ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book analyses the ways in which the urban cultures of east-central Europe have reflected the profound challenges to cultural memory of mass displacement, destruction and murder. It highlights important counter-currents that challenge, deconstruct and overcome martyrology by embracing and reflecting on lost urban others, thereby creating that common space of experience. The book identifies the creation of something like memory among urban communities who have little or no direct or family experience on which to draw in relation to the object of that memory. Memory cultures are always changing, however, and always responding to political and social currents. While the growth of nation-centric official memory policy in Ukraine and Poland has implications within each country, it also has serious implications for relations between them.
