Memory, memories

One of the main issues arising when it is about Central and Eastern Europe is the management of painful memories. More or less frozen during the Cold War these memories of wars, lost territories, symbolical heroes became facts of daily life in post-communism. In fact, by the very fact that they were forbidden they get a privileged status and the critical evaluation of past was for a long time seen as an attack against core values. Lacking any references to start with, the Franco-German reconciliation model was a stereotype of political discourses on ethnic reconciliation in Romania, Hungary or Slovakia, fitting as well the objectives of this countries to be full parts of organisations as EU and NATO. But the historical facts and the recent and past memories were different and no external mechanism was able to provide a miraculous solution. The pressure of euro-atlantic integration was huge, indeed, but these countries, by themselves needed to find their own reconciliation solutions, first of all, by making history the duty of historians and not of the politicians.

The common trait shared with the other reconciliation models, as the Franco-German one for example, is the need to focus on a common future, for every citizen of their countries, whatever their cultural, gender and national background.
http://hnn.us/articles/49105.html