Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński, Director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum Cover picture: Visitors in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum | EUROM Whether visitor attendance is good or poor, whether it grows or remains stable, is not the essence of the matter. Attendance seen in terms of a sacred, annual number is really just a museum …
Montse Morcate , PhD, artist, researcher and lecturer of photography at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Barcelona Cover picture: Christian Boltanski. Réserve des Suisses Morts, 1991 The contemporary photographic art project has incontrovertible value as a tool for transmitting and reflecting on historical memory and genocide. In this respect, teaching in …
Filippo Focardi, Università di Padova, Department of Political and Juridical Sciences and International Studies (SPGI) Cover picture: National monument of the Foiba di Basovizza in Trieste | EUROM The dramatic political changes in Europe since 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the breakup of the Soviet Union and the disintegration of Soviet control …
Laure Neumayer, University Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne Cover picture: Tunne Kelam MEP (EPP Group, Estonia) speaking in the commemoration of the Baltic deportations at the European Parliament in Strasbourg | EPP Group Since their inception, European organisations such as the Council of Europe and the European Union (EU) have celebrated the common past of their …
Interview with Michael Rothberg Cover picture: Michael Rothberg Photographed by David Wu, UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies Michael Rothberg is a Professor of English and Comparative Literature and the 1939 Society Samuel Goetz Chair in Holocaust Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Working in the fields of Holocaust, trauma and …
Marcello Flores, Historian, professor at the Università degli Studi di Siena, and Carlo Giunchi, cultural manager Cover picture: Souvenir shop in Predappio main street | EUROM It was recently announced that the mayor of the town of Predappio had decided to use a large disused building, the former Casa del Fascio e dell’Ospitalitá, as a …
This issue of Observing Memories represents the consolidation of a high quality multidisciplinary journal which explores the past from a permanent trans-European and international perspective. With each issue published, the Observatory’s reputation has grown and we are delighted to present our latest edition, published just after the exhumation of the dictator Francisco Franco from the mausoleum of the Valley of the Fallen. The removal of Franco’s remains is an important step for democracy both in Spain and in Europe. It means that we can now begin to consider this place of terror from the perspective of heritage and culture – perhaps even as a tourist destination, once tribute has been paid to the memory of the thousands of victims buried there illicitly by the dictatorship.