World War II in the Memorial Space of Eastern Europe. Review of: Borodziej, W., François, E., Keding, E., Makhotina, E., & Schulze Wessel, M. (Eds.). (2015). Krieg im Museum. Präsentationen des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Museen und Gedenkstätten des östlichen Europa. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. 376 p.

Abstract

The current world situation is characterised by a complex interaction and open rivalry between democratic, authoritarian, populist, and fundamentalist values and strategies. The recent anniversaries of the end of the two World Wars clearly showed that some power groups purposefully use the commemorative events as part of their historical policies as an instrument of their own legitimisation, social discipline, and ideological control. This tendency is especially noticeable in relation to the historical memory of the victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War. In this regard, the practice of memorialising World War II and the Great Patriotic War in organised public spaces — museums and monuments in the territory of Eastern Europe, whose peoples endured the most difficult ordeals and suffered the greatest sacrifices, becomes very relevant. The peer-reviewed work of the international team of authors “War in the Museum” considers this issue. The author of the review draws attention both to the obvious advantages of this work, i.e. the desire to show the role of museums and memorials in the formation of a collective memory of the war, and some shortcomings associated with the lack of necessary methodological reflection.

Keywords

• Великая Отечественная война
• Вторая мировая война
• коллективная память
• концентрационный лагерь
• культура воспоминаний
• мемориал
• музей
• холокост.