Historical Background of CULT Towards a new culture of remembrance: Facing the shades of our past. Several European countries promote the positive aspects of their history without acknowledging their most critical legacies. Since this sanitisation of the past has detrimental impacts on society at large, how best can the culture and education sector adapt to reverse the trend? What concrete steps can be taken at both European and national level to improve public recognition of those who have suffered from oppression, colonisation and crimes against humanity? “We can no longer take that which was good in the past and simply call it our heritage, to discard the bad and simply think of it as a dead load which by itself time will bury in oblivion [...] Such is the reality in which we live .” - Hanna Arendt Vergangenheitsbewältigung is a composite German word that describes the processes of coming to terms with the negative, repressed and incriminating aspects of the past (Vergangenheit “past”; Bewältigung “overcome”), with particular reference to the collective past of a ethnic or national group. The first codified use of the term specifically refers to remorse for Germans’ complicity in the war crimes of the Wehrmacht, the Holocaust, and the relat-
ed events of the early and mid-20th century - including World War II. While this collective process was particularly strong in post-War Germanies, many other European countries had not completely dealt with the most shameful aspects of their history yet. Moreover, a cultural and political trend opposed to critically analysing past event is re-emerging; paired with the surge of nationalistic movements which actively push for historical revisionism (e.g., genocide negationism in Turkey and Bosnia, sanitisation of the European colonial rule over Africa and Asia, glorification of former dictators in Italy and Spain).