Image of the Westerbork National Monument for Holocaust Victims: Photographed by Caroline Sturdy Colls.

Accessing Campscapes: Inclusive Strategies for using European Conflicted Heritage Sites


Project Summary

This project looks at traces of the twentieth-century mass violence and terror as tangible reminders of the ‘age of extremes’ and their present uses in (trans)national contexts.

In most post-war European countries former Nazi internment camps have become icons of anti-fascist resistance and the Holocaust. They have played a consistent role in post-war European memory of totalitarianism and genocide. In the Eastern European centre of the Holocaust and Communist terror, many former ‘terrorscapes’ are still contested spaces where consecutive internments of prisoners by occupying powers and authoritarian regimes transformed the victims of one event into the persecutors of another.

Prof. Robert van der Laarse

Project Leader

University of Amsterdam
Netherlands


Treblinka Quarrystones Memorial

Jasenovac Camp Plan

Jewish gravestones used for pavement by the German army

Kapo Training at Westerbork

Falstad SS Punishment Camp

Remains of a processing uranium mine in Jachymov

Falstad Memorial and Human Rights Centre

Treblinka excavation site

This entanglement of remembering with forgetting and the silencing of competing narratives show the strong connection between heritage, storytelling and the politics of identity. This poses a serious challenge to museums, remembrance institutions, civil society organisations, social activists, critical academics and educators tasked with the development of new and alternative narratives to make such spaces ever more relevant.

View project website

Project Partners

Prof. Robert van der Laarse

Project Leader

University of Amsterdam
Netherlands

Email

Prof. Nicolas Apostolopoulos

Freie Universität Berlin
Germany

Email

Dr Caroline Sturdy Colls

Staffordshire University
United Kingdom

Email

Dr Pavel Vareka

University of West Bohemia
Czech Republic

Email

Prof. Marek E Jasinski

Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Norway

Email

Prof. Dr. Paul F.M.J. Vershure

Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia
Spain

Email

Associate Partners

Dirk Mulder

Kamp Westerbork
The Netherlands

Email

Dr. Edward Kopówka

The Museum of Struggle and Martyrdom Treblinka
Poland

Email

Natasa Jovicic

Jasenovac Memorial Site
Croatia

Email

Lubomíra Hédlová

Lidice Memorial
Czech Republic

Email

Stephanie Billib

Bergen-Belsen Memorial
Germany

Email

Jane Jørstad

Falstad Centre
Norway

Email

Mikuláš Kroupa

Post Bellum
Czech Republic

Email

Dr. Béla Rásky

Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies
Austria

Email

Dr. Éva Kovács

Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies
Austria

Email

  • University of Amsterdam

    University of Amsterdam

  • Freie Universität Berlin

    Freie Universität Berlin

  • Staffordshire University

    Staffordshire University

  • University of West Bohemia

    University of West Bohemia

  • Norwegian University of Science and Technology

    Norwegian University of Science and Technology

  • Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia

    Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia

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