Heritage, Memory and Conflict Journal

“Sites of Violence and their Communities” presents the results of a research project that brought together scholars and practitioners of memory work in an attempt to critically reinterpret the links between sites, their (human, and non-human) users, and memory. These interdisciplinary discussions focused on overlooked, repressed or ignored sites of violence that may benefit from new approaches to memory studies, approaches that go beyond the traditional focus on communication, symbolism, representation and communality. Clandestine or contested sites, in particular, pose challenging questions about memory practices and policies: about the status of unacknowledged victims and those who witnessed their deaths; about those who have inherited the position of “bystander”; about the ontology of human remains; and about the ontologies of the sites themselves, with the natural and communal environments implicated in their perdurance. Claude Lanzmann – one of the first to undertake rigorous research on abandoned, uncommemorated or clandestine sites of violence – responded to Pierre Nora’s seminal conception with his work and with the critical notion of “non-lieux de mémoire.” Methodologies emerging from more traditional as well as recently introduced perspectives (like forensic, ecological, and material ones) allowed team members to engage with such “non-sites of memory” from new angles. The goal was to consider the needs and interests of post-conflict societies; to identify and critically read unofficial transmissions of memory; and to re-locate memory in new contexts – in the grassroots of social, political and institutional processes where the human, post-human and natural merge with unanticipated mnemonic dynamics.

The Spanish Civil War ended in 1939 with Franco’s victory, beginning a dictatorship marked by extreme political repression. The dictatorship initiated an elaborate commemorative regime to honour the Francoist dead and vilify the defeated Republicans. A striking feature of Franco’s memory politics was the Causa General, a bureaucratic accounting of war deaths throughout Spain. The process characterised the regime’s dead as martyrs, whilst demonising Republicans as perpetrators. Forensic science was deployed by the Franco regime in their construction of post war narratives, one of the earliest historical examples of such usage. This article employs the approach of archival forensics to examine the reports of exhumations conducted in 1939, and the contemporaneous media coverage. We examine how facts about the war were constructed by the regime and then disseminated as propaganda. This article will focus on exhumations at Soto de Aldovea (Madrid). In December 1939, the Military Court of the dictatorship in conjunction with a relatives’ association, excavated 414 corpses, which the regime defined as “Martyrs and Fallen”. The examination of human remains was rudimentary, even by the standards of the time. Instead, the regime focused on the associated objects—personal effects, clothing, and documents—which were critical to the identification process. Out of the 414 bodies exhumed, only 69 were identified. Notably, a third were found with valuable personal items, described in detail in the archive, offering material insights into the dead. This exhumation highlights how Franco’s dictatorship used post-war exhumation processes to reinforce its historical narrative. The analysis of the evidence and its role in the identifications, allows us to interrogate the martyrdom narrative of the regime, through his own judicial, forensic, and material construction. This case also enables a critical engagement with the broader issues raised by forensic science as a modality of historical representation.

Based on the experience of spatial confusion and inadequacy common during visits to uncommemorated sites of violence, the authors propose expanding the topological reflection in the research on the spatialities of the Holocaust, as well as to introduce topology into the analysis of the everyday experiences of users of the postgenocidal space of Central and Eastern Europe. The research material is composed of hand-drawn maps by Holocaust eyewitnesses – documents created both in the 1960s and in recent years. The authors begin by summarizing the significance of topology for cultural studies, and provides a state-of-the-art reflection on cartography in the context of the Holocaust. They then proceed to interpret several of the maps as particular topological testimonies. The authors conclude by proposing a multi-faceted method of researching these maps, “necrocartography”, oriented by their testimonial, topological and performative aspects.

This paper examines the role of museums in shaping public perceptions of past conflict through visual representation. It explores how victim-perpetrator narratives are constructed and visualised within museum spaces and how such representations contribute to the reconciliation process. This study focuses on the visual representation of the Jeju 4.3 Incident in the Jeju 4.3 Peace Park in South Korea. It applies thematic analysis to examine textual descriptions, along with formal and iconographic analysis to analyse images and artworks, exploring the narratives constructed within the museum space. Particular attention is paid to the stakeholders of the presented voices and the format of visual communication in delivering bottom-up narratives. The paper argues that museum representations in the Jeju 4.3 Peace Park contribute to the reconciliation process by providing a space to negotiate different interpretations of the conflicting past. This is achieved by giving victims a platform to share their perspectives, exposing state violence within a state-led museum, and promoting the recognition and commemoration of victims. By publicly engaging with difficult and dissonant heritage, the exhibition reintroduces the conflict into collective memory, encouraging changes in public perception and shaping shared understanding of the past.

The approach employed by memory activists to sites of memory often involves historical practices. This paper presents the results of the examination of historical practices undertaken in locations of Holocaust violence during World War II and the disposal of victims’ remains that were not memorialised properly according to local residents or other groups with an interest in the sites’ past. The analysed practices were observed in the course of field research in various locations in Poland. The goal of the research was to describe these practices, discuss their critical potential, and indicate their distinct features as activities pertaining to contested sites of memory. A central tool for approaching this task is found in concepts of “non-site of memory” and “vernacular historian” as introduced to the debate by Claude Lanzmann and Lyle Dick. As a result, the article presents the cases of four vernacular historians whose practices are experimental combinations of the components of the work of professional historians and ways of working conditioned by local cultural environments, individual experience and commitment to communal life. Although vernacular history is sometimes considered of little value by academic historians, the research shows that the practices in question have the potential to produce new, socially relevant knowledge. Two distinct features of vernacular historical practices in non-sites of memory were observed: these unmarked sites of burial attract activists and prompt them to undertake historical practices; vernacular historians of these locations often undertake unconventional, sometimes experimental activities..

Former Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s 2022 apology for the “extreme violence” of Dutch armed forces during Indonesia’s war of independence (1945–9) was not only extended to the “people of Indonesia”. It was also addressed to Dutch veterans and, euphemistically, to the diverse diaspora community from the former Netherlands East Indies in the Netherlands today. Between the lines of Rutte’s apology lurked a problem that has haunted Dutch politics ever since. Exactly which historical actors were responsible for the “extreme violence on the Dutch side?” This article traces how some veterans’ and Indies-diaspora lobbyists have formed what we call “allied entitlement groups”. We focus on how these groups have mobilised politically to object to the spectre that Rutte’s apology raised of their implication (in the Rothbergian sense) in an unjust war, despite his best efforts to appease them. We argue that concepts of trauma and an interdependent politics of victimhood are central to these political mobilisations, in extra-parliamentary politics as well as by Dutch politicians. Our article critiques the historical and conceptual evasions in these political mobilisations, to mount instead an argument for truth-telling and acknowledging complex forms of implication.

During the First Scouting Alert (Poland 1965), scouts were tasked with finding and describing sites related to the events of Second World War. Those were mostly monuments, places of conflict, graves and body disposal pits. The scouts were tasked with finding such sites in their neighbourhood according to information collected from local communities. The campaign resulted in 26,000 reports in form of the registration sheets containing self-made maps, short descriptions of the found sites and answers to several questions on how to commemorate them. The Alert can be seen as a nationwide response to non-sites of memory.

The article analyses the reports of the scouts, as well as considering the action as a process. It presents the political background of the action and diagnoses its influence on the results of the reconnaissance conducted - types of places to be found and registered or overlooked by scouts. In particular cases, the Alert generated opportunities during which non-sites of memory could be restored to the public awareness. The paper summarizes the campaign and focuses on two cases: Krępiecki Forest and Adampol, described to present the influence of the Alert on the memory cultures. In the neighbourhood of Krępiecki Forest, the Alert was an impulse to transform a person who saw the mass murder into a key witness. The case of archaeological investigations conducted in Adampol shows the potential of the Alert archive materials to evoke the state of unrest and to become forensic evidence

Inspired by the Nazi rally grounds in Nurnberg, the National Socialist Movement of the Netherlands (NSB) purchased a plot of land near the village of Lunteren where they created an open-air theatre that could accommodate thousands of people. On one side of the terrain a long curved wall was constructed, which is known today as ‘Mussert’s wall’ after NSB-leader Anton Mussert who used it as a podium to deliver his speeches. Since the early 2000s, discussion arose about the site’s future. On the one hand, some local political parties and heritage organisations wanted to restore and preserve it. On the other hand, the Centre for Information and Documentation Israel (CIDI) tried to prevent this, fearing that Mussert’s wall would become a place of pilgrimage for right-wing extremists. In 2018, the national heritage agency of the Netherlands (RCE) decided to enlist the building as a national monument. This started a new discussion about how the site should be presented to visitors. This paper analyses the interplay between stakeholders involved in discussions about Mussert’s wall, including local communities, governments, heritage professionals, and other interest groups, as well as the strategies they considered for this site, ranging from demolition to preservation and adaptive reuse.

The paper describes and discusses the educational workshop in the form of a board game jam held in Radecznica, a village in Eastern Poland. The event, organised by researchers from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, was a follow-up of the research project on uncommemorated Jewish mass graves in the area. The aim of the workshop was to facilitate individual reflection on local Holocaust killings amongst the participating adults, as well as to bolster the memory of mass graves in Radecznica. Combining Holocaust memories with the didactic properties of rapid board game design, it was also an attempt to employ game jams as a method in Holocaust-related education. The workshop’s success leaves us optimistic regarding the method and its possible applications in the future.

This discussion gathers voices of an international group of researchers and practitioners from various disciplines and institutions who focus on diverse aspects of sites of past violence in their work: archaeology, history, ethics, literature and art, curatorial practices, oral history, education and commemoration. The debate, which took place during the conference “Sites of Violence and Their Communities: Critical Memory Studies in the Post-Human Era” in Kraków in September 2019, itself centres on six main topics: the question of archives of uncommemorated killing sites; research methodology; the position of the researchers themselves; the problem of complicity during conflict and the right to be a witness to past crimes; the place of the Righteous Among the Nations within Polish collective memory and the international debate on the Holocaust; and, finally, new ways of commemoration and education about mass violence.

Participants: Katarzyna Bojarska, Michał Chojak, Ewa Domańska, Zuzanna Dziuban, Karolina Grzywnowicz, Aleksandra Janus, Karina Jarzyńska, Maria Kobielska, Rob van der Laarse, Bryce Lease, Erica Lehrer, Jacek Leociak, Tomasz Łysak, Tomasz Majkowski, Christina Morina, Matilda Mroz, Adam Musiał, Agnieszka Nieradko, Łukasz Posłuszny, Roma Sendyka, Caroline Sturdy Colls, Katarzyna Suszkiewicz, Aleksandra Szczepan, Krijn Thijs, Jonathan Webber, Anna Zagrodzka, Tomasz Żukowski

In the early 2020s, two seemingly unrelated political developments came to a head in the Netherlands. First, in January 2020, then-Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the center-right VVD party issued an official apology on behalf of the Dutch government for its complicity in the deaths of more than 100,000 Dutch Jews in the Holocaust. Second, in the November 2023 national elections, Geert Wilders’s anti-Muslim, pro-Israel PVV party won the highest percentage of votes, leading to the formation of a far-right cabinet under Prime Minister Dick Schoof in July 2024. In this article, we argue that this double consolidation of the historical legacy of the Holocaust and of racist, right-wing politics has put Dutch Jews in a dangerous bind. On the one hand, the memory of the Holocaust and the contemporary safety of Dutch Jews have been elevated as a paramount concern in Dutch institutional, legal, and political life. On the other hand, Dutch Jews have been positioned as the perennial would-be victims of violent antisemitism—virtually always, it is falsely imagined, at the hands of Dutch Muslims. The historical persecution of the Jews in the Holocaust is now used to underwrite a “proprietary” form of Jewish victimhood in the present: non-Jewish white Dutch people position themselves as the saviors of Jews, and thereby claim ownership over their past, their collective fate, and the political means to secure their safety.