"European Remembrance" - 4th International Symposium of European Institutions dealing with 20th-Century History
Remembrance of the Second World War 70 Years After. Winners, Losers, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders.
Vienna, 11-13 May
Participant registration has begun for the 4th edition of the annual “European Remembrance” Symposium, which brings together several hundred representatives of institutions and organisations dealing with 20th-century history. This year’s edition will focus on memories of the Second World War and it takes place on 11-13 May at the seat of the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna. The event is organised on the initiative of the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity.
The idea behind the Symposium is the conviction that there is a need to have common and multidimensional reflection on the history of the last century which would take into consideration various narrations, sensitivities, historical experiences and their interpretations. 70 years after the Second World War ended some questions return: who, from the perspective of Yalta, should be considered winners and who the defeated? How to remember perpetrators who themselves became victims and how to talk about victims who in another context were perpetrators? How to assess bystanders who were not blameless themselves?
In order to discuss such issues we are now extending our invitation to historians, representatives of museums or institutes for remembrance, educational and scientific centres as well as foundations and associations dealing with 20th-century history. The three-day event will give the participants plenty of opportunity to attend lectures, discussion panels and workshops organised by e.g. the German War Graves Commission, the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on War Consequences or UNESCO. The successive parts of the Symposium will focus, in particular, on such issues as: remembrance of the Holocaust in dictatorships and in democracies, remembering the crimes of totalitarian regimes or various aspects and interpretations of war in arts.
This year’s panellists include Martin Pollack (an Austrian writer and a journalist as well as a translator of Polish literature), Anda Rottenberg (a Polish art historian, critic, art curator and commentator) and Richard Overy (a history professor at the University of Exeter expert in the Second World War). The Symposium enjoys the honorary patronage of Austrian President Heinz Fischer who has pre-announced his availability for the event.
More information, detailed agenda and registration form available at: www.europeanremembrance.enrs.eu. Registration for the Symposium lasts until 15 April. The number of participants is limited.
The “European Remembrance” symposium cycle was launched in Gdańsk in September 2012. Its successive editions were held in Berlin and Prague. In 2016, the Symposium will take place in Bucharest.