Places and Layers of Memory
Reflections on the Eastern Part of Europes
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
East-Central and Eastern Europe was the core zone in the epoch of world wars and revolution. Violence raged in unprecedented form here. The region was caught between the fronts of National Socialism and Soviet Communism; it was the main theatre of wars, policies of social and ethnic cleansing, the genocide against the Jews, a scorched earth policy, and enormous forced population and refugee movements. There is no language capable of finding a single denominator. Only when all the nameless millions of victims of this violence have been named can there be any serious talk of a European memory.
(Osteuropa 6/2008, pp. 13–26)
Read this article's international version:
Places and strata of memory