News

Between 10 and 12 April, Ms Iwona Cichoń of the Museum Archive took part in a seminar organized by Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw organized in cooperation with USC Shoah Foundation of Los Angeles. On 10 April Dr Anna Czerner of the Research Department participated in the 23th Seminar of the Sites of Remembrance in Eastern and Western Europe taking place in Krzyżowa.

The seminar held in Warsaw was addressed to workers of museums and sites of remembrance in the country and was devoted to the subject matter of oral history in the context of traumatic experiences such as war, occupation and genocide. The program of the meeting started with acquainting the participants with the activity of Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute and the background of their cooperation with USC Shoah Foundation while making recordings of survivors’ testimonies. An important element of the event was a videoconference executed with the team from Los Angeles, during which the participants got to know the genesis of the Visual History Archive and the educational portal iWitness.

The next part of the seminar included lectures dealing with methodological challenges of working on accounts as well as a workshop on servicing the base of Visual History Archive. Thanks to them the participants obtained access to over 50 thousand testimonies which can be consulted in search of concrete biographical fates and historical facts. Theoretical aspects of the training were complemented with study visits and field classes.

In turn the 23th Seminar of the Sites of Remembrance in Eastern and Western Europe, which took place between 8 and 11 April at the International Youth Meeting Centre of the “Krzyżowa” Foundation for Mutual Understanding in Europe, was devoted to memory and forms of commemoration after 1989. It was attended by a number of experts and educators from several countries and provided a platform for a profound reflection over the question of how the fall of the Iron Curtain affected historical narrations in Europe. The starting point for the participants was the assumption that historical memory is rarely harmonious and more frequently becomes an area for conflicts and intensive social debates. It was underlined at the same time that dissonance and dispute over the past can be productive as long as they are overt and initiate a constructive dialogue.

During the meeting it was also sought to answer the question about the transformation of museums and sites of remembrance in the last three decades. It was analysed, too, in what way difficult topics are presented in the museal education.

Dr Anna Czerner took part in the discussion panel devoted to the transnational dimension of memory of World War II and postwar period in Western and Eastern Europe. It was an occasion to present the paper under the title “The Site of National Remembrance in Łambinowice: Europe starts here”, and also to participate in a debate with representatives of German sites and institutions of remembrance.