Contact:
alain.gueraud@drjscs.gouv.fr

Current living place:
Limoges, France

Alain Guéraud

CEPJ / DRJSCS Limousin

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• My organization:
  The Limousin regional board of the state Youth Ministry is encouraging/supporting youth policies in the field of culture and European and international mobility. As regional correspondent of French-German Youth Office and Youth in action European program I organise since many years youth exchanges and seminars with partners from Germany, Eastern Europe, Euromed countries and South East Europe.

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• Examples of concrete activities I have organized/am organizing in the field of “dealing with the past”:
  
  • In cooperation with the “Centre de la mémoired ’Oradoursur Glane” a seminar of young History teachers from Austria, France and Germany about the way History of the 2nd world war is taught in the 3 different countries.
  • In cooperation with the “centre de la mémoired’ Oradoursur Glane” and the Jugendgästehaus Dachau different seminars:
    • Memory places in Europe (BiH, Germany and France)
    • “Crossed Histories “(Croatia, France and Germany)
    • "Wars and propaganda" (Serbia, France and Germany)
    • "War crimes and trials" (Croatia,France,Germany and Serbia)

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• Concrete challenges I am facing in my “dealing with the past”-related work:
  

  It seems that one of the most challenging thing concerning “dealing with the past “is for each seminar’s participant to avoid having a too emotional point of view. There is a big gap between French and German participants whose grand-parents were living during the Second World War and participants from the Balkans who are personally strongly concerned by the war.
  Our work, we could also say our duty is to make sure that in our seminars everyone is aware that we have to work on History, upon facts, and if we listen to a witness we have to be careful and try to sort out real facts from subjective elements.

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• My personal link to/interest for the topic of “dealing with difficult pasts”:
  I studied History at universityand after that I started to teach and train in the field of youth and community work especially toward youth workers and ngo governors. Going further into the subject, one can say as Italo Svevo "The things that everyone ignores and which leaves no traces do not exist". Moreover, dealing with the past and memories are defyingnational representations and challenge the right of states to tell what they think is good for the nation.