Sites of Suffering and Trauma: What to Remember and What to Forget

This conversation explores how communities connect with places of suffering, like former prisons that have been turned into museums—specifically Esma, the former clandestine center of Detention, Torture, and Extermination under Argentina’s Junta, and Robben Island, South Africa’s detention center for anti-Apartheid activists, including Nelson Mandela. How does this connection impact the development of local and international narratives? How does memory interlink with the social-economic uses of heritage in places of trauma? And what does this do to the meaning of the site for the community? Speakers Alejandra Naftal, Executive Director of ESMA Museum and Site of Memory, Argentina Andre Odendaal, Founding CEO, Robben Island Museum; Writer in Residence and Honorary Professor in History and Heritage Studies, University of the Western Cape Moderated by Ihab Saloul, Research Co-Director of School of Memory, Heritage and Materials Sciences, University of Amsterdam; and Professor of Memory and Narrative, University of Bologna