Educational paths of memory. Places and objects as witnesses between past and present

Abstract

European Union has its roots in the cultural development which led to the defeat of totalitarianism and the construction of democracies. The formation of new social and political paradigms is based on the ability to build a public memory, that is a process of narrating historical events on which renew the social pact that unites communities. The construction of European memory, from the genocides up to Auschwitz, has been characterized by educational processes: from the first "pilgrimages" of deportees to the concentration camps, up to the "training trips" aimed at schools today. In this context, Liliana Segre recently expressed her concern about the "tiredness of the story of the Shoah" and the risk of the memory disappearing together with witnesses. This essay intends to reflect on new educational paths of European memory, to be activated starting from the valorization of places and objects understood as new tools of public narration. Processes are not limited to visit to museum sites that narrate the human destruction of the past but to insist aces of genocide in the present. The objects preserved in museums, in relation to objects of the present, become a further storytelling tool useful for educational paths that construct and deconstruct the material and immaterial cultural heritage of the EU.