- The two-day programme will deal with the memories of the Holocaust and the communist past in Romania;
- It will consist of a series of speeches and guided visits to some of the most emblematic places of commemoration and memorialization in Bucharest and Jilava;
- The travelling seminar is co-organized by the EUROM and the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Bucharest and will include the participation of master students and experts from the University of Bucharest and the University of Barcelona.
Romania, which became a member of the European Union in 2007, has experienced two totalitarianism in the 20th century, an extreme-right wing regime (1938-1944) and a communist regime (1948-1989). Their shadows still cover the post-1990 Romanian political and memorial landscape. While the Romanian state has addressed the traumatic past through such initiatives as the Wiesel Report (2004) and the Tismăneanu Commission (2006), which documented the Romanian Holocaust and respectively condemned the “criminal communist dictatorship”, Romanian society has been less adamant to share this official condemnation.
This travelling seminar will introduce students and scholars to the memory of the Holocaust in Romania and its traces, as well as to the memorialization of the communist past, both at the official level and in what concerns memory sites. Participants will visit some of the most emblematic sites, such as the Holocaust Memorial in Bucharest, the Jilava memorial, “80 east” (a communist apartment), and will also join walking tour on totalitarianism in downtown Bucharest.
Programme
- March 13
The memory of the Holocaust in Romania
Venue:
Centrul pentru studierea evreilor din Romania (CSIER)
Calea Călărași 57b, București, 030167
- 9:00 am – 9:30 am
Felicia Waldman (University of Bucarest)
“Holocaust Memory in Postcommunist Romania”
- 9:30 am – 10:00 am
Adrian Cioflâncă (CSIER, CNSAS)
“Traces of (In)humanity in Holocaust Related Killing Sites in Romania and Moldova”
- 11:00 am
Guided visit to the Holocaust Memorial
- 11:30 am – 1:30 pm
Totalitarianism tour, a walking tour in downtown Bucharest
- 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Visit of the 80 east – the communist apartment (civic educational initiative), with the participation of Alexandra Bardan (University of Bucharest)
- March 14
Memorialization and dealing with the communist past
Venue:
Institute of Political Research, University of Bucharest
Coposu hall
Str. Spiru Haret 8, București, 010175
- 09:00 am – 09:20 am
Cristina Petrescu (Department of Political Science, University of Bucharest)
“The Communist Dictatorship in Romania: Coercion, Consent and Dissent”
- 09:20 am – 09:40 am
Dragoș Petrescu (Department of Political Science, University of Bucharest)
“Public Exposure without Lustration: Dealing with the Secret Police Files in Post-communism”
- 09:40 am -10:00 am
Alexandru Gussi (Department of Political Science, University of Bucharest)
“The politics of forgetting and the politicization of memory of the communist past after December 1989”
- 10:30 am -12:00 pm
Travel to Jilava
- 12:00 pm -1:00 pm
The Memorial Jilava
- 4:30 pm
The Soviet cemetery in Pipera
