I4: Wartime Heritage, Commemoration and Reconciliation
Tracks
4
| Wednesday, December 2, 2026 |
| 10:45 AM - 12:00 PM |
| RHMZ01 |
Overview
Stream: Difficult Pasts, Conflict and Reconciliation
Paper / Session Submitter
Mx Penelope gkini
Founder
Porizo
Kontomari : A cretan village between collective trauma and colonization
Summary Abstract
Every year in May, Crete commemorates the Battle of Crete (May 20-30, 1941), where New Zealand soldiers of the Commonwealth army fought alongside locals against the Nazi operation "Hermes."
In this context, in the village of Kontomari, the cultural association has been organizing the "Festival of Remembrance" for the past four years. In May 2025, we co-organized a collective memory workshop with the cultural association, where the goal was to get people thinking and talking about the execution of 25 civilians.
Tourism expansion and the purchase of real estate by foreign Northern Europeans are rapidly changing the character of the area, while the village seems to remain trapped between a traumatic past and an uncontrolled future. So what values are competing here? And how does the narrative of the execution and its memory reproduce this competition? And what role do the new foreign residents play?
In this context, in the village of Kontomari, the cultural association has been organizing the "Festival of Remembrance" for the past four years. In May 2025, we co-organized a collective memory workshop with the cultural association, where the goal was to get people thinking and talking about the execution of 25 civilians.
Tourism expansion and the purchase of real estate by foreign Northern Europeans are rapidly changing the character of the area, while the village seems to remain trapped between a traumatic past and an uncontrolled future. So what values are competing here? And how does the narrative of the execution and its memory reproduce this competition? And what role do the new foreign residents play?
Biographies
I have been a mountain guide throughout southern Greece for 17 years. I studied Communication and Media at the Kapodistrian University, Arts/Literature/Languages at the University of Dijon, and I have a master's degree in Alternative Experiential, Dialogical, Creative, and Sociocultural Approaches to Psychology in Education from the University of Crete. I am a cultural and natural heritage interpreter and interpreter trainer. I have been trained in nature education and sensory play (messy play). I was responsible for the program "The Postman's Road in Sfakia"and was responsible for the interpretation tour at the Ministry of Culture's summer school of intangible cultural heritage in Dimitsana. I have also participated in summer schools on sustainable development in Spetses. I am a trainer for the European organization Interpret Europe and work with communities that want to promote their cultural and natural heritage throughout Greece. In 2023, I created Porizo, a business through which I can combine all my knowledge of nature, education, and cultural heritage. It is a form of informal education with multi-level approaches through the triptych "Heritage, play, nature, connection."
Dr Rowan Light
Lecturer/curator
University Of Auckland / Auckland Museum
Ka maumahara tonu tātou: Commemorating the New Zealand Wars at Tāmaki Paenga Hira AWMM
Summary Abstract
A historical overview of the development of Te Pūtake o te Riri, He Rā Maumahara, the national commemoration for the New Zealand Wars since 2016 and offers a case study of how Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum is developing October 28th public programming as part of its kaupapa (purpose) as a war memorial.
Biographies
I am a historian at the University of Auckland and project curator for the NZ Wars at Auckland Museum. I research material collections relating to the NZ Wars with an interest in the role of objects and taonga in the commemoration of colonial violence.
Dr Alison Starr
Independant Scholar
Independant Scholar
Postwar reconciliation and rebuilding relationships: exploring Japanese gardens in Australia and New Zealand
Summary Abstract
Advancing Japanese forces during the Asia Pacific War meant Australia and New Zealand were threatened not as only as fighting forces but as sovereign nations. Postwar, in light of widely reported war atrocities, hostility towards Japan and its citizens endured. Postwar economic realities, however, saw Japan sign landmark trade agreements with Australia and New Zealand. Following this, a network of sister-city relationships sought to rebuild bilateral relations through citizen diplomacy, increasing rapidly during the booming economic conditions of the 1980s. As tangible expressions of postwar reconciliation and cultural diplomacy, Japanese gardens were a common sister-city gift.
This paper explores the development of Japanese sister-city gardens in Australia and New Zealand, alongside political, geopolitical and economic circumstances, considering scholarly and applied characterisations of heritage practice of gardens, origin and authenticity, and the idea of these gardens as reconciliation devices, reflecting on relevance and interpretation for current and future audiences.
This paper explores the development of Japanese sister-city gardens in Australia and New Zealand, alongside political, geopolitical and economic circumstances, considering scholarly and applied characterisations of heritage practice of gardens, origin and authenticity, and the idea of these gardens as reconciliation devices, reflecting on relevance and interpretation for current and future audiences.
Biographies
Alison has extensive public and private sector experience as a built heritage specialist, with a disciplinary background in architecture and Asian Studies. Alison's research doctorate investigated the management of wartime enemy human remains, their role in the postwar reconciliation relationships, sites of shared war memory, and methods of transcultural memory.
Professor Sally Hill
Professor Of Global Studies
Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University Of Wellington
Turning Back: Accumulation and Amnesia at the Monument to the Italians Fallen in Africa
Summary Abstract
This paper examines Syracuse's Monument to the Italians Fallen in Africa, originally commissioned by Mussolini in 1938 for Addis Ababa but relocated to Syracuse in 1968. While retitled to emphasize Italian losses rather than colonial conquest, the monument's imagery—armed forces, colonial troops, battle scenes—still celebrates imperial power. For decades neglected and fenced off, municipal interventions since 1986 have transformed the site with amenities like playgrounds, bike paths, and viewpoints. Crucially, park benches position visitors facing away from the monument toward the sea. New plaques commemorate Italian WWII and Foibe massacre victims but ignore colonial atrocities in Africa. The paper argues that heritage management through strategic inattention and accretion has literally and figuratively turned Syracuse's back on colonial history, exemplifying Italy's broader failure to confront its violent colonial past.
Biographies
Giacomo Lichtner is Professor of History and Film at Victoria University of Wellington and the Deputy Chair of the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand. He specialises in the history, memory and representation of the Holocaust, Fascism and World War Two. Giacomo is the author of Film and the Shoah in France and Italy (2008, 2015) and Fascism in Italian Cinema since 1945 (2013). He has co-edited numerous volumes, including special issues of Annali d’italianistica: "Il fascismo nella cultura italiana: 1945-2023" (2023) and of Modern Italy: "History and Memory in Italian Cinema" (2017). His current projects include a monograph for Bloomsbury entitled The Search for Meaning in Holocaust Cinema and, with Sally Hill, the ACIS-funded Research Project "Reframing, Revisiting or Removing: Making Fascism Visible in Contemporary Italy."
Sally (Sarah Patricia) Hill is Professor of Global Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. Her research focuses on transdisciplinary understandings of visual and narrative representations of marginalised identities and on historical memory in visual and material culture. She co-edited Stillness in Motion: Italy, Photography and the Meanings of Modernity (Toronto University Press, 2015). With Giacomo Lichtner, she is co-lead of the ACIS-funded Research Project "Reframing, Revisiting or Removing: Making Fascism Visible in Contemporary Italy."
