HIST1010: “How do we remember?”
Introduction
Memorials remembering a tragedy (or perhaps celebrating the perceived positive outcome of a tragic event) often serve different purposes over time. In the beginning, they usually focus on the suffering and on the loss of both soldiers and civilians. The establishment of the memorial is an integral part of the mourning process. But while historians try to keep these memories alive in their ‘objective’ accounts of events, they do inevitably fade.
At the same time, others (for example the government, but also support groups) try to remember the past, creating lieux de mémoire that evoke pictures from ...