Suchergebnisse

In 1954, international dignitaries and veterans joined the commemoration of the Allied Landings on the beaches of Normandy, though not everything went according to plan. For the French organisers, chief amongst them Gaullist deputy Raymond Triboulet, the event was intended to communicate a unifying, pro-Allied message amidst a turbulent political climate. By June 1954, France had recently suffered a decisive defeat at Dien Bien Phu and was politically gripped by the divisive prospect of a European Defence Community. In debates over these crises, war memories surfaced and France's experience of Occupation and Liberation enflamed passions. For many who attended the Normandy ceremony in 1954, the missteps of organisers created tension and upset, endangering Allied participation in the Paris Liberation ceremonies to follow. This moment of disjuncture illuminates how currents of memory, international diplomacy, decolonization, and broader Cold war tensions all intersected and influenced each other on the Normandy beaches.

The article sketches the ruptures in today's German memory culture, concentrating on the Volkstrauertag (People's Day of Mourning) and the Gedenktag für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Remembrance Day for the Victims of National Socialism) on 27 January. It starts with an overview of the history of the Volkstrauertag with its (outward) transformation from a commemoration day for dead German soldiers into one for "all victims of war and violence." The inclusive model of commemoration that was typical for the Bonn Republic is disintegrating today. In united Germany, the Volkstrauertag and 27 January reflect antagonistic memory strands, that is a memory focussed on the war dead and German suffering or on the Holocaust and German guilt. In light of discussions about commemorating Bundeswehr dead, the article ends by describing a re-heroicizing of the Volkstrauertag and, in a more general way, tries to outline the shifting construction of German national identity.

The General Delegation of the PLO to the US and the American Federation of Ramallah Palestine teamed up to host a special dinner to commemorate Prisoners' Day as well as the 39th Palestinian Land Day on April 17 at the Westin Hotel in Arlington, VA. Following the playing of the Palestinian National Anthem, Ambassador Maen Rashid Areikat told the audience that Land Day honors the six Israeli Palestinians who were killed and hundreds who were injured and arrested as they peacefully protested Israeli plans to steal tens of thousands of acres of land in the Galilee. Criticism of policies is legitimate and moral, Areikat emphasized, urging Palestinians to use their votes, forge alliances and contribute to their communities. They need you to be Palestinian Americans, he concluded, and not Palestinians living in America. Adapted from the source document.

Commemorations are about the present more than the past, as they reveal how different groups of people believed historical events should be understood within their own modern context. Both Margaret Thatcher in 1984 and John Major in 1994 were aware of the complicated political implications of British commemorations of D-Day. While Thatcher managed the potential international diplomatic traps that were thrust upon her in 1984, Major's intentional efforts to use public festivities to boost domestic political support in1994 were far less successful.

Defence date: 3 June 2016 ; Examining Board: Professor Pavel Kolár, European University Institute (EUI Supervisor); Professor Lucy Riall, European University Institute; Professor Peter Haslinger, Herder Institute; Professor Nancy M. Wingfield, Northern Illinois University. ; This thesis examines national days in Hungary and Czechoslovakia from their establishment as independent nation-states in 1918 to the collapse of Communism in 1989. The focus is on the capital cities of Budapest and Prague, as the locations of the official commemorations. In these eighty years both countries underwent major political, social and cultural changes that were reflected in national day commemorations. In the interwar period these countries were free to establish their own commemorative calendars and construct their own national historical narratives. Whilst in Hungary this was a rather straightforward process, in Czechoslovakia establishing the calendar was fought along a number of different battle lines. During the Second World War Czechoslovakia was occupied by Nazi Germany and dismantled, whilst Hungary became Hitler's reluctant satellite. National day calendars, rather than simply being completely cancelled, continued in some form from the previous period, as this allowed the Nazis to maintain a semblance of normality. The most significant overhaul of the national day calendar came with the Communist takeovers. The Communist parties imposed a new socialist culture that included a new set of Sovietthemed national days. However, they could not completely break away from the national days of the independent interwar states. Eventually, especially from the late 1960s, the Communists in both countries found that it was expedient to restore some of the interwar national days, some of which still continue today, thus questioning how radical a break 1989 was. Studying national days over the longue durée enables historians to uncover how the dynamics of political power operated in Central and Eastern Europe over the 20th century. This thesis concludes that national days are an example of both the invention of tradition as well as the resilience of tradition, demonstrating how political regimes are always bound by the broader cultural context.

This paper is closed access until 22 September 2019. ; This article explores what motivates ordinary people to become involved with commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD). Whilst there is an expanding academic literature on HMD, public commemoration and the memory work (and politics) of remembrance, a great deal of this commentary and analysis is offered from the first-hand perspective of academics writing about large scale public memorial or museum projects. There is, in contrast, very little published that examines small-scale public participation with HMD, including why people get involved in organising their own commemorative activities. Since 2005, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT) has been responsible for organising and promoting HMD commemoration in Britain and, as part of this brief, they organise free workshops across the UK for people interested in organising an activity to mark HMD. This article analyses interviews with the organisers and participants of three workshops that took place during the build up to HMD 2016. In this article, I focus in particular on the ways that interviewees orientate to questions of conscience, and the ways that their personal and political values accord with the aims of HMD. My paper suggests that pedagogic and political potentials of HMD are more varied than academic analysis has thus far suggested, and that further work is needed to explore the engagement of ordinary people in HMD commemoration.