BHS / ENG

310

 

Christian Savary

Contact:
savarychristian11@gmail.com

www.sentiersdelamemoire.org

Christian Savary

History Teacher

  • Former activities:

    History Teacher since 1995, Music festival creator and organiser from 1991 to 2000.

  • My organization:
    The “Paths of Memory” (Sentiers de la mémorire) is an association founded in 2004 with high school students working on the history and memory of the genocide of the Jews during the Second World War. Over time, the association developed its structure, became open to adults and has become a very active actor of the cultural landscape of Coutances.
  • Examples of concrete activities I have organized/am organizing in the field of “dealing with the past”:

    • Historical and memorial trips throughout Europe and in the direction of Auschwitz. Since 2004, there have been 13 trips through France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lithuania, Latvia and of course Poland.

    • "International Weeks of Memory", all 2 years in Coutances, with meetings between young people from Europe (Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, Switzerland, Armenia, Hungary, Czech Republic and France), to present testimonies, conferences, exhibitions, concerts, screenings and speakers from around the world.

    • Memorial events and commemorations every year.

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

    The challenges are much more technical than intellectual. It is difficult to conduct associative activity and professional activity in parallel. The other technical challenge is financial. Nevertheless, the last challenge is to set an indisputable historical framework so that the work of memory is not instrumentalised or biased.

  • My personal link to/interest for the topic of “dealing with difficult pasts”:
    It is something very personal. Nevertheless, such dealing with a difficult past is a matter of justice. It is also a matter of recognizing the victims in order to better project oneself into a better future, hence the need to work with the younger generations. In addition, the European dimension is fundamental to seize the history of the other, to share it.