The aim is to research the cultural strategy towards social memory in Lviv in the process of settling accounts with the Nazi and Stalinist heritage. Activists and employees of the Terror Museum create contemporary projects to confront the recipient with the problem of settling the history of the Holocaust in Lviv and the consequences of the Sovietization of Lviv after 1944 (research projects, and projects popularizing history and education). To what extent may national institutions of public memory contribute to the transnational dialogue of memories? In the case of the image of Jews in Eastern European memory, we are dealing with a kind of discontinuity. The last twenty years have brought attempts to restore the other world, to rebuild and recall. It often takes place in a kind of museum setting. As a result of the tragedy of the Holocaust and the post-war waves of anti-Semitism, minority of Jews in Lviv is deprived the presence of its descendants perceived and made aware by the environment. The memory is to be restored through the activities of non-Jews and foreign foundations and organizations. This process is clearly visible in Lviv.
A very important question: how does the memory of the Lviv ghetto arise, what is the idea of working on the trauma of the Holocaust? Can you see for the "forgotten" "removed" from memory in public space? I propose an analysis of the origin of the oral history idea. It is an attempt to show the idea of working with a difficult history, which is absent in the contemporary city space. It is a kind of urban renewal and revival, perhaps a national memory of the trauma of the community, which in fact created the Lviv reality before World War II.
The projects I analyze:
1. The Center for Urban History of Central and Eastern Europe, together with the Center for European Studies (Lund, Sweden) and the Terror Territory Museum, conducted a research project "In Search of a Home" in post-war Lviv. "The Podzamche Experience, 1944-1960" (ending with an exhibition).The aim of the project was to explain one of the most important pages in the history of modern Lviv - the transformation of the Polish border city of Lviv and the German-occupied city of Lemberg into the Soviet Ukrainian Lviv.
2. The Synagogue Space project is an initiative to commemorate the Jews in Lviv and to better understand the shared history of the city and the common heritage of Lviv residents and city guests. For the first time in Ukraine, the commemoration of Jewish history sites was initiated by the city administration.
3. Project #непочуті: continuation and extension of the oral history project of the "Territory of Terror" Museum "Living History".
In all these projects, the most important thing is to work with a personal document and witness to history. How idealized are this?
