THE ROLE OF THE MEMORIAL PARKS IN THE CONCTRUCTION OF THE COLECTIVE MEMOTY AND NATIONAL IDENTITY

Abstract

The memory of the Second world war plays a essential role in creation of the identity of every european nation. It is the mark of the colлective memory of the modern Europe, the mark of the past times of domination, separatism, and harsh intolerance, a reminder for “those who succeded to build the bright future on the bloody and friable foundations”. By the reminiscence we maintain continuity of the time, past and present, and we turn history into heritage; we reveal the mistakes made and also create a possibility to interpret the history in the right way and based on that, to transform our own identity.
The Serbian society haѕn’t came throught this path just yet, although the memory of the WWII had a significant part in the construction of the national identity. As the simbols that revive our memories and bring them into our realm, the memorial parks play an important role. By the analyses of our national vision of the past, we can see that it is selective, ideologically crippled and even today, hasn’t been reconstructed yet. Two historical sites, similiar in the past, but treated utterly different at present, Staro Sajmište and Šumarice, will be analised and compared in this study. Staro Sajmište, the site of the first Belgrade fair, and later a concentration camp in which 17000 innocent people lost their lives, exists only in oblivion; it is a site without a proper monument, not even a stone, scattered on the threads of the World Wide Web.