Denial: online debate on the desecration of memory

Kaytn Forest by Saper - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=29626266

Denial, says Gregory Stanton, is always the final stage of genocide. It occurs during the crime itself and continues for years after. It is a desecration of the victims, the final indignity, denying them even the truth of their own deaths.

This second in a series of online panel debates for the House of European History began with an exploration of the phenomenon of denial and then moved to an in depth examination of the silence and deception surrounding the Katyn massacre, the murder in the spring of 1940 of some 22,000 Polish prisoners by the Soviet Union’s NKVD.

Combining psychological and historical approaches the panellists consider:

What factors lead to the denial of mass crimes?
What are the different strategies of denial?
How does the denial of responsibility for mass crimes affect the victims’ families?
How can we more effectively support reconciliation and transitional justice in the aftermath of such trauma?

Featured guest speakers:

• Rezarta Bilali, Associate Professor of Psychology and Social Intervention, NYU Steinhardt;

• Alexei Miller, Professor of History, European University in Saint-Petersburg;

• Mirosław Filipowicz, Professor of History, Catholic University of Lublin, former co-head of the Group for Difficult Matters by the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs;

• Joanna Urbanek, Lead curator of the Fake for Real temporary exhibition, House of European History.

Moderated by Paul Salmons, Curator and educator specialising in difficult histories, Paul Salmons Associates.

Introduction by Constanze Itzel, Museum Director of the House of European History.