6
Foreword
in literature, theatre and film be investigated outside of its cultural and historical context. That is why this theme encourages broader interdisciplinary cooperation. Follow-up meetings of our international team will be held again in Prague, in July 2012 (the 1970s and 1980s), and in Gießen in November 2012 (the period after 1989). Polish colleagues from Łódż could not take part in the Prague symposium. Nevertheless, we believe our cooperation will continue and this encounter of various representations of Jews and the Shoah in the literatures and cultures of Central Europe will prove beneficial. In June 2009, during the Czech presidency of the EU, representatives of 46 countries adopted the Terezin Declaration, which, inter alia, undertakes to take care of the study and preservation of Jewish culture. Contemporary European society is threatened by the “forgetting”, in other words, the loss of historical memory or soulless presentism. There are no perfect legal and institutional mechanisms to prevent, once and for all, any new pogroms, genocides and totalitarianism. We must therefore rely on basic moral principles and consciousness of historical memory. We hope that our workshops will serve this aim, contributing to the recovery of historical memory and the maintenance of tolerance and respect for cultural pluralism. Jiří Holý