The project addresses borderland remembrance, reconnection, restoring, resilience and healing of communities with conflicting, traumatic memories along the former Iron Curtain. The recent past in these multi-ethnic Slovenian-Italian and Slovenian-Austrian borderlands has been burdened by totalitarian, authoritarian regimes (fascism, Nazism), World War II crimes and inter-ethnic conflicts. The memories of people living side by side have been politically abused and today compete for victimhood. A memory of one group is used to immunise against its neighbour. While some memories are exposed, others are silenced, ignored. As the Communication on “No place for hate” claims, indifference or ignorance presents a threat to the people facing discrimination and it can be even more hurting than the crimes themselves.
A need has been identified to foster intercultural, inter-ethnic and international dialogue which encourages the construction of a shared European memory based on responsibility, self-criticism, emphatic view of the “other”. Memories of silenced groups which have been neglected in dominant national memories will be given voice by upgrading them in a historical, anthropological, educational and psychotherapeutic frame. The young and wider public of different ethnic and migrant groups along the borderland will be educated to construct responsible shared memories based on mutual respect and European values of “living United in diversity” (“No place for hate”).
The aim will be achieved through a documentary film on silenced memories, workshops with film screenings, conferences based on anthropology, history, psychotherapy and education, public discussion with testimonies, excursions on borderlands’ paths of remembrance and a public concert of silenced groups. The innovativeness of the project lies in the interdisciplinary holistic approach to collective trauma in order to bring healing where issues of the past have been covered up for too long and yet have impacts.
Partners are: University of Primorska Faculty of humanities, University for Teacher Education Carinthia (Austria), Institute Epiona (Slovenia), Quarantasettezeroquattro (Italy), Fixmedia (Slovenia); associate partner: Cultural Heritage Directorate, Ministry of Culture, Slovenia.