On May 4 we remember all victims who have been killed or murdered in the Kingdom of the Netherlands or anywhere else in the world in war situations or during peace-keeping operations since the outbreak of WWII. But who or what is on your mind during the two minutes of silence?

Memories are not only personal, but also shared, collective and political. How one deals with a difficult inherited history differs from place to place, and changes over time. There are moments in which countries, or the international community, tend to forget or repress uncomfortable memories, and there are moments of reckoning and repair.

Dr Lorena De Vita (UU) is a historian of international relations, who analyses how the traumatic past (re)surfaces in diplomatic settings. What are the politics of memory and forgetting in 2024, and how do they relate to what happened after WWII?