Collective Memory and Holocaust Remembrance Today
International symposium

Saturday 29 November 19:00-20:00

Sunday 30 November 11:00-17:00

 Konstakademien, Fredsgatan 12, Stockholm

Participants: Aleida Assmann, Victoria Fareld, Talya Feldman, Jeffrey Olick, Alexandra Polivanova, Hans Ruin, Rachel Spicker, Rebecka Katz Thor, Maja Thrane, Malin Thor Tureby.

Music:   Sofia Winiarski;  Reading: Hannes Meidal. 

A century ago, in 1925, French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs published the book The social framework of memory (Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire). In it he coined and developed the idea of “collective memory”, how memory is not only something personal but a shared form of human experience. From the 1970s onward this idea was revived and explored in the new field of Memory studies, including both collective and cultural memory. From the outset a core topic was the memory of the Holocaust, how it had been both forgotten, repressed, and why it needed to be reactivated and mobilized both as a way to honor the victims of the past and for the purpose of justice, repair, and reconciliation in the present. In Russia, the movement Memorial was founded in the wake of the Helsinki accord, to counter the collective trauma of Stalinism. Celebrating Halbwachs work, the symposium will present a broad picture of the current state of memory studies, as both an academic discipline and as a form of social activism in talks and seminars with some of the leading international scholars in the field.

The symposium is a collaboration between the Swedish Holocaust Museum, Jewish Culture in Sweden and the Memory Studies Platform at Södertörn University in Stockholm.

Supported by the Swedish Arts Council, The City of Stockholm and the Stockholm Region.