Memorialization is a key element of dialogue on the issue of missing persons

Memorialization is a key element of all public dialogues on the issue of missing persons, said Dr. Nicolas Moll, today, during the second day of the seminar at the International Commission on Missing Persons in Sarajevo, reports the Bosnian news agency Patria (NAP).

Memorialization can directly impact the efforts made by family members of the missing to exercise their right to find and identify their missing relatives. In Argentina, for example, the practice of displaying photographs of missing persons on busy streets has become a kind of monument, a challenge to government representatives, and a way to obtain information about the missing.

Dr. Moll referred to the memorial in Berlin, designed in 2008 by Peter Eisenman and the company Buro Happold, dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust.

- This is about Germany remembering the crimes committed by Germans - he said, emphasizing that memorialization plays an increasingly important role in the attempts of various countries to confront the crimes of the past – crimes they themselves committed, not necessarily those where they were victims. Another example is the Memorial dedicated to the abolition of slavery in Nantes, designed by artist Krzysztof Wodiczko and architect Julian Bonder. The main theme of this memorial is the role that the port cities of the French Atlantic coast played in the lucrative Atlantic slave trade.

The two-day seminar was organized by the ICMP and the Regional Coordination of Families of Missing Persons. Nicolas Moll is a historian and coordinator of the Memory Lab platform.