The magazine of the EUROM - European Observatory on Memories
November 2018
Observing
Memories
2
THE MEMORY OF THE
PERPETRATORS AND
THEIR LEGACIES
VALENTINA SALVI
Once victors,
now victims.
LEIGH PAYNE
Left Unsettled
JORDI GUIXÉ
The Valley of the
Fallen
KIRSTEN JOHN-STUCKE
Memorial museum
of Wewelsburg
EXPERT’S VIEW
EUROPE INSIGHT
OVERVIEW
ENZO TRAVERSO
GEORGES MINK
HORST HOHEISEL
The complexity of
the past
The international spread
of state interventionism
in history
“The long shadow of
the past” in the short
light of present
EUROM is led by Fundació Solidaritat de la Universitat de Barcelona with the support of the European Commission – Europe for Citizens Programme.
THE MEMORY OF THE PERPETRATORS AND THEIR LEGACIES
Observing
Memories
LED BY
WITH THE SUPORT OF
The European Observatory on Memories (EUROM) is a transnational
network of institutions and civil society organizations committed
to research and promotion of remembrance policies and memorial
initiatives. Its main goal is to promote collective and citizenship
memories through a plurality of approaches and diverse perspectives.
EUROM is led by the University of Barcelona’s Solidarity Foundation
with the support of the program ‘Europe for Citizens’ of the European
Commission.
Meet our partners at www.europeanmemories.net/network
Legal deposit: B 27726-2017
ISSN 2565-2923
ISSN (online) 2565-2931
SUMMARY
EDITORIAL
3
Jordi Guixé, Director of EUROM
DEEP VIEW: THE MEMORY OF PERPETRATORS
4
Once victors, now victims. How do the Argentine military remember their recent
past? Valentina Salvi
12
Left Unsettled: Confessions of Armed Revolutionaries. Leigh Payne
EXPERT’S VIEW
20
26
About the complexity of the past. Interview to Enzo Traverso
Mausoleum of terror. “Fallen in Pamplona and Cuelgamuros”. Jordi Guixé
EUROPE INSIGHT
36
The international spread of state interventionism in history and historical memory.
Georges Mink
42
48
European remembrance policies. Markus J. Prutsch
“Citizens’ engagement is at the core of the Europe for Citizens programme”.
Interview to Gilles Pelayo
OVERVIEW
50
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64
“The long shadow of the past” in the short light of present. Horst Hoheisel
Can memorials heal the wounds? Ana Milosevic
The one who sows winds, reaps storms. Validity of the Damnatio memoriae.
Fernando Hernández
REVIEW
70
72
Festive Spaces, 2016. Kristina Norman
Books. Tsjalling Wierdsma
The Social Life of Memory: Violence, Trauma, and Testimony in Lebanon and Marocco
Law and Memory: Towards Legal Governance of History
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“Auschwitz: Not long ago. Not far away”. Travelling memory of the Holocaust. David
González
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History museums in the Caucasus. Between soviet nostalgia and current regional
disputes. Oriol López
SIGHTSEEING
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“Ideology and Terror of the SS”. An exhibition about the perpetrators, victims and
bystanders in the memorial museum of Wewelsburg. Kirsten John-Stucke
1
OVERVIEW
Can memorials heal
the wounds?
Ana Milošević
University of Leuven (KU Leuven),
Leuven International and European
Studies (LINES)
n 2014, the Swedish artist Jonas Dahlberg won a competition for a memorial to the
I
victims of the Utøya massacre. The project, called Memory wound, aimed to cut an island
into half to symbolise the death of 77 persons killed during the 2011 Norway attacks.
But controversy beset Dahlberg’s proposal. Environmentally-friendly Norwegians opposed
changes in the natural landscape. Local residents — already traumatised by the mass
killings, stood against the project. “How we are supposed to heal the profound wounds”,
they wondered, “with such a constant reminder of the tragedy?”
Perhaps even without knowing it, the Norwegians raised a very important and somehow
forgotten question: What is the purpose of memorials? Can memorials help healing of the
wounds or do they simply keep them open?
Memorial purpose
For better or for worse, ours is the age of memory.
Over the last three decades, the term “memory” has seen an inflationary dissemination.
Some authors even warn of a memorial mania (Doss, 2010) – a sort of pathology of
our modern societies. The current upsurge in the (de)construction of memorial sites
revolves also around mass production and consumption of memory. On the one hand, we
overproduce memory using obsessively memorial language and tools. On the other, we
are terrorised by the forgetting (see Rieff, 2016), or better said the absence of memory.
Not remembering or wanting to forget is associated with amnesiatic or denial state. Our
infatuation with memory and memorials might be the real reason why we do not discuss
anymore whether and why to memorialise but rather ponder on how.
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How we handle memorialisation often depends
further lacerate the wounds inflicted by tragedy and
on who is directing the process, and importantly
violence.
what role is assigned to memorials. Differently
from the past that celebrated survival, resistance,
Transitional justice experts working in the Balkans,
victories, and heroes, our present is built on
Sri Lanka, Rwanda, or Nepal (just to name some)
monuments that primarily commemorate trauma.
know this very well. While the global transitional
The purposes of these memorials are multiple:
justice fetishizes trials and truth commissions,
as a form of symbolic reparations, justice for the
memorialisation is often used in conflicting ways.
victims, acknowledgement, tools for dealing with
To both promote and counter the new knowledge —
the past. Memorials are conceived as ethical and
or truth if you like — about the past. In the post-
political promises of non-recurrence that clearly
genocide Rwanda, the government uses the victims
have a didactic end. They are meant to teach future
as a perpetual public testament to the manner of
generations the lessons from the past so that
their death. In Murambi (1) - one of six genocide
tragedies of the history cannot repeat again.
museums in Rwanda, 848 preserved human
corpses remain on view, years after the genocide
Bizarrely enough - we know little about
memorials as a part of social and personal
recovery.
(see Longman 2017) (1). This macabre testimony
of death is not only offensive for the victims, but
utterly dehumanising – as it uses the human remains
to promote political legitimacy of the current
It is unclear whether memorials indeed help to heal
government. More than 20 years after the wars in the
the wounds of antagonism and what is their role
Balkans, memorialisation has evolved into an ethno-
in the prevention of future violence. The past, after
political instrument for nation-building and virtue
all, has its ways of coming back to life. But what
signalling – a conspicuous expression of moral
we know for certain is that memorials don’t always
values (2). Arguably, it serves to keep the wounds
act as a unifying force for social groups. Sometimes
alive rather than to support reconciliation and the
they can also deepen the lines of division and
healing process (Touquet and Milosevic, 2018).
Grassroot memorial after the Bataclan attacks | Ana Milošević
OVERVIEW
57
In these and many other cases, the victims and survivors are
used as a political currency. Only rarely do they have a say in
the handling of the public memorialisation. As the time goes
by the victims and survivors perceive memorialisation as a
perpetuation of past conflict and lived trauma. The meanings
of their personal tragedies and suffering are appropriated by
the collective.
The untold story is that, more often than not, top-down
memorialisation fails to meet the expectations of survivors in
the aftermath of violence. With their grievances unattended,
In Western societies,
grassroots memorialisation has now
become a socially
accepted practice of
mourning in a public
space.
survivors are often creating alternative memorial spaces that
will address their needs. The Monument Quilt, for instance,
is one such example. It is a crowd-sourced collection of
thousands of stories from survivors of rape and abuse. Using
quilts to symbolically stitch their stories together, the victims
are creating and using public space to heal after sexual
violence. Yet, even when memorialisation is successful – that
is accepted, endorsed and practiced by the survivors, it still
represents only one segment of a much broader process of
addressing their needs (health and care, support, poverty,
reparations).
Memorial at the Maelbeek metro station in
Brussels | Ana Milošević
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Kihei, US Memorials | Ana Milošević
Therapeutic memorials
The proliferation of memorials in recent decades is arguably the result of an
impetus to mend history and its aches, to bear witness to the suffering and tragedy.
Forgotten or marginalised histories are recovered. Memorials are erected to the
victims of the past as a retroactive token of recognition. Yet, not only the tragedies
of the past linger in our political present. Terrorist attacks, natural and man-made
disasters, are forcing us to rethink how we remember and what purposes we assign
to memorials.
In Western societies, grassroots memorialisation has now become a socially
accepted practice of mourning in a public space. Grassroots memorials are objects
which serve as a focus for memory of something (an event) or someone (a person
who has died). Usually they mark an untimely death and can be found in the
streets, hospitals, parks, schoolyards. Numerous memorials have been created
worldwide to commemorate the terrorist attacks. From 9/11 to the Toronto attacks,
society itself has taken the role of a memory actor. Memorialisation is used to
express solidarity and closeness, to mourn and grieve. Grassroots memorialisation,
therefore, is directed towards survivors and those who perished, but also towards
the society itself — seen as a victim of a collective tragedy.
OVERVIEW
59
Seen how widespread grassroots memorialisation
is, it clearly matters to a lot of people. To the
survivors, these memorials and their accompanying
commemorative activism provide a certain comfort,
as they demonstrate social empathy and solidarity,
closeness and understanding. But the main purpose
of these memorials is to address therapeutic needs of
their makers – individuals and communities. In the
aftermath of violence, memorialisation in a public
space helps shell shocked populations to process the
impact of unexpected loss and violence (see Truc
2018). As such, memorialisation helps to restore
shaken bonds in the community and reassures one’s
sense of security.
Graffiti in the street of the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris | PIctures:
Ana Milošević
Yet, some people find grassroots memorials
disturbing, and even false. When the tributes placed
at site start deteriorating they are an eyesore for the
community. Usually this is one of the main reasons
to start the dismantlement of a memorial. In Nice
(France) after the lorry attack on Promenade des
Anglais some of the mourners used the memorial
to express anger and frustration. They were
spitting at the place where the attacker was shot.
In Brussels, following the attacks in 2016, a small
group of anti-immigrant protesters contested the
public outpouring of grief. They demolished tributes
accusing the mourners of false and unjustified
grief— since they didn’t know the victims.
The recent terrorist attacks around Europe, however,
have shown that grief transcends the sphere of
personal and national. The images and stories
of these memorials are replayed countless times
through media forging communities around crises.
Individuals and communities that did not suffer
a loss have used memorialisation to express their
closeness. It is through solidarity in grief that many
grassroots monuments have been created in the
cities and countries around the world. To remember
the victims of Berlin attacks or London bombings,
national landmarks such as Burj Khalifa in UEA or
Tour Eiffel lit in colours of Germany and UK. Flowers
and candles were left at the doorsteps of the British,
Canadian or French embassies.
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Memorial plaque at the Bataclan theatre | Ana Milošević
Limits of remembrance
wreaths laid. No political speeches were delivered
on the day of commemoration, and no references to
What lessons can we take from these
cases? Do memorials and memorialisation
support personal and societal recovery?
the causes of violence made. This is understandable
seen how polarising and difficult the issue of
terrorism and security has been. But the criticism
of the victims’ families and survivors that emerged
Over the last two years, I have been studying
in response to top-down memorialisation of the
societal reactions in the aftermath of the Brussels
terrorist attacks is also similar across the EU. They
terrorist attacks. On 22 March 2016, two separate
see a strong contrast between societal and political
bombings occurred: one at the airport and other
remembrance and want to contribute to the process
in the Maelbeek metro station. Following the
of distilling the meanings and values from the tragic
tragedy in Brussels many memorials have emerged
event and shaping the knowledge about the terrorist
to commemorate 32 lost lives, and more than 300
attacks.
persons that were injured ( Milošević 2018).
In Belgium, a number of issues have been raised by
Differently from grassroots memorials that attract
the victims’ families, associations and survivors.
very large numbers of people, permanent memorials
On the one hand, the process of determining the
and annual commemorations don’t have the same
memorial in Brussels has proven to be very divisive
emotional resonance. On the first anniversary of
as it is its resolute, memorial itself. The survivors
the attacks in Paris (2015) officials unveiled small
and the victims’ families, as well as some of the
plaques at each of the three bombing sites. One year
associations that represent them, have put forward
after the attacks on the London bridge, the Tree
their own views on the process. They wish to have a
of Healing was planted. In Brussels, a permanent
proactive role in the overall memorialisation process,
memorial was created by the government at the
from monument making to commemorations
Schuman Square.
organising - instead of being simply the object of
remembrance. This message comes across different
In all of these cases, annual commemorative
interviews I have conducted between 2016 and 2018
ceremonies followed the same script. Minutes of
with survivors from the Zaventem and Maelbeek
silence were marked, names of the victims read,
bombings sites in Brussels.
OVERVIEW
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The planning of a permanent memorial was
memorialisation as a means of symbolic reparation
plagued by conflicts. Massive consultations on
and recognition is overshadowing other more
remembrance included all levels of Belgium (very
pressing needs and demands of the survivors
complex) government. It resulted with a plan for
and victims’ families. The issues of reparations,
a memorial for all the victims of terrorist attacks
access to medical care and adequate psychological
(not only of the attacks in Brussels) to “allow the
support are some of their key concerns. A young
relatives of the victims, survivors and citizens to
girl that survived the Maelbeek metro attack told
gather and remember.” A call for proposals was
me, “commemorations are like a political memorial
launched already six months after the attacks and
circus. Everyone is here to remember that day, to
a monument ordered for a sum of 100.000 euro.
hold our hands and take picture. But I have to live
Many survivors and local residents questioned the
with this by the rest of my life. I am reliving that
decisions of the Government, namely the cost and
day 365 days per year.” The role of politics, in her
location of the monument. Belgian decision-makers
view, is to acknowledge their tragedy and injustice
opted to install the monument in the European
suffered by providing protection and reparation,
Quarter, thus far from the actual places of tragedy
taking care of their needs and ensuring security
(Zaventem airport and Maelbeek metro station) and
for the community – and to a lesser extent to
certainly not in the city centre that emerged as a
commemorate.
symbol of post-attacks remembrance.
The unveiling of the monument at Schuman Square
was another moment of division and delusion
for some of the survivors in Brussels. Besides
its questionable aesthetics ( de gustibus non
disputandum est), the survivors were disappointed
because the names of the victims were not engraved
onto the monument. “It’s too neutral, it doesn’t
communicate and it’s clearly not saying what
happened and how it happened” – says one of
the survivors of the Zaventem bombings. For the
victims it is very hard to identify with “impersonal
memorial” that offers “no reading of the tragedy.”
Unveiling of a memorial plaque at the Zaventem
Airport and attending the commemoration at the
Maelbeek metro were also very emotional moments
for the survivors and victims’ families. Every return
to the site of the crime, even for the reason of
commemorating, stirs up very strong feelings that
some of the survivors are not ready to relive yet.
Many interviewed survivors don’t harbour any
illusion that a memorial in Brussels will help the
healing process, provide them some closure, or
even a sort of relief. Still, they believe that having
a memorial is useful to “leave a footprint of these
terrible events in history.” Yet, overemphasis on
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The monument at Schuman Square in Brussels. The survivors were disappointed because the names of the victims were not engraved onto the
monument | Ana Milošević
Do we need memorials or memorials need us?
When an unexpected tragedy strikes individual and communities are shell-shocked. We
feel sadness, anger, disbelief and grief – and sometimes all at once. We mourn prematurely
severed bond between the dead and the living. The questions about the healing, growth and
a path to resilience come only later.
Memorials can provide a place of sanctuary for mourning, but the therapeutic purpose of
memorials and remembrance should not be taken for granted. It would seem that, for the
survivors of terrorist attacks, memorialisation matters more in the immediate aftermath
of a tragedy and violence. It symbolises acknowledgment, societal solidarity, closeness and
empathy. It’s a sort of a sympathetic hug of a society of strangers. But when candles burn
and flowers wither away, political or societal pressure to memorialise must not be forced
upon the survivors and their families. Remembrance has its therapeutic limits but in order
to succeed it requires that those who are left behind have the ownership of their own grief
process.
Whoever suffered a loss or a tragedy, knows well that post-traumatic recovery and coping
with loss needs a lot of time. There is no magic formula that can help dealing with the
grief and void left by a tragedy. Psychology teaches that a road to healing goes through five
stages of grief, the outcome of which is supposed to be acceptance of loss. It means being
able to get a hold of the pain and acknowledging the “new” reality in which our dear ones
do not reside anymore. Yet, every road to recovery is different: sometimes that road begins
with remembrance, and sometimes it will depart from it.
More than a right to remembrance,
we must offer to the survivors the
right to move forward on the path
of healing and recovery.
References
Bibliography
(1) https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/theinsistence-of-memory/
Erica Doss (2010). Memorial Mania. Chicago:
University Press.
(2) https://balkanist.net/placing-all-bets-onmemorials-memory-mania-goes-balkans/
Gérôme Truc (2018). Shell shocked. The social
response to terrorist attacks. Malden: Polity
Press.
David Rieff (2016). In Praise of forgetting.
Historical memory and its ironies. London: Yale
University Press.
Ana Milošević (2018). “Historicizing the
present: Brussels attacks and heritagization of
spontaneous memorials.” International Journal
for Heritage Studies 24(1): 53-65.
Timothy Longman (2017). Memory and Justice
in Post-Genocide Rwanda. Cambridge: University
Press.
Heleen Touquet and Ana Milošević (2018).
“When Reconciliation Becomes the R-Word:
Dealing with the Past in Former Yugoslavia” in
Krondorfer, Bjorn (ed). Reconciliation in Global
Context: Why it is Needed and How it Works. New
York: CU NY.
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