives to counteract these attempts. A further theme for the forum could be an analysis of what this facing up to history at sites of remembrance actually achieves. The question should be raised, too, of whether and how the interaction of historians and the media might be intensified within the context of memorial work. There was also a proposal to monitor the development of European historical institutions (the European History Museum, the European Solidarnosc Centre).

i A project by the artist Gunter Demnig, which remembers the victims of the Nazi period. Small brass plaques are embedded in the pavement outside the last freely-chosen residence of deportees. These 'stumbling-block' Stolpersteine have now been installed at over 500 addresses in Germany and other countries of Europe. See: www.stolpersteine.com

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