Family memories
Course participant: Kaja Haelbich (Hamburg, Germany)
In our course "Understanding Internal Dynamics of Societies in Conflict" we started to engage in the topic of Israel Palestine conflict by talking about memories.
We discussed different kinds of memory like autobiographical and family memory, historical memory and collective memory. We concentrated on the different narratives about the 48th war ("war of independence" or "Nakba") and we continued by talking about Israel's Occupation, Palestinian Resistance and alternative voices inside Israel and we ended by discussing about the events of the last years.
According to the idea of the course to relate parts of the things we dealt with to the history of our own countries I would like to focus my essay on the subject of memories and dealing with the past, more precisely how the National Socialism is commemorated in Germany. I would like to discuss the difficulties of dealing with family stories and the fact that the grandparents of my generation have been perpetrators.
