CIAO DATE: 06/2011
May 2011
Danish Institute for International Studies
In this working paper Anne Wæhrens analyses how the memory of the Holocaust has been addressed in the European Parliament from 1989 to 2009. She identifies two major changes in this period of time that have changed the EU approach – namely the Bosnian war in the 1990s and the enlargement of the European Union in 2004. In the 1990s, the war in Bosnia and the question of restitution universalized the memory of the Holocaust and made it present in the minds of the European population. And the 2004 enlargement of the EU towards eastern Europe meant that it became a central task for the EU to construct a community of memory that includes not only the memory of the Holocaust but also that of Soviet Communism. The analysis also identifies what seems to be a political memory split between Left and Right; and it shows that the time might not be ripe for a shared European memory.
Resource link: Is there a shared European memory? Politics of Memory and Holocaust Remembrance in the European Parliament 1989-2009 [PDF] - 561K