Cover picture: “Aixafem el feixisme” [“Crush Fascism”]. Can Batlló, Barcelona. Mural painting and picture by Roc Blackblock. Based on the original picture by Pere Català Pic. The work is part of the project “Murs de Bitàcola” (Log walls)
Our Observing Memories magazine has reached its fifth edition. It has been another complex and complicated year owing to changes in cultural relations, academia and the scheduling of public events and activities. Nevertheless, at the European Observatory on Memories (EUROM) we have managed to keep all our activities, some of which have changed to an online format while others have begun to take place face to face. In addition, we have continued to network with many of our partners and collaborators on issues concerning memorial heritage, public memory policies, and many of the most topical debates surrounding uses of the past. In this regard, and especially after the summer, we have been able to take part in seminars, study trips and include young students and researchers therein. We have also worked hard to maintain our annual publication which enjoys the collaboration of illustrious international specialists.
This magazine adheres to our approach every year, providing a crosscutting analysis of various subjects surrounding education, research, memorial museums or places of memory, transmission and new contributions by experts as well as some of our initiatives. However, the core issue we have sought to explore in detail revolves around negationism, revisionism and what we understand as memory- based relativism. Relativism in a global society that witnesses the development of various forms of denying the barbarity and violence of the 20th century, beginning with the Holocaust, but not only that. The idea is hardly a new one and some experts claim that the new media, political and even academic approaches adopted by those who deny the history of deportations, mass crimes, State crimes and the barbarities of the various dictatorships cling to contemporary digital technology and to today’s more right-wing or ultra-right nationalist political trends.
We wished to share the concern over this debate with some of our other network partners and we would like to push for more seminars next year. It is not just a European phenomenon, but also a global one. Talking to our French friends at the Maison d’Izieu – Memorial to the Exterminated Jewish Children, we set out to continue the work they have been undertaking for years to pursue justice against those who perpetrated the crimes and some of those who
deny them. We have also established a line of collaboration with our colleague Verónica Torres, from Memoria Abierta. Together with the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Sites of Memory (RESLAC), she shall initiate a permanent programme that also addresses relativism in the framework of other countries in the world and other memories, such as Latin American dictatorships. At this delicate time of multiple crises (not just health-related), we therefore felt that our in-depth perspective had to focus on the ease with which the past is trivialised and how it is used to deny or relativise genocides or State crimes.
In 2016, the film Denial, about the trial of historian Deborah Lipstadt and denialist David Irving, was brought to the big screen. Historian Richard J. Evans, who participated as a specialist on the Third Reich, tells us about the ins and outs of the trial, which took place in 2000, and his impressions of the film directed by Mick Jackson. At issue here is no longer just the relationship between history, memory and justice, but how it was translated to the big screen. Furthermore, we
move from traditional negationism to the revisionism and relativism of the new far right. We do so alongside historian Federico Finchelstein, who analyses how the latter is capable of subverting the law, paradoxically in the name of the law. The year 2021 marks the 60th anniversary of another trial, in this case, the Eichmann trial. For historian Annette Wieviorka, this trial marked the advent of the witness. We discussed this subject with her, as well as the role of the witness today and other issues in the interview we are publishing this year.
Marie-Claire Lavabre tells us about the memories of communism in Europe and the complexity of their analysis, either because of the political uses resulting therefrom, their social dimension (the memory of shared experiences that remains among different groups) or the historical distinction between Eastern and Western Europe. This distinction shall also be addressed by Sébastien Ledoux. He analyses the phenomenon of “memory laws” based on their legal characteristics, the legal tradition from which they emerge and the specific context in which they developed.
The section with shorter articles features the personal insight of historian Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk. He describes the social and cultural consequences experienced by the citizens of former East Germany as a result of unification or, rather, the manner in which it was carried out. Moreover, journalist and political scientist Emir Suljagić explains
the need to inscribe the Srebrenica genocide in European history and memory, describing the role that the Srebrenica Memorial Centre has taken on. Archivist Gustavo Meoño tells us, as a result of the declassification of American documentation, how the US Government, since the 1940s, has intervened through various operations in
Guatemala’s policy that violated the human rights of its population.
Finally, historians Nuraini Juliastuti and Carine Zaayman, through a visit to the Dutch National Museum of World Cultures, analyse the contents of one of its exhibitions from a personal and decolonial perspective. This year, the magazine also features reviews by historian Vanessa Garbero surrounding a recent publication on the Francoist executions in Madrid and the memorial conflicts that have arisen therefrom; and historian David González, on how the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship are dealt with in textbooks. In addition, the magazine presents an article by Alejandra Naftal, executive director of the ESMA (School of Navy Mechanics) Memory Site Museum in Buenos Aires. She puts the space forward as a UNESCO World Heritage Site candidate, a campaign that we advocate for and wholeheartedly support.
Finally yet importantly, in the section dedicated to our partners, Elma Hašimbegović, director of the History Museum of History of Bosnia and Herzegovina, delineates the objectives, contents and characteristics of this space, its evolution and the different transformations it has undergone over time.
Concisely, we hope that your reading of the various articles contained herein will prove enlightening and foster reflection, analysis and learning, which is our overarching goal. As always, we would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to the authors for their collaboration, having shared projects and friendships with some of them. Our warmest gratitude also to the EUROM team that has made this edition possible and to the other members of the Fundació Solidaritat, without whom this volume would not have proven possible.
Health and happy reading to you all.