The European Parliament and The Notion of a Common European Historical Memory

In conclusion, my love for European history engulfs me. I love reading about it and watching documentaries about it. I have my own collection of books on it that I bought to further my learning and education of it. It has also influenced my career path because I’m considering a major in history. I am thankful for my love of history because I have learned so much about other cultures, societies, and even civilizations. History enriches our lives and expands our minds and our experiences, both real and vicarious. Knowing the past and embracing it will, hopefully, point us to a bright

Immediately after the close of the WWI, Europe plunged itself into WWII, a major world conflict that ended in 1945 and brought forth significant changes that set the footnote for Europe’s future development. In many ways, the 1945 was seen as a turning point of modern European history.

“Holocaust remembrance depicting the horrors of Auschwitz, published in 1960, to forget would not only be dangerous but offensive to forget the dead would be akin to killing theme a second time.” It tell about The Danger of Forgetting And The Imperative of Remembrance. “Their race, religion or political views,

The article “History Still Matters” by Bill Moyers expresses some important concerns in our societies over the loss of interest in history. Throughout the article Moyers explains the loss of interest but also shows the reader the subject is crucial for societies to progress. He uses deeper meanings to further understand the importance of history as well as expressing the reasons he thinks cultures have lost interest past events. The author also mentions that although people find no relations to history in today’s world, there are conflicts that can resemble current problems. It is also imperative to realize history has assembled our concurrent world. For those reasons we can have our own outlook and interpretations of history to further understand the progression and stage we are currently in.

History is the totality of all past human events, and historiography is the written record of what is known about our lives and societies. In the recent past, history lessons were meant to convey a certain patriotism or to turn an immigrant into a “true American,” but today too many historians are using historical analysis for political purposes. This probably dates to the tumultuous times of the 1960s. Gordon Wood offers a prescription for the proper use of history. Shunning the ideologues of today, he believes historians should “seek to study past events not to make trans-historical generalizations about human behavior but to understand those events as they actually were, in all their peculiar contexts and circumstances.”

In cessation, the historian’s ubiquitous quote, “Those who cannot not remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” proves its validity because it provides a reference point, inspires effective solutions, and prevents oblivion. Without remembering the past, a society simply can’t foresee a diagnoses and subsequently cannot cultivate a solution. Although dispute and disagreement are imminent when diagnosing nearly all solutions, they allow a solution to be refined and perfected from error. Whether describing the economy or agriculture, one must remember the past in edict to evade future

Winston Churchill once said, “History is written by the victors.” Humans are so consumed with what is spoken, written, or otherwise presented of themselves; who presents it however, controls how the situation is perceived. From ancient Rome to modern America, countries of great power have perfected the art of telling stories from one side, the winners view.

Bernard Giesen covers how the trauma of the Holocaust created a collective memory that was influenced and shaped by the loss of German identity. The German national identity is one that stresses its unique and exceptional nature, so with the loss of World War II came shame and connected with the loss of identity (Giesen 115). The first identity after the war, somewhat similar to Americans in this way, was silence (Giesen 116). When the trials began, especially after the Eichmann trial, a new narrative was born, that of individual criminal guilt (Giesen 121). This excluded those who destroyed the German identity of uniqueness by legally excluding them from society (Giesen 125). A new narrative was again created, this time with a focus of the German people living below politics (Giesen 126). As more new generations grew up, more questions were asked about the Holocaust. They did not want to be associated with the “perpetrators” and so public conversation of the Holocaust became more of a focus (Giesen

Europe in the last 100 years has been a hot bed of much controversy in the last 100 years and has shaped our world into a world that is much different than it has ever been before.I will be focusing on four major concepts that jettisoned us into the world we live in today and those are Economics, international relations ,European relations and to show what these affects are I will be analyzing everyday life in the European citizen .

Their struggle towards constructing a collective memory of the Nazi era would visualize itself in the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. Although the site was commemorated in the early years of the 21st century, the arguments and political discord brought up by the planning of this memorial in the early years of unification reflected not just the conflicting attitudes towards the memorialization of Nazi crimes, but also the ways in which Eastern and Western German attitudes towards their collective past clashed in their unified state. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe reflects both the struggles Germany has had to face in recent years when attempting to reflect on its past and the ways in which their approach to national memory gives foresight into their future.

• To examine the history of Europe between 1914 and the 1970s as an organic whole made up of closely interconnected parts

One way in which history is examined is through analyzing the collective memory of a certain historical event in a particular place. Patrick Finney’s Remembering the Road to World War Two: International History, National Identity, Collective Memory examines seven countries, the Soviet Union, Germany, Italy, France, Great Britain, the United States of America and Japan and how their civilians and historians collectively remember the beginning of the Second World War. This paper will examine how objective history is a myth by using and examining Finney’s various arguments and evidence. While doing so, this paper will also provide a review of Finney’s Remembering the Road to World War Two.

We can learn a lot from consulting the past. We learn more about our world, more about our history, and even more about ourselves. Spanish aphorist George Santayana once said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (qtd. in Moncur 1). In general terms, this famous aphorism means that it is important for us to study and learn from history in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes. However, the standards and values that we use today to judge the present are much different than they were in the past. What may have seemed like the right thing to do one hundred years ago might not be viewed the same way today. In her essay “At the Buffalo Bill Museum, June 1988,” Jane Tompkins

The relatively new historical branch of collective remembrance, when applied to the collective memories of Britain and the Soviet Union, reveals much more disparity than resemblance in the way these two nations remembered, and still remember, the Second World War. The collective remembrance of Britain is different from that of Russia because while the Soviet Union utilized similar styles of ceremony and commemoration as Britain did to promote a continued remembrance of the war, the Soviet Union was unique in the silence of the unspoken grief of millions that lay in more than the war itself, but in a history of repression and abuse at the hands of the state. Britain, on the other hand, dealt with the memory of the war by making it front and center in a new narrative of British patriotism. While both countries created myths about the war

On the 26th of June 1963, the 35th President of the United States John F. Kennedy delivered to a massive crowd one of his most memorable speeches in Berlin, Germany. Standing in front of the infamous Berlin Wall President Kennedy’s speech ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ contrasted democracy and freedom (West Germany) with the repression of communist (East Germany), it left a big impression on Germany during the Cold War.