From Memory to Memorialization 

 

The ICMEMOHRI 25th Anniversary Conference marks a milestone for ICOM’s International Committee for Memorial and Human Rights Museums.
It will bring together museum professionals, scholars, human rights advocates, and memory workers to explore how sites of memory transform personal and collective remembrance into sustainable public memorialization. As first-hand witnesses fade, ethical and meaningful representation becomes ever more urgent, especially in times of shrinking civic space and rising authoritarianism. In Vienna, reflections will include the city’s anti-fascist struggles, Jewish exile, Roma and Sinti persecution, forced displacement, concentration camps, and Austria’s complicity in Nazi crimes. The conference will also engage with sites and institutions addressing contemporary human rights issues, including places dedicated to the documentation of state violence, alongside global examples such as the Spanish Civil War and the International Brigades. These histories remind us that memorial museums must preserve memory while actively defending human dignity and human rights today.

 

Lectures / Workshops Location:
Vienna Wiesenthal Institute (VWI), Rabensteig 3, 1010 Vienna
Felicitas Heimann-Jelinek, Chair ICMEMOHRI, Conference Chair
Barbara Thimm, Jill Vexler, Jane E Klinger, Lea Fink, Ophelia León, Program Committee

 

Registration: https://www.eventbrite.fr/e/icmemohri-25th-anniversary-conference-2026-t...

 

Partners:

 

 

Program

 

ICMEMOHRI PRE-CONFERENCE 

25 May 2026 
JEWISH VIENNA 
CITY WALK (FULL DAY) 
9:00 17:00 
Route: Walking tour through historic Jewish neighborhoods 
and key sites in Vienna 

 

17:00

Freud Museum 
Address: Berggasse 19, 1090 Vienna 
A guided tour of the Freud Museum’s permanent exhibition, with a 
special focus on the curatorial and design strategies used to visualize 
the transformation of Freud’s former private apartment and medical 
practice into a museum space. The program will conclude with a small 
reception in the foyer (white wine, water, and grissini). 
 

FROM MEMORY TO MEMORIALIZATION - ICMEMOHRI CONFERENCE, DAY 1 
26 May 2026, Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance & Morzinplatz / Vienna Wiesenthal Institute 
SITE VISITS 
9:00 11:00 
Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance (DÖW) 
Address: Wipplingerstrasse 6-8, 1010 Vienna 
Documentation of resistance movements, Austrian fighters in International Brigades, 
exile, Nazi justice, postwar trials of Nazi perpetrators, contemporary right wing 
extremism in Austria. 

 

11:15 12:15 
Memorial to the Victims of State Terror (Former Gestapo Headquarters/Hotel 
Metropol) 
Address: Salztorgasse 6, 1010 Vienna 
Discussion on Gestapo, repression, and machinery of persecution. 

11:15 12:15 
Memorial “Never Forget” for the victims of the Gestapo 
Address: Morzinplatz 
Vienna’s first and originally illegally erected memorial for victims of Nazi crimes. 

 

12:30 13:00 
Transfer to VWI 
TBC Welcome by Éva Kovács, Deputy Director (Academic Affairs) VWI 
PANEL 1 
THREATS TO MEMORY 
TBC 
A) FAR-RIGHT MOBILIZATION, POLITICAL REPRESSION AND MEMORY CONFLICTS 
Moderator: Ophelia Leon 
Far-right attacks on the culture of remembrance 
Philipp Neumann-Thein 
Repressive Policies in Kyrgyzstan 
Abdrakhmanov B.D. 
Vernacular Memorialization of Genocidal Violence: Negotiating Collective 
Trauma in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq 
Bareez Majid 
Topics for discussion: political instrumentalization of history, state repression and 
memory politics; far-right mobilization against remembrance cultures. 

TBC 
B) CONTESTED NARRATIVES IN SITES OF VIOLENCE AND CONFLICT 
Moderator: Jill Vexler 
Navigating the Challenges of Memorializing Drobitsky Yar, Kharkiv 
Galyna Fesenko 
Marginalized Memories and Disputed Temporalities of Colombia’s Internal 
Armed Conflict 
María Gaitán Valencia 
Topics for discussion: contested memory at sites of violence; memory under pressure 
in contemporary conflicts; plural and marginalized narratives of violence. 
TBC Break 

 

PANEL 2 
REMEMBERING THE SAMUDARIPEN AND MARGINALIZED VICTIMS 
TBC 
Uštica – A Site of Remembrance for Roma Genocide / Samudaripen 
Danijel Vojak & Kristina Lukec 
Samudaripen, Romani Memory, and the Ethics of Representation 
Zlatomir Jovanović 
Thinking (Dis-)Continuity in Antigypsyism-Critical Education 
Lukas Engelmeier 
Topics for discussion: Roma genocide remembrance; ethics of representation; 
educational approaches to antigypsyism. 
18:30 
Jewish Museum Vienna 
Address: Dorotheergasse 11, 1010 Vienna 
Reception by director of the Jewish Museum Dr. Barbara Staudinger. 
 

 

FROM MEMORY TO MEMORIALIZATION - ICMEMOHRI CONFERENCE, DAY 2 
27 May 2026, Vienna Museum & Memorials / Vienna Wiesenthal Institute 
SITE VISITS 
9:00 11:00 
Vienna Museum – Permanent Exhibition 
Address: Karlsplatz 8, 1010 Vienna 
Guided tour through segments of contemporary history 
• Sinti & Roma persecution 
• Spiegelgrund children - Euthanasia 
• Persecution of homosexuals under National Socialism 
• Integration into broader narrative of Jewish Vienna. 
Hrdlicka-Memorial (Albertina) 
Address: Albertinaplatz 1, 1010 Vienna 
Memorial against war and fascism by Austrian sculptor Alfred Hrdlicka. 

 

12:00 12:30 
Judenplatz – Rachel Whiteread Memorial 
Address: Judenplatz 1, 1010 Vienna 
Whiteread’s Holocaust Memorial in Vienna commemorates the thousands of Austrian 
Jews murdered during the Holocaust through an abstract cast of a library shelving 
unit, evoking absence and memory. 

 

12:30 13:00 
Transfer to VWI 
PANEL 3 
MUSEUMS, EXHIBITIONS 
AND THE REPRESENTATION 
OF VIOLENCE 
TBC 
A) Museums and Cultural Trauma: Representing War and Violence 
Moderator: Kirsten John-Stucke 
The Representation of World War II Cultural Trauma in Vernacular Museums in 
Latvia 
Maija Meiere-Oša 
Representations of Roma in Post-Socialist Memorial Museums 
Ljiljana Radonić 
Topics for discussion: museum narratives and silences; representation of minority 
victims; national vs. transnational memory frameworks. 

TBC 
B) CURATING ABSENCE: SILENCES, OBJECTS AND THE POLITICS OF EXHIBITION 
Moderator: Markus Moors 
Distant Atrocities, Local Meanings: Holocaust Commemoration in Post-
Apartheid South Africa 
Jakub Nowakowski 
Two Photographs, One Medal, and Changing History 
Jane E Klinger 
Zámeček Memorial – execution site. Commemoration in tension between 
narratives, politics and stakeholders 
Viktor Janák 
Topics for discussion: curatorial strategies and interpretive choices; absence and 
invisibility in exhibitions; objects, evidence and narrative construction. 
TBC Break 

 

PANEL 4 
NEW FORMS OF MEMORY: DIGITAL, ECOLOGICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL 
TBC 
Moderator: Zahava Doering 
Green Commemorations 
Aleksandra Janus & Witold Wrzosiński 
Virtual Madımak Massacre Museum 
Erol Gülüm 
Rejuvenation of an Early Feminist Utopian Text as Memory of the World 
Mofidul Hoque 
Topics for discussion: digital memory practices; ecological remembrance; 
experimental approaches to memory. 

 

18:30 
Naturhistorisches Museum, Department of Anthropology 
Address: Burgring 7, 1010 Vienna 
A guided tour will explore the history of racial science and the practice of 
collecting human remains and ethnographic objects within the museum. 
Participants will have the opportunity to examine how these collections were 
assembled, contextualized, and interpreted over time, reflecting broader 
scientific, cultural, and ethical perspectives. 
 

 

FROM MEMORY TO MEMORIALIZATION - ICMEMOHRI CONFERENCE, DAY 3 
28 May 2026, Human Rights Square / Heldenplatz / House of Austrian History / Vienna Wiesenthal Institute 
SITE VISITS 

9:00 9:30 
Platz der Menschenrechte - Human Rights Square / Marcus Omofuma 
Memorial 
Address: Museumsplatz / MuseumsQuartier, 1070 Vienna 
Public reminder against racism, state violence, and for the protection of human 
rights, commemorating Nigerian Marcus Omofuma, who died during a forced 
deportation in 1999. 

 

9:40 10:10 
Heldenplatz – Outdoor / Heldentor 
Address: Heldenplatz, 1010 Vienna 
The Heldentor exposes tensions between heroism, victimhood, and historical 
responsibility in Austria’s memory culture. 

 

10:15 11:15 
House of Austrian History (HdGÖ) 
Address: Heldenplatz, 1010 Vienna 
Focus tour “Fundamental and human rights” explores key moments and debates in 
Austria’s human rights history within the broader context of contemporary history 
since 1918 

 

12:30 13:00 
Transfer to VWI 
PANEL 5 
MEMORY INSTITUTIONS: ARCHIVES, MUSEUMS AND ETHICAL PRACTICES 
TBC 
A) THE ARCHIVE AS LIVING MEMORY 
LBI and the VWI Archive/Museum 
Karen Franklin, Sandra Weiss, Sandro Fasching 
Topic for discussion: Archival networks. 

TBC 
B) BETWEEN GLOBAL AND LOCAL MEMORY NETWORKS 
Moderator: Nils Roemer 
Ethics of Care in NGO–University Collaboration on Human Remains 
Agata Strządała & Agnieszka Jabłońska 
Jewish Cemetery Education and Digital Memorialization in Moldova 
Irina Șihova 
A Living Monument: Memory Practices at Casa do Povo 
Ernesto Mifano Honigsberg 
Topics for discussion: institutional memory work; ethics of heritage and remembrance. 
TBC Break 

 

PANEL 6 TBC 
Founding of ICMEMOHRI – Origins, Intentions and Challenges 
Kirsten John-Stucke 
18:30 
Kulturankerzentrum Schlingerhof, exhibition opening “Towards a Democratic 
Culture of Remembrance” 
Address: Brünner Straße 34-38, 1210 Vienna 
This exhibition is dedicated to a resistance fighter from the district who joined the 
International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. The exhibition explores individual 
biography within the broader history of antifascist resistance, transnational 
solidarity, and the struggle for democratic values in Austria and Europe. It reflects 
on how remembrance itself can become a democratic practice—one that resists 
forgetting, simplification, and historical silence. The exhibition is presented at the 
Kulturankerzentrum im Schlingerhof, a site of particular historical significance: in 
1934, the Schlingerhof was a central location of antifascist resistance in Austria. By 
situating this personal history within this charged space, the exhibition connects past 
struggles with present responsibilities. 



 

ICMEMOHRI POST CONFERENCE 
29 May 2026 
EXCURSION – MAUTHAUSEN & GUSEN (FULL DAY) 
Guided visit to the formerly largest and most lethal concentration camp complexes in Austria, Mauthausen and Gusen in Upper Austria 
8:30 Departure from Vienna to Mauthausen 
10:45 Two-hour guided tour of the Mauthausen Concentration Camp Memorial 
13:00 Lunch break at the memorial’s bistro 
14:00 Departure for Gusen 
14:15 

 

Visit to the Gusen Concentration Camp Memorial, including a 
presentation of the plans for the extension and redesign of the 
memorial site. 
16:15 Farewell / conclusion of the visit 
18:15 Arrival in Vienna