1 . Japanese Embassy in Seoul and watched from behind a bronze statue of comfort women . PIcture by Sakaori , CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons / licenses / by-sa / 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
memories keep all their intensity and remain in us like the keystone of our inner temple ”. That being said , collective memory is not just the addition of individual memories . Its collective ( and therefore social and political ) dimension is largely shaped by the action of institutions , whether associations , parties or the government ( in its local , regional or national variations ). However , this management has proven to be highly problematic .
Honouring the dead
Collective institutions have above all sought to pay tribute to their dead . According to Victor Hugo , this is because “ those who died for their country have the right that the crowds come to their tombs and pray ”. However , this seemingly obvious undertaking has run up against severe obstacles . For example , in a France ravaged by destruction and shortages , the public authorities were hardly eager to waste precious raw materials . They were also stingy when associations and political parties asked to install headstones and build monuments . As a general rule , moreover , the names of the victims of the conflict were purely and simply added to the monuments that had flourished after the First World War in all the communes of France . Yet the problem , all over the world , lay in knowing which categories of victims were appropriate to honour . Indifference and ideological biases got involved . The fate of the
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