Whose Memory? Which Future? Remembering Ethnic Cleansing and Lost Cultural Diversity in Eastern, Central and Southeastern Europe

The book takes a new approach to the subject of ethnic cleansing. It is not about its history and not about the memories of the victims. It focuses instead on the present and investigates how the present-day population in a number of Eastern European cities (Wroclaw in Poland, Lviv and Chernivtsi in Ukraine, Pohořelice, Teplice nad Metují, Ústí nad Labem and Postoloprty in the Czech Republic, Zadar in Croatia and Visegrad in Bosnia and Herzegovina) relate to the memory of the ethnic cleansings that took place there in the twentieth century and to the cultural heritage of the people that vanished in the wake of these events. The volume is a result of a research project conducted by a group of scholars at Lund University in Sweden. It constitutes a contribution to the expanding, multidisciplinary field of Memory Studies as well as to the studies of contemporary Eastern and Central Europe. Besides attracting attention from scholars and students the book also can be of interest for a broader public, specially people with roots in the cities described, aware through their family histories of the difficult past of these localities and of the sensitive questions of memory there.