Notebook: Memorial, Memorials, Memory, History (Part II)

by Ann Kjellberg, editor

Gathering soil at the site in Center, Texas, where sixteen-year-old Lige Daniels was lynched in 1920, for inclusion in the Community Remembrance Project of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Equal Justice Initiative, Montgomery, Alabama

Read Part One of this post here

The Russian advocacy group Memorial came into existence, and endured, in part because Russia never embarked on a national process of facing and reconciling with its past, in contrast to the extensive self-reckoning that has taken place in Germany since 1945 and reunification, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in South Africa, Argentina, and many post-Communist countries. As the website of the Memorial archive says, although the “concept” of a state policy to recognize victims of political repression was approved in 2015, the Russian government created no corresponding national program. The national program is left to brave individuals.