How do you tell a history that is still unfolding? Can remembrance begin while events are still occurring? The Documentation Centre for Displacement, Expulsion, Reconciliation explores new approaches to memory culture in its panel discussion Remembering in Wartime – Memory in Transition. Ukrainian culture of remembrance in the context of the ongoing war. The evening asks how the remembrance of the Second World War is shifting, at a time when commemoration and lived experience begin to overlap, and familiar forms start to falter. Remembrance often feels ritualized, complete, something that only needs to be reframed to remain relevant. But if the present has yet to become the past, how does memory function? Does it become a reflection instead? The current war in Ukraine is reshaping our perspectives on remembrance. It prompts different questions and invites us to look again, because war is no longer just a historical reference point. In Ukraine, new forms of commemoration are emerging in real time, more immediate and more urgent. They are tied to the search for identity amid destruction. These developments, in turn, raise questions about our own memory culture, memorial sites, and the certainties we attach to them. What does it mean to speak about the Second World War when fresh graves are being dug nearby? And what might this imply for a shared European memory? Voices from academia, museum practice and politics come together to open the space of remembrance to new perspectives. You are invited to step into it. Admission is free.
Text: Emma Zylla / Photos: Philip Ratuschny, Rory Grubb
Documentation Centre for Displacement, Expulsion, Reconciliation, Stresemannstr.90, 10963 Berlin–Kreuzberg; map
Remembering in Wartime – Memory in Transition 04.05.2026 18–20h. Get tickets here.
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