KARTA Centre, Warsaw
The KARTA Center is an independent non-governmental organization (incorporated as a foundation), documenting and popularizing the recent history of Poland and Eastern Europe.
http://www.karta.org.pl
EUSTORY Summit: Short information
"Dealing with History in Europe: Understanding Differences, Overcoming Divisions"
Warsaw, 6 - 9 December 2007 in cooperation with Foundation KARTA Center (Poland
The Topic
Modern Europe is a success story. Democracy, freedom and welfare have triumphed over deprivation of rights, genocide and totalitarianism. Most of us enjoy more civil, human and political rights than we dreamed existed. But still, despite the impressive European success story, many of us lack a shared passion for Europe and a clear sense of belonging together. This deficit is combined with conflicts, stereotypes and misunderstandings based on the political misuse of history. All this together generates confusion and divisions that endanger our common future.
Europeans have to understand that we have different backgrounds and that we need to openly discuss our conflicting histories together. Each country has its own national, regional, individual or family memories. Only if we Europeans learn to tell our histories to each other instead of using them against each other we will understand what Europe is about and how we as individuals fit into it. Accepting the variety of historical narratives, presenting honest histories to each other and opposing the abuse of history as a political weapon will enable Europeans to understand differences and overcome divisions. The European idea will then regain power in the hearts of individuals.
The EUSTORY summit
As one of the most significant grass-roots initiatives on history and identity in Europe, EUSTORY provides examples and recommends strategies for a perspective on history that contributes to peace and tolerance instead of fuelling conflicts, distrust and misunderstandings - obstacles that keep Europe from being as strong and convincing as it could be.
The first international EUSTORY summit will take place between 6 and 9 December 2007 in Warsaw/Poland. The summit will be organized by the Foundation KARTA Centre. The EUSTORY summit will bring together previous EUSTORY award winners, European activists from the field of cross-border dialog on history and understanding as well as national EUSTORY competition organizers.
The topic of the summit will be: "Dealing with History in Europe: Understanding Differences, Overcoming Divisions." Under this topic, the EUSTORY summit aims at developing and promoting strategies for an open and critical dialog about history as a way towards mutual understanding in Europe. The EUSTORY summit will result in a position paper on these topics written by the young Europeans taking part in the summit. The aim of the position paper is to raise the awareness of European politicians and officials for the importance of history in current debates about European identity, European culture and the process of unification.
The EUSTORY summit is made possible thanks to funding that the EUSTORY Network receives as awardee of the National Prize 2007 issued by the Deutsche Nationalstiftung (German National Foundation). The award ceremony was held in the French Dome in Berlin on 19 June 2007. German Federal President Horst Köhler handed over the prize to the EUSTORY Network.
