IN-PERSON: Prague – Section A

Abstract

In Western Europe, recognizing the Holocaust as the greatest tragedy of the 20th century, the memories of the Holocaust and Soviet Occupation in Central and Eastern Europe are often characterized by a competitive relationship underlined by intertextuality and contextuality related to the experience of a particular country. In Lithuania, this relation is extremely problematic and oriented to the creation of dominant Soviet occupation narrative. Despite the fact that, the collective process of remembering in the context of the state is undoubtedly an important component of ontological security (Mälksoo, 2015), examining the concept of mnemonic security, is noticed that the effort to establish a unified narrative of memory in the public memory, related to the evaluation and understanding of one or other historical events faced by the state, can form new security dilemmas and not increase, but decrease a sense of security in society (Budryte, 2021, Mälksoo, 2015). Now discussions about monuments, related to Holocaust and Soviet Occupation have been active in Lithuania revealing the clash of conflicting narratives based on different versions of difficult past creating tensions within local and national communities. This presentation, using monuments as heritage objects, will discursively analyze how these narratives are developed and where are the „hot“ points related to the memory of Holocaust and Soviet Occupation. The analysis of construction of conflicting narratives resulting from the use and misuse of cultural heritage serves as well as the contribution to sustainable ethical strategies developing guidelines for the formation of difficult memory and conflicting narratives.