in tribute to victims by punishing their denial as public order offences . This change is linked to a turning point in the narrative in democratic societies that goes from a collective indebtedness to the victorious heroes and fighters who ensured the continuation of the nation-state , to indebtedness towards the civilian victims who , for their part , guaranteed a rule of law , both for human rights and those of national minorities . The law ’ s memorialisation of crimes and victims is therefore seen as an essential tool for the pacification of societies , the assertion of nation-states ’ democratic identity , and the education in tolerance and human rights of their citizens .
Another key feature of these memory laws is their supranational European expansion in a context in which memory has become , like in national spaces , a category of political action in its own right to symbolically build a European identity . However , the laws or resolutions pertaining to the past have been seen by the actors of European institutions as effective instruments to efficiently share a common narrative in Europe . These laws thus participated in a process of Europeanising national memories against the backdrop of Eastern Europe countries ’ accession to the European Union , and the pursuit of a common European memory . The matrix function of Second World War crimes in the building of the post- Soviet European narrative identity has formalised in these supranational legislative provisions that have evolved over the past thirty years .
Initially , memory laws demonstrated a division of the continent between East and West . On the one hand , a memory of the West was structured around the recognition of the genocide of the Jews that was led by European institutions ( the Council of Europe , the European Court of Human Rights and the European Parliament ) as an identity marker ( see the Resolution of 3 July 1995 voted by the European Parliament calling on Member States to establish a “ European Holocaust Remembrance Day ”). On the other hand , a memory of the East has focused on the recent communist past and the crimes committed by the USSR against civilian populations during the Second World War . When many Eastern
European countries joined the EU in 2004 ( Czech Republic , Hungary , Estonia , Latvia , Lithuania , Poland , Slovak Republic and Slovenia ), these states had already approved , within the framework of a democratisation process , numerous memory laws that primarily concerned their communist past and the crimes perpetrated by the USSR against their populations . The European Parliament then asserted itself as a major player in the memory policies of East-West reconciliation , through
5 . Memorial ceremony at the Raoul Wallenberg square with Holocaust survivors , 27 January 2013 , | Frankie Fouganthin , Wikimedia Commons
6 . August 23 , 2009 . Candles symbolically marked the 20 years of the Baltic Way | J . šeduikis , CC bY-Sa 3.0 , Wikimedia Commons
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