Transitional justice depends on dialogue to reconnect communities ruptured by mass violence. Yet, such dialogue presupposes a shared spatial world-one that, in many post-atrocity contexts, has vanished. This presentation examines how digital mapping might help reconstruct a terrain for such encounters and foster more productive forms of community engagement and memory practice. Through a case study of a Holocaust memorial project in Łomża, Poland-located 20-kilometers from Jedwabne, where Jan Gross's Neighbours ignited debates over Polish collaboration-I consider how a digital map functioned as a mediator guiding Polish-Jewish reconciliation.
By analysing the points of contention that emerged in my collaboration with Łomża public historians and an American Jewish family descended from Łomża Holocaust survivors, the presentation probes the limits of digital versus material memory, the effects of temporal versus spatial detachment from historical events, and how digital memorials can both relieve and exacerbate tensions in the present. While the participants initially operated within a zero-sum logic that treated memory as finite, the project's digital form revealed the affordances of virtual space: the capacity to layer, juxtapose, and hold competing narratives. Ultimately, this presentation assesses what virtual topographies can offer as a new frontier for transitional justice practices.
With Kyra Schulman (Department of History, University of Chicago)
Registration
The event is part of the digital event series "Perspectives on the Culture of Remembrance" organised by the Lower Saxony Memorials Development Department. Registration is required for participation. If you are interested, please send an e-mail to the following address, stating your name, profession and (if available) affiliation. We will send all registered participants the Zoom link in advance of the events.
Register: gfn@stiftung-ng.de
The organisers reserve the right to exercise their domiciliary rights and to refuse admission to or exclude from the event any persons who belong to right-wing extremist parties or organisations or who have made or continue to make anti-Semitic, anti-democratic, history-denying, nationalistic, racist or other inhuman statements, attitudes or visible signs.