Publications

In its 31st volume (issue 3, 2017), 'East European Politics and Societies: and Cultures' features a special section on the Genealogies of Memory. Its guest editors are Ferenc Laczó and Joanna Wawrzyniak.

Articles included in the special section:

Memories of 1989 in Europe between Hope, Dismay, and Neglect - Ferenc Laczó, Joanna Wawrzyniak

1939 versus 1989—A Missed Opportunity to Create a European Lieu de Mémoire? - Aline Sierp

1989 in European Vernacular Memory - Lars Breuer, Anna Delius

A Tale of Two Revolutions: Hungary's 1956 and the Un-doing of 1989 - Victoria Harms

The "Children of Crisis": Making Sense of (Post)socialism and the End of Yugoslavia - Ljubica Spaskovska

Creative Agenda to serve as foundation for Sound in the Silence. Written by Dan Wolf, published by MOTTE.

Sound in the Silence is a cross-cultural memorial project for young people. At historically challenging locations student work with art in order to understand how the past is connected to their questions in the present.

The project is carried out by ENRS and MOTTE.

En: Europe on Trial: The Story of Collaboration, Resistance, and Retribution during the Second World War.

In Europe on Trial, acclaimed historian István Deák presents the comparative history of collaboration, retribution and resistance during the Second World War. Deák explores these three themes through the Western and Eastern European countries that suffered at the hands of German military occupation. The occupied countries had to face the question of whether to cooperate with their German occupiers, try to survive the war without any political involvement or risk their lives by opposing the Nazis. Foreword by Norman M. Naimark.

German version published by the ENRS in cooperation with Böhlau publishing house. Year: 2017.

The publication features the most significant texts from the annual European Remembrance Symposium, for the period 2012-16.

Does a common European culture of remembrance exist? Is it possible to build a common historical narrative in 21st-century Europe? These two questions are at the centre of international discussions and debates between history scholars, history academics, researchers, and culture managers. They also provide the underpinning for the European Remembrance Symposium - one of the main events organized by the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity.

Now selected lectures, discussions, and commentaries from Gdańsk, Berlin, Prague, Vienna and Budapest have been assembled into one publication. It is available on-line and in print.

The publication presents the 2016 edition of the Sound in the Silence project exploring the significance of resistance. Young participants visited the former concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they learend about the activities of the in-camp underground movement organized by the Polish soldier Witold Pilecki, as well as the escape of Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, two Slovak Jews, authors of one of the original reports describing the situation in Auschwitz.

The Nation’s Memory Institute in Slovakia in cooperation with European Network Remembrance and Solidarity has prepared a series of brochures regarding the history of Slovakia 1939-1990. The brochures can be especially useful for teachers and students and for all those who seek basic knowledge about the totalitarian regimes and their consequences in Slovakia. The authors – historians and researchers from the Nation’s Memory Institute – chose a simple yet attractive form of leaflets with archival photos to describe the reality of limitations of human rights and religious freedoms under the Nazi and Communist regimes in the general and international context of the past century. The brochures were published in English and in Slovak language versions. For the Slovak version, please visit http://www.upn.gov.sk/sk/informacne-letaky-pre-studentov/

En: Dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu 1965-1989. The Genius of the Carpathian Mountains

The overall picture of the Ceaușescu dictatorship in Romania offered by Adam Burakowski presents the brutal machinery of oppression and dictator’s calculated relationships with the West in a broad historical-political framework. The Romanian translation of Dictatura lui Nicolae Ceaușescu 1965–1989. Geniul Carpatilor [Dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu, 1965–1989. The genius of the Carpathian Mountains] was published in 2016 by Polirom, a publishing house, in cooperation with the ENRS. It is the first book published in Romania to use original documents of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland in Bucharest.

Published by Polirom in cooperation with the ENRS. Year: 2016.

En: Magazines of European Network Remembrance and Solidarity. Volume 8. National Socialism and Regional Awareness in Eastern Europe: Ideology, Power Struggle, and Inertia

The essays in this volume examine the relationship of National Socialist territorial and population policy to regional identities in the countries of Eastern Europe. A focus is placed on the role of “Auslandsdeutschen” (ethnic Germans in foreign countries), including their relationships to their nations of residence and to the Third Reich given their cultural ties and the exigencies of the Second World War.

Published in 2016 by European Network Remembrance and Solidarity, De Gruyter Oldenbourg
Edited by Dr Burkhard Olschowsky, Ingo Loose.

The book was published as a result of the first editions of the "Genealogies of Memory" project, organised by the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity and coordinated by the editors of the volume, Małgorzata Pakier and Joanna Wawrzyniak.

In studies of a common European past, there is a significant lack of scholarship on the former Eastern Bloc countries. While understanding the importance of shifting the focus of European memory eastward, contributors to this volume avoid the trap of Eastern European exceptionalism, an assumption that this region's experiences are too unique to render them comparable to the rest of Europe. They offer a reflection on memory from an Eastern European historical perspective, one that can be measured against, or applied to, historical experience in other parts of Europe. In this way, the authors situate studies on memory in Eastern Europe within the broader debate on European memory.

Published in 2015 by Berghahn Books.

En: History of Mutual Interactions

The publication, previously known only in German, was published in the Polish language as Historie wzajemnych oddziaływań [Historie der Beziehungsgeschichte]. The collection of texts edited by Professor Robert Traba was written by Polish and German historians, cultural theorists and writers. The texts deal with one of the most important problems of modern historical studies: the interaction phenomena occurring in regions that differ in terms of identity and culture. It is an attempt to analyse how the same historical events, which play a different role in various nations, have often simultaneously affected the history of those nations.

Published in 2015 by ENRS in cooperation with the Centre for Historical Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Berlin.

The publication describes the Freedom Express campaign which was the ENRS's major project of 2014, oganised in order to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fall of communism in Europe. It started with 20 young Europeans going on a study trip. The aim of the study trip was to make young people aware of the reality of the life behind the Iron Curtain. Time was spent in meetings and workshops, discussing and exchanging opinions, where they had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet the witnesses of history and to experience the atmosphere of late 1980s. The publication also describes the open-air exhibition Roads to 1989. East-Central Europe 1939-1989, which documents the complicated process through which our part of Europe regained its freedom from communist dictatorship.

The 4th issue – entitled “The memory of economic crisis” – focuses on depressions, recessions, shortages, and hyperinflation. These topics are not often a subject of memory studies, however memories of war and revolution often center on the economic experience of these events. Therefore, scholars look among others into Living in Warsaw under Hyperinflation in 1923 (by Izabela Mrzygłód), Parallels of Economic Business Cycles in Slovakia (by Ľudovít Hallon), Public Transportation in Budapest in 1945-46 (by Zsuzsa Frisnyák) and discuss The Possibility of Remembering Economic Crisis (by Łukasz Mańczyk).

Published by Znak and the ENRS.

The Polish translation of the book was published in 2015 in cooperation with Znak, a publishing house. With Dance Shoes in Siberian Snows, written by Sandra Kalniete, a Latvian politician and diplomat, is a memoir of the author’s family banishment from Latvia to Siberia. It tells the story of Latvia’s 20th-century history determined by a nation’s struggles with the twin plagues infecting Central and Eastern Europe: communism and Nazism. The book was a best-seller in Latvia and has been translated into several languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Arabic.

The book describes the Soviet bloc’s struggle against Radio Free Europe (RFE). It is the first book in English to use the unique documents of communist foreign intelligence operations and propaganda materials, interviews with RFE staff and collaborators as well as with Polish Communist Party and security functionaries. The English translation reflects further discoveries of documentation since the original publication in Polish in 2007. On 2 February 2015 the book was officially presented by the author and the representatives of the ENRS in the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC.

Published in 2014 by Woodrow Wilson Center Press with Stanford University Press, with ERNS as a partner.