We are very pleased to announce the publication of “Encounters with Troubled Pasts in Contemporary Dutch and Greek Historiography“,  Volume VIII in our series “Publications of the Netherlands Institute at Athens”, published by Sidestone Press, Leiden.
Contributors, experts in their respective research fields with a wide range of scholarly publications, eschew dominant national accounts, deconstruct top-down narratives, and situate the historical subject(s) at the centre of the analysis. The examination of troubled pasts and their accompanying imagery raise enduring questions: Whose past is remembered? How is past appropriated and memorialised? Which pasts are at best neglected, at worst silenced – and why? Encounters with Troubled Pasts  addresses such issues by reference to Dutch Colonialism in the New World and South East Asia, the Greek campaign in Asia Minor, the Shoah and its aftermath in Greece and the Netherlands, the Greek Civil War of the 1940s, Transitional Justice in Post-Soviet Russia, and the Massacre of Srebrenica.
Seven out of the eleven volume’s chapters were first delivered at the workshop “History Unwanted: Testimonies, silence and public memory”, which was held at the NIA in September 2016. As many scholarly accounts on troubled pasts are only discussed in publications in Dutch and Greek, the aim of the workshop was to bring together scholars from Greece and the Netherlands in a Greek-Dutch academic setting to present their current research on troubled pasts in English.

“Encounters with Troubled Pasts ” is fully accessible on-line through the website of Sidestone Press, where you can also order your PDF e-book or printed copy.

The Netherlands Institute expresses its gratitude to everyone who contributed to the realization of this project, which highlights the dynamism of the Institute’s activities. We especially would like to thank editor Philip Carabott for all the time and energy he invested in the publication of this volume.

Contents

Preface

Note on Contributors

An Undigested Past. The Netherlands and Its Colonial History
Frank van Vree

Pride, Shame, Responsibility. New Historical and Heritage Studies on the Holocaust and Slavery
Dienke Hondius

The Other Side of the “Catastrophe”. Greek Army Atrocities During the Asian Minor Campaign (1912-1922)
Tasos Kostopoulos

An Unclaimed Past. The Shoah in Athens
Philip Carabott

The Silent Tree. Collaborationism, Political Power and Collective Guilt. A Dutch-Greek Case Study in Memory
Riki van Boeschoten

A Ticket of Re-Admission into Dutch Society. The Controversy on Amsterdam’s Monument of Jewish Gratitude (1950)
Roel Hijink & Bart Wallet

Persecution Through Demonisation, Condemnation Through Silence. Reflecting on Left-Wing Violence in 1940s Greece
Iason Chandrinos

The “Morality Narrative” on Jewish Rescue in Greece. Commemorative Practices and Representations
Anna Maria Droumpouki

“Narratives Don’t Burn”. Understanding Oral Testimonies and Conceptions of Loyalty Among Exiled Greek Minorities in Central Asia After Stalinist Repressions
Eftihia Voutira

Narratives Competing for the Public Space in Post-Soviet Russia. A Case Study in Challenges to Transitional Justice
Nanci Adler

The Narratives of the Survivors of Srebrenica
Selma Leydesdorff