EDITORIAL
Our Observing Memories magazine has reached its fifth edition . It has been another complex and complicated year owing to changes in cultural relations , academia and the scheduling of public events and activities . Nevertheless , at the European Observatory on Memories ( EUROM ) we have managed to keep all our activities , some of which have changed to an online format while others have begun to take place face to face . In addition , we have continued to network with many of our partners and collaborators on issues concerning memorial heritage , public memory policies , and many of the most topical debates surrounding uses of the past . In this regard , and especially after the summer , we have been able to take part in seminars , study trips and include young students and researchers therein . We have also worked hard to maintain our annual publication which enjoys the collaboration of illustrious international specialists .
This magazine adheres to our approach every year , providing a crosscutting analysis of various subjects surrounding education , research , memorial museums or places of memory , transmission and new contributions by experts as well as some of our initiatives . However , the core issue we have sought to explore in detail revolves around negationism , revisionism and what we understand as memorybased relativism . Relativism in a global society that witnesses the development of various forms of denying the barbarity and violence of the 20th century , beginning with the Holocaust , but not only that . The idea is hardly a new one and some experts claim that the new media , political and even academic approaches adopted by those who deny the history of deportations , mass crimes , State crimes and the barbarities of the various dictatorships cling to contemporary digital technology and to today ’ s more right-wing or ultra-right nationalist political trends .
We wished to share the concern over this debate with some of our other network partners and we would like to push for more seminars next year . It is not just a European phenomenon , but also a global one . Talking to our French friends at the Maison d ’ Izieu – Memorial to the Exterminated Jewish Children , we set out to continue the work they have been undertaking for years to pursue justice against those who perpetrated the crimes and some of those who deny them . We have also established a line of collaboration with our colleague Verónica Torres , from Memoria Abierta . Together with the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Sites of Memory ( RESLAC ), she shall initiate a permanent programme that also addresses relativism in the framework of other countries in the world and other memories ,
Cover picture
3