Preliminary Programme

Until the nineties the the master narrative recounted in Switzerland concerning the country’s role in WW2 was the story of a heroic little nation bravely resisting the Nazi threat, picturing itself as a humanitarian island in the middle of Europe. The dispute over the Nazigold in 1996/97 can be seen as an eruption of this mythical interpretation of Swiss history. This paper presents examples from group discussions with Swiss people of several generations, showing how WW2 and the Holocaust are spoken about today and in what ways perspectives of memory have changed. (Show less)

The presentation deals with the question of how images and meanings of the Second World War and the Holocaust are communicated and negotiated within groups.
For this purpose we conducted group discussions with four different generations in seven European countries. As a point of departure for the group-discussions we used a stimulus consisting of five untitled photos from the Second World War.
In our presentation we will focus on the process of making sense of these photos in different generational and cultural contexts. (Show less)

In Norway, the official history about the German occupation 1940-45 was for many years telling about the vast majority of “good Norwegians” holding up national attitudes and virtues against the enemy. Consequently, stories from “the right side” were handed down to the younger generations in most families. The memories of a vast majority of Norwegian families fitted into the occupation narrative which had a highly integrative impact on the post war welfare state. On the other hand, both the stories and the voices of those being marked as traitors were silenced. 60 years after the war history culture has changed and many members of the grandchildren’s generation are no longer attached to the scheme of resistance fighters and traitors. The national frame seems to fade away among the youngsters when they think of WW2 and, instead, the human rights question or present genocides are connected to it. Are the younger generations, thus, getting rid of the national narrative or just modernizing it? (Show less)

The paper addresses the question about the role discourses of victimisation play within the Danish and Dutch memory of the German occupation and the Holocaust. In which way is the field of tension between on the one hand the experience of the occupation (and its mostly nationally organized commemoration) on the one hand and the Holocaust and the international history of the Second World War (mostly transported via the media) on the other hand negotiated? How do the generations born after the war make sense of the stories they heard from their parents and grandparents and in which way are the international and national/local perspective integrated? (Show less)