During the last few years, many have become rather alarmed by, and suspicious of, the trade in Nazi memorabilia across Europe. This trade and its associated desire to own, touch, gaze at, and display things of the past is now said to be booming more than ever. Some are perturbed by the sheer increase in the, often illegal, trade activity and its collectors; whereas others are more outraged by the very logic of longing to own anything pertaining to the particular event. This paper grapples with the ways in which the trade of Nazi memorabilia connects with, travels through, and informs the continual negotiating of a collective European memory landscape.
In this paper I explore how these ‘things’ of the past stay with us through their representations but more so through their materiality itself – I ask: How are negotiations between a ‘complicated past’ and current identity ongoing, and mediated through the trade, collection, and use of disputed objects? The tension between memory and forgetting and its relevance for the European identity project is always brightly evident, and I argue that this relevance is resurrected most problematically in the responses to, and banning of, the trade.
