Days of Holocaust Remembrance in the European Union: The Challenges of Commemoration in the Twenty-first Century
April 13, 2.30 pm – 6:00 pm and April 14, 9:30 am – 6:00 pm
Auditorium del Memoriale della Shoah di Milano
Piazzetta Edmond J. Safra 1, Milan
The only commemoration observed by all European country is the day of remembrance for the extermination of the Jews.
What function does the memory of the Holocaust plays in today’s Europe? What led to establish national commemoration days to remember this tragedy? What is remembered, and how and when in each of the Union’s countries? How does the memory of the extermination of the Jews relate to other narratives in each nation and within the policies promoted by the European Union as a whole?
These are some of the questions posed by an international conference to be held on April 13th and 14th in Milan at the Shoah Memorial. Days of Holocaust Remembrance in the European Union: The Challenges of Commemoration in the Twenty-first Century analyzes the genesis, development and function of the days of Holocaust remembrance in different European countries, with particular reference to Italy, Great Britain, France, Germany, Hungary, Croatia, Greece, Poland and Romania.
The event is sponsored by the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Milan and the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation (CDEC) with support from the Center for Judaica Goren Goldstein of the University of Milan and the patronage of the Coordination Committee for the Commemoration of the Holocaust at the Presidency of the Council of Ministers.
Curator: Guri Schwarz (Università di Pisa)
Scientific committee: Michele Sarfatti, Giovanni Rota, Liliana Picciotto
Program
April 13
14:30 – Conference opening
Greetings
Presidenza Memoriale della Shoah di Milano
Giorgio Sacerdoti, presidente Fondazione CDEC
Liliana Segre, presidente Associazione Figli della Shoah
Introduction Guri Schwarz (University of Pisa)
Chair: Liliana Picciotto (CDEC)
Michele Sarfatti (CDEC/Centro di Judaida Goren Goldstein, Università di Milano)
January 27 in Italy: Tensions and Intersections between History, Memory and the Present
Tal Bruttmann (EHESS – Paris)
Commemorating what? And when? France and the commemoration of the Holocaust
David Cesarani (Royal Holloway College – London)
The Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission in the UK, 2013-2015
April 14
9:30
Chair: Marco Cuzzi (Università di Milano)
Giorgios Antoniou, (International Hellenic University – Thessaloniki) – Leon Saltiel (University of Macedonia)
Between Lethe and Mnemosyne. Institutional memories and Holocaust Legacies in post Cold War Greece
Mila Orlic ( University of Rijeka – Fiume)
The Controverse Past of a New State: Croatia between National Myths and Memory of the Second World War
Eva Kovacs (Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies – Vienna)
Remembering the Holocaust – The Hungarian Secession
Discussion
14:30
Chair: Piero Graglia (Università di Milano)
Michael Shafir ( Babes-Bolyai University – Cluj-Napoca)
Romania: Neither fish, nor fowl
Carla Tonini (Università di Bologna)
April 19, Holocaust Memorial Day in Poland. The reasons for this choice
Michael Brenner (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität-München/American University – Washington DC)
Which Day is the Right Day? Holocaust Remembrance in Germany
Lothar Probst (Universität Bremen)
The Europeanization of Holocaust Commemoration – A Way of a Moral Foundation of the EU?
