The Belgrade University Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, together with the Heinrich Boll Stiftung, Haver Srbija, and the Staro Sajmiste Memorial Center, is organising a two-day international conference on the Holocaust and the Sajmište concentration camp in Belgrade, on 14 and 15 December, entitled „If Not Then, Now. Memorialisation of Staro Sajmiste“.

The “If Not Then, Now. The Memorialisation of Staro Sajmiste” conference intends to reflect on the most recent practices of memorialisation of the site and the establishment of a new memorial institution and its future. The issues which will be raised focus on the memorialisation of history and victims, on the place of the memorial in the context of the European network of Holocaust memorial activities and other sites commemorating Nazi crimes, and on the fundamental issue of the Holocaust remembrance and ethics in the 21stcentury saturated by media representation and consumeristic practices.

The conference will have three parts:

1. Holocaust at the crossroads of media, ethics and consumerism
Holocaust narratives have been continually retold, reframed, reconstructed, recollected, placed, displaced, appropriated and negotiated together with their blank or traumatic ruptures and voids, or precisely because of them.

2. Projects on Staro Sajmiste: the struggle for remembering
Non-governmental organisations from Serbia and other countries worked together and produced publications, digital tools, guides and school manuals that can contribute to the development of the new Memorial and its programmes.

3. The memorialisation of Staro Sajmiste
The goal of the round table is to reflect on the experiences produced in various European countries, in Germany above all, and in Serbia, in order to understand how historical knowledge can be presented through a pedagogical approach that recounts the tragic experiences of concentration camps with understandable and respectful language.

The conference will take place on December 14, from 3 PM, at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, and at the Memorial Center Staro Sajmiste on December 15, from 9:30 AM.

Download the conference program here.