EDITORIAL
spaces, while Piotr Cywinski, the director of the Auschwitz museum, reflects on the Nazi death camp.
Marcello Flores and Carlo Giunchi address the problems that have arisen in Predappio, the town
where Mussolini is buried, and the plan to create a museum of Fascism. Other places, with their own
idiosyncrasies and complexities, are studied in the pages of this issue of Observing Memories: Lenin’s
mausoleum (Siobhan Kattago), the memorials of the former Yugoslavia (Aleksander Jakir), the Lipa
memorial centre in Croatia (Carlota Sánchez), the 23.5 Hrant Dink memorial in Istanbul (Oriol López) or
the remodelled Museum of Free Derry (Adrian Kerr), which is a member of the international EUROM
network. Different channels of the transmission of memory are also assessed, in the form of artistic
photography (Montse Morcate) or new technologies (Orli Fridman), and current debates also feature
such as the management of the memory of slavery in Europe (Celeste Muñoz). In addition, in the
section on European memory policy, we are lucky to have the contributions of two specialists of the
calibre of Laure Neumayer and Filippo Focardi, and an interview with the specialist Michael Rothberg
on the concept of multidirectional memory and recent research.
Some of these experiences provide positive examples of the application of a heritage policy
with a balanced, unified perspective, avoiding any excessive spontaneity and on occasion making
up for a certain lack of content. As is well known, the recovery of sites of memory in recent years has
rapidly intensified the uses of the past (political, commercial and tourism-oriented) accompanied by
more than a decade of commemorative events in the different countries of Europe. Memory becomes
collective and plural, sharing knowledge with the discipline of history. Sites of memory are not
restricted to monuments, spaces, landscapes or objects; celebrations, emblems, commemorations,
and songs are also included – in short, any material or symbolic representation that transmits memory.
Matter and symbol are organized and form a system, an organic unit, building the memory
of a group, a collective, a state, or a continent like Europe. So, sites of memory are not just physical
places: they can also be immaterial, intangible or abstract. Their function in terms of memorial
heritage, and the objective of memorials or memory institutions as guarantors of this heritage, is
to make the memory of the past relevant in the present thanks to a collective exercise of reflection
and acceptance of memory as a collective legacy, and of the right to memory as one of the pillars of
contemporary democratic societies. The first of these reflections encourages us to think about projects
all over the world (not only in Europe) for the recovery of monuments and places of memory for
purposes of cultural tourism, as places of residence that we share, and as places of resistance holding
out against oblivion. Increasingly, sites of memory are being classified as heritage assets. In some
cities and countries they are even legally protected as places of local, regional or national interest.
Others are catalogued by both UNESCO and the EU as cultural heritage sites, run by management
organizations dedicated to the protection of historical heritage under the broader heading of cultural
landscape. Heritage and territory emerge as key elements for local development strategies. It is
therefore important to analyse the relationships established between history, cultural heritage, tourism
and territory through the recovery of memory. The many different ways in which groups with their
own professional interests, political views and emotional responses engage with historical memory
– conducting historical research, lobbying for legislative changes, organizing commemorations,
designing memorials and museums and even signposts – mean that public policy needs to exert some
form of regulation.
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Observing Memories
ISSUE 3