War remembrance in a sacralized space of memory: The origins and evolution of Volkstrauertag in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada

Abstract

In 1970, the remains of 187 German prisoners-of-war who died in Canada during World Wars I and II were transferred from three dozen sites across the country to a central burial ground in Kitchener, Ontario. Since then, a remembrance event ( Volkstrauertag) has been organized each November by members of the local German-Canadian community at the German War Graves in Kitchener’s Woodland Cemetery. I address the initial controversy that surrounded the decision to establish a central war cemetery to German prisoners-of-war. I then explore the evolving narrative that underlies the local annual remembrance ceremony and reveal incidents where the German War Graves temporarily became a contested site of memory. I conclude by arguing that, in contrast to observations of the event in Germany, the formative tradition of commemorating all-victims-of-war rather than simply the German war dead has not only been maintained in Kitchener but has broadened in recent years.

‘There is no room in our city for hate’: The re-emerged debates over the current and former place name of a Canadian city

“…Despite some initial opposition to the move, the initiative was accepted due to the widely recognized symbolic significance of Kitchener as Canada’s ‘German capital’. Annual remembrance events which were attended for several decades by German veterans of the Second World War went on without any serious problem as they still do (Kovacs, 2016). To be sure, such displays of a once suppressed ethnic cultural identity were given a major boost with Canada’s official adoption of multiculturalism in 1971 and the attendant interest that the new policy fostered in the documentation and celebration of ethnic settlement histories and cultures across the country (Mackey, 2002).…”

The discursive reconstruction of memory and national identity: The anti-war memorial the Island of Ireland Peace Park

“…This mediation is not a one-off event but an ongoing process. The same meaning could be reproduced and thus maintained, but it is also possible, and likely, that the text will take on a new meaning as its use is adapted to suit the purposes of particular groups in the present (for example, see, Bushaway, 1992;Kovacs, 2015). For Nora (1996), this is what makes such lieux de mémoire, or 'sites of memory', so interesting:…”

“…This mediation is not a one-off event but an ongoing process. The same meaning could be reproduced and thus maintained, but it is also possible, and likely, that the text will take on a new meaning as its use is adapted to suit the purposes of particular groups in the present (for example, see, Bushaway, 1992; Kovacs, 2015). For Nora (1996), this is what makes such lieux de mémoire , or ‘sites of memory’, so interesting: For although it is true that the fundamental purpose of a lieu de mémoire is to stop time, to inhibit forgetting, to fix a state of things, to immortalize death, and to materialize the immaterial […] it is also clear that lieux de mémoire thrive only because of their capacity for change, their ability to resurrect old meanings and generate new ones along with new and unforeseeable connections.…”