ABSTRACT
Chapter 7 analyses ‘difficult’ heritage in connection with the paradox of democracy and Hannah Arendt’s ‘promise’. As the touchstone of the EU’s story, the chapter analyses: how the Holocaust is put to service as a paradoxically universal and singular ‘negative founding myth’ which has persisted over time; the ways in which simultaneously shared yet divided European memories pertain to contemporary political tensions; and the impact of absent memories and contested belonging within the European heritage record. These are examined in multiple museum and memorial heritage site representations, including the House of the Wannsee Conference, Auschwitz Memorial and Museum, Schloss Cecilienhof, the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, and the Lepsiushaus in Potsdam. A spatial and digital ‘site’: the Houshamadyan web Archive, which constitutes a vast, digital recuperation or rescue of lost Ottoman-Armenian memory, provides an ‘unofficial’ memory book for Europe, in contrast to the ‘official’ heritage sites.
