Does Addressing Past Wrongs Advance or Hinder Reconciliation? A Comparative Study of Memory Activism in Israel, Poland, and the Sudetenland Since 2000

This paper examines how global discourses and models of reconciliation are implemented locally by NGOs and governments in cases of active conflict in comparison to post-conflict societies. In recent decades, dealing with past wrongs has become a condition for reconciliation according to an expert-based paradigm. Designed for post-conflict societies, this globally-circulating paradigm also reaches cases of active conflict, where it helps to shape the vocabulary and claims of minorities and governments. Using ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative analysis in 2012-2017, I focused on a central junction in the diffusion of the global discourse of reconciliation in domestic settings: non-governmental actors that I call memory activists. The study compares three cases of memory activism: by Jewish and Palestinian citizens in Israel, Catholic Poles who remember the prewar Jewish population, among others, in Poland, and German and Czech citizens in the Sudetenland – the first, in the context of a protracted conflict and the second and third, in post-conflict settings. Examining the implementation of the global discourse in these domestic cases, I found similarities and differences not only between the categories of conflict and post-conflict but also across these categories. For example, the Polish and Israeli cases similarly showed a flexible use of the expert claims by governments that aim to hinder rather than advance reconciliation. These findings present the term 'reconciliation' as empty yet flexible category that can equally accommodate ideas of peace and equality and of polarization and conflict.