Introductory remarks

Is memory a process, object, feature or phenomenon? According to Sztumski (2002, 8), memory itself is a phenomenon and a feature (quality), training memory is a process, and the preservation of memory has the character of a material object. Cultural context: paradigms, ideologies, worldviews, systems of values and concepts of identity determine the replication of memory images. Multiple disciplines and areas of interest deal with memory: philosophy, psychology, sociology, theology, political studies, cultural studies, and the ethics of memory which is connected with transitional justice (Margalit 2002, 6).

Much has been said about the meaning and function of the past for the present and future but remembering the past ought to incorporate remembrance of moments that are not exclusively glorious, also including those that show the fall of humanity, the dark pages of human history which should not be repeated. The historical past plays a role in the development of contemporary political culture, its norms, values, rules and attitudes through the choice of what our societies should remember. Formal and non-formal education are crucial in shaping political culture in which the social, collective memory of the past also has many functions apart from informing us about history and warning us that crimes and cruelty might be repeated. Collective memories, as sociologists remind us, are loaded with strong emotions and evaluations of facts and personalities, and they allow us to reassess them (Szacka 1983; Kwiatkowski 2008, 231).

One of the examples of how collective memories/representations of the Holocaust were created is found in the content and form of the International Military Tribunal Trials at Nuremberg in 1945–1949. Tangible evidence presented in films and photography from the liberation of the Western camps created an association between the Holocaust and death camps. The role of the Einsatzgruppen (special operational groups), battalion-sized mobile killing squads of the Security Police (ger. Sicherheitspolizei; Sipo) and SS Security Service (ger. Sicherheitsdienst; SD) created by the RSHA and which followed the German armies in June 1941 after the outbreak of war with the Soviet Union, was given little or no attention in post-World War II representations of the Holocaust despite the fact that the Einsatzgruppen killed more than 1 million Jews.