Intercultural Legacies of the International Task Force: Lithuania and the British at the Turn of the Millennium

Abstract

In the first 15 years following the collapse of Communism, and among pre-existing national and local efforts, there were also a number of international collaborative attempts to draw renewed attention to the memory of the genocide of the Jews in Lithuania during the Second World War. These efforts included the establishment of an ITF British/Lithuanian ‘Liaison Project’ (2000–03) as part of the work of the Task Force for International Co-operation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research (ITF, which has been renamed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance [IHRA] in 2013). It will be argued that the British/Lithuanian ‘Liaison Project’ offers an example of intercultural memory work which enriches and nuances the research of scholars such as Tony Judt, Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider. This is because the British/Lithuanian ‘Liaison Project’ can be interpreted in terms of British and Lithuanian political, cultural and foreign policies in relation to Europe and the memorialisation of genocides in the global arena at the turn of the millennium.