How is World War II represented in state-financed, post-socialist memorial museums that were (re)opened after 1989? The contexts of this project are the “Europeanization of memory” and the post-socialist reinvention of history. It compares permanent exhibitions in memorial museums of EU member states in east-central and southeast Europe. It goes beyond a mere overview of the museums, their historical origins, and the question of what they represent, by exploring how “double” and “triple” occupation and the Holocaust, narratives of victims and collaboration were treated in individual countries. It also investigates the effects that efforts to join the EU had on these negotiations. Because several exhibitions were changed more than once after 1989, we are afforded insight into the dynamics of narratives of victims, into externalization and “negative memory.” How do museums appeal to “European standards,” and to what extent do they adopt the trend to shift the focus to (individual) victims, one which originated in Holocaust museums?

Ljiljana Radonić is writing her Habilitation on World War II in post-socialist memorial museums at the Austrian Academy of Science’s Institute of Culture Studies and Theatre History. Since 1989 she has been teaching on (east-central) European memory conflicts at the University of Vienna’s Department of Political Science.