Thomas Van de Putte (Trento), Holocaust Memoryscapes

In this paper, I analyse the entanglement of practice and meaning in spaces of Holocaust memory. I demonstrate how the meaning we attribute to certain commemorative realms is constituted by everyday and ritualized practices and interactions. The paper compares two different cases. First, I look at how, around the contemporary Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, the contested meaning of certain spaces as either sacred commemorative realms, or as profane realms of everyday life, is constituted through conflict and confrontation. In a second case, on sites commemorating the so-called ‘Aktion Reinhardt’ (including Treblinka and Majdanek), I outline how different ideas and practices of commemorative sacrality clash and compete for prominence within these spaces. 

Thomas Van de Putte is assistant professor in Sociology at the University of Trento. He works on questions of collective Holocaust memory, combining perspectives from sociology, linguistics and cultural studies. He published his first monograph, Contemporary Auschwitz/ Oświęcim, in 2021, and his second monograph, Outsourcing the European Past, in 2024. During the last three years, he has been working on a project in which he observed academic Holocaust historians in their interactions with laypeople. The book resulting from this project, Historical Distance and the Holocaust, will be published by CEU Press in 2026.