Museums and Transitional Justice: Assessing the Impact of a Memorial Museum on Young People in Post-Communist Romania

Abstract

Memorial museums are frequently established within transitional justice projects intended to reckon with recent political violence. They play an important role in enabling young people to understand and remember a period of human rights abuses of which they have no direct experience. This paper examines the impact of a memorial museum in Romania which interprets the human rights abuses of the communist period (1947–1989). It uses focus groups with 61 young adults and compares the responses of visitors and non-visitors to assess the impact of the museum on views about the communist past, as well as the role of the museum within post-communist transitional justice. The museum had a limited impact on changing overall perceptions of the communist era but visiting did stimulate reflection on the differences between past and present, and the importance of long-term remembrance; however, these young people were largely skeptical about the museum’s role within broader processes of transitional justice. The paper concludes that it is important to recognize the limits of what memorial museums can achieve, since young people form a range of intergenerational memories about the recent past which a museum is not always able to change.

Memorial Ambivalences in Postcommunist Romania: Generational Attitudes towards the Symbolic Legacy of Communism

“…Extant scholarship on the politics of memory in the postcommunist region and Romania in particular relies heavily on the transitional justice framework to conceive of memorialization as a public act of acknowledging the wrongdoing perpetrated by the former dictatorial regimes [20][21][22][23]. Moving beyond this transitional justice paradigm, this paper draws on the body of works developed in political geography and especially in the interdisciplinary field of critical placename studies, where important research was done on the postcommunist politics of street name changes and monumental removal in CEE region and Romania.…”

Antecedents of Rural Tourism Experience Memory: Tourists’ Perceptions of Tourism Supply and Positive Emotions

“…Although tourism experience memory is an important and growing area of research, research on this topic remains uncertain and fragmented [ 54 , 55 ]. In recent years, researchers have studied the factors influencing visitor memory formation through visitor tourism experiences in museums and historic Sites [ 56 , 57 , 58 ]. However, the current academic research on rural tourism experience memory lacks a cohesive and timely synthesis.…”

Education During the Covid-19 Pandemic. The Case of Romania’s Political-Administrative Decisions on Education and Health

“…However, the deepening of the social gap, poverty and, in some cases, certain cultural and religious particularities increasingly influence equal opportunities in the educational field (Crețan and Turnock 2008;Crețan et al 2021). The broadening of the educational framework through outdoor activities with students, fields trips, visits to museums and other cultural and heritage landmarks was also taken into consideration (Marinescu 2015;Light et al 2019Light et al , 2021.…”

“…The broadening of the educational framework through outdoor activities with students, fields trips, visits to museums and other cultural and heritage landmarks was also taken into consideration (Marinescu 2015; Light et al . 2019, 2021).…”