Abstract

The people we call Europeans include many millions of European Union citizens, the Swiss, the Ukrainians, the Turks, the Norwegians, the Croatians, the Serbs, and the Albanians. Do they share memories and a common sense of history? Indeed, should Europeans share memories? Each of the European nations has accumulated a stockpile of tales and myths that allow its citizens to act in solidarity within set boundaries. What, then, does that imply for a united Europe? In what way do Europeans have a "shared memory" We must display the anchor points of supra- and transnational memory as concentric circles: The first circle: the holocaust as a negative founding myth. The second circle: Soviet-communism-equally criminal? The third circle: expulsions as a pan-European Trauma? The fourth circle: the Armenian question- Unanswered? The fifth circle: the European periphery The sixth circle: Europe as a continent of Immigration. The seventh circle: Europe's success story after 1945